Skill Issue | The Grinding Gear Podcast #78

The Grindys, The Golden Gears, Return! The Best of 2025. What a year it has been. GG has survived several YouTube-polyspes and played many games. Some retro, but more modern than our normal affair. This is the final official podcast record for the year 2025 and we have our own LEGALLY DISTINCT accolades to hand out. An insane year for video games comes to a close. Who will win “Best I Think It’s an Indie game” and who will walk away with Brightest Dumpster Fire. Our plans are big for 2026, we’ll see you then. Supportourbromance.com for a big new year of GG in 2026! That’s no joke. 

Jesse Cox returns to the show to discuss the Game Awards! The reveals, the trailers, the gossip and the awards. Fathoming Highgaurd and trying to sell us on Ace Combat. What is Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic? How much goo fits in a single Divinity body? These are all classic questions that Garrett and Kyle need answers for. We are also on the eve of a fresh new Final Fantasy XIV MSQ Patch. We all played Dispatch too. Supportourbromance.com and you too can get that WB face. 

Guild Wars 1, Octopath 0, new FFXIV content on the horizon, revisiting our favorite childhood films, talking smack about Tarantino talking smack, and exploring Jujutsu Kaisen! ALL on today’s episode of the GG Podcast!

We touched the grass, ate the turkey and watched the sports ball. Video game discord trudged on. With these perspectives, we return to ai up to its old bull. Banana Fish has been released on Amazon Prime Video with a horrid case of the Computer voice for the english dub. Where Winds Meet’s ai chat bots are being tricked into completing quests early. In other news, Team Cherry wants to make new things, Jeff Keighley has found a terrible portal and Kyle’s voice is going out!

The Game Awards nominees are here! Let’s see how many Expedition 33 racked up and who else broke through! On top of that Yoshi P is out here hyping up the next chapter for FFXIV, WoW housing is bumming us out, and Steam Machines are back and made by Valve!

Expedition 33 special with music YouTube extraordinaire, MarcoMeatball is today’s offering! Marco joins the boys to talk not just about the exceptional music of Clair Obscure. But also it’s story and the hot takes that start flying around chat whenever someone gets to the ending. Enjoy this deep dive in Sandfall’s first game as well as our brains’ as content creators!

Will Pokemon save us from the Ai? Stormgate, you remember Stormgate right? Tim Morten had a rather honest rundown of where he feels the post-Blizzard design team went wrong and brings up the changing landscape of Venture Capital. The episode can’t help but get real on the eve of Pokemon’s release. Love em or hate em, Nintendo is about to drop another massive Poke’drama’pocalypse into the world as reviews come in around 8/10. Xbox continues its cursed run by talking about an upcoming “ad supported” tier of Xbox Game Pass. We’re both playing Megabonk. Emails and more.

The Round Table gathers. 7.3: The Promise of Tomorrow MSQ ends the Dawntrail ark in traditional fashion. Garrett, Kyle and Jesse freshen themselves up on the story happenings, having played it back in August. Preach, recently caught up, shares a fresh viewer's perspective. Is Calyx around for the long haul? What does that mean for the story and Sphene? What lessons have the devs learned from Dawntrail and what will they carry into the future. One thing is clear, FFXIV is a story first game and it’s future rides on its ability to capture it’s fans once again. 7.3 seems a solid start.