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PlayStation's Weird PR Fiasco | Firelink Podcast
2.2k Plays1 year ago
This week on Firelink, Marty, Nick, and KC discuss the weird PR mishap that Sony just caused with star director, Neil Druckmann, from Naughty Dog.
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Transcript
Raid Success & Celebration Games
00:00:00
Speaker
The dungeon has been raided, the monsters have been slain, and the treasure is all yours. That can only mean one thing. It's time for the after-party at the Red Dragon Inn. The long-running, rambunctious card game from Slugfest Games that dares to ask the question, how will your adventuring party celebrate after a quest well done?
00:00:18
Speaker
Choose a character, then drink, gamble, and roughhouse the night away as you attempt to be the last one standing in the rowdiest bar. This side of the adventure is night. Club, the last one awakened still with coins in their pocket wins, so be sure to keep an eye on your money, your fortitude, and those delicious flagons of ale. And don't forget to tip your servers, you filthy animals. Head on over to slugfestgames.com slash R-D-I to learn more and snag your seed at the Red Dragon Inn today.
Introduction to Firelink Podcast Episode 23
00:00:52
Speaker
Well, hello everyone and welcome back to Firelink Podcast, episode number 23 for Wednesday, May 29th, 2024. I'm Marty Sleevit here alongside Nick Colander, Casey Wosu, producer, Eric. Look at that, we're back. Feels like it's been a while. It has been a while. I didn't have electricity last week, which was very exciting. Let me tell you, living life with electricity, I'm going to go on a win. Better than without.
00:01:16
Speaker
Better than no. Good time to have electricity back too because we had an exciting show for you today.
Upcoming Gaming Events & Cultural Discussions
00:01:21
Speaker
We're on the precipice, the cusp, the nibbly edges of Summer Game Fest. Ooh, I don't know why I said nibbly edges. So we're going to chat a little bit about our Summer Game Fest plans, the stuff we already know that's going on.
00:01:34
Speaker
and we're going to talk in our big story is right before Sony's big state of play tomorrow they seem to once again in a year of a lot of developers and publishers kind of stepping on rakes and making unforced errors Sony has once again made a very strange unforced error this time involving Neil Druckmann in quotes he did not say and so we're going to talk about that and then kind of extrapolate that to a bigger story of
00:02:01
Speaker
in 2024, what is the best way for us as enjoyers of this medium to stay informed on things? Not just by who to watch, but what to watch, how to absorb this info, what sort of things are important. So yeah, what we're having about that. How are you guys doing? Happy Wednesday. Oh my god, it's the end of May. It is. It's no longer going to be May. No. Is there a fun, do they do June goofs? Similar June goofs?
00:02:29
Speaker
Shit, no, May has a lot of goofs. May has like the Star Wars Day, then it has the NSYNC. NSYNC. What? Yeah, it's gonna be May. It's gonna be May. Oh, man.
00:02:42
Speaker
Not heard that a long time. What are you talking about? Every year I hear this. Every year. I'm uncultured then. Listen, not uncultured, just different parts of the culture. Culture's a wide swath, a large array of things. It's a nibbly edge of everyone. It's a nibbly edge. We don't need to make that a thing. What, nibbly edging?
00:03:07
Speaker
Oh, I didn't say that part. Oh, no. I actually didn't mean to say that. It was OK until you added the ing into it and then it got weird. You know, it's called adverbs. Well, I don't even know that's an adverb. I don't know what an adverb is. Yeah, it's it's been a while since we had this combination.
Six-Month Celebration Stream Plans
00:03:24
Speaker
Like we've gone. We did a lot. We use a lot of frost.
00:03:27
Speaker
Yeah, a bunch of Frost's up in. Yeah, he's a real primetime player, a real good sixth man to fill in. But yeah, it's exciting because we're on the, like we said, the press piss of, well, not only Summer Game Fest, but obviously tomorrow is our big Hootenanny six month celebration here at Second Wind. We're going to start streaming 10 a.m. Central. So tomorrow's not going to have your regular streams. We're not going to have your shoot to shit. Casey and I won't be starting DMC until next week. But we are going to have a nine hour long stream.
00:03:57
Speaker
Starting at 10 a.m. Central, we're gonna be showing off all sorts of cool stuff we've been working on. What we have in store for the next month, six months, year, and beyond. So, tune in for that, and then playing a bunch of games. All your faves. We're gonna be there playing games. We're gonna have fall guys. We're gonna have golf with your friends. We're gonna have first-class trouble. We got the return of Dokapon. I think this is hour 22, 23 and 24.
00:04:20
Speaker
Oh my god. It is. So make sure you, uh, we're going to be playing with the community. So if you want to play with us, have fall guys installed, have gang beasts installed and have golf with your friends installed or golf with your enemies, actually. Yeah. Should be the name of the sequel. Yeah, they should. And they owe me trademark for it. But B Pen Dragon said in the stream earlier, he was not going to be there tomorrow, which I am disappointed because I've held a revenge vendetta against him.
00:04:46
Speaker
Since the last cap I will go with your friends. Revenge Vendetta, I guess. You have, yeah, every time you, you were like, oh wow, I'm already in first class trouble so I could drown him. You baptized me. Excuse me, you did it first and then I pushed. Amen. Like, what is the problem? I see, I see, he likes to space me a lot.
00:05:05
Speaker
Yeah, like one time. Yeah, it's all the time. Yes, he was like, man, you just you just really want to kill me in first class trouble tomorrow when I was on stream with him a little bit ago. I was like, listen, I'm very sarcastic and I get thrown out all the time. I need you there to balance out my sarcasm. Yeah, they have to choose between you and me to throw out. I mean, right now I would throw me out, but, you know, it's fine.
00:05:29
Speaker
It's funny when you get thrown out because then it's a worse experience for the viewer because you're just like a shitty little Roomba and everyone's voice sounds bad.
Rock Music & Pop Culture
00:05:40
Speaker
I'll make sure this time not to go into a room that my room book and get closed into because that's what happened last time and I was stuck in a room. Did it not have a way to just cycle through? No, it didn't have a way to talk about it. No, that's silly. Uh, first guys trouble though. We'll be playing that. I think that's the last game we'll be playing tomorrow evening, but yeah, tune in for that. That's a very exciting. And then, uh,
00:06:05
Speaker
Yeah, all sorts of stuff to reveal and all sorts of stuff. What your incredible patronage and viewership and super chats have been going towards over the past couple months, including Ryan Betts, straight off the bat, with the $2 dono tonight. Thank you so much, Ryan. I'm just here for the beefy rats. I don't know if we, do we have, I mean, it's been weeks, but it kind of like crescendoed, right?
00:06:28
Speaker
Like, like the the battle ended. Yeah. Like kind of like that is. But yeah, but there's a lot of other stuff just happening in the margins. I don't think it's worth bringing up in a whole segment. No. But but like I was excited for like, this is why like rap and hip hop has been energized. Yeah. Like a lot. I can't believe we have like a modern rock beef. I want rocks.
00:06:53
Speaker
Who, what is modern rock? Imagine dragons. The congos, arctic monkeys. Arctic monkeys are around like 20 years ago. Yeah. I listened to them in high school. Yeah. And we're olds. I don't know about modern rock anymore. It makes me sad. There's no modern rock anymore. That's awful. Fine. Let's listen rap. It's better.
Lego Collectibles & Nostalgia
00:07:17
Speaker
Uh,
00:07:18
Speaker
Before we get into the Summer Game Fest shindigs, I don't know if you guys saw the biggest news of the week. It's the Zelda Legos. Zelda!
00:07:28
Speaker
You and your toys. These aren't toys. These are these are function materials. Nintendo revealed a new Lego set in the Zelda universe. That is of it is both an Ocarina time and a Breath of the Wild set. It is a two in one set of the Deku Tree. So you could build the Deku Tree if I'm not going to look at that. Where'd you get those from? These are bootleg. I got these. I was about to say those can't be real. It looks pretty good.
00:07:58
Speaker
No, they came in like one of those like video game subscription box thingies. Well, those are actually really cool. Yeah, they look really nice. Yeah, they look like Lego, at least on a webcam. You find those on eBay for a thousand. Are you going to buy them? I'm not going to buy for a thousand, Nick. That's why I'm sorry. Well, I mean, they're going to these are going to get scalped, right? Like you're not going to be able to buy these as a normal person. These Lego said, oh, I bought I already bought one. And you already have one. Oh, but my thing is, this is so this is you guys got to talk me off this ledge. It's three hundred dollars.
00:08:27
Speaker
But it's two in one. One is the Deku Tree from Ocarina of Time. And it's got like Ocarina of Time, like Young Link, Adult Link. It's got the Skultias. It's got Link's house in Kakariko Village. And it's the Deku Tree that looks like the Deku Tree. And then the other one is the Deku Tree from the modern games, from Breath of the Wild and Twilight Princess, with sort of that like cherry blossom look to it. It has the Link and Zelda who look like that. It's got little Hestu and Koroks, like some cooking stuff on it. The thing is,
00:08:57
Speaker
You can only build one at a time. Like, it's not like it has pieces for one and pieces for the other. It's you got to choose which instruction you do and all the pieces go into those. All the pieces for the for both sets. Yeah, like some things will be different, but like you cannot build two at the same time, except you can.
00:09:17
Speaker
because you buy two of them, right? I mean, that's one. That's what I bought you. Don't you do it? I mean, it would be rude not to buy two. It doesn't sound like a scam. It actually sounds like this sounds very much like a scam. You know, people are freaking out about three hundred dollars. This is this is this is Pokemon all over again. What do you mean, Pokemon? You get two versions of Pokemon that are the same game with one little change. Yeah, but this is different. Where's Jamie? He's going to buy both of them. He'll do it.
00:09:47
Speaker
I can't imagine. But yeah, I'm excited. Also, Georgia says I don't want to build a tree. Give me a castle. My other worry is like a thousand dollar. Yeah, that would be way more popular than the tree. Like people love the Deku tree. You know, great, great little sad story. But I'm thinking that thing for three hundred dollars. Is that like a cardboard box next to it?
00:10:09
Speaker
That's pretty loose that's true. No for 300. I think that's like I think that's an envelope On the side there. So you can't judge how much something costs based on its size like We like you can get Like a giant judge has a good thing else. He's no dear. He would have ran away with that. You would have ran away with that this time
00:10:30
Speaker
And Veritas 7ax with a $5 don't know. Thank you so much. So guys missed the last few DMC streams Casey and Marty I was busy getting married Veritas Congratulations Veritas means truth. I think I'm not sure I think Veritas might be Latin for truth. I can't wait for the next and good luck Casey on your nuptials Thank you so much and congratulations on on yours. What nuptials is funny? I know I hear you just don't hear it a lot
00:10:59
Speaker
Madeline and Chet just said, I'm going to need a banana for scale. I literally asked Diktoji for a banana for scale for something earlier. That sounds like it was like a sex thing, but it was not. It was not. It was not. But yeah, we'll be back next week, normal Thursday evening with Devil DMC. DMC Devil May Cry.
00:11:18
Speaker
Ninja Theory's own. Maybe later on in the episode, we'll be talking about a recent Ninja Theory game that some of us have played. I hope, because it wasn't me, because I've not played that game yet.
Press Kits & Their Value
00:11:27
Speaker
It's too scary. And then, yes, sort of the outside of obviously our big shindig tomorrow we have. I guess in terms of the Legos, is there anything you would pay this, like what would be your dream? I mean, Nick, you're not like a big collectibles guy. You're like your steel cases, right?
00:11:44
Speaker
Like there've been like Halo Megal blocks or something, right? Never bought those. Yeah. Yeah. I've never been a big Lego guy either. If I'm going to do collectibles, like it has to be something that is like either this looks really, really cool and is very cheap. Like that combination. So I've ended up with things here and there, but like, yeah, like I can't.
00:12:05
Speaker
imagine anything would really push me over that edge. $300 is a massive amount of money to spend, but Legos are super popular for a reason. People love them. I think it's one of those things where... I've said this before where it's like, I wish there was a way to just view your internal stats as a human because I don't know what my favorite things are. I know of things I like, but I don't know what my favorite of them is. I
00:12:30
Speaker
I don't know what my favorite food is. I can name you, like, a hundred foods I really like. I don't know which one is my favorite. Like, what food is your default food all the time, right? I think Zelda might be my favorite, though. Like, just your favorite of all things? I mean, because there's been this shit for a thousand other things that I've never pulled the trigger on. I didn't pull the trigger on Mario, on Star Wars, on Lord of the Rings, on Harry Potter, on, like, you know. Yeah, and you love Star Wars, and there's a lot of things on Star Wars.
00:12:55
Speaker
There's a lot of cool Lego Star Wars things. And yeah, then all of a sudden when those like one of those franchises that hasn't been like completely sullied by being over corporate. I mean, it might be like highly merchandise. Yeah, it's highly merchandise and like.
00:13:13
Speaker
They've never had, they've had ups and downs in terms of quality, but usually that's been a person by person basis. Like they've never had a, Ooh, this is like the dark days of Star Wars or Halo or, you know, anything like that. Um, I feel like they've taken it. Yeah. I didn't mean to take it straight there, but it was just right there. I mean, even like smash had, it's like, well, like brawl. Yeah. Yeah. Let's just go, go back and pay attention. Um,
00:13:41
Speaker
So Nick, none of these things, none of these things would get you to not, not, I mean, not gaming wise. No, I mean, like growing up, I collected like sports, memorabilia and stuff like that, but not. Yeah, I've never.
00:13:54
Speaker
No, even like when PR would send me like, you know, collectible stuff. It's like sitting in my closet in a box somewhere. Yeah. I like it. Like they sent me, there was one time they sent me a giant, like destroy a human's box. I think you might have seen it in my stories before, but they're like, the thing was as tall as I am. And I'm not that tall, but I'm like five eight. And that thing was as tall as me.
00:14:17
Speaker
And when I was moving into my house, I just like handed it off to the movers like here, you can have this for your kids. I couldn't do anything with this. The last minute. I don't know. Oh, a big like whatever. What's the alien's name? Oh, I forget what his name, whatever his fucking name is, he was Elvis. No, that's.
00:14:38
Speaker
No, no, yeah, but he like they had a big big figure of him in the box and stuff and like Both crypto crypto his name is trip. Oh Damn, he got canceled our IP crypto. Oh shit. The last big PR thing I got from games was well small thing I got which was very cool was a little notebook for
00:15:01
Speaker
Lorelai and the Laser Eyes since the game is all about like writing stuff down so it was cool to get like a little Lorelai and the Laser Eyes notebook. But the thing before that was, remember when I got that giant wanted dead box from Poland? Yes, I do. Like why did you send this to me? Casey, whatever your birthday rolls are out, I'm sending you a giant box of wanted dead things including an in-world cookbook. Right, there's a video of
00:15:26
Speaker
the lady, Stephanie Houston, making lasagna from that, from that cookbook. It's going to be one of those things where I send it to you and then I'm going to look it up and be like, oh, that press kit is worth $4,000. I should not have told that. I could have bought so many deco trees for that. Yeah, the only press kit thing I've kept and put anywhere is that helmet that I had a couple of weeks ago.
Summer Game Fest Overview
00:15:48
Speaker
That's bad things. Oh, that medieval thing that you said kept cutting your face. Oh, yeah. I've cut my ear lobes.
00:15:56
Speaker
in my face. Yikes. It's slightly more housekeeping before we get to the main story and then a bunch of shit we've been playing. Summer Game Fest. It begins... Do we legally say tomorrow?
00:16:12
Speaker
What's our PlayStation? Yeah, I guess so. If Summer Game Fest is what we're just referring to as E3, as like summer funsies, it begins tomorrow because now that we got Sony, the state of play, which is going to be at 3 p.m. Central, or 5 p.m. Central tomorrow, and then
00:16:29
Speaker
At the same time, Marvelous, which is going to be a small one, but for weaves, we're excited. And then an hour later, 6 p.m. is going to be the latest Silent Hill transmissions. So I expect to see stuff from, obviously, Silent Hill 2 Remake. Maybe it gets dated. A lot of people thought it's coming later this year.
00:16:45
Speaker
And then maybe stuff from the other Silent Hill games they've announced, like the ones they're working on with A24 and whatnot, or Annapurna and whatnot, so. But yeah, it feels like tomorrow it begins. It's like a, it's a minor Sony showcase in terms of it's not a showcase, it's a state of play. Like they have two tiers of events and this is like,
00:17:03
Speaker
the lesser of the tiers, which is still fine. And there's going to be all sorts of third party stuff there. So, you know, maybe we, you know, maybe that's where Capcom shows off somewhere. There's been some scuttlebutt about some resi news or some monster hunter news. Um, they dated that for next year, right? That is just, yeah, they put that, it could be spring though. Yeah. Um, they could, they could at least show something cause they, they didn't last time. Yeah. Yeah. Running through the desert.
00:17:32
Speaker
No, no, it was it was an engine. I think it was an engine, but like it was just running around. Yeah.
00:17:40
Speaker
Show me something with a HUD. Show me someone getting fucked up by a monster. That's how I know it's real. I want to see it. Sure you can. Exactly. And then we're still waiting on other things to fall in place over the next week. But then next Friday is the big one. That's going to be Summer Game Fest, the Keely Showcase, immediately followed by Day of the Devs and the Devolver Showcase. And then next Sunday is going to be Xbox. The following day is going to be Ubisoft. I'm sure Nintendo Direct is going to be somewhere around there.
00:18:07
Speaker
And then wait to see if folks like Square and you know Capcom and sort of the other publishers like that actually do their own. So like Bethesda will do their own again or are they done with that? No, I think it's gonna be part of I think Microsoft's is gonna be like a two-hour Microsoft Activision Blizzard Bethesda.
00:18:26
Speaker
The monopoly right? Yeah, they're finally bringing everything in house. Yeah, like I met cuz I imagine the Bethesda stuff, you know, we go next week I'm sure we'll devote the whole thing to the proper predictions and whatnot, but I'm like the probably the big Bethesda things are going to be Indiana Jones and the big starfield like expansion that's coming out or DLC or whatever this fall so and those could easily be shown I think during And avowed and those can all be showed kind of during a showcase proper the doom rumor
00:18:54
Speaker
The doom rumor. Doomer arcages. That'd be cool. I don't know what's cool about that, because it makes it sound like Hexen or like the original quake, which had kind of a medieval feel to it. So I'm all in on that. If that's if that's what it is, give me going in space. It was good. We don't need doom in medieval. Whatever. Yes, we need to do the eternal phallic. It had some medieval stuff at the beginning. There was kind of like castles in the shade. It was it was like post-apocalyptic, I guess. But yeah, castles, right?
00:19:22
Speaker
It looked like New Jersey a little bit. It looked like New Jersey. It looked like Trenton. I've been to New Jersey. My family lives there.
00:19:33
Speaker
It would have to, it should be illegal for a new Doom game to release on a day other than a day when a new Animal Crossing game release. Like those two should have to be, have like a symbiotic relationship for the rest of their- They're just quantum entangled forever. For the rest of time, yeah. So maybe Doom can release on the day the new Switch releases next year alongside a new Animal Crossing. So there you go, that'd be great. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes perfect sense. Yeah, and then yeah, we'll have,
00:20:01
Speaker
Obviously, not tomorrow's things because it's going to be during our big all-day festivities, but for the rest of those, we'll be doing our regular pre-show, watch-alongs, post-shows, sort of shenanigans. Those will kick off starting next week, so very excited about that.
00:20:17
Speaker
Let's just you want to just get into the main topics we gotta get the main topics got a lot of beef on it And then we got a lot of games to play and then I'm just gonna get tired at the end Then I'm gonna want to go to bed. So yeah, so we can do all three of those things So our name main her main story, which is like kind of a lot to unpack was So the original story came out last year and I sourced VGC for this just cuz later
00:20:42
Speaker
Last year last year.
Sony's AI Interview Missteps
00:20:44
Speaker
Oh, no, sorry. And then last week. Oh my apologies. How long is your week? My apologies very long. I didn't have power. I was sick. I was gone. I was haggard. No, that's like a year in internet time. That's fair. Yeah, exactly.
00:20:57
Speaker
But in an official interview by Sony on the official PlayStation blog with Neil Druckmann, the head of Naughty Dog and creative director of The Last of Us, Druckmann, they sort of had this like
00:21:13
Speaker
whole sort of state of the industry thing by Neil Druckmann to where he started talking about The Last of Us the show and The Last of Us game, talking about Naughty Dog's next game and how he's eager to see how the new game resonates, especially following the success of The Last of Us TV show, as it could redefine mainstream perceptions of gaming. And then he also said things about how AI is so exciting, about how it's going to revolutionize the way creatives work in games. And that went out from an official Sony source.
00:21:42
Speaker
And a lot of people dunked on it. A lot of people were like, first off, Neil Durkham's already kind of getting a... I think everyone likes to hate whoever's the most popular kid at the table. You're already seeing that with Todd Howard. It's, I swear to God, I promise you, it will come from Miyazaki someday. I can guarantee you it will come from Miyazaki. And when it does, I will be here saying none of it in front of me. With the exception of Kojima, I feel like a lot of Japanese devs don't carry themselves that way. You know what I mean? Like they... Maybe Miyazaki doesn't do a lot of big interviews yet. Yeah.
00:22:11
Speaker
Just wait until he gets one game. He really says one game people folks don't like and they're going to lose their goddamn minds. No pressure. Coachy was going to put the wrong person in his soul-socking machine. He's going to get like Mel Gibson in there. We're all going to be like, no, Hadeo! Get him out of there! He was like, here's my best friend, off daddy. I'm putting him in here. No, Hadeo! Get him out of the machine! Did you not reproduce?
00:22:32
Speaker
Yeah, Kojima won't retweet my next story and then we know it's bad. And so, yeah, understandably, a lot of folks were dunking on that and being like, what the fuck, dude? Like you're supposed to be a creative, like what happened to you? You sold out. Neil Druckmann, a few days later, on Twitter, just kind of quote tweeted that in a very...
00:22:54
Speaker
amicable democratic way, considering that this was the company that he works for, although he is a very important person at that company. He quote tweeted that and said, he kind of has a whole thing he said, in editing my rambling answers to my recent interview with Sony, some of my words, context, and intent were unfortunately lost. Well, here's the full long rambling answer for the final question about the future of gaming. And he has his full quote, and it's,
00:23:22
Speaker
not what Sony printed. He doesn't say these things. There's entire swaths of it that what Sony printed were just words he did not say. Not only did they just chop things up and remove context, but they put words in his mouth that he did not say as a quote, including this whole thing about revolutionizing and redefining what it means to be a game. And he didn't say
00:23:45
Speaker
If this was an interview with IGN, he'd be like, what the fuck, IGN? Why did you do this? But because it was the official Sony blog, he was like, oh, something got lost in the translation. And then six days later, finally, earlier today, this is the latest update, Sony pulled the story and apologized to Neil Druckmann. And they didn't, or they just said, we apologize for significant errors and inaccuracies.
00:24:13
Speaker
didn't explain how this happens, didn't explain what groups this went through, like how this possibly happened. And so we're here with Sony does not give interviews of their lead creatives a lot anymore to people. Like Neil Druckmann is not doing sit downs with
00:24:29
Speaker
IGN or with, you know, Corey Barlog have like a lot of interviews when God of War was, uh, got a war one. Yeah. This is very different. And Neil's recommended for like uncharted four as well. And then before the last of us to, this is sort of a more, more recent move by Sony. And so the kind of the big response to this is.
00:24:48
Speaker
what the fuck, why did Sony do this? And if this is a future where press or, you know, trustworthy sources are getting less and less access, but then we can't trust the first party sources of someone interviewing their own people, like this is just bad for everyone, right?
00:25:09
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it kind of goes back to last week with the high fire rush stuff, right? Like, Phil Spencer hasn't said anything about that yet, by the way, with them closing, not a word about it. And you go back to that like Bloomberg interview with Sarah Bond and.
00:25:27
Speaker
That interview, there was no pushback on it. She asked, why did you guys close down Tango Game Works? What's the measure of success when a game sells well, has critical acclaim, blah, blah, blah? There's this complete non-answer, and the interviewer's like, OK. I'm like, your job is to find out why. Why did they shut this down?
00:25:48
Speaker
And so the answers were really bad. Yeah. Sarah Bond's usually really good at those kinds of things. And it almost felt like they didn't expect them to be asked. Yeah. About this thing where it's like, of course you're going to be asked about this. This is clearly the biggest Xbox. To me, that felt more like they know why they cannot say why. So they didn't give them talking points. Like they just kind of don't.
00:26:13
Speaker
They can't step on the landmine as to why this happened because I think that but I don't love them. But there was no I don't I don't care about our answer. I care about that. There was no pushback at all. Like you just like the media. Yeah. Well, the media does these corporate corporate interviews like there's no they just take the answers at face value and don't like press them on it. A lot of times this thing was Sony like, you know, now that we're gone from escapists like I said it publicly before, like I don't work with Sony PR anymore for the review copies or anything because
00:26:43
Speaker
The last time we tried to get a review copy from them, they're like, well, zero punctuations, like cinema sins. Like what? And also like they were just super condescending in the email. And today, you know, when this happened, I kind of tweeted like, this doesn't really surprise me. Sony, from my experience, just really likes to control the messaging on their stuff. And with like this taking an interview like this with your biggest creative and then butchering it. And this guy like Neil Druckmann gets a lot of shit on the Internet already.
00:27:14
Speaker
And you let this stay up for six days without taking it down or retraction. And when you do retract it, there's no explanation for what happened. I have a couple of questions about everything surrounding that. Like are like does the PlayStation blog because I remember some time ago, like there was someone who I used to listen to on a regular basis who left where they were to go work on the Sony PlayStation blog like as an editor and a media guy.
00:27:38
Speaker
Does that site still do bylines? Like, do we know who did that interview? I don't know, because this thing was a...
00:27:46
Speaker
it wasn't like a full interview that was posted. It was almost like a blurb of an interview that was posted. So what are the chances that this is handled by AI? And essentially somebody fed the machine, like maybe the full thing with like, Hey, write this up as a blurb and AI just filled in some video platitudes. I mean, non zero chance. Like it would be shocking if that was what happened. But like,
00:28:12
Speaker
They still they still published it and like this is their top creator. Like I don't it doesn't make sense. Like it doesn't make you. Also, he's a guy who his answers are always thoughtful and articulate and easy to just you could just post what he said. And it would be an interesting thing because he's someone people like listening to. There was there was a I was reading some of the threads kind of discussing this and like one of the explanations actually made a lot of sense was like basically
00:28:38
Speaker
Sony, again, I don't know for sure if it happened or whatnot, but like Sony added in like Orbo speak basically that would excite investors and stuff. Sure. Yeah. And they threw those lines in there because like those lines specifically read like investor lines. We're going to read a fire. Yeah. Yeah. Bullshit. You know, so that wouldn't surprise me. But also like, man, if I was Neil Druckmann and they did that,
00:29:03
Speaker
I'm sure behind closed doors he was. Oh, boy. The thing the thing about what you're suggesting is that someone decided let's corpo up this blurb is like, so who is the writer? Because the person who you hired to be an editor would have some sort of say in that matter, you would think.
00:29:22
Speaker
to be like, you can't just put words in a man's mouth and put it on the internet. Yeah, but this was less. I might have said PlayStation blog, and I think I just used that term. This wasn't like one of those things that goes up on the PlayStation blog. There's folks who were on the PlayStation blog who were former journalists, who worked at IGN, who were like, I know them, they are good journalists. And I know those people would not do this. This was a thing that was tied to, I believe, their investor presentation.
00:29:48
Speaker
Uh, so Nick, I think, you know, although we don't have the, the exact answer, uh, I think, uh, that's probably pretty close. I would say that if we had to tug on one string, it's that this was, this was put through Corpotron 5,000 and, uh, it could not have been a journalist who did this at least not anyone with any shred of, you know, decency or skill. It was someone who got their hands on it and either.
00:30:17
Speaker
I'm thinking like put it through AI to do the work for them because they're not creative or don't know the rules of journalism. It was like, all right, well, I'll just jazz this up a bit. We also need to separate here. Like the PS blog and the same thing with the Xbox wire isn't journalism at all. It's just it's.
00:30:36
Speaker
a blog, their puff piece blogs was what they are. Press release. Doesn't mean they can't be. Yeah, it doesn't doesn't mean they can't be good work because, yeah, but they also follow the ethics of like that. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Things in quotes or anything. No, I do. And honestly, 99 percent of previews are puff piece. Yeah, I mean, it's like, yeah, we've had this discussion before, like most of games media in its current form is access media these days and not really journalism.
00:31:01
Speaker
but yeah like this you know i just i have to imagine whoever's whoever's running the ps blog is under significant fire right now for letting that be published because i don't know i don't know how they're again i don't think that was a ps blog i think that was a part of the investors thing
00:31:16
Speaker
I think this was... And it's so funny. I've been telling you guys, and I know some of the folks in the audience were watching, I've been rewatching old E3 press conferences on my personal channel. And going back to the Xbox ones of 2005, right around the launch of the 360.
00:31:33
Speaker
Everyone who gets on stage is a suit, is an exec. There are no creatives, like no creatives allowed on stage. And the shit they are saying is Corpo speak. They are talking about how they said by the end of the 360 generation, one billion people will be playing on the 360. And I'm like, Jesus Christ.
00:31:53
Speaker
You guys are going to be doing well, but what was that number? Where did you get that number from? To make sure we to make sure we fact check ourselves here. This was posted on the Sony corporate site and not the Sony blog and the PlayStation blog. Okay. Okay. So yeah. Direct all that stuff about the PlayStation blog had nothing to do with it. It was straight up Sony's corporate creative entertainment vision page. Yeah.
00:32:13
Speaker
I mean, that's what that sounds like. Corpo speak right there. So that is like, you know, that was absolutely, that was absolutely for investors. I feel like someone use that to jazz that up. Yeah. Let's see. Let's just use our AI thesaurus right here. You can't even get like, can't even hype themselves though. They're going to use AI. They're not, they're not writers. Yeah. These business robots. They're absolutely robust. Yeah.
00:32:40
Speaker
Yeah, it fucking sucks. And especially when, like we said, we have a combination of companies like Sony, and honestly a lot of, you mentioned FromSoft, but Nintendo, same thing, where they don't give a lot of access to...
00:32:55
Speaker
You don't get a lot of, like, journalism that comes out of these places. You don't get people doing in-depth profiles or interviews in here. You know, you get them now more from indie studios who are, you know, who aren't sort of on a, like, very tight PR leash, who are willing to be like, yeah, you can come in here and we'll be very honest with what the journey was like making this game.
00:33:15
Speaker
That coupled with the fact that there are now fewer and fewer like not only does it feel like a Long-standing editorial outlet is closing every six months, but you know have this just increasing and never-ending consolidation recently with IGN buying the gamer network, which was Comprised sites a lot of like you're a gamer. Yeah, you're a gamer. Yeah rock-paper-shot So
00:33:42
Speaker
just a ton more sites that people know that had individual identities all big funneled under the same umbrella. And every time that happens, we know what the outcome is going to be. And so, yeah, we live the fact that, yeah, you have these studios who are less willing to give access combined with less outlets around to do the access. And I just think at the end of the day, that's going to lead to like,
00:34:05
Speaker
a pretty big vacuum of knowledge and education on behalf of the player, of the normal person who kind of wants to know a little bit how the sausage is made. Yeah, especially these corporate outlets don't, even if they did have access, they don't fund this longer form journalism.
00:34:23
Speaker
You know, it's all SEO smoke now and Google's A.I. is fucking all that over. Like I was the guy like we we we got lucky kind of getting well, I got kind of lucky getting fired when I did because with the Google A.I. stuff coming around, like, man, we were it was going to happen sooner. I think that's going to be pulled pretty quickly. But yeah, Google A.I. is a disaster. But didn't I tell someone to like to kill themselves?
00:34:50
Speaker
Hey, I got a good suggestion for you. There was one about how to get your, uh, was it the cheese to stick to your pizza? It is. Use a little bit of Elmer's glue to a little, not like a ton, but just like a little, like, yeah, a little won't kill you. Just throw a little gorilla glue in there. It'll never come off. Less, less gorilla glue than you would. Yeah. But yeah, I've been kind of saying, like I think I've said on this very podcast before, I think within the next five years, like,
00:35:18
Speaker
There's going to be the two big to fail websites, IGN, maybe GameSpot, and then some middle sites that are independently owned. And then the bigger independent outlets like us and less media and kind of funny and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, the individuals. Yeah. But I would say like most. 90 percent of us that are like these independent outlets don't do like real full on journalism anymore, much more commentary and critique.
00:35:47
Speaker
There's also no money in real journalism. I think we really like real journalism. You're not going to get a million people to click on something that's real journalism. Unless you're a huge bomber guy, I guess. Yeah. Well, I'm curious how... I would love to have Steven Totillo on this podcast to talk about his stuff because he's running an independent newsletter just by himself doing journalism. So it's like, you're not going to have teams that have
00:36:11
Speaker
journalists anymore, you're gonna just have independent people that can support themselves doing that journalism. Like how long before Jason Schreier goes off independent and unties himself from Bloomberg and stuff like that. Bloomberg probably has very good health insurance. I'm sure. Is he the only gaming journalist there? Like it's just Jason Schreier?
00:36:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's just like tech journalist though. They have like that. There's a Japanese tech journalist who like breaks some stories for them. So, but I think in terms of like centralized gaming focus, I believe he's the only one. Yeah. Cause he only, he only posts a story. Like I don't, he must get paid a lot of money to post like a story every couple of months. It doesn't feel like he posts very much.
00:36:54
Speaker
He's one man. How much are they going to get out of a single journalism? That's the thing with journalism is it takes a long time. The best journalists are not churning out weekly things, daily things.
00:37:08
Speaker
you know, you get there with like Zack Baron is one of my favorite writers of profile pieces for GQ and he does four or five a year. Um, but they're amazing, but they take a long time. So like good work like that. And the one thing I really figured out, uh, for the story that I was working on, you know, those past few months is like, even, even after they've left these companies,
00:37:33
Speaker
They still can't talk about it not just cuz of nda's but because at their new companies they have like policies in place where they can't like speak to the press on certain things and all that and like anything that stirs up like any sort of drama for their current company. Can't talk and then it's like i don't know i'm sure like a lot of industries are like that but i mean like it it kind of blows my mind at how much the games industry like hell.
00:37:57
Speaker
Even though it's almost seemed like it's been more open the last few years, I like doesn't feel like it. It's it's probably a personal choice as well in that you don't want to leave an employer and talk a bunch of trash about them. And then your new employer think that maybe that might be. Yeah, I'd be next. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's just it's just not a good look. But even they can't even they still can't even talk about like old games they worked on and stuff like that.
00:38:25
Speaker
Yeah, that thing always pisses me off. And that's just real archaic contracts and whatnot. But I always hate the same thing with movies that end up never being made. With the Furiosa coming out recently, people kept talking about how we were days away from post-Dark Knight Rises pre-Zach Snyder Man of Steel getting a George Miller Justice League movie.
00:38:51
Speaker
Like, the cast was down there, so George Miller, director of Fury Road, and everything was going to direct just a Justice League movie with a fresh cast of all the folks. And it fell through at the 25th hour. And so it's always one of those things, like, I always want to know the story of that. Like, there's like a million interesting games that ever got made. And I'm always like, what's the story about that? I've been researching Mega Man stuff recently. And there's like, remember that Maverick Hunter game, Casey?
00:39:21
Speaker
No, I might have called it the wrong thing What I'm thinking of whatever thing the thing again, I'm thinking of was by app armature the studio that ended that did recore Retro people and this was a game that was never officially announced But internally they were working on it and it was a first-person gritty Mega Man game that kind of looked a little bit like Metroid Prime Okay
00:39:44
Speaker
But you were Mega Man, it was just a gritty take on Mega Man, and it never, it got to a certain point, but then never saw the light of day. And it's always like, that kind of thing is interesting. What happened to this thing? How far did they get along? Mega Man Legends 3, they priced a demo for the 3DS, and then they said, it's coming out in June. And then before that June date rolled around, they were like, we have canceled the game. It does not exist.
00:40:10
Speaker
more like, what happened? I don't know what's going on here. Yeah. Um, so yeah, you can get some of those stories by, you know, uh, did you know going gaming and there's certain people, they do a lot of that, like, yeah, yeah. Um, and so yeah, almost, it feels like you need to,
00:40:28
Speaker
If you want to know about that shit, you got to dig into it and be like, you know, find weird video essays by people who are willing to, willing to find that. Because again, it just feels like so much of this knowledge is just being lost to time, like Nick said, of folks who can't talk about these things. Yep. Folks that can't talk about these things, folks that could fund these things, not funding it.
00:40:51
Speaker
Man, if I ever became a billionaire, I would just give so much money to the dumbest people to make cool shit. I would be like, I want all these things paid, please. Here you go. Here's, here's a blank check. Here you go, George Miller. Here you go, George Miller. Make whatever movie you want. Kojima, here's a hundred million dollars. Go make your Mad Max game. Have fun. I feel like, I feel like Death Stranding is his Mad Max game. No one played Death Stranding. Like you get in a little buggy, you got to deliver shit across wastelands. There's marauders.
00:41:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's fair. There's marauders. If there's marauders, it's got to be a man. I mean, they even wasn't bad. Even she's like, throw spears at you. Yeah. So Mad Max Death Stranding is Mad Max. You've heard of here. I mean, Death Stranding too. The guy has a guitar. So, you know, like flamethrower, flamethrower.
00:41:45
Speaker
That's my favorite Kojima boss flame penis guitar man. Yeah, it's the Mega Man game. I was thinking of Eric Oh, yeah. Yeah, do you think a mega man? Do you not think of this? No, I think I think of a metric bomber what he's got like actual bullets. Yeah
00:42:00
Speaker
Oh, it's Doom. It's Doom Mega, man. Yeah, pre-doom. Little pre-doom and post-doom. Buddy Aces, with a 4-9, I don't know. Thank you so much, buddy. Out of all the Corpo A-holes, who is going to grab VR and make it work, in your respective opinions? I mean, speaking of Sony, they did, the news has come out that they're like, they're close to maybe announcing their dongle to make it work on PC.
00:42:24
Speaker
Yeah, and then I don't know. I literally just talked about this the other day because I was like, I have the index. I haven't touched the damn thing since Half-Life, Alex, because if I wasn't done anything with it, there's no games like I have to play on the index. God, what is? Don't worry about it. Val's working on what's what's the thing that leaked the hero shooter. Oh, oh, crap. Someone with something something lock deadlock deadlock. Deadlock. Yeah.
00:42:52
Speaker
Yeah. The luck. The luck. Oh, my God. The first. I don't know. Like every everybody dislikes meta slash Facebook and for good reason. But like they seem to have been the ones taking this more seriously than anyone else. Like they're like three is great. Yeah. Like the quest three is not a bad VR set and like they're making it at the price range that.
00:43:12
Speaker
Regular people could actually afford and make use of it's just that yeah the software still isn't great But like I put mine on every now and then to like, you know watch stuff and but I don't use it for gaming you watch different VR
00:43:25
Speaker
Yeah, there's a really big screen. I know what you're watching. Yeah. You do. That's what he said. Why would I say that on? Why would I come to that? He tried to slip that by.
00:43:43
Speaker
It's the honesty hour we talk about that's going to go on a live podcast and be like, yep, I put on my head. And I beat the last time I used my Nintendo Labo. I got to put together that little cardboard contraption at that time. I got all worked up. I've pulled on as I made my very first E3 experience. I walked in and the very first booth that was in front of me was the red tube VR booth. And I was like, no,
00:44:08
Speaker
They're like, hey, you had a booth? Yeah. A booth on the E3. E3's death knell was like a decade in advance when they started that. Was it packed? Was there a lining around the corner? There were people there messing around with it. It's CES 2016. I did VR porno. Let me tell you, not great.
00:44:32
Speaker
Not great, underwhelming. In case you asked who would admit that on stream, and lo and behold, I didn't ever work. The man next to me, or above me in the dark corner. You got paid to do it, that's the dream. What Marty did is the dream. I got to expense my dinner afterwards. Patreon's here at $75. Oh my god, it was such a weird, it was the weirdest hotel suite too. It was a really nice hotel suite, but it was so weird.
00:44:58
Speaker
No, but that makes sense. Pornography has been at the forefront of burgeoning technologies since VHS. Like when Porno chose... Eric, that's a pretty good group. When Porno can... That could be like a kingmaker. If Porno was looking at HD DVD versus Blu-ray, they could have been like, and we bestow the win of Blu-ray. And everyone's gonna be like, well, Blu-ray won.
00:45:21
Speaker
HD DVDs got Kong, but Blu-ray's got Dom. So we gotta go with these guys.
00:45:28
Speaker
Hey, hey, and all your glory. Yeah, exactly. Oh, no. The glory back. What is it? What is this good? Oh, is this labo? I want whatever game Eric's playing. This game is a tentacle porn. No, it's not tentacle porn. It's fine. It's fine. This stuff never came to fruition via labo, right? Like this look this is all fake, right? What is it? I don't know this labo. This might just be a VR game. It says Nintendo labo in the corner. But like, I don't I don't think I don't think it's probably Nintendo labo. No, nothing.
00:45:59
Speaker
Um, do you got anything, uh, anything else regarding this topic? Do you want to move on to all the, all the games and whatnot? We've been playing. Yeah, I just, I just want to see. I'm just really curious about this conversation that's going on behind the scenes with Neil Druckmann and Sony, like, bro, you just got me harassed and no end and nobody that posted that stuff, nobody that yelled at him is going to retract it. No.
00:46:29
Speaker
It's, yeah, I don't know. It's a real sticky wicket. And again, it's like one of those things that sucks, because it's like right before tomorrow was supposed to be the big, exciting, oh, look at these games we got playing. Oh, ochi-machi. Everyone's talking about Sony. And so to have this be the story we've been talking about.
00:46:46
Speaker
Yeah, I guess that's funny. Going back to your Xbox, Nick, you mentioned how Phil Spencer hasn't addressed the thing yet, which makes sense because addressing anything on Twitter seems like a terrible idea. They're going to bring it up during their showcase, right? Or do they just not? I don't think they will.
00:47:09
Speaker
You don't think there's even like it's a tough year in the games industry and we had to say goodbye to some great friends. I don't. I don't. It's doom. I don't know how you. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I can't even think of like how you do address that like.
00:47:25
Speaker
Like those studios being closed were extremely corporate decisions. So they don't justify that to us. They don't give a damn what we think. So like their next thing is just to show the consumers what they have to buy and then make the
00:47:45
Speaker
the stock price go up because people get excited and that's it. They don't have to give us any real reason, which is why I feel a little salty going into the Xbox conference. I'm usually very excited for the Xbox show because I like their ecosystem very much, but this one feels very different. It feels like the promise that we've been waiting on for years and years and years, it finally hit that, okay, I don't think it's ever going to come true. They're just never going to get to where
00:48:12
Speaker
to what they were building on. Just wait until next year. Wait until next year. Give them one more year, kids. We need to cut together one more year of montage. I can't take another year. Yeah.
00:48:25
Speaker
in my gut tells me he won't they want to address it at the showcase and I'll address it in post interviews because what I GM's got the whole exclusive with them afterwards. I'm guessing that's where I'll address it where it's not taken away from the hype man stuff. Yeah. Yeah, that's actually because like what do you what do you do? You come up on stage and say, yeah, we close angle softworks and Bethesda or I mean, our king Austin, here's new games and
00:48:53
Speaker
Do we laugh? Do we? Yeah, I flip you out. Like, what do we do? Real, really bitter pill to take before trying to be excited for something. So I feel like they will wholesale ignore it until the only the only other way I can think of them doing it is using that guy does the world premiere is like we shot Tango software. That's foul.
00:49:13
Speaker
You want some prayers with those affected. Yeah. No, that seems like the best way to do it. Yeah. No notes there. Cool. Let's move on to what we've been playing and watching. Let's start off with the thing I haven't been playing, but I know you guys have, which was Hellblade 2, which feels insane that it doesn't feel like anyone's talking about this game anymore.
00:49:37
Speaker
Yeah, that was a real talk about them. I mean, I liked it. There's just not a lot to talk about. Yeah. Nick, you reviewed it and Casey played it. Did you finish it or did you? No, I finished it. I guess to play it is probably to finish it. There's not. Yeah. Yeah. And I know I know for us and you know, these thoughts, Casey. Oh, I don't know. No, I know your thoughts, too. I was attacked in our meeting that I was the one that I liked it. You might have felt attacked. We just told the truth.
00:50:07
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I'll kick that off like I am the sort of player that I can appreciate experiences for what they are. I guess I don't know. I guess I don't mind every once in a while a technical showpiece where it's just it's in my life for five to eight hours and I'm done with it and then I move on.
00:50:31
Speaker
And for me, Hellblade 2 just kind of hit that sweet spot where like I got told a story, it looked cool, I liked the combat. I liked the combat a lot more in the sequel than I did the original game. I know you find that weird, but like
00:50:48
Speaker
A lot of the people that I talked to didn't use the more advanced features of the combat in Hellblade 1, didn't even know it was there, because there were apparently all kinds of combos, and I'm like, was there? Because I don't remember shit about combos in that game. I mean, it wasn't a very deep system, but it was a system.
00:51:06
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I just felt so much more engaged with Hellblade 2. I liked Hellblade 1's story. I did not like its gameplay. And Hellblade 2, I liked pretty much the whole package. As I said, my review of it is kind of like, hey, I was playing with that. Stop taking away my control. And also, why, when she's climbing, why do I need to watch a cutscene when somebody's climbing? Come on, we've been having climbing mechanics or games for how long now?
00:51:35
Speaker
So I don't know... I don't like... Well, what I would say is I don't want Ninja Theory to do another Hellblade. I want them to make... I was okay with this, I really like this, but please God, make like another game like Enslaved. Using this technology, using how good the combat does feel when you do play it, but don't make me another movie. Make me a game.
00:52:00
Speaker
That's why I was very clear in my review, like, this is an interactive experience. I don't want to say this is a game. Yeah, like it. It is really pushing the limits of what we consider a game. And I know a lot of times, like it's frowned upon to basically say something that is being sold as a video game isn't very much of a game. Like Walking Simulator does get that kind of heat oftentimes.
00:52:22
Speaker
But I've really been thinking because of Hellblade 2, what does that mean? For an interactive experience that is primarily just telling you a story, like how much value does the interactivity bring to the story? Because depending on how much that is or how engaging it helps make that story, the fact that you don't have a ton of control might be paramount to experiencing exactly what that story is trying to tell you. But I don't get any of that from Hellblade 2.
00:52:51
Speaker
And it's it's like you said, like it's it's also like a double dagger because of the studio. Like Ninja Theory are very good at mechanics. Like DMC is one of my favorite action games ever. Like me and Marta are going to get ready to start it. Like that's the only of the Capcom DMC's that I've actually played. And I played it multiple times, which I don't usually do. And it's not one of the Capcom DMC's. Oh, it's not. No, no, no. That one. Well, I mean, Capcom owns it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But
00:53:21
Speaker
But like, so yeah, like knowing what Senya was, uh, sacrifice, the first one, knowing that that one was like a really good premise, um, had good mechanics. Like some of the puzzle-y gameplay was a little rough, but like them having a second shot at it with Microsoft's budget, I, I got excited. Like I thought this was going to be something that would really showcase
00:53:44
Speaker
all of their skills, their storytelling ability, as well as their mechanical ability. And this very much took the story side of things.
00:53:53
Speaker
And didn't even kind of get over the finish line in that regard, because in terms of a through line, the story was very simple. It was also kind of confused about how it was trying to get to its conclusion. And by the end of it, I very much did not feel satisfied. I didn't like or get to know many of the characters who were introduced over the course of it. Senua herself wasn't very compelling throughout the entire thing.
00:54:20
Speaker
And I just had to sit there and watch it. I didn't even get to control most of what was happening moment to moment. Very early on, I realized that those climbing sections you were talking about, it doesn't even require you to hold the stick the whole time, even though that's the main thing. No, you just push it forward. Yeah, you press it once after an animation has completed. She does a section, and then she'll stop. You press it again, she'll do that other section, and then stop. And it's like, that is not gameplay.
00:54:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's why I keep saying I took it as like a...
00:54:56
Speaker
Interactive experience because I went back and like read and watched a bunch of reviews about hellblade 1 before I got into hellblade 2 just kind of to get my mind in the right mindset for what to expect out of it and I think it was the game spot review that basically called it a visual novel and I think that's what that's why I went into it like with my Expectations and check that there wasn't gonna be a whole lot of gameplay again. I mean, I was worried about that from
00:55:21
Speaker
Uh, the amounts of stuff they were showing from it, like they wouldn't show any gameplay. Yeah. Well, we thought, yeah, we talked about that. Okay. So we're like, where's the, why are they showing gameplay? I was getting more and more worried. It's because if they did, if they showed us the preview, they would have shown us a third of the game and one preview. But this was even less gameplay than the first game. Like they, they ripped out mechanics that existed already in the combat and like they, they did something really cool and that they made the combat, um,
00:55:48
Speaker
they made it look really visceral, right? Like if you were just sitting down and watching this play out, like it looks awesome, but you don't really get to do anything. Like you hit the buttons to swing, like you can dodge every now and then. But if that was fun in the first 10, 15 minutes, nothing changes from that point to the end of the seven hour experience. Like that's the only real gameplay in the game is you swing in the sword a bit, you have a light, you have some heavies.
00:56:18
Speaker
Hellblade One was too though. It wasn't Hellblade, Hellblade One. What else wasn't Hellblade One? I don't remember at this point. First of all.
00:56:25
Speaker
Don't say the puzzles. No, no, no, not the ones. Combat was not deep. It was not deep. It was not deep, but it was doing something mechanically awesome in that when you played, you heard like your HUD was the voices in your head. Yeah. So characters could attack you from behind and they say behind you. And that would be your cue to like dodge out of the way. That is leagues more interesting than what we were doing in Hellblade. Yeah, but they removed the people. They removed that because people complained about it.
00:56:52
Speaker
Because it didn't work very well. I thought that was great. Like, I mean, I just played out one like a few weeks. There's a whole boss fight in Hobo one where they train you to fight a monster blind because of how good the audio design is. Hmm.
00:57:03
Speaker
And like, there's just none of that in the second game. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, as I was playing, I felt like something went wrong along the way with this. I mean, people are keep starting to say it took seven years to make six years to make. They made it in three years. It started full development in 2020 because when they revealed it in 2019. Why what? Well, they were working on Bleeding Edge before. Everyone had Bleeding Edge fever. Bleeding Edge released like forever ago. They had way more than three years have started. Bleeding Edge released on 2018.
00:57:34
Speaker
Bleeding Edge released in 2018. Yeah, they were they've been working on like three different projects all at once I don't know why when they're only 120 person studio 80 people made Hellblade 2 So I just don't know Yeah, like I feel like somewhere along the way like they got way too focused on the tech and not making a game but
00:58:00
Speaker
I like I don't I still don't mind it so much because like I just again I saw how it was like a Yeah, I guess a tech demo if you want to call it that but like I Don't know. I guess it was the first time I felt like I've seen the real potential of what unreal in five can do and now like
00:58:18
Speaker
I'm just thinking ahead now to gear six at the Microsoft conference, because the rumor is that they're going to reveal gear six this year. And I'm like, ooh, baby, show me that game. The problem is it's going to be a CG trailer with like a sad slow over of like baby one more time or something. So I'm going to close the window in here because it looks like a thunderstorm.
00:58:37
Speaker
It, uh, yeah, I'm, uh, because I haven't had a chance to, yeah, I was sick the weekend it came out and then I didn't have power for 72 hours and I was out of town. Uh, so I'm probably playing it this weekend. I feel like I'm going to like it. I think I'm going to be on your side, Nick. Uh, if only because like, I am also totally fine with a game, not really being a game with a game that plays itself.
00:59:00
Speaker
I mean it's an experience like that's I don't yeah there's so many different still think it's a game like I don't I'd be I'd be more comfortable with that sort of thing if it facilitated the story was telling I don't think it I don't think help it who does that like I feel like the story they're telling is not interesting and the fact that you don't participate in it
00:59:20
Speaker
Doesn't help Yeah, the one worry I have going into it is I think one of the reasons the first Hellblade worked so well for me the first time I played it and even recently is that it is so centrally focused on Senua and like you don't meet other can you meet other characters via kind of like memories and via your Psychosis and via those kinds of things and like gods and whatnot But like this one just seems like you're always like surrounded by some dudes and if like the dudes aren't interesting I'm gonna be like, oh damn. I don't want to hang out. It's like in the Hobbit We're like, why is there like 15 of these fucking dwarves and I don't want to hang out with
00:59:50
Speaker
Yeah, the game. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but like if the game had just stuck with the first character you meet, Casey, and you know who I'm talking about, the guy you fight, if the game had just stuck with him and explored that relationship of guilt, forgiveness, all that kind of stuff, I think it would have worked. I don't think they even needed the other two characters in it.
01:00:13
Speaker
It should have just been a journey. It should have been that journey alone. And then it got I think it's spread itself thin trying to still because it expands the world of Hellblade a lot into like more mythology and all that over the very simple story that Hellblade one told. And this tries to make it. And that's where I think somewhere along the line, like they're they wanted to make something bigger, realize we can't had to constrain it to fit what they wanted to do, possibly, because especially the end of the game is like so quick.
01:00:43
Speaker
And it also, I don't want to spoil anything either, but like, maybe you can have a spoiler shot for this sometime down the road. Cause I feel like whatever they were building off, they kind of very quickly undo by the end. So it's like, it's Dublin and satellite. I wasn't that invested, but like the story they did have, they decided to be like, you know what? It's not that. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, go ahead. No, no, no. I was going to kind of transition into another game in case he played that feels like it's in a similar vein of this, but okay.
01:01:14
Speaker
I was gonna talk about indica cuz anything is another game that came out recently obviously a different It's something that sort of just appeared on our radars earlier this year at steam next fest and then released Recently it hit PC and it hit just hit councils a few weeks later Yahtzee played it for Yahtzee tries I streamed it and Casey you streamed it all what did you what did you think of indica? I
01:01:36
Speaker
Overall, I thought it was actually really, really cool. And it's a really good counterpoint to the Hellblade 2 thing, because that game, it does have more gameplay than Hellblade 2, but it's not that much more interesting, the gameplay, like the puzzles aren't super engaging, like there's a big kind of sluggish section in the middle where like,
01:02:02
Speaker
You're really just walking around and like the stuff you do is kind of uninteresting. And the story even meanders a little bit. But the initial premise and then the ending premise does have a complete like story. Do you like the ending? I kind of love the ending. I started I frost and frost and Yahtzee are like, man, fuck you guys. It's disturbing. But I think that's that's purposeful. Yeah. Yeah. It made me feel something like I felt kind of like
01:02:31
Speaker
gross and confused and hopeless by the end of the day. I'm like, this is right. Art is supposed to make me feel something. It makes sense in the context of the story too, especially because they give you kind of...
01:02:44
Speaker
they give you the context for that very late in the story, which makes that all hit in such a very impactful way. And it definitely just ends and leaves you on this real kind of gross, grody... Is it raining in my office? What's going on here? Can you guys hear the thunder? Is that picking up on the mic? No? You sound like you have voices in your head, much like our good friends in America and Senua.
01:03:15
Speaker
But yeah, thanks to Senua, though, I was able to recognize that the character in Indica is basically dealing with psychosis because they don't they don't explicitly say it. But it's kind of all the same like symptoms that you experienced from from the first and in some parts the second game as well.
01:03:33
Speaker
You know, the environment like voices talking to you. Yeah. You know, I probably like tabloid a lot more as like a been walking sim interactives, experience cinema and whatever the fuck you want to call it. We just call it because I didn't have to because I did not have to read any notes anywhere. Everything was audio done, done an audio. I didn't have to read a single log or note.
01:03:56
Speaker
I mean, that's a plus. I like that. Kept me, kept me in the experience the entire time. Nick, you got to play in the cup. I want to, I want to get your thoughts on any compared to Hellblade. It is definitely not as, uh, polished as, as, uh, Hellblade. Uh, but I feel like it takes, uh, it takes some really fascinating big swings that, uh, it's not going to be one of my favorite games of the year, but it's going to be one of the games I think about the most this year. So it tells a very compelling story and it has.
01:04:26
Speaker
flair in the way it tells the story. Not the whole way through, sadly, like there's there's a big section in the middle that felt like they just they were kind of just treading water. But then like I think the beginning and I think they should be arrested for the puzzles they designed. Maybe it was just me. But my God. No, some of them are just really boring. Those puzzles. Yeah, there's just I saw a clip of you doing that elevator puzzle and you did it so quickly. Yeah. Chad said like, oh, here's the part where Marty was stuck for like really long. I was like, wait, where's the part? Because I was already finished.
01:04:56
Speaker
I was stuck really long two nights in a row because the first night I finished it and then quit but the autosave was right before the puzzle and then I was like back in the first night I saw the puzzle without realizing what I did after 20 minutes and I was like well I guess I'm back here again and another 20 minutes I just couldn't I just don't get it. If you put me in it again I wouldn't be able to do it. That's the same thing that one puzzle where you gotta like move the kind of bridges
01:05:19
Speaker
Yeah. What the fuck is happening? It's unintuitive. But like, yeah, I figured it out eventually. But like, yeah, I got zero satisfaction from many of the puzzles in that game. Yeah. Which is a problem. But there's a bunch of stuff where I was like, oh, hell yeah. The one where you're kind of going through the room that like, like you kind of the same room. Yeah, that was awesome. That was awesome.
01:05:41
Speaker
I guess along the same lines this is a very different game but in terms of like I don't know I am fine with a game that is only
01:05:51
Speaker
only has one out of a hundred things that we would use to define a game. Someone mentioned Kentucky Route Zero earlier. I fucking love Kentucky Route Zero and that is 99% a book with vibes that you happen to use a controller for. But I've been, I've been, I've streamed a little bit of this game. I've been singing this praise. It's this game called Arctic Eggs and it is a
01:06:14
Speaker
turning into Jack with all these weird indie games. Listen, I'm fucking digging deep. This is a year of folk. I just put Arctic, but I meant to also say the word eggs. I'm sorry, Chad. But this is so this is a narrative driven game where you play. You are like the egg cooker. You wake up and you're in this kind of dystopian future and you got punished and you're just the egg cooker now. And so you got to go around these kind of tenements and talk to these characters who want their eggs cooked in specific ways.
01:06:43
Speaker
and like using the mouse is like your hand holding the pan for the eggs and they're like they tell you kind of their story and then they're like oh i want two eggs over easy with cigarettes and the cigarettes represent your time limit for when to cook the eggs and then you gotta cook the eggs over easy and so the cigarette is slowly going down because that represents your time and then there'll be other ones that's like oh i want uh
01:07:08
Speaker
Two fried eggs with a cigarette and a bottle of booze and the bottle of booze is the thing that you need to like you can't tilt your Your pan too much or else you're gonna the bottle of booze is gonna fall and they're gonna be like fucking you gotta do it again because I wanted a bottle of booze with it But they wanted the eggs They wanted the eggs hard so you have to flip them over because you gotta cook the eggs on both sides So, how do you flip the eggs but not still the bottle of booze?
01:07:30
Speaker
Exactly. It's a little it's a little puzzle Good and I liked that the three difficulty levels the playing it on easy is like you're ostensibly cooking in a walk That has like a really high wall so you can like really do it But then if you play it on the hardest mode, it is just flat It is the flattest pain you've ever seen there's no edge to this pan
01:07:47
Speaker
This is the most dangerous pad ever created. It's really good. Arctic Eggs is like a shockingly, shockingly good game that I was like, I don't know where this came from. I don't know who made this or why, but I am so glad that it exists and its vibes are immaculate. And I'm just glad like more and more folks are playing it. Look at that. 764 overwhelmingly positive reviews. Folks love the eggs. They love the eggs.
01:08:10
Speaker
Um, Arctic eggs. Game of the year. Not the game of the year. And I'm gonna be honest, Animal Well is still probably the game of the year. Did you play? Did either of you guys play Animal Well? Yeah, I finished Animal Well. I started it. Okay.
Animal Well Game Critique
01:08:20
Speaker
Casey, where are you? Where are you at on Team Animal Well? Are you on Team Game of the Year or Team... It was Team Jack. Here's a thousand complaints, 8.5. He was Team Jack. That Animal Well is a great game, but it is gonna suffer from overhype. Like, there was stuff I saw
01:08:40
Speaker
Uh, the way this game being described that maybe very excited to play it. And I just never got any of that out of it. And like that, I hate that. I hate being kind of bamboozled like that. I would, I would have liked it more if I didn't hear how overwhelmingly positive some people were. But the thing is, I think other people just need to play more games. Like if they've played
01:09:02
Speaker
if they have played tunic, which is game keep getting. It's way better than tunic, though. It is not way better than absolutely better. Oh, no. Like you're going to go outside. You got it. You got to let it go. It's way tunic is a very good eight point five tunic is your tunic is your Twitter. It's a real healthy tunic is a ten point five. That's not even a real score. It got better after I stopped playing it and to learn more about it.
01:09:37
Speaker
I don't want to argue against it again and i like animal i think it was a great game like it does very like this is what i like about animal animal is a solid metroidvania but it remixes kind of the tools in the language we usually use.
01:09:53
Speaker
to navigate Metroidvanias. There's no double jump, but there's something that's kind of equivalent. There's no Hollow Knight S dash halfway across the screen, but there's something that's sort of equivalent. And the thing that was, I guess, the brain unfolding thing that folks were making the comparisons to Tunic and Outer Wilds didn't hit for me because it's all mechanics-based, which is I love a game which has a ton of mechanics.
01:10:22
Speaker
But the thing that opens my brain has to be a merger of the mechanics and the storytelling. And I don't think Animal Well is doing a very good job telling story or conveying lore. It's got vibes out the wazoo, but I don't know what the hell is going on in that game. And I actively went out searching for what this game is about. And nothing I've seen gives me anything near satisfactory answers as to like, oh, this game is telling you about X or Y or Z. It's not.
01:10:50
Speaker
I don't think it is. It's just a game. Because it's about you. The problem is it's story, whereas you can get the story in Tunic and especially in Outer Wilds, you can you get the story from the core playthrough.
01:11:05
Speaker
Mm hmm. And then you get more afterwards with Animal Well, like the quote unquote story doesn't come until the post game. Well, then it is more of a vibes based. Yeah, it's still like that. That's the thing I was like that I had accepted that that like, OK, once I.
01:11:25
Speaker
reach the end is when I'm going to start to get this unfolding experience. And so I played several hours after the end and I was collecting a bunch of eggs. I was unlocking additional like secrets and stuff. Like I was seeing what the people were talking about and what they were like losing their minds over and it just wasn't hitting me the same way. Like this isn't the same thing to me. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the excitement is more from like finding the secrets than the secrets being something worth finding.
01:11:56
Speaker
without spoiling anything, some of your tools are more than you think they are. And it is cool to kind of stumble upon that stuff. But Outer Wilds, for example, does a thing where you learn. You literally learn that the stuff you have at your disposal is more than it seems. And then that actively changes everything from that point forward in the world.
01:12:25
Speaker
And like that, it's a different feeling. Like this is a word we use a lot when we talk about video games. And I think it's very important because like,
01:12:32
Speaker
It's the most important adjective I think we can use when we talk about games. Like you can feel stuff from music and movies and whatnot, but games is like, you can feel all those different things that those things give you and then like the sort of tactile immersive element as well because you're the one in control. And like when a game makes you like legitimately feel like you have learned something, like I've just become smarter within this game world, like that means a lot. Like that's amazing.
01:12:57
Speaker
And Animal World never did that for me. It's funny, I agree with you that feel is probably my most important thing in a game, but it's also probably the most subjective thing, right? Yeah, because that's case-by-case basis. Yeah, feel for me in a lot of games, it's just the journey along the way, not what it's teaching me or telling. Or a feeling from doing something really well in a competitive game that I get
01:13:20
Speaker
nothing from that you, Nick, especially, probably really do get something from when you're playing those games. Like, I just don't. And it's not me saying that feeling doesn't exist. That's just saying that my nerves have been frayed to whatever that feeling is. There's no better feeling than in Halo when taking out somebody you know and just teabagging them into the dust. Yeah.
01:13:44
Speaker
There you go. That bag of into the dust. Are you going to keep playing animal? Well, Nick, are you? Yeah, yeah, I want to I want to get back to it. It's just been a busy couple of weeks. No, I would. Yeah, definitely. And it's just been a lot of like the good games don't stop. Yeah. That's why when I keep getting to a new good game, I'm like, oh, my God, everyone should play this one, too. Everyone should play this one, too.
Game Burnout & Dragon's Dogma 2
01:14:08
Speaker
Yeah, I needed I needed I needed a game like Hellblade just because every game has been so fucking long all the time lately. And then. Yeah, I put like 30 hours into the rising and I haven't gone back to it yet. I want to because I really liked it, but just kind of spent. I do that. I do that thing that you shouldn't do, and especially as a games critic is like if you're not reviewing something, putting like 30 hours into it so quickly because then you get burned on it.
01:14:34
Speaker
Sure, but if you got like excited like the first weekend, uh, dragon's dog. My two was out. I was like, this is my forever game. And then one day I just stopped. It wasn't a thing I got annoyed with. It wasn't anything bad. I was like, I got to like the second half of the game and he just had enough to do. I just.
01:14:55
Speaker
stopped. I don't know. I feel like a lot of people stop for the second because it's a desert. You go to a desert and deserts are bad. You know who didn't stop? Casey didn't start until recently. Yeah, I just started Dragon's Dog with two. I started on a stream recently, and I think that was a bad idea. I made two bad decisions. I started Dragon's Dog with two on stream and I started Dragon's Dog with two as an archer. Like I made my character from Adventures and I and the
01:15:18
Speaker
The Archer vocation, I think, is bad, but especially like early in the game, it's bad because that game does not have like, and I think J'Mae actually spelled out a lot of this in his design delve on Dragon's Falcon 2, but like that game does not have a universal like dodge mechanic, like
01:15:39
Speaker
across the vocations, like the way they move are very specific to the vocation and the archer cannot roll. He can't like dip to the side. Like he can't move very fast. Like he basically sits there and like shoots the arrows and you have a couple of special shots, but it's really boring. And like,
01:15:57
Speaker
I was getting my ass kicked constantly. Like I was trying to do the first couple of missions and, uh, it didn't matter where I went. I was getting beaten into the, into the ground and like the game will, uh, auto save for you and then start you back before that, that fight, but with less health than you, you left it. Yeah. Yeah. You almost like lose your max health on like your max health. Every time you die until you go to run away and go camp.
01:16:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that was the thing I learned like frustrating. So after after my first attempt on a stream, I basically was I need to be a little more prepared running around these wilds. Like I need to have a full set of pawns with me because I was it was just me and Davarella who I made as my main pawn.
01:16:36
Speaker
Like I had like I got like a wizard, I got like an archer and I changed my vocation to the twin dagger thief. That's what I that's what I started out with. And that was really good for. Yeah, because that one has a dedicated dodge. It just has like a like zoom out of the way. And then the first move you can unlock is also a very quick like dart type move that is also an attack. So now I have these movement options. I have a bunch of people with me. I brought the heavy ass camp set things like a camp whenever I feel like.
01:17:02
Speaker
All of a sudden, I'm I'm mowing everything down and it's a lot more fun. Like I'm actually having a good time with it. I do. I do wish it felt because it all of its previews made it look very similar to Monster Hunter. So I imagine it would feel like Monster Hunter, which has very like really good control over the characters despite whatever you're holding. Like every character can still like move really well and have options to get around on top of do their their full range of attacks.
01:17:27
Speaker
This is a little looser in that regard. Like there's no lock on for example So fights fights are a lot more are like chaotic Yeah, but like once you get the hang of what you know, the flow of combat and stuff is it's a lot more fun The stories whatever like I'm not like super invested in it The story missions are the worst part of that game
01:17:49
Speaker
Ended up when I realized I was never not go back to it I end up like digging deep spoiling myself on the ending and stuff and what happens there I will say there's a lot of cool shit at the end of it and there's like a lot of interesting like Recontextualization and just like it feels like a thing that if I would have got to the end of it I Wouldn't have been like well this wasn't worth it I'd be like well at least I stuck it out because all this shit seems really cool
01:18:13
Speaker
Yeah, I'm still playing it. As soon as I get the free time, I'm going back because I am enjoying it. It sold really well. I think after 10 days, they said it sold two and a half million copies. And so another big W for Capcom in a long series of W's between Resi and Monster Hunter. It's just the lack of variety. There's like seven monsters in the game.
01:18:39
Speaker
That's it. I get. Oh, wow. OK, so the stuff I'm seeing now is the stuff I'm going to. Yeah, that's why I like I bounced off. It's so hard when I got to the second area because I was like, there's this is it. There's like there's no more monsters and like them. It's not really a spoiler to tell you like the Medusa is like something you fight once and never see again. But this is all that opening monster. Yeah, it's like a I think it's a scripted. She don't come back. That's wild.
01:19:06
Speaker
Yes. I was playing. I was playing a bunch of dragons. Dogma won when we were out shooting adventures. And I was like, man, I'm hopefully two has like a lot more monsters and stuff. And I was like, oh, I'm just fighting the same shit that I thought in this game. That's upsetting. Yeah, like it's a fun game for. Twenty five hours and then you hit the second area and it just kind of fell off a cliff for me, literally.
01:19:42
Speaker
What are you talking about? There was man. There was man and dog. There was Kevin and Joe and Roger. Yeah. And us. We were the monsters in this harmony. We were the monsters. You know what game's great? I'm not going to hear anything about it. I suppose part two. Great game. I haven't played it yet. Oh my God. Before the next season comes out. What a game. The game that I've been playing, Marty. It was a game that you recommended.
01:19:49
Speaker
Literally fall of a god.
01:20:07
Speaker
Oh, no. Oh, never mind. They should inventors fucking rules. Yeah, it's like a basically exactly how you describe it. Basically, Zelda Geometry Wars. And I kind of love it. Yeah, it's stupidly good as a balanced as like a proof of concept from a studio of like this is their second game, I believe. And I'm like, ooh, I really want to see where you do next. So someone should give me some money to just make a fucking Zelda game. Yeah.
01:20:36
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know what it is, like it's just really vibes heavy fun game. I guess I do know what it is. I don't know. I said I don't know what it is. But my main my main thing with it is some of these fights are so goddamn unbalanced in terms of like how much shit they're throwing at you. There's no way to get around it.
01:20:56
Speaker
Yeah, the problem is it's also every time you get into ability, you're like, ooh, maybe I shouldn't have been picking a fight with those guys. Yeah. This new ability is really helping play
Game Reviews & Recommendations
01:21:05
Speaker
this. Do you know what's game, Casey? Oh, I have not heard about this at all. Yeah. He was on when we talked. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, yeah. Many shoot adventures is a, it, it, uh, controls like geometry war. So twin top down twin stick shooter, uh,
01:21:18
Speaker
You kind of upgrade your character, you have a skill tree that you can choose whether you want, you know, stuff like damage or speed. But you are in ostensibly a top down Zelda world that has an overworld and a map and a hub town with shops and caves you go into, mini dungeons, major dungeons, major dungeons where you get a new item that recontextualizes how you interact with the entire world. That sounds really freaking cool. Like Zelda like bosses that are kind of like puzzle bosses.
01:21:48
Speaker
Because the worst part of any top-down Zelda game is the combat. And this combat is always good. And like even Nick said, like the thing the worse it gets is so chaotic that, but it's like you're never tuned out. You are like always tuned in. You're always making progress towards something. Killing stuff will always, like this is one of those games where every time you level up,
01:22:10
Speaker
It feels like you are getting noticeably more powerful. And you're like, ooh, when I put another level into damage, I can tell that I'm going through enemies quicker. Or when I put it into speed, I can tell that I can outrun guys. Or when I put it into my special moves, I could tell that they hit harder. It's really, really good. Just like this. This looks really fun.
01:22:43
Speaker
Don't say it with that voice. Say it with pride. Yeah, that was that. You got to show respect for the Monday. My last couple of things I just wanted to jot out quick. I've been playing an hour of Paper Mario Thousand Year Door every night. Just fucking delightful. What a perfect game that I'm so glad more people are getting to experience 20 years later. Is it available on Amazon yet? Oh, physical? I don't know.
01:22:55
Speaker
I think you would love this game. You guys should play it for hidden gems. Play for them whenever it's your next week. You know what? Maybe I will. Play for them gems. Play for them gems. I love the gems. Write it down right now.
01:23:07
Speaker
I got a code for my good friend Shigeru Miyamoto. Marty Son, here's your code for Paper Mario Thousand Year Door. But yeah, Thousand Year Door, that was the GameCube Paper Mario, the second Paper Mario, the one that most people say is probably the best one, and had been on GameCube slash Piracy Island for the past 20 years. So nice to finally have it out now. A lot of nice quality of life changes. You know, the game runs great, looks great. Just a fucking banger.
01:23:36
Speaker
We're in the final year of the Switch, which God, please God, tell me we're in the final year of the Switch. What a nice little way to go out with this. And then if they announce Wind Waker or Twilight Princess, it's all my favorite games of the...
01:23:51
Speaker
The 2000s. What's sad is that that would work if they just drop those. Metroid Prime 2 and 3. Yeah, I've been waiting on that, on like a remaster of those. What's old is new. It's great. Been behind that. I'm finished Thousand Times Resist, which is
01:24:12
Speaker
phenomenal. When we were talking about games with stories, uh, a thousand times resist is, uh, it kind of got lost in the animal well in the bonanza of the last month or so. Uh, but it is a, uh, near automata slash, uh, 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim slash a little bit of persona inspired, uh, narrative heavy game, uh, that
01:24:34
Speaker
is bouncing through time and also dealing with, like anyone who played Nier will know, the very heady themes of literal identity and destiny and what it means to be human. It is a game that's very hard to talk about story stuff without spoiling it.
01:24:54
Speaker
if you're fine with playing a game that is not going to be the most mechanically intense game. This game looks at a glance when you look at it, you're like, oh, is this going to be like a character action game or something? It is not. It is ostensibly a visual novel where you're controlling the
01:25:12
Speaker
the character in a 3D space. But the writing and the acting and the characters and the plot and the themes it deals with are fucking astounding, like genuinely astounding. I think it's easily my favorite story of the year. Honestly, probably my favorite story of the year in any medium, maybe even more than any movies. So just really, just really good shit. Highly recommend A Thousand Times Resist. It's out on Switch and PC. Someone told me the Switch port is bad.
01:25:42
Speaker
I didn't do any digging into it, so I'm just playing on Steam Deck, but just a word of warning. I don't know anything. I just might have been spreading misinformation, which happens. And if I did, I apologize, but I'm playing. It runs great on Steam Deck. And then the last one I want to talk about was Isles of Sea and Sky.
01:26:00
Speaker
which is I've been playing a lot of stuff. Well, this is, we didn't do a show last week. And I was also, uh, I was at the mercy of things that were downloaded on my devices to play until they died when my power was out. Uh, Isles of sea and sky is, uh, the latest, uh, Sokoban.
01:26:16
Speaker
Adventure, Sokoban is that genre. If you played Void Strangers or watched the Hot Monday Energy crew play Void Strangers, they're kind of the block-pushing puzzle game. But again, not to continue to bang the same drum, but it feels like that combined with an old top-down Zelda game. Where you sail these different islands, you're solving kind of these open-world puzzles, you're getting items that you're like, oh, I can go back to this old island and unlock new stuff and see what's going on here. Just in terms of nice little brain teasers, a lot of good, this has been a year of a lot of good brain teasers.
01:26:47
Speaker
Lorelai. Meanwhile, what's triple A doing? Hold forward. Suicide Squad. Hold forward. Look at these big numbers. Look at these big numbers. You're so excited. Shameful. Uh, but yeah, just, just a lot of good indies coming out and they just, they're, they won't stop. Someone please stop them. Someone stop the indies. No, never stop. Never stop. Have you guys been, uh, uh, playing anything else, Casey? Uh,
01:27:15
Speaker
No, nothing I can think of. You know, probably, but nothing I think of right now. I was watching Baby Reindeer on Netflix. How far did you get in that? I finished it. OK, I got to the big twist and then I had to take a break. Yeah. It was a five. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I needed a break after. Yeah, baby. So if you haven't heard of Baby Reindeer, it's like one of the best shows of the year right now. It's on it's on Netflix.
01:27:46
Speaker
Essentially, it's about this guy that serves a woman tea at a bar, and then she starts stalking him. And I really don't want to see him wear a neck, because it'll spoil. Serves her tea at a bar? Yep. Serves her tea at a bar. He does a nice thing. And then she starts stalking him. And there's a bar in one's tea. If I recall. She didn't want anything, right? Like, she came in here and said that she didn't have any money for anything. And so he just gave her, like, a free tea. And then... Yeah. But that's a lesson.
01:28:15
Speaker
It's a super like it's based on a real story. And it just. Explores a lot of different subjects from a perspective that we don't often hear about, especially from a man's point of view with the actor in the show is the one who would happen to apparently.
Netflix Series Discussions
01:28:35
Speaker
Oh, that makes that. Yeah, that's it. That's the real life man. Well, fuck. That's the real one. I just made that a much more.
01:28:46
Speaker
I need a break from this podcast now. Yeah. That was one of the, um, that, that felt like not quite levels of like squid game or, uh, what was the cat, the cat thing? Cat thing. Yeah. The whole cat cat cat zoo. Yeah. It's called the pandemic cat zoo. What was the fucking reality show? The cat zoo.
01:29:06
Speaker
What are you? What are you talking? Oh, okay. Come on. Get the fuck out of the cat zoo. I wasn't trying to trick you guys. I just couldn't remember what it was called. What was it? It was about a cat zoo. Big cats. There's different cats. It also sounded like I kept saying catsu like a like a Japanese like a poor cat. Yeah, it was a big hit.
01:29:30
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, it's a really, really powerful show now knowing that that's the actual guy makes it. And I don't want to watch it again now knowing that. But just be prepared if you do choose to watch it to be in the be in the right mental health space. It's a it's a fucking tough show to watch. I'll say that it's it's really heavy. Yeah.
01:29:54
Speaker
Challenge accepted. I mean, still, it's also it's also got like a real dark sense of humor as well. It does. Yeah. Like like I wasn't fully sold on it. Like I was very interested in what was going on. But like it does like that kind of big episode in the middle, which isn't very funny. Yeah. And then it's like, oh, shit, this is an entirely different show than I thought it was. Oh, so I did tell you, you didn't you didn't see that coming.
01:30:23
Speaker
No, I don't think any I don't think anyone would have guessed where that went. And like I have to commend them because I usually am not the biggest fan of like.
01:30:34
Speaker
this context was missing from everything before, because like it leads you down a certain path intentionally. But like because of what that was for the character, it made sense that it only came up when it did. Yeah. And like it's like that's like a brain unfolding type of thing, because now you're looking at everything before that like, oh, shit, like, oh, shit. Now there's actually. Yeah, there there was an episode. Well, I think you're coming up on it because there's only eight episodes, I believe.
01:31:04
Speaker
Yeah, like first time in a long time that it shows like just made me cry hard for a specific moment that happened.
01:31:13
Speaker
And like, it's something that I can't even relate to. And I can't say what it is because I would spoil some stuff. But like, I guess like sexual identity comes into play in a lot of it. And I can't relate to it as a straight guy. I guess, you know, kind of giving away some of it, but just like really opened up eyes like one of those moments is like, oh, man, I get it now. Like I get I get a lot of this.
01:31:37
Speaker
I don't know. Like, yeah, like when you go and finish it, like we'll be able to talk about it more depth. And yeah, I'll be watching or listening to the show a few weeks from now. Spoiler, yes, for Haiti or for Hellblade to be right here. Yeah, combine them both. Yeah, it's definitely a show worth talking about. Like I need to help. I want to read more people's opinions on it, especially people that can identify more with it because man, it's just like, shoot.
01:32:04
Speaker
But yeah, I've been watching that. I watched that. I did watch Three Body Problem, finally. I really liked it up until after episode five, and then the pace kind of just fell apart. I don't have you either of you watched it. I've not started it yet, no. Yeah, I watched the Chinese version as well. Yeah, the like the first five episodes is like really good mystery thriller stuff. And then once the mystery kind of
01:32:28
Speaker
is over. I felt like the pacing of the show just completely dove off a cliff. Thankfully, you're getting a season two. You never know of Netflix these days, but it just kind of felt like the climax of the show should have been that final episode.
01:32:47
Speaker
and then head into season two. Yeah. So this is the show that Netflix signed the big old deal with Benioff and Weiss, the Game of Thrones guys. So their show based on a trilogy of books that are like crazy bestsellers in China. And so sort of adapting that for the American audience.
01:33:07
Speaker
Are you talking about a Chinese show as well? There was a Chinese movie and a Chinese series. Yeah. So this is like the third time it's been adapted, but it's like being adapted for the West. But yeah, the problem is, like Nick said, where it starts off pretty manageable for the kind of mystery that it's unfolding. And then it just is quickly becoming like, oh, this is real big, heavy sci-fi.
01:33:32
Speaker
this this like the books apparently become like century spanning sci-fi uh and so it's like oh this is like getting this kind of getting there like it starts off like an intimate character drama that almost turns into like foundation or something yep as exactly i was about to say reminded me foundation and like once the mystery of foundation is kind of lifted it kind of it kind of reveres off a little bit yeah
01:33:55
Speaker
But yeah, I think season two, yeah, like, I don't know. Maybe they just learned their learn their lesson from Game of Thrones, like stretching out a story far too long. But I mean, they went into the second book with this, though, is the thing of like a trilogy of books. It's not like they're like.
01:34:13
Speaker
Dragging their feet or something, it just seems like a real like a big old messy story to adapt. Yeah, that's more what I meant is like, you know, the game of thrones, they they ran out of material as they wanted to do more seasons. Yeah. This kind of feels like, well, we have a lot of material, but let's condense it almost too quickly. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I still had a really good time with it. So more. Yeah. And I definitely I definitely want to watch season two and three that they already announced. So. Hmm.
01:34:42
Speaker
But watch anything else.
Anime Reviews & Reality Show Hyperdrive
01:34:45
Speaker
Because the last thing last thing I started, which I don't know why they haven't marketed it at all. Season two of The Outer Range. Hell, yeah. A voice for the start of that first episode last night. And oh, yeah, I got it real quick. I need to rewatch. I need to rewatch season one because I do not remember anything. But then Josh Brolin deal with a bunch of fucking boards. They do a pretty good recap for season one or at the start. Yeah, but.
01:35:12
Speaker
Yeah, good first episode. They dropped it all at once, right? Yeah, I guess they did. They haven't said a word about it. Who needs to create buzz around your shows? Well, I guess Fallout dropped all at once.
01:35:27
Speaker
Yeah. I had plenty of buzz. I had plenty of buzz around. Marked a bit of shit out of that. Yeah. But again, should have done weekly, but maybe I'm just old. It was an old crank. What about you, Casey? Anything else? Yeah, I did a bunch of like catch up stuff with some phase four Marvel stuff. So like I watched Quantum Mania, thought it was fine.
01:35:48
Speaker
I watched the Marvels, thought that was a little better than fine, but that suffers heavily from just baggage. You need to have watched so much and have understood so much history. It don't want to get anything out of that. But I watched the She-Hulk series, and I was very pleasantly surprised. That's a hilarious TV show. And it requires very little baggage. There was no baggage. Yeah, it requires not that much, and the little they do have, they kind of explain to you.
01:36:16
Speaker
Well, that is great. The concept of not just like superheroes, but like even villains having to deal with like just the ramifications of the American law legal system is very funny. Like they set up very funny scenarios for like the day by day episodes. I remember that the finale was a little
01:36:41
Speaker
controversial. Yeah. And I can see that because she does a lot of fourth wall breaking. And I don't know much about the She-Hulk character in the comics. I don't know if that's what she does. Yeah, that's like one of her things, like her. OK, that's one of her things. She'll like jump out the frame of the comic and then like swing down to the next panel and like address the reader and everything. OK, so yeah, so that then that's just them being true to, I guess, the character. But I got to say, I didn't like much of it. Like the fourth wall breaking wasn't great in this.
01:37:09
Speaker
I mean, it was funny, but I don't feel like it served the story. It felt like it was distracted from what was happening in the story. But other than that, pretty good show. I really liked it. I kind of want to see more. Hopefully, that gets to season two.
01:37:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think it continues the one thing like no matter how rocky The phase four of the MCU has been which is pretty rocky I would say Their casting is still generally spot-on like Tatiana is like really fucking good and incredibly charming and like I think she's great in the role
01:37:39
Speaker
And it was nice to get a little bit of Daredevil back. I'm excited to see him more. Yeah, he was great in that, too. Like, I'm not a fan of the suit color, but he was great. Oh, yeah. That she called it a ketchup and mustard. I think that was just like a little goof for this because from everything they've showed from the actual Daredevil show, I think this is back to old old red. But I started and caught all that delicious and dungeon because that show is
01:38:07
Speaker
great. And I was a little lukewarm on it, like it was fine at first, and then it gets serious. And then I'm like, Oh, shit. So it apparently is done tomorrow. I think. Oh, awesome. Season one is done tomorrow. They dropped two episodes at a time, which they weren't doing that originally. Like, I think I'm starting to back. I'm a fan of that.
01:38:24
Speaker
So I watched the first half and I stopped, I believe after episode 12 or 13, where it sort of felt like, oh, our first adventure is over kind of thing. And I purposely just waited for it to all be back. So I could, I'll probably, again, this weekend, probably binge through it. Did you think the second half was as strong as the first half? Because I really love the first half. Yeah, the second half, I think, keeps things moving in the right direction. Yeah.
01:38:50
Speaker
But I'm invested now. I'm invested in all the characters. I'm invested in their discovery of eating monsters and just of the world, the greater magical world in general. I'm interested in the history of the dungeon itself, what they've been hinting at over the course of the series and now giving you more explanation as to what's been going on with some of those reveals. And I didn't realize until super late that it's a trigger joint.
01:39:15
Speaker
Yeah. And that's what they do as their bag. It's a little more low key. And I think the last thing they did was like that, like where it wasn't like, what even was that? They had a show that just wasn't, oh, it was freaking. No, it was, it was the robot one, right? Pluto. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's right. They did put it on Netflix. Yeah. And that one was like subdued. Yeah. Yeah. So this was somewhere in between.
01:39:43
Speaker
when they want to like do something like really gnarly they they have no problem with like pulling out all the stops with that yeah like they have episodes where it's like all right everything has hit the fan and like it it makes that hit a lot harder i feel so that's great can't wait to finish that up yeah i feel like that could be an anime you i feel like you might like delicious in dungeon a
01:40:02
Speaker
It has a pretty simple D&D-ish premise, but it also feels like they explore video game mechanics and ideas through the episode in neat ways. I feel like by being a fan of video games, you get a little bit more from the adventures and the things that happen to them because it almost feels like a
01:40:26
Speaker
I don't know. Do you get what I'm saying there, Casey? I think so, yeah. Like, yeah, like there are there are rules for the dungeon that aren't the same rules for the real world and that feels video gaming. Yeah, like both that and solo leveling I watched recently do like it feels like knowing and caring about video game mechanics kind of play into my enjoyment of the series as a whole. But it's also got a great English dub. Like I've been watching it in Japanese at first and then changed to
01:40:55
Speaker
to English when my fiance sat down with me for a little bit. And I just, I've stuck to English since then. Cause like, it's really good. Yeah, they're great. I know Jack, it's one of Jack's favorite shows in recent memory as well. He's watching with his kids. Yeah, it's great. I'm sure Jack likes it obviously as a D and D boy.
01:41:09
Speaker
I also burned through like I had this hankering for just more like Moto Sport TV. Like I started 100 Days to Indie, which is another Netflix documentary, but about the the indie car series as opposed to Formula One. That was a very boring show. I jumped off of that after the first set.
01:41:28
Speaker
It was an anti-recommendation. Yeah, I don't I didn't like that very much at all. But that found this reality show called Hyperdrive, which is essentially they pull a bunch of amateur street racers and like drifters and like donutters. I don't know. There's a term for when you just do like the best donuts in a competition. But like they just pull these people from all over the world and they put them in this like Ninja Warrior esque obstacle course where they have to like drive their car and do a bunch of like
01:41:56
Speaker
skill checks over the course of several nights. They're eliminating each other, they're doing head-to-head races when they're at the bottom of the elimination pool. It's got a great cast of reality show-esque characters who are just really fun and endearing people.
01:42:13
Speaker
For the most part, and they have such really good backstories, too. They'll go down the rabbit hole of, oh, this person is drifting because his friend died on this crazy mountain pass. And he's like, if my friend had known how to drift, maybe he'd still be here. So he dedicated his life to teaching people how to drift. It sounds ridiculous, but no, that's actually his motivation. That's how he got here.
01:42:38
Speaker
He's a true drift king, a true DK. There's a kid who's like this prodigy and his dad used to be a racer, so you feel the tension where it's like the dad wants his kid to be the greatest and the kid wants to be the greatest, but he's having to please his dad, so it's like, he doesn't really want this. They have all those elements, but then the races themselves are super exciting. Crazy shit happens between the rounds as if it was scripted. This was something that I really liked about
01:43:05
Speaker
um, drive to survive formula one show is that the regular real life season like stuff would happen that made it feel like someone wrote this because this is perfect the way this is played out like the drama is palpable and like that reality show maybe they manufactured it maybe not but like it has really good beats for like all the competition from the beginning all the way up to the end so i had a really good time actually watching that it was a really fun reality show
01:43:29
Speaker
Uh, and that was called hyperdrive hyperdrive. Yeah. It's bad. And where is it? Where is it on a, that's on, that's on the real bed. Yeah. Yeah. It's a terrible name, but it's a great reality show. Yeah. The problem that I feel like outer range also has a bad name. Cause I keep thinking of, uh, there was a Kevin Costner Western, like 20 years ago called open range. And I'll be like, I kept searching open range. And I'm like, no, this was not a Kevin Costner Western from 20 years ago. This is a different show. Why can I not find this? You should have called it the outer void.
01:44:00
Speaker
I'm just saying that was that was the show that really that that was my void my love my void awakening. You know, that sounds like the shittiest anime thing. It's already void awakening. That's where the meme that's where the meme came from audience, the outer range because when Marty when Marty goes bad, he goes in the void hole. I fucking put me in the void. That's not like a prison. That's you think that's a punishment. Marty loves it there. Did you not watch the show when they go into the void hole? They get run over by bison.
01:44:30
Speaker
that spoil what's in the void hole no Marty's in there
01:44:40
Speaker
My worry about bison would be their dander. I'm not worried about getting trampled by the bison. I'm mostly worried about their dander effecting. Are you allergic to bison? I'm probably allergic to everything, dude. Oh my gosh. It is crazy how much I'm allergic to. There's a dog at the bar the other night. I was allergic to him. He wasn't even sitting that close to me. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. If you bring the dog to the bar, make sure they're hypoallergenic. I have a graphic bar for you called Bar-K.
01:45:05
Speaker
Was that like a bark joke? Dog bar was literally. Yeah, it's a dog bar. It's called barking. I would die. I would die. Can go there. Can I go to non dog bars? Cruella de Vil's bar. I want to go to. She's going to have the hella dog fur in there. So you're still. Isn't it insane that a few years ago they made that Emma Stone Cruella de Vil movie where it was trying to be like, no, no, no, she's she's actually like a hero. She kills 100 dogs.
01:45:32
Speaker
She's crazy. She's literally Skins dogs. She's awful. Was that what we were trying to redeem her or was she just the main character? She was still bad, right? It was a prequel. She wasn't bad. Oh, okay. She wasn't bad. So she was like mischievous, almost like a Harlequin. And then she has her downfall.
01:45:48
Speaker
Skinny goes to a bar and there's so many dogs there. She's like I gotta wear these fuckers Shout down the stone front of the show Most kids growing up watching that movie didn't realize how fucking dark it actually was
01:46:03
Speaker
All those Disney movies. I think we got it like Dumbo. A lot of Disney movies are dark. A lot of Disney movies like Kill'em. Yeah. The ending of Tarzan is romantic. We should have seen what was coming. Kids gotta embrace the darkness. No wonder I was so fucked up. Nihilistic thing to say. Disney did this so they could sell us Marvel later. It was all planned. It's working. It's absolutely working.
01:46:28
Speaker
I feel like as we're wrapping up for the evening, going back, quintuple A, you had a $2 donut a long time ago, right before we started talking about all this stuff. And you just said, okay, Eric. Yeah. Casey had to rain on him for like the entire podcast.
01:46:42
Speaker
Oh, I heard a little bit of thunderstorms. I wish I would have read that earlier. I want the podcast to just have white noise where it's kind of like a light thunderstorm in the background. That sounds nice. That is nice. Yeah, we'll do a podcast like that. Apologies to both Eric and Quintuple for putting together a joke that I ruined by not reading it for about 45 minutes. Apologies there. That does it.
01:47:12
Speaker
for us for today. We did a great job.
01:47:17
Speaker
Obviously the big thing everyone should be watching out for tomorrow, 10 a.m. Central. So it was a 12, 14 hours from now, we are gonna be live. We're gonna be live with our big six month extravaganza. We'll be there, all your familiar faces will be there. Yeah, we'll be kicking things off at 10. We'll be showing you our plans for what we have in store, what we got cooking for you. Adventure is nigh, merch, non-adventure is nigh, cool little secrets.
01:47:47
Speaker
Yeah, tune in for that, and then we'll be for nine hours. We'll be playing games. We'll be playing Fall Guys. We'll be playing Gang Beasts. Our next Dokapon adventure is going to be starting at 1 p.m. Central, so all four of us Dokobros will be back for that. Yeah, that'll be a ton of fun. So there's going to be a bunch of prizes. Eric will be dropping games. We got secret prizes. I don't know if we've talked about secret prizes yet. Yeah, yeah. Eric will be tossing game codes out like they're candy all day.
01:48:13
Speaker
We'll be raffling off individually not all together in one package a ps5 and xbox series x and a nintendo switch. Can i win all the pc heathens to learn how to play video games on a true console yeah.
01:48:29
Speaker
Sorry, I called you all PC heathens. But apart from that, Casey, what do you have going on? What should folks check out in your neck of the woods? Pretty soon, I should have a Jess Hoops written and narrated bite sized out that I'm producing. I don't know, probably the end of this week, maybe.
01:48:55
Speaker
don't have any other beer products I can pick up. Nothing that's forward facing at least. But I'll be back streaming with my fiance this Friday. Not sure what we'll be streaming yet, but I'll try to keep it short because immediately after that, I'm leaving to go get my son from New Year port. And so he'll be joining us for all of our wedding streams and probably some other weekend streams as well for the whole summer. It'll be Starboy summer. So looking forward to that.
01:49:21
Speaker
And I think that's super smash Sundays on Sundays as well. Like that's also going on on my personal channel single years nine. So follow all in all the places and you should be all set. You said that you you are on record saying you think you're a better at smash than 2005 era of water. Is that true? I don't want to blow up your spot. Is that what I said that to me?
01:49:41
Speaker
I said, could you be the one he's trying to walk in bed? No, I said, no. I remember saying, could you say water and Reggie? I said, I could take Reggie. I don't know. You're a little worried about a water. OK, I don't know if I can take a water. I'm trying to start beef between you and you want to be a part of Satoru Iwata.
01:50:05
Speaker
No unpacks for me tomorrow because of the stream all day so my next unpacked video will be in two weeks and then Frost and I will be back to continue wrap up Call of Duty United offensive on Friday and then we get back to you. You're gonna stream Friday after streaming all that tomorrow?
01:50:23
Speaker
Yeah, I've been having fun getting back into streaming this week, keeping me off social media. Yeah, so if you want to follow me, my Twitter is now private, so you have to request it. I'm keeping it private because it's just gotten too toxic and I don't want to deal with it anymore. So if you want to follow up some of my gaming thoughts on there, you can follow me on Twitter, other than that.
01:50:42
Speaker
Uh, just, yeah, we're pushing the patron hard. Uh, we, you know, as patron goes, you have your ebb and flows and we're in that, that. And that's going down. We want to go momentum back up. So we'll be doing that every six months or so for this kind of thing. Yeah. Exciting, exciting shit for, for folks to see tomorrow. So, and, uh, since you guys are here in the, uh, podcast, you can, you can get the early jump on, uh, at the $25 tier, we're adding a brand new perk for, uh, voting for Yahtzee summer game game, uh, game review.
01:51:13
Speaker
I'm a game game. What game do you think it's going to be? I don't know. Last year, the second place was Danganronpa. A very close third was Knights of the Old Republic, and I really want to see him review Knights of the Old Republic. No, I want to see him review Danganronpa. Yeah, I think I would rather see that. Well, when we did it back in the Escapists, we only had about 30 votes here. We'll have like a little over 300.
01:51:39
Speaker
It's going to be a little bit like an NCAA main madness bracket to pick it as much madness, but it's fine.
01:51:48
Speaker
You're a fake little basketball boy. But that's it for us. Thank you all so much, everyone who's watching live, everyone who listens on your podcast service du jour, or watching a nice little VOD. Thank you so much, Eric. Thank you so much, Casey and Nick. For Marty, this was Firelink. I almost said breakout, and then I almost said recap. I was like, first one makes sense as a mistake. The second one, that wasn't even
01:52:14
Speaker
That was an eve of the show. That was an entirely different program. This was bringing out fucking episode number 23 of whatever show this was. Thank you all so much for joining. Have a wonderful rest of your evening. And we'll see you back here at 10 a.m. tomorrow morning with the all-day festivities. Bye, everyone. Yes. Bye.
01:52:43
Speaker
you