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S2 Ep177: RSS - October - Ian
74 Plays4 years ago
Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Ian as they talk about what they've been playing recently, physical games, loops, platform fighters, card games, a spot of news, and more in this week's episode!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction and Host Banter
00:00:00
Speaker
🎵
00:00:29
Speaker
Bye!
00:00:45
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave.
Mailing Shenanigans
00:00:51
Speaker
How's it going today, Dave? It's going better than it's ever been, because I am joined by my co-host, strictly my co-host, Ian. How's it going today, Ian? It's going pretty good, boss. Thanks for keeping me around. When am I going to get my first paycheck? Listen, you haven't been here the past couple of weeks, so let's hold off on that, yeah?
00:01:14
Speaker
Oh, all right. It's like an internship podcast guest deal. We're here for the experience, right? Like you'll grow into a full podcasting position. Yeah, yeah, eventually you'll get there. Well, he told me that, you know, I would get my first paycheck when he got his coffee, but thanks to Covid, it is just it's been in the mail. I've received some grounds. I don't know what to do with this.
00:01:42
Speaker
It might have just been ground. It might have just been dirt. I don't know. I was thinking of a joke payoff, but I don't have the setup for the rest of the joke, but it was going to come off of what you just said. It was going to be grounds for divorce. That was that was the payoff. There's just no connection there. You know, we joke about sending Dave like dirt and coffee grounds, but haven't someone in our group
00:02:05
Speaker
just sent Dave a potato in the mail. Yeah. Hasn't this been done? Gennaro from the podcast and mailed me a potato because he found out he could. And he's like, yeah, you can just put stamps on that motherfucker. So now, of course, what other root vegetables can be sent via mail? I think there's a list as long as it's not like going to go bad immediately in the mail, you can ship a quite a number of things.
00:02:36
Speaker
There has to be just a website dedicated to. Like, coconuts are good. They're not going to just rot. What about watermelons? See, I feel watermelon could be too much. Because in case of catastrophic failure, like, there goes all of the mail alongside this watermelon. But that's the thing. That's the postal systems problem. Like, if they would have not broken it in the first place, I feel like this is indictment against all courier services and the safety in which they keep our packages.
00:03:06
Speaker
They care. I don't care about this watermelon. I'm going to ship it to and fro, but you know, you better straighten up and not drop my package or else it's your problem now, not mine.
00:03:16
Speaker
So I mean, like, would you risk that and order a watermelon and a PS5? Assuming that they were coming in like the same carrier. The opens, the combined packages, they're just like, I throw the watermelon in there. Like assuming you woke up from a coma for the last 30 years, you have no idea the status of FedEx versus UPS versus all other courier services. And you're like, I need to order something and I need to pick how it's going to be shipped.
00:03:42
Speaker
I'm going to do a trial run by sending 30 glass jars filled with various liquids with no packing peanuts in it. And we're going to pick different courier services and whoever comes back with the most intact jars is the winner.
00:03:59
Speaker
Hmm. I mean, you should just try this and let me know. I'm concerned, though, in a post 9-11 society about shipping unlabeled miscellaneous liquids, powders, anything like that. I mean, I could just put labels on them and lie, tell people this is water when it's clearly not.
00:04:19
Speaker
This is anthrax. It's obviously not. But, you know, so are the different liquids for like different viscosities? Like, what's the test there of having 30 different liquids? Different thickness on the jars. So you could tell on like a sliding scale of how roughly the package was treated. OK. And maybe dye them like rainbow colors, make it, you know, fancy.
00:04:46
Speaker
I'm thinking like baking soda and water would be a good test. Cause then in case there was an abrupt shift, it would actually be less likely to sludge away. It hardens in response. See the thing is you said baking soda and water. So my brain immediately went to just send a package that's 50% vinegar and 50% baking soda and just send it and be like, well, mail service. If you weren't rough with my package, this wouldn't have happened.
00:05:16
Speaker
Yeah, and we're rapidly approaching why they probably don't allow most things in this arrangement to be shipped. I actually just had to take a work training class on the various how to receive and ship hazardous materials, which has zero subjects pertaining to my actual line of work, but company wide, it's required policy. And I feel like I learned so much because I don't remember any of it now.
00:05:43
Speaker
That is often how knowledge goes. I learned a lot.
00:05:49
Speaker
Yep. I'm just imagining, based off those two pieces of information, that you had training on shipping hazardous materials and it had nothing to do with your job, that the training was just like, in case you're considering shipping hazardous materials, don't.
Impact of COVID on Social Interactions
00:06:02
Speaker
We don't need you to. Training complete. There's one guy named Terry who just mailed something out he shouldn't have, but under a company address. Return to Terry. Great. Now we all have to suffer for Terry's mess up. Thanks, Terry.
00:06:19
Speaker
Classic Terry. You guys had to, like, ship anything weird? Just in general? We've had complications. I usually don't do the shipping. I'm usually the the ship. And you've been shipped. Right. I mean, some people in our friend group really want me to hook up with other people in our friend group. There's an active shipping community.
00:06:46
Speaker
international shipping. DM me that. I'm curious to know who's I want to know. Well, people think I'd be really cute with like Landon, but then people are like, but Landon's married. Right. Right. But Jen doesn't watch anime. So hear me out. Is Landon actually married or is he just engaged? I've lost track. They eloped during COVID. Oh, good for them. Yeah.
00:07:10
Speaker
But it was like super slow because he was like, Oh, we're married now. I'm like, what? Yeah, a lot of people did that. Uh, I feel like COVID has become like the great filter of our time. Like the events before and after we've constantly made jokes of the before times and the after times. But I look back on my life and I'm like, what happened before COVID? At least three couples have gotten married. Two of them have had children.
00:07:40
Speaker
Like our friend group pre COVID and post COVID is going to be a wildly different because of all these life changing events that happened in the no no zone. Right. I will say it's not just us. It's not even just our friends group that refers to pre COVID as the before times. I've heard that or seen that read that in other contexts. So there is some cultural association with literally that phrase.
Nostalgia and Physical Video Games
00:08:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember how to like work our way back this rabbit trail to whatever we were talking about, something with anime and shipping and we were talking about literally shipping things. I mean, we could just start talking about video games. Sure. I mean, that's a wild idea. Have you been shipped any video games recently? If so, what are they?
00:08:42
Speaker
When was the last time you purchased a physical video game? I can answer this. That's good. It makes it a decent question. Yesterday, I picked up a physical copy of Metroid Dread because Nintendo games don't lose value.
00:08:58
Speaker
That's true. Because they never they never put anything on sale. Exactly. I mean, it's a single player game. Not that I think I'm going to trade it in, but I could probably beat this game. And then, you know, six months down the line, if I ever am in a rough scrap and I need money, I could trade it in. I'll probably get like 30 bucks out of the 50 I spent for it.
00:09:18
Speaker
That's true. I also like if I pick up a game that somebody else might want to play down the line if I've already beaten it and she's going to sit on the shelf for like two years and be like, hey, borrow this. Check it out. And vice versa. Somebody could like let me borrow something, too. Yeah, I think I'm really big on on physical copies of console games.
00:09:38
Speaker
I think the concept of a physical copy on a PC game is ludicrous at this point, but for console games, especially the Switch, I'm always big on the actual thing. Yeah. Particularly, there's so many factors that go into it, like smaller hard drive size on consoles, so you might not want to full install. Most PCs don't even have DVD drives anymore, so how are you going to share it?
00:10:07
Speaker
There's a lot. Back in the day, we used to have a shelf tray for CD cases, where you could fit two dual CD cases in for your different PC games and PC software. And that was coming off to your library right under the monitor. Yeah, I'll have to run out. And where does the monitor stand? I'll have to run out and pick up some loose. Do you know what was a great disappointment with my new physical game purchase, though?
00:10:36
Speaker
Pick it up, you take the plastic off, you open it up, and there's no manual inside. I miss manuals. It's because it's just a plastic case now with the little game card in it. I will say that the case was reversible. And it had like a big menacing Samus illustration on the other side instead of the whole
00:10:58
Speaker
cover art. So that was nifty. But I miss manuals and just all the pictures and illustrations inside them.
00:11:09
Speaker
I think that those are like, like, collector's editions of games. Physical collector's editions make way more sense than digital collector's editions. The digital collector's editions barely ever matter. Like you get, hey, here's an extra skin that's going to be released at some point anyways. But like, I remember Fallout 3, I had like a literal lunchbox, like, and there was a bobblehead in there and I think there was a map and like all this really cool stuff that I loved, you know,
00:11:41
Speaker
Dave, what was the coolest physical edition of a game you've ever gotten? It's gotta be like Diablo 2 Battle Chest is the only one that jumps to memory.
00:11:51
Speaker
But again, it was mainly because like that big honkin manual and it had lots of like monster art in the back. And then it had all the details for like the abilities and everything. So it was like a nice little codex for me. This was before the era of the day one patch, which would have just invalidated so much of it. Right. Yes. Yes. Pre-mist strategy guide in shambles. Do you remember the good old days when you used to get actual physical rewards for pre-ordering games?
00:12:21
Speaker
Because I think so. I used to have, because we're talking about Metroid, it got me thinking. I used to have an honest to God shirt that I got from GameStop for pre-ordering the original Metroid Prime. It was like this ugly ass olive shirt, but it had like a trucker patch on it that said Samus. And I wore it to death like it was it was stolen from me and thrown away because of how raggedy it was.
00:12:52
Speaker
I like that their old style marketing is like, what are we going to do with all these green shirts? Fuck. I don't know, slap Samus on it, ship it out, give it like a pre-order bonus. I'm like, genius. And then Ian loved it today. There was some kid in, you know, Bumblefuck USA who's like, I am so excited for my shirt. Uh,
00:13:14
Speaker
But I think the coolest pre-order bonus, or not pre-order, like physical edition I've ever gotten, is I fell for Todd Howard's marketing and I bought the Fallout 4 Vault Boy edition. That had the Pip-Boy. Yes, I got the Pip-Boy and the Big Case and the map. A bunch of posters. I miss the physical stuff.
00:13:44
Speaker
That definitely wasn't as terrible as some of the other collectors, like super collector's edition, like items that were shipped alongside that, like the the bag, the like vault bag or like the Nuka Cola Dark. Oh, from Fallout 76. Yeah, those are for 76. That's right. Weren't they like free shit they gave away at college, like freshman orientation type stuff? It was really bad. It was.
00:14:07
Speaker
If you've never watched the fall of 76 video, it's a half an hour of enjoyment as one man breaks down every single misstep. I've definitely watched that because I like shitting on Todd Howard and Bethesda as a whole, and it's kind of helped justify it for me. I'm like, see, see. Todd Howard, the modern day Peter Molyneux, has he inherited the title of like the hypest of hype men?
00:14:35
Speaker
I think he's probably gone past it because Peter Molyneux was just like on LSD when he was describing any of his products. And people, I feel like, yeah, he got investors motivated or whatever, but it didn't take too long before gamers, gamers, were like, okay, none of this stuff is gonna be in the game, right? Fable one was good. Maybe the rest were enjoyable, but it's not gonna change the world.
00:15:05
Speaker
Um, Todd Howard's legitimately like, and this game's going to work and then it doesn't. And there's a big difference between those two things. What if that was the next like E3 presentation for the Elder Scrolls five? No Elder Scrolls six. He just comes out on stage. There's the fanfare. There's everything. And he goes, our next game is going to be revolutionary and different from anything we've done before. Cause I can promise you here and now that on day one, it
00:15:35
Speaker
will run. I mean, he did. He didn't actually already do that. He said it just works. Right. That was what we became known for. It just works. And then I imagine like an entire auditorium of people just screaming. Uh huh.
00:15:53
Speaker
developer, the developers of fallout 76 sweating in the background as he says. The QA who just got hired during the presentation is like, what, what's going on? Oh, it just works. I guess I don't have any work to do. Except it's easy to check. Not met. Does not work. So how, how is Metroid Dread? Uh, Metroid Dread's pretty excellent so far. Um,
00:16:23
Speaker
It is for anyone who's not like up to date on their Metroid games, which is not surprising because they released them so few and far in between. It's the first Metroid game that advances the storyline since Metroid Fusion and Metroid Fusion came out in November of 2002. So it's sort of like you just beat Final Fantasy 7 and then they didn't release a sequel talking about it for 19 years.
00:16:53
Speaker
Right. How is that comment applicable to anything in recent history?
00:16:59
Speaker
Hmm yeah, but not dread is dreads good I enjoy where it's going. It's learned some lessons from the other like handheld Metroid games Like save points are much more liberal because they understand that you're playing this on a mobile device So maybe you'll pick it up play it for an hour and then put it down again so you don't want to you know when you decide that I don't want to play this anymore for now
Metroid Series Discussion
00:17:26
Speaker
and
00:17:26
Speaker
Let me wander around for 30 minutes to find a save point. Nah, you just walk away. There's usually one within like a two minute jog.
00:17:34
Speaker
I have a joke here, again, this is the skeleton of a joke, but the save points are much more liberal, so clearly they're safe spaces. They're actually having enemies in there. Well, safe spots are very well known for being clear of enemies, so yeah, works, safe spaces. Layers. Do you recommend this for people who haven't ever tried Metroid because they were born and grow up and developed?
00:18:00
Speaker
after the last game came out. Seriously, there are people who have never played a new Metroid game in the main series that are getting into it now. I've never played any of them. Also have not played any of them. Really? Really. It's an okay starting point to the series. It has a really good recap at the beginning. It basically goes over. You figured that.
00:18:26
Speaker
There are five main games in the Metroid series so far, this being Metroid 5.
00:18:32
Speaker
And the first two of them were on the Nintendo Entertainment System and the original Game Boy. So you can understand that there wasn't a whole lot of environmental storytelling going on in those eight bits. So really, the only story comes about in the Super Nintendo, the Game Boy Advance one, and the Switch one. So there's not a whole lot of backstory to go over in these. It just kind of picks up, tells you what you need to do, and gets going.
00:18:59
Speaker
Did GameCube not advance the story? The Prime series? The Prime series was sort of its own spin-off thing. I think chronologically, Metroid Prime happens after Metroid 1 or 2, after Metroid 2, but before Metroid Super Metroid, Metroid 3.
00:19:23
Speaker
So while it happens, it sort of happens in its own little universe. Granted, Metroid Prime series is amazing. I cannot hype those up enough for anybody who likes any games.
00:19:36
Speaker
Those are the ones I'm personally most interested in because I don't usually play platformers. I don't like them that much. Hollow Knight's a massive exception. I love that game to death. But like I saw Metroid Prime back then when I was a kid and I was like, this looks really cool. And now I still kind of look at it. I'm like, this looks really cool. But I know that it will have aged significantly for a first person perspective game.
00:20:01
Speaker
My primary rebuttal to that I would say is that they bundled all three Metroid Prime games and put them together with the Wii version and added motion controls, which is one of those things where this sounds awful, but it's actually not atrocious. It kind of fixes some of the original problems with the Prime games being it was a shooter with one stick.
00:20:26
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Any type of shooter on GameCube felt a little bit sus because I don't know, it handled like shit. Yeah. I'll say that at least they didn't often ask you in the heat of the moment to aim up or down. I know the game had a lot of lock on, right? You're like, all right. Yeah. Lock on.
00:20:47
Speaker
I'll tell you what, when it comes out for Switch with either a rerelease or a remaster, I will pick it up. Because they're putting everything on Switch. Nintendo will happen. If Nintendo finally manages to do what I've been begging them for years to do, give us an online store with an online account that's unified across all your consoles. The Nintendo account, everyone else has one. And if I buy Super Metroid on it,
00:21:17
Speaker
And then the next console comes out, just let me download Super Metroid to that console and play it. Like, I think I've purchased Ocarina of Time on no less than five Nintendo consoles at this point. So obviously they're getting their money's worth out of me.
Nintendo's Digital Strategy and Fan Projects
00:21:34
Speaker
Yeah. And that's why they're not going to change that policy. I recognize this. But it is getting old, he said, pulling out his wallet for the next Ocarina of Time re-release.
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah, that was actually really funny because they both re-released it and they remastered it. We were talking in the last talkcast. I can't remember if we covered the item or not, but they do have Nintendo has an online expansion pack membership, which includes games such as Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Mario Kart 64, Star Fox, Yoshi's Story, Streets of Rage, Echo.
00:22:10
Speaker
Bunch of stuff from their catalog and Sega's because Nintendo ate Sega. We did cover it because I remember making a joke about that. Yeah.
00:22:21
Speaker
But it sounds like they're at least starting to move a little bit into that space. They just got tired of bonking down ROM sites and they're like, let's just do it ourselves. Oh, I mean, I guess that's kind of like the perennial thing is like people are going to get sick of buying super Metroid on every single thing that comes out, especially when anybody at this point can figure out how to run a ROM on their computer and everyone has a computer.
00:22:48
Speaker
The only Mario is what that stands for. He's so cool. And we're back. It's kind of nice in a way how communities will do these things independently, like, oh, we're doing mods. Oh, we made a ROM of this so we can play older games. That's basically the community saying, this is what we want. And then a ton of it's like, oh, we can do that.
00:23:15
Speaker
And then once it becomes official, do you know how hard it is for people to say, like, I'm going to go do this thing when I can just click one button, pay money and it's done? Yeah. OK, let me just opt into the online store. OK, now I have access to these games. Cool. Well, that's like. Oh, you can go ahead. I was going to say there was a so I mentioned we're talking about Metroid and it's on the brain, the mother brain.
00:23:42
Speaker
Metroid 2 is the return of Samus and it was released on the original Game Boy and it is not good. So a lot of people spent a lot of time and effort on another Metroid 2 remaster, AM2R.
00:24:00
Speaker
And it was like a big deal because this thing was like really really well done. It was really polished It was hyped for years. It was worked on and then Nintendo comes in and access it Yeah, because later that week they announced the official Metroid 2 remaster coming out within like six months and
00:24:24
Speaker
Nintendo has a relationship with that, right? This is almost, imagine that you're just watching a child grow through the years. They're headed to school each day and there's a stranger on the opposite side of the street and they're always just standing there, standing there, until the child grows old enough and then the stranger kills them. And that's what Nintendo does to community projects. And replaces them with their own child that looks very similar.
00:24:48
Speaker
We have been growing this child. It is a more superior product. We hope you understand. Yeah, DMCA. They're really bad for it, though. I mean, Nintendo and supporting your community pick one. Yeah, look at online services and how that's been going.
00:25:10
Speaker
Like it's still shit and people make fun of it all the time. But if they could just, I don't know, let go of their cock and balls for like two seconds and just bring in like a third party for like two seconds. Like I know they're very protective of their IP, but certain things like they suck at or like if somebody does something in the community space and they want to basically just steal that idea,
00:25:35
Speaker
I don't know, throw some fucking money at him. When Binding of Isaac had like that whole like, hey, here's this separate DLC. They then incorporated that into the game because it was good. Well, I mean, look at you said it yourself. Look at Sonic Mania.
00:25:51
Speaker
Everyone wanted their... I thought people liked Sonic Mania. Sonic Mania was reviewed really well. I was just making a furry joke, sorry. Oh, okay. See, Sonic is not... I did not grow up with Sonic, so I'm like... I am the orphan looking in on the window at all the people that love Sonic and like, why do they like it so much? But people were making like, Sonic games by themselves and they were arguably better than the Sonic games that Sega was making.
00:26:20
Speaker
It's like eventually he's like, you know what, if you guys are going to do this, here's a bunch of money, put it all together and make it good. Yeah.
00:26:27
Speaker
Basically, it was made by fanatics who cared so much about the series that they actually did a really good job with it and kept it at heart. There's a quote from one of the reviews for Sonic Mania was right here. It's taken as a full package. This is arguably the best Sonic game there is. And if your fans can make something that's arguably the best Sonic game, then
00:26:51
Speaker
I mean, good job. Nintendo is very reticent to do something like that. The closest example I can think of is they took the people from Crypt of the Necrodancer. I was just thinking that. For the Zelda. I can't remember the name of it. Cadence of Hyrule. Because it's a bad pun.
00:27:15
Speaker
No, Nintendo has a slight history of like letting other people handle their intellectual property. And like sometimes it turns out great. Rareware did the Donkey Kong Country games and are arguably some of the best Donkey Kong games. And Retro Studios did Metroid Prime. But then sometimes they have, you know, missteps like when they gave Metroid to Team Ninja and then we released Other M and then nobody liked it. Yeah.
00:27:45
Speaker
And then they didn't make another Metroid game for eight years. Nobody likes Team Ninja though. I, yeah, I was going to say Team Ninja can fuck off. I don't like their style of games. Neo being my most recent.
Warriors-style and Tabletop Games
00:27:59
Speaker
And Geo and Ninja Gaiden are there two big things. I was going to say I played Ninja Gaiden and I liked Ninja Gaiden, but I can't think of anything else they did that I like.
00:28:09
Speaker
Marvel Ultimate Alliance, the black, or three, the black order. There you go. A classic, yes. Dead or Alive, Extreme Peach Volleyball. Oh, actually a classic. I mean, I was joking that after Metroid Other Ram, of course Nintendo wouldn't let them touch anything else, but Nintendo gave them Legend of Zelda with Hyrule Warriors in 2014. Yeah, I heard that actually did okay.
00:28:38
Speaker
Hyrule Warriors is seven years old. I could have sworn they are still releasing stuff for Hyrule Warriors. Maybe. Or did they make another one? That's a review super hot on Metacritic. It's a 78, which is low for an intended game. I mean, to be fair, it is a Warriors type game, so I don't know what you want. Not that.
00:29:05
Speaker
And that's very, very hack and slash. But I feel like if you like the IP, like I was curious about the Gundam version they had. Like that a Gundam Dynasty Warriors. I played the demo for it at a GameStop once and it was astoundingly fun. I just sometimes I like mechs. That's it. Yeah.
00:29:28
Speaker
Let me sell you on Lancer RPG. I'm not going to. No, you trust me. I've been already romanced by Jake about the Lancer tabletop role-playing game because we were in the back of a limo going to a bachelor party and he turns to me and goes, let me sell you on the Lancer RPG. And he probably picked the only person in that limo that was honestly excited about this. I'm glad you guys sat together on the opposite end.
00:29:56
Speaker
No, I've got too much going on to run with it, but someday, check it out. It sounds cool. If you picked up the bundle for racial injustice from HIO, it's in there. So, read up on it, it's good stuff.
The Indie Game Scene
00:30:12
Speaker
Other stuff going on. Bunch of things have happened. We've been playing some games. Yeah, why did we- We could match right a shot at some point.
00:30:22
Speaker
Yeah, what have you been playing, Dave? Generally speaking, I know what Jay explained at any given time, for some reason or another, but...
00:30:29
Speaker
Yeah, he's constantly posting on Facebook and Instagram and like, dude, shut up. Yeah. Most recently for me, I mean, like Dota 2 is still like a standby, touched Minecraft again. Most recently, probably Deltarune Chapter 2 will be a big highlight. And I can't talk about it yet due to NDA reasons. But I really did enjoy it. It literally came out of the blue, which is no daves allowed.
00:30:59
Speaker
Yeah. Toby Fox, the Twitter post, Dave, don't talk about my game. As someone who's not really big into the Toby Fox verse or Undertale or Delta Runes, I saw someone talk about it the other day. Wasn't Delta Rune chapter one and two both released for free? Yes.
00:31:19
Speaker
How does this man make his money? So we talk about this all the time. Well, we do think like Undertale, he did make money from it, obviously. But other things like it has to be licensing and merch because he's just like dropping it hot with nothing. But they put it on the switch. So like switch had to give them money to do so. Is that how it works? I thought it worked the other way around. Here's my game. Please put it on your console. Here's my money.
00:31:49
Speaker
I mean, that would work. That would be the case if it wasn't free or if there was any sort of like payment coming back. But I imagine this was probably a.
00:31:59
Speaker
I don't even know if anyone received money in this. I bet Toby Fox was like, hey, I had a Switch development kit. Do you want to put my free game up there? And they're like, yeah, maybe. But I mean, like there must have been something they did for Undertale and like putting songs as a me fighter. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they would have licensed. Yeah. So that's that's the question is how big what's the developer density required to get Nintendo to do free stuff for you to get you to favors?
00:32:29
Speaker
Like, hey, I know normal processes probably to pay a small fee to have my game listed on your store. And then a percentage of the profits get to you. But since this game's free and I'm a big name, people like my stuff. Could you just kind of like take this? Give it to the masses?
00:32:49
Speaker
I mean, historically, it's a one man developer job, right? Like if you're Notch, if you're Toby Fox, you have like an indie darling title and then you just fucking everybody wants you stuff. That's my theory anyway. Yeah. But that's just a game theory. A theory about games.
00:33:09
Speaker
I will say, for as much as I go out of my way to poke fun at Toby Fox in the Undertaleverse, because it never clicked with me personally, I am overjoyed to see these small indie devs, like actual small indie devs, small teams, solo man shows, getting these hugely critical acclaimed games off the ground in the AAA environment that they live in now. This Stardew Valley, similar games in that space.
00:33:37
Speaker
I mean Hollow Knight was a rapid success and we discussed that at length that that's one of our favorite games. Between all three of us we love that actually. And at some point I hear they might talk about making a sequel? Someday, maybe. We'll see how that goes.
Game Announcements and Marketing
00:33:54
Speaker
Alternate reality perhaps. One community manager hit the wrong button and created an entire trailer for a sequel and accidentally posted it it seems because they went dark for four years.
00:34:05
Speaker
Yeah, but there's so much going on. I would rather they just happy surprise. Here you go. Silk songs out. Pick it up. You know, like that's we're a little critical of Nintendo and how they treat their community. One thing I do love about the way Nintendo has treated their releases sometimes is they're just like,
00:34:24
Speaker
The game is done. We will now make you aware of it compared to some of my other recent interactions with games that were very anticipated. And unfortunately, we're not ready to be released. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it's nice that these these properties come into being created from Nintendo and don't get cock teased out for five years. Like, I mean, when was.
00:34:51
Speaker
Elder Scrolls 6 officially announced, not even officially announced, just said that we're working on it. Like a year or two ago? I swear people- Wasn't it an E3? Maybe. It was after the Fallout 76 debacle because they wanted to keep it away from that as much as possible. Don't worry, we're making another.
00:35:13
Speaker
Yeah, but they were good stuff. I mean, it wasn't Deathloop. Deathloop was talked about literally forever before its final release. Yeah, they marketed Deathloop very heavily. I actually like saw trailers for it in different forms of media and things like that.
00:35:30
Speaker
Part of it was because if you look at the documentary, the Noclip documentary for Prey, they under marketed that a ton and it did not perform well. And I'm very sad about this as well as the actual team for Prey. I was going to say, big shame Prey is still my favorite arcane game.
00:35:50
Speaker
Mm hmm. To be fair, though, like they actually had good stuff for Deathloop. It wasn't like a shitty blanket tease of like, what's this game going to be? Each time they're like, here's what the game's going to be. And they had installments of here's like other mechanics and things you can expect. And they gave you like a good idea. Granted, it was like shotgunned on my YouTube. And I'm sure everyone else is. But I think it helped it a lot more. Like you say, what they did for Prey, which was
00:36:20
Speaker
the opposite of, like, there's a game called Prey. See you. Yeah. I think they actually didn't even originally want to call the game Prey. Microsoft was like, we have the Prey IP. You need to call the game Prey. And they're like, OK, but I mean, our game doesn't have anything to do with this IP Prey, I guess. Well, now I'm curious, did they have an original title before Prey? I think they had a working title, but not an official. Like, this is what we will call it.
00:36:51
Speaker
Weird. But I think that these games that, you know, they drag on in development hell for years and years and years, you know, you're Duke Nukem's. It's they either I'm going to say it and I'm going to wound Jake terribly, but Bloodlines 2 has officially entered the is it vaporware yet? Right. Question, because they talked about it a whole bunch, then fired everyone who worked on it. Yeah. And then they said, but don't worry.
00:37:21
Speaker
Here's a demo and the demo was like middling reviews and then it just goes silent like a Russian submarine. It just starts running dark and no one's heard about it. We don't know if they're alive. We don't know if they're going to come up. It's just gone. We just hear Sean Connery on the comm and that's about all we have to find the submarine.
Battle Royale Burnout
00:37:45
Speaker
That's a hunt for Red October. I was going to say. Deep cut. I was going to say, I really would like to see a game with Sean Connery voicing in it, but then I remembered that Sean Connery died last year and now I'm sad. Yeah. So he's no longer in the front group, unfortunately. Yeah. Rest in peace, Sean. You have to survive to be a friend of the show.
00:38:14
Speaker
The soapstone podcast friend group is very much its own battle royale game You might have thought that those were going out of style, but no we've brought it back Yeah Although to tie two ideas together that we're just talking about battle royale games and vampire Why in the world did they make a battle royal vampire game?
00:38:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I didn't hate it and our little our little playthrough of it, but it also I was getting the same gameplay enjoyment from it that I got from like any battle royal that I played, which is like peaks of interest and then like valleys of sadness. I think that's every multiplayer game for me, competitive multiplayer game.
00:38:58
Speaker
I feel like Apex is like the only one I have played, but also the best one I've played so far. And that for me is still kind of eh.
00:39:07
Speaker
I'm not huge into first person shooters. Yeah. So at least like the vampire one, like it is a third person. There's mainly options and other stuff powers. It could it could develop to be something a little bit better. But I don't think anyone who is a fan of the vampire world of darkness IP was like
00:39:27
Speaker
Battle Royale game top of my wish list. So you're trying to say that the Venn diagram of people that are into the world of darkness and the people that are into battle royale games, not a whole lot of overlap. Probably not.
Fighting Games and Skill Balance
00:39:41
Speaker
Probably not. The same they probably said of people in the Teletubbies fandom and people who follow Dark Horse comics. So we're talking about, you know, unlikely combinations here.
00:39:56
Speaker
to steer us back into the video game direction. A Super Smash Brothers style game, but with Nickelodeon characters. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that came out this week. And I haven't looked anything up because I'm astounded. I'm still in shock that it exists. All of the Smash YouTubers or not all of them, but all of the ones that are pretty much all of them, all of every single one, 100 percent have been playing the game.
00:40:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it makes sense for like, it's the hype new thing. My money is on me being a pessimist by nature. I think it's going to be more of a flash in the pan. Yeah. Where it's like the novelty of, oh, shit, we can essentially do Smash's Nickelodeon characters. But I don't think it's going to stick around so much. But like, they are already having like some tournaments for it because of how close it is to Smash. I'm looking at you, PlayStation Battle All-Stars flash in the pan.
00:40:56
Speaker
I mean, this one's basically their... It might not be their... Eh, it probably is. Their Smash Bros 64 release equivalent, right? Like, the game is slow, it's floaty. A lot of those hits don't look particularly good.
00:41:14
Speaker
That's one of the big things in fighting games is the faster it feels with more weight to how things connect. Usually that comes later in the lifespan of the IP. Otherwise it's just like disjointed hit boxes and a bunch of nonsense.
00:41:32
Speaker
Like, if you look at that, compare what Smash gameplay looks like to the Nickelodeon game. And Nickelodeon looks really slow and much more approachable. And Dave and I played Smash 64 at a arcade in a local area recently. And my gosh, that looks so close to the Nickelodeon game. And that game fucking sucks. Hey, it was it was the groundwork.
00:42:02
Speaker
It it laid laid the bricks. Mm hmm. It's very easy to see the characters also on character select because we have like six because there was like eight of them, I think tops. Yeah, it was a ten to secret. It's two challengers on either side. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Those were the days, though.
00:42:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's cool that like it exists in general, like in the same way with like Rivals of Aether. It's cool to see other things come out of that platform fighter area.
00:42:41
Speaker
So maybe somebody will actually really like the style of Nickelodeon and how it plays. Cool. Awesome. Do it. But I've become so accustomed to four years of playing Smash Bros. Ultimate to where that has become my main metric for it. And anything that's outside of that, it's a lot harder for me to pick up on.
00:43:02
Speaker
They just need like, they need to take all of the lessons that they'll learn from this release, the Nickelodeon game. This is kind of a positive projection that there would be a series of these games and it would develop in like a fighting direction. But take all those lessons, improve on them.
00:43:18
Speaker
release a new game that cleans up. Cartoon Network will have their own, obviously, at some point. Johnny Bravo, Edda and Eddie. I mean, Cartoon Network, particularly if they went for like Toonami, could actually be pretty cool. I was actually going to make the show. Let's go. If we do Cartoon Network, when do we get the anime crossover fighting game? And then I realized that Jump All Stars is literally a thing. It happened and we have to move on with our lives.
00:43:47
Speaker
Also, every DBZ game, Melty Blood came out like last month on Steam. There's a lot of anime fighting games, Blaze Blue, all of it. Guilty Gear Strive. Guilty Gear, yeah. I love the style of a lot of those games, but bro, I can't do 2D fighters for shit. I'm so bad at them. The last time I ever tried to be good at a fighting game was in the Xbox 360 generation with Marvel versus Capcom.
00:44:17
Speaker
three. Eubank and I spent a lot of time trying to get good and the problem is that he is much better at that game than I am. Not like slightly better in that we have a decent win-loss ratio going on.
00:44:37
Speaker
better in the sense that unless I ultimately cheese him on a bad day, he's going to win 70 to 80% of our fights. And over time, we both lost interest because I get frustrated that I can never win and he gets frustrated because he never loses. That is tough.
00:44:59
Speaker
I think it's important to have somewhere near equal skill levels, at least with some deviation. When Dave and I play Smash, sometimes he dominates the whole night. Sometimes I do really well the whole night. Sometimes it's really even, but it's always a toss up at the beginning of the night. Who's on tonight? Who's going to really kick butt?
00:45:26
Speaker
And it's not like I lose every single game and I've played for years, right? Like that would just be demoralizing. Yeah. Sometimes it feels like it's maybe just like a matchup thing. So like maybe one person is winning on a character. It's like, all right, you stay on that character. I'm going to switch to somebody else. And then like you bring it back or you're like, all right, stop playing that character. I hate you.
00:45:49
Speaker
But yeah, it's it's like when you have the game at home and then you have a friend come over for a day But you've been playing for like two months. Do you wanna play that game? Not really.
Card Games: Digital vs. Physical
00:46:00
Speaker
It's not the same But if you have like two people who have their own separate copies of Soul Calibur 3 and you play once in a while and then you meet up and play That's nice. Yeah, that's like my buddy Scotty constantly wants to play Magic the Gathering with me He wants to play Commander
00:46:18
Speaker
and he's like let's play commander we'll invite some people over and i'm like okay there's only two problems with that one we're both in our 30s and there are no people anymore it's just you and me right we own a post-apocalyptic society if we want to find other people to play with us that work on our schedule we have to have people drive from like half hour away and we can't ask them to do that an expedition for survivors and two we each only have one commander deck
00:46:43
Speaker
where my commander deck is black and blue where all of the creatures are black and all the spells are blue and you have a commander deck where your commander has protection from black and then the game is no longer fun because I can't block anything you do and I lose every time because of it
00:47:02
Speaker
And he's like, well, I'll make a different one. I'm like, well, don't coddle me. Don't patronize me. I want to be a Mega Man. I want to do it myself. And I haven't played Magic in years.
00:47:17
Speaker
That's why digital is good, though, things like arena where you can just be like, I'll just spin up. This is I mean, this is I tried to get a little bit into magic and the physical aspect, despite it being cool from a collection standpoint, was one of the major limitations for me getting into it was like, I can't just be like, that's a cool card. I'm going to adopt it into my deck. I unpack this. Awesome. Let's throw it in. It was all more effort than digital space where it's like, let's make a skeleton red deck go.
00:47:46
Speaker
Yeah. Just saying, MTGA is free. I'm usually doing daily quests to get some free packs. And I'll play with a couple of friends here and there. Yeah. So that's nice for me, because I don't have magic anymore physically, outside of one commander deck that's in the closet for, if anybody's like, hey, we should play commander. I'm like, all right. And then I slap it down, and then I ruin somebody's day. But beyond that, it's.
00:48:12
Speaker
Do you have any gay decks? You're like, yeah, I've got one. It's in the closet. And then he slaps it down and he ruins somebody's day. Exactly. I liked MTGA, but I liked it when I was in the beta with, you know, like the early access, whatever, the first release with everyone else who was in the first release. And we were all new and we all had starter decks and we were all just putting things together in the beginning. I tried to get back into it like six months ago.
00:48:43
Speaker
And unfortunately, due to the nature of magic, all of my old decks have been cycled out. They're no longer in standard. So it's like, OK, here's some starter decks to play in standard, and I'm getting dumpstered by people that have.
00:48:57
Speaker
built proper decks. And then it's like, all right, fine. I'll open myself up to like the legacy. You know what? I can't remember what's the expanded historic. I'll open myself up to historic and play my old decks. No, because now we're hyper specialized historic decks with the best cards of 10 generations. And I feel like I'm getting my back broken either way. And it wasn't long before I lost interest again.
00:49:23
Speaker
Yeah, that was the same issue I had with Hearthstone when they introduced Wild format. They're just like, hey, we're going to start rotating our sets and you can still play your Wild decks if you want, but understand that broken things happen in Wild and we're not going to balance it. They were pretty consistent with that.
00:49:48
Speaker
Um, only very rarely did they balance anything involving wild, uh, cartons. So it was kind of a pain. Anytime I left the game, came back to it. I have no up to date decks. Now, anytime that you see me playing Hearthstone and discord, I'm not playing against people. I'm just doing the single player, um, campaigns and things. Cause I like how you answered a question that I was never going to ask, but did have in the back of my head for two days ago. Um, yeah.
00:50:15
Speaker
Because I played it not that long ago, and they still do this thing where they're like, hey, let's release single-player PDE modes with really broken aspects. It's played more like a
00:50:29
Speaker
a roguelike style, a broken deck approach. And also powers that would never work in a player versus player. Actually a PvP.
Inscryption and Devolver Digital
00:50:39
Speaker
Yeah. One of the things you can play as is a person who their hero power is you rewind time to the beginning of your turn and you can just redo RNG on any cards.
00:50:52
Speaker
And that would be very bad in PvP. Speaking of card games, though, and roguelikes and atmospheric stuff, I know Jake saw some inscription stuff. Yeah. Dave, did you see anything about that game? Yeah, I watched the trailer and then I played like five minutes of the demo. I'm excited to see where it goes. It's very weird.
00:51:22
Speaker
And usually weird stuff develops into cool stuff later on. Or at least I've been telling myself that since high school.
00:51:32
Speaker
I'm gonna let that one sit. The demo also has like six hours of content. It doesn't, it's all a trap basically. Like you think it's done, it's not done. There's some other conditional state. Like our friend Dan was playing and streaming it one afternoon and intended to stream it for an hour in the stream, like five hours and he was still finding new things.
00:52:00
Speaker
It seems like it has a lot of cool stuff. It's just, I'm more interested in the atmospheric part of it at this point. So it might be more of like a spectate than a mechanically checkout thing at the moment. Yeah, I will say, I mean, in terms of inscriptions card game versus a developed card game like Hearthstone or Magic, it's lacking.
00:52:25
Speaker
Like, it's got a few mechanics. They sort of play independently of each other most of the time. It's very rare that you get a card where two mechanics dovetail for something that's, you know, purposeful. I think, I honestly think that the card game mechanic is just there to prop up this narrative exploration based gameplay.
00:52:51
Speaker
I mean, I'm fine if it is that because it does look really interesting. Like just watching the trailer from like two years ago, I was like, oh, what's this? It's on that borderline of spoopy. Yeah, I was usually a spoopy person, but it caught my interest. I will say the card game does have some satisfying moments. I did do like nine points of overkill damage once in a single turn where normally you only manage one or two. And I did like nine and it felt great.
00:53:21
Speaker
But then the gameplay loop didn't allow me to utilize those points later on and it didn't feel great. Right. So part of it probably because of the demo. With the amount of content that's in the demo, I do have high hopes for the full release. Yeah. Do we know is this early access or is this going into early access or is it going to release fully?
00:53:44
Speaker
There's one way to find out and that's go to the steam store. I don't I don't think I saw anywhere saying it was going into early access I think I just saw Release Because I don't I mean the guy made Pony Island and I don't think Pony Island was ever like an early access thing. It just happened. I
00:54:03
Speaker
Right. I don't think anything has been published by Devolver has been early access for a call. That's fair. I didn't realize Devolver was the publisher. That explains. Anything you think is remotely weird and interesting. It's tied to Devolver. They've got a market angle. They really do. Also Pony Island. Good game. I didn't play it. I'm just tangentially aware of it.
00:54:28
Speaker
Anything. It's not super long. I'd say a couple hours. Check it out. I own it. I can say that I bought it on a steam stale for I think a dollar. That's that's a value purchase right there. Any of the games in the My Little Pony universe are usually pretty good. So
00:54:47
Speaker
Our little pony, Jake. Ah, right. Ever since the divorce, they just argue like this. We can't, we can't, uh, right. Uh, grounds for divorce. Um, and we go back to the beginning.
Game Release Strategies and Early Access
00:55:01
Speaker
That'd be a great time to end the episode, but I'm not gonna, cause I'm enjoying talking to you guys. Well, we were talking about maybe making this an episode devoted to loop games. And here we are looping towards the end of the discussion, which is creepy.
00:55:16
Speaker
That's true. All things reciprocal. Except for bicycles. I was going to say squares.
00:55:26
Speaker
All right. Do we care about any of this news? Maybe. I'm excited for Back for Blood. Back for Blood. It's coming out. I've been waiting. It's also released. Well, it's also not. If you paid extra money, you can access the game now and you probably have some extra bonus rewards. Yeah. If you just got the game normally, it'll be available on the 12th.
00:55:51
Speaker
Yeah, this one confused me slightly because this was cited as grounds for canceling D&D on Friday. And I was like, but it's not even coming out yet. But technically, yes, for people who have the deluxe edition, it came out. Hot take. I hate this. I don't think you should provide some people access to your game if they spend more money on a deluxe edition. You shouldn't give it to them early. That's my hot take.
00:56:20
Speaker
I agree with it. It's just kinda... shitty. It doesn't feel good.
00:56:27
Speaker
It's also lame, right? Like what if your friend group half of them get the deluxe edition half of them don't and then everybody else starts their gear is crappier as many cards The other people have already started to optimizing their strats like there's a reason it feels bad to come back after like time off or something like that or like a work trip a big game came out and you missed all of the you missed the train exactly you missed the train I mean I just so
00:56:56
Speaker
Probably one of the most fun multiplayer experience I've ever had with my group of friends and I think you might have been there too Jake When we played rust for the first time were you part of that? I believe so. I think there's a weaponsmith. I literally had a route for collecting weapons. I
00:57:13
Speaker
See, I remember Dave specifically because Dave was like my umbilical cord into this new world because I drop in in the wilderness and the group of people is like, yeah, just send Dave to go get him. And then we wandered lost in the desert for 40 years. But eventually we found our way and.
00:57:30
Speaker
The only reason it was fun for me was because I got to a start with everybody, only like two hours after everyone else started. Like if you guys were thoroughly into the game and then you're like, come play this with us and you guys are walking around with M80s and I've got like a stick, I've got a hatchet with a stone blade attached to it. That's not fun.
00:57:52
Speaker
Yeah, you're either starting so far behind or you get everything kind of just thrust upon you at once. Like, hey, you have the 20-hour gear now and you're like, okay, why didn't you really have that experience and progression to get there and appreciate it? I wasn't banging rocks with people. I wasn't hunting deer. I wasn't fending off random people who had guns and we didn't know where they were, type thing.
00:58:15
Speaker
It's just you're missing out on the experience. People criticized me when I brought this term up earlier, but I did look it up. It's an actual thing. Twinking can be detrimental to the multiplayer experience.
00:58:30
Speaker
I don't know what that phrase means. I know what that phrase means, but I'm not going to explain it because I like Ian's facial expression. Exactly. And that's how a lot of people get it when they respond.
Co-op Experiences in Astroneer and No Man's Sky
00:58:43
Speaker
It's basically people who are pro gamers who a lot of people take energy drinks or like sugar packets to like kind of increase the reaction time. But it's actually just like slogging down multiple Twinkies at once. OK, that's not right. But yeah. Why? What do you think it means?
00:59:01
Speaker
Categorically, if you start a new character and you give it all of your in-game gear, you just throw money at it, throw resources at it, run with it. It's kind of similar to what people would do Soul Level 1 invasions in Dark Souls.
00:59:16
Speaker
Oh, OK. Stay really low and get all this great stuff. But yeah, it in multiplayer games, this could be if you join your friends game after they've already like Borderlands. Great example of this. They're just like, hey, let's just throw a bunch of gear at you. Start you right here.
00:59:50
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah time into place Because like there are times where I just want to skip through some of like the early level bullshit and Get to something So I don't always knock that part of it but if you want the experience and it's just Gone that sucks. Yeah
01:00:03
Speaker
It's not fun compared to playing the game as it was originally intended.
01:00:10
Speaker
Dave and I were having this discussion not that long ago when we had a group of people that were playing Astroneer, they started like a little bit later. And we had already started the tech tree, we'd already started our own individual goals, we were making our
01:00:25
Speaker
expansion and our base and Dave didn't know all the mechanics of the game yet and rather than having been part of that initial wave when we were figuring stuff out we were just like oh do the tutorial he wasn't feeling it at the time and he quit which is a perfectly valid response actually right like if you feel that you're already behind the wave of enjoyment then it takes effort to catch up and it's not always worth it so
01:00:50
Speaker
You know, in like a year or so when we've forgotten more about Astroneer, we're going to have to come back and play Astroneer and include Dave this time because I have great memories with that game and they have constantly been updating it since we played it. Yeah, I poke at the Steam page every now and then and it's like, yeah, look at this is our new update came out last week. And I do get
01:01:16
Speaker
where I'm not going to go too far into this, but I have been playing No Man's Sky recently, and a lot of the things I'm enjoying about it are very similar to Astronyr. I mean, I would check it out. Yeah, it's good stuff. I was going to say, our buddy AJ was talking about he tried to play No Man's Sky with you last night, and he just ran headlong into like every problem you can find to get enjoyment out of a new game.
01:01:45
Speaker
He did start on survival, which is more difficult off the jump. And the game tells you, don't do that. It's like, play normal first so you have an idea of how to actually get started. Because the hardest survival part of the game is right when you load into the first world. You have no basic needs taken care of.
01:02:07
Speaker
I think that might be what I did like a year and a half ago as well, because now that that sounds awfully familiar to why I stopped trying to play No Man's Sky. Yeah. Yeah, those problems are easier to solve than they ever have been in the game's lifecycle.
01:02:27
Speaker
There's basically two basic needs bars. There's environmental protection and life support. And if you get any money whatsoever, you can just buy massive stacks of the resources that instantly fill those needs. And then it's just you don't have to worry about that. So much like real life money tends to solve your problems. It does. Yeah. Is it weird that Jake's doing better PR than they ever did for No Man's Sky?
01:02:56
Speaker
Are you kidding me? The PR for No Man's Sky was great up until it released. Right. It was great. I don't see Jake sweating as he's saying these comments. A little more, a little more backing behind it. I can't think of the name, the face behind No Man's Sky. Sean Murray. Sean Murray. Sean's also no longer in the friend group because of his, because of his lies.
01:03:21
Speaker
Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies. Turns out there's a lot of reasons you get excluded from the soapstone friends list. Death and lying to name a few. Or if you just name a Sean. Yeah, Sean's don't make it that long. Yeah. I know a couple good Sean's.
01:03:38
Speaker
But I mean, I haven't had them as guests on Soapstone, so. How good can they really be? Yeah. As Reggie said, no Sean's. Wait, that's not right. We haven't had any Johns on the Soapstone either, so it does check out. Remember, no Johns.
01:04:01
Speaker
What was the other thing? I'm going to skip all of the other news and go to the last one. So there was an article from an interview with the producer for Elden Ring, a From Software product that stated that it is in the final stages of development.
01:04:19
Speaker
Even though it's an open world game with a unique map, there are no errands in the world, which is interesting. And it should be on track. So our scheduled release was January next year for Elden Ring. Oh, that's way sooner than I had expected. I'll take it. Yeah, as long as they keep doing what From Software has been doing,
01:04:48
Speaker
It's going to be a hit for
Anticipation for Elden Ring and Conclusion
01:04:49
Speaker
me. I mean, because out of the three Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro, only one of those was even anything less than excellent. And we don't talk about Dark Souls 2 anymore. I didn't say it. It was Dave.
01:05:07
Speaker
Again, I'm a Dark Souls 2 apologist. Well, hey, Dark Souls 2, devil's advocate here, Dark Souls 2, innovated. They took things and they changed them to see if it would work and just their luck, a lot of it happened to not work. Not knocking it overall. I'm just saying, like, if you look at Dark Souls 1 per janitor, Dark Souls 3, they polished a lot. Bloodborne was very good and did its own thing. Sekiro was very good and did its own thing. And there's Dark Souls 2 for me.
01:05:35
Speaker
Dark Souls 2 innovated and then all the missteps they learned from Dark Souls 2 they did not ever make again. So it did a job. And if Elden Ring is just anything continuing their trend of just making these great open world, vastly connected environments with difficult combat, I'm a little bit worried how much they've tacked George RR Martin's name onto it as a marketing gimmick.
01:06:00
Speaker
Yeah, he doesn't do anything though. I think it's just for like some of the story because like they got him on very early and then I think they've been updating him on like where they've used some of his writing from my understanding. Yeah, I think I heard in an interview that was the case. He was just part of the initial writing for the plot developed like pull on some of that fantasy stuff.
01:06:24
Speaker
And then he actually, this was with him and he said that it was out of his hands after that. It was like the actual development is completely out. I haven't been following Elden Ring. I usually just put my head in the sand with FromSoft games until they're like in my face. Yeah. Is Elden Ring going to release on all consoles and platforms? Yeah, basically everything I think I'm going to verify real quick.
01:06:50
Speaker
And by that, I think we can it's even safe to say it's going to be like PS4 and Xbox one as well, not just latest gen. That is correct. Although, I mean, what are you guys going to pick it up on if you do have that option? I don't have a PS5. I'm not. I don't have it yet. So I can probably consider picking up on Windows.
01:07:09
Speaker
I mean, it's going to be PC for me so I can do my Xbox controller as I've done for all FromSoft games outside of Bloodborne. Because I, again, don't think PS5 is going to ever be in the future. So we'll see. Yeah, I'm the PC guy as well now because kind of pursuant to our discussion earlier about Nintendo and their release strategies, once I get it on PC, like I could upgrade this thing 10 years down the line and I'll still be able to boot up Steam and load up
01:07:37
Speaker
Right. With all likelihood, be able to load up a Steam release of a game. Not to mention, assuming that From does misstep somehow and releases the game in a poor state, there will always be the DS fix option. There will be the ER patch for Elden Ring that comes out 30 seconds after release that fixes problems we didn't even know we had. Yeah, that is true.
01:08:06
Speaker
Um, but looking forward to that. We'll obviously let people know if we hear more information. We realize we are the news source for a wide swath of people in the gaming community. So, um, looking forward to it. Uh, is there anything else that you guys would like to cover before we close it out? Any parting words of wisdom or things you feel need to be said?
01:08:35
Speaker
I think people should play Outer Wilds. Yeah. We didn't touch it on it. And the expansion just came out. And as I said earlier, it's occupying like 30% of my brain. And I'm going to use this platform and opportunity to preach to go out and play it. I would second that.
01:08:56
Speaker
I have no comment on this game and no advice at this time. That's fair. All right. Be good to each other. And if you have any good games you would like us to talk about in the future and news articles, you think that we have overlooked that we should discuss in depth. Dedicate an entire episode to something inconsequential. You could send in those ideas to soapstonepodcast.gmail.com or you could also just join the discussion on Facebook if it's up.
01:09:26
Speaker
Facebook.com slash soap some podcast and as always we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night. See you later