Phasmophobia from High School was honestly a pretty cool dude, despite all of his flaws. Chilling with him was easy. You could come home from a rough day at work an invite him to hang out on occasion, maybe with a couple of friends, and it would be a pretty nice time.

The issue with Phas back then was that he would invariably put a sour taste in your mouth. Sometimes you’d see the cracks in his personality and realize that he was sort of just putting on a show for his first impressions. Like, really, he’d way overdo it sometimes. People meeting him for the first time might take me aside as say things like “Wow! He’s a really exciting guy.” Yeah, a bunch a bullshit, I’d think to myself. But of course I wouldn’t say anything, ruining the newbie’s view of Phas would be rude, anyway.

Eventually everyone saw it, though. Phasmophobia would pull the same old tricks over and over again, and we wouldn’t say anything, but every time he set a ghost upon a hunt or threw some ‘challenges’ at us, we kind of just sighed in boredom and second-hand embarrassment. He just wasn’t trying to be anything but that first impressions guy you met 3 months ago when you and your friends got hammered and decided to try some dumbass horror game “because fuck it.”

There was no real depth to the guy. Again, super chill. I don’t want to say anything negative about someone who was genuinely an alright guy, but damn, dude. He was fucking boring.

But that was the old Phasmophobia

This new guy, hold on leme’ tell you something. This new guy, Phasmophobia, is not the same guy he used to be. I invited him to a kickback to celebrate this big update his devs put through to live. Apparently they had been working on it for some number of months, so it was a pretty big deal. Whatever, right? Most games have updates that take a while to make, it should make too huge of a difference, right?

Well forget that. Phas walked in after, I don’t know how many months, since the last time I saw him. He was jacked. Incredible body. The dude looked like he did bicep curls while hitting his squats, you know what I mean? At first I was afraid, you know? Like, what if he’s a total roided up douche bag now? But he was actually super friendly and chill, just like he had always been. Except he seemed a lot more lively and interesting. He even brought two six packs with him. So thoughtful!

I congratulated him on his new state and we had a drink while reminiscing over the old days. He started talking about how he appreciated who he used to be as a person, but understood he had some changes that needed to be made. Apparently he really dug in over the last few months and worked his ass of to change his habits. I mean, clearly, his workout regiment has improved, but could even see it in the way he was able to sprint. Like, he was fast as hell for a solid three seconds at a time now. But everything from his demeanor to his speech pattern was improved. It was honestly surreal to see it in person. I remember, even now, how he applied the teachings of Sun Tzu to my work life and gave me the confidence to ask for a raise. “When weak, appear strong”, or something like that. Amazing stuff.

And it wasn’t just me, everyone seemed to take a liking to him. It was almost the kind of situation where you wanted to hate Phas because of how popular he was with everyone there, but he was just too interesting to dislike, you know? I mean, one could say he was almost too popular. He actually stepped outside for some air once everyone had started drinking and things were getting rowdy. After a few minutes, I noticed Ghost Hunters Corps’ girl had slipped outside with him and were talking it up. Look, you didn’t hear it from me, but she was just comparing Phas to her boyo. “Oh, he doesn’t buy me unique textures like you have!” “He’s so aggressive sometimes, he doesn’t know how to just chill out and let me hunt for evidence like you do!”

Phas was so classy about it, too. He just told her that GHC is probably trying his best and that there are bumpy roads in all relationships. What a guy, Right!?

So yeah, I don’t know what the devs did to him, but Phasmophobia is all the better for it. We actually have a hangout planned for later this week. Just gunna relax and hunt some ghosts with his new items and evidence type. It’s gunna be great. I just hope I don’t seem to clingy, you know? It would be really embarrassing to be ‘that guy’, to someone who used to be ‘that guy’ to me. No chance though, right? No chance.