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How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Franchise | Windbreaker Podcast
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On this week’s episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Marty, and JM8 chat the moments that our favorite franchises took a wrong turn.
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Transcript
Game Releases and Retrospectives
00:00:00
Speaker
This video is brought to you by Shadows of Doubt, the immersive sandbox detective game that's finally leaving Early Access on PC and hitting consoles on September 26th. Become the hard-boiled gumshoe of your dreams, solving an endless wave of murders across a procedurally generated city. You might recall I broke my own rule of not reviewing Early Access a while back, because I like Shadows of Doubt so much, it's a great story generator. I fondly remember calling a suspicious phone number, writing down the name of whoever answered, hacking into the phone records to trace the call to a building, pouring over the phone book to find names with a matching address,
00:00:26
Speaker
infiltrating an apartment through the ventilation shafts and beating up and handcuffing the occupant, only to find I'd accidentally snuck into the apartment next door. And the full release of Shadows of Doubt will have even more opportunities for me to hilariously fuck up. Version 1.0 launches on PC and consoles on September 26th.
00:00:49
Speaker
Hello, children. Welcome to the Windbreakers podcast. I'm Daddy Yahtzee Croshaw, and here's Uncle Jay and Uncle Marty. and i be Happy anniversary lost. Lost 20th anniversary. Oh my god, I still need to finish that. that twenty I completely forgot what that was for now and I thought we were just talking about how you would somehow lost your 20th anniversary. Oh, don't. Right behind the couches on them.
00:01:14
Speaker
ah But anyway, we're talking this week about how to ruin franchises. No, for no particular reason. This is one of those topics we've had in the back pocket for a while. But it's I guess the topic resonates for me at the moment, because I've been playing the Dead Rising remaster. All right, I'm gonna ask for your thoughts about you doing a fully Ramblo on it.
00:01:34
Speaker
I am, yes. But i'm not supposed I'm not saying the remaster ruins the franchise. I'm saying, of all the franchises that you could say were ruined by one game, Dead Rising would probably be up there for me. No me in, because I haven't played any of them. Which one wrote it? Four. Dead Rising 4. The Dead Rising Holiday Special, as I like to refer to it.
00:01:57
Speaker
ah well Because Dead Rising was always a game ah that had certain idiosyncrasies. The 72 hour time limit, the timed missions, the very unique cartoonish psychopath boss fights, and Dead Rising 4 basically threw all of that in the bin and portrayed Frank West as the most annoying twat in the universe. In what way was he annoying?
00:02:19
Speaker
Well, I guess they were sort of channelling a sort of bad impression of Ash Williams. Oh no. rather than He was a relatively straight character in the first game, but they were trying to make him into sort of wisecracking, you know, goofy hero <unk> sort of area. Ash Williams toes this line. I love Ash as a character.
00:02:41
Speaker
But he's very much towing this line. And if you push it slightly too far, it can get really great. Oh, that's such a shame. He gets away with it because a ah most of the time he fucks up. And that makes it more lovable and be Bruce Campbell's bottomless charisma.
00:02:58
Speaker
Yeah, this is true. Yeah, and in the ah in the original Dead Rising, it worked well because um as like a character, Frank felt like the straight man in a world of just complete weirdos. And you could like dress him up as a weirdo, but he kind of didn't like...
00:03:16
Speaker
He just, he never broke a character, whereas yeah once once he almost became too wordy, ah that's when that's when you started to lose me a little bit. yeah Which sucks because I liked the Christmas premise of four. Like I like the idea of like, especially at a game built around, you know, ah ah garish consumerism. ah It feels like Christmas, like that that's a pretty nice match, but um yeah. it it I mean, clearly it kind of ended the franchise and maybe this is bringing it back, but who knows the remaster. It was particularly galling that they dropped some of the, the series is a trademark gameplay elements because it's so strange that even today there's almost nothing like Dead Rising in terms of its unique mechanics.
00:04:06
Speaker
just, I don't know why you'd throw that away and just to be like everyone else. Uh, it's, it's funny cause I made a, I made a, uh, just off the top of my head, I listed a bunch of franchises and where I think they started to go wrong. And some of them correct, you know, correct the course. Some of them completely go off the rails, but it always feels like straying away from your original vision or mission statement or even originality as a whole and trying to chase a trend. Like I can't count the number of franchises I have here where they started to fall apart when it felt like they were no longer leading and that they were following. um yes Yeah. That's how it works, isn't it?
00:04:47
Speaker
You want to die innovative or you live long enough to start ripping off the newly popular. Yeah. Yeah. I think like sequel-esque games, you know, the the the ones that are pumping out sequels every year or or two years are the ones that suffer from this the most. For me, the most famous ones are like Battlefield, which is just run itself into the ground um in in the eyes of its fans. um Hopefully they can claw it back because I do enjoy that franchise again with a shooter, Halo.
00:05:14
Speaker
has done that by um maybe jumping to a different company and then them trying to chase trends and trying to um push things in the direction that they think fans want but they don't necessarily want. Well, yeah. If a franchise goes on long enough, inevitably, there will be a wane. But what do you think are the franchises that will just never go away?
Franchise Evolution and Challenges
00:05:36
Speaker
Because ah there have been plenty of franchises that have had bad installments that didn't kill the IP. Resident Evil I put up there.
00:05:43
Speaker
yeah Yeah. Here's a question for you. How many bad Sonic the Hedgehog games in a row would there need to be before Sonic the Hedgehog lost its salability? I mean, it it won't stop, right? Because there was the but over a decade of bad ones. And I think that that's one of those franchises where It's so funny to look at Sonic and Mario because they they kind of follow the same course. they they come around ah They come along around the same generation. They have this kind of rivalry representing their two companies. ah that they They enter the 3D realm relatively in the same space. But whereas Nintendo felt like they took their time and like really believed in every new idea and iterated upon it, Sonic, starting with post Sonic Adventure 2, just really feels like fucking throw it out the wall and see what sticks.
00:06:31
Speaker
What if you control three characters at the same time? Oh, no. Okay. What what if yeah this is a big open world thing? You could kiss a human woman. No. mario Mario and Sonic are definitely on the same hurdle track, but Sonic can't jump. And it's just like face planning into each hurdle. Yeah.
00:06:48
Speaker
yeah I think the difference for me is that Mario ah never lost sight of the core audience of like kids. It's a kid franchise and it basically reinvents itself for every generation for a new generation of kids. Sonic made the mistake of trying to age with its audience. Agreed. Shadow being the worst example of that.
00:07:09
Speaker
yeah Yeah, that is that is funny. oh It always it's always funny to me when Sonic tries to be serious. ah Yeah. And it's like, oh, this character is even like in Sonic Adventure 1. Yeah, you get Shadow or whenever you get Shadow introduced in Sonic Adventure 2 and you get the backstory of that, like, but was it the girl or her grandpa scientist dad dies or the girl dies? like yeah honest I just can't remember what the story is like. Adventure 2 is. And I'm sorry. everyone likes I don't think they intended it this way, but the camp and the cringe that comes from that trying to age with your audience has become what I think a lot of the audience like. they I don't think anybody likes Shadow in a serious sense. I think they like the kind of edgy cringe that he is, like him with a gun and stuff like that.
00:07:59
Speaker
i think like that t ah 13 years old at the time liked it, right? That was cool at the time. Yeah. you were If you were 13 years old at the time, Shadow the Hedgehog came out, you probably unironically liked Shadow the Hedgehog. Oh, I don't think so. Oh, no, I think so. Because I think you hit that point in your life where you're getting older and you feel the need to validate the things you like and you want to be like, No, no, no, this is for adults, and here's X, Y, and Z. Look, Sonic has a romantic partnership, and look, ah Shadow's got a gun. Look, look, this is, I know you guys are playing Call of Duty and everything, Grand Theft Auto, but no, no, no, Sonic sonic is just like it.
00:08:39
Speaker
yeah I think there's like this middle ground, right? Because a lot of kids would just want to play what the older kids are playing, right? um I agree with the arts in the sense of like, I think Mario has seen so much more success, not directly because of its IP, but because it's just reinventing itself for the next generation of children rather than trying to age. um And like, I think Sonic in the long run might see Because are a lot of young children into Sonic at the moment? I think they must be right because of the movies and and stuff like that. Yeah, I have nieces and nephews who love Sonic. They love the movies, they love the animated series, they have Sonic toys and shit. like They like the games though. because
00:09:19
Speaker
I think you yeah know none of them wanted to talk about Sonic for years with me. Because the games just have to exist for the IP to continue. And I think the fact is, there's always going to be Sonic because the ah the name is so recognizable.
00:09:37
Speaker
I mean, people who know nothing about video games know the name Sonic the Hedgehog. There's a fucking, there's a fucking Bill Hicks routine where he talks about Sonic the Hedgehog. He calls it Sonic Hedgehog the whole time. Sonic Hedgehog. There's no the Sonic Hedgepig. The bloody formal of him. Yeah. But I guess my question is. Yeah, these are the franchises that have gone so long that they're basically immune to ruination. Pokémon's immune. There'll always be hope for a new one, and and they could always turn things around by bringing out a really good one, like what Resident Evil does every few years. yeah But what's what franchises have died ah like sort of um in the process of becoming that?
00:10:20
Speaker
but What franchise didn't make it? Dead Rising, I would put up there because Dead Rising 4, frankly, just sort of killed it dead. Frankly, no pun intended. Killed killed the franchise yeah dead for me there. Infamous seems to have died with infamous second son. See, those are interesting because I don't feel like it is the for a game like Infamous. It's not Infamous's fault that ah that we don't have Infamous anymore. It's the fact that Sucker Punch went on to do Ghost of Tsushima and it sold so much better than Infamous ever did. That's true. And that's the same thing I think with Killzone and them moving on to Horizon Zero Dawn. like They're never going to go back to Killzone because it's just like, why would we when when these other games are printing money?
00:11:07
Speaker
although i did pretty I did pretty well hate Infamous Second Son, as someone who really liked Infamous One and Two. Yeah, yeah you keep beating the drum about bringing them back to PC and and modern consoles. um yes it's Obviously, it has it has come back and regained life, but I think Metroid Other M did its damnedest to try and kill the Metroid franchise and post, uh, you know, there was that huge gap between, um, super Metroid and then you, you know, we got some of the, the zero mission, like the, the Game Boy ones, but then like Nintendo just forgot about 2d Metroid games for a very long time for like the better for, for over a decade. And I think that push into 3d is something that did rock the boat for a lot of franchises. Adapt into 3d didn't know how.
00:11:55
Speaker
Yeah, Castlevania. Yes, as I keep saying, Sonic and Castlevania, the two franchises that never got on with 3D. Yeah. Castlevania is a frustrating one because like all of the, ah for lack of a better term, Metroidvania Castlevanias are good. Yeah. like The GBH trilogy, the DS trilogy, and then they just stopped.
00:12:19
Speaker
And I guess it's, you know, Ego went and formed his own company and made Bloodstained and everything, but it just felt yeah weird that they just stopped. Well, if you're holding out for metroidvania's along the lines of Castlevania, I got good news for you. Go to the steam. Look at those indie games because they never a fucking in. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like every week Nick drops a code in for some upcoming, uh, in the better. I'm a huge fan of, um, the, the 3d, uh, Castlevania builds a shadow, um, game. i notice I was about to bring that up because, uh, I noticed Eric just brought it up. It's
00:12:57
Speaker
Well, it didn't feel much like Castlevania. It felt like God of War. Yeah, but I like that and I like the exploration of the IP. I love Castle. I'm a big fan of Castlevania. I love that kind of melding of all of the you know, the hammer horror kind of, you know, villains and that kind of gothic aesthetic. I really like it. And I thought that series really could have gone somewhere. It's a shame the second one was absolutely garbage. Yeah. copy I mean, there was a lot of promise to it. I mean, Dracula in the future. That's that's like an elevator pitch right there. Yeah. Yeah. Because when he was Dracula sort of fish out of water in the future.
00:13:35
Speaker
I think it's because they tried to do that on top of like three other things and they should have focused on the direction. Agreed. Yeah. For me, a lot of the, a lot of the issue with like franchises that die, if we look more broadly, I think a lot of the things that die are like genres. Zombie, zombie games have effectively died out and they were huge, you know, 10 years ago. um I wouldn't say zombie games died out. um i say Some of the biggest PC games, those like Project Zamboid and there's a, there's a, yeah, but they're not being like churned out. They're being explored in the indie scene, I think really interestingly, but like, one of our games on.
00:14:16
Speaker
Days gone. What about the last of those? OK, fair. Yeah. Walking Dead is the I don't know. It just it does. It feels like zombie fiction isn't nearly as popular as it was 10, 15 years ago when most 20 years later, Walking Dead, Last of Us, that feels even like telltale is walking dead. I don't necessarily mean a dead. It's more of just like we're not seeing five different zombie games a year as we were. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah.
00:14:45
Speaker
Well, I guess it's it's been ah that we've sort of gone through the routine enough times. I think these days you need to have something as well as zombies to really stand out. Like sphere right dying was zobbies with chanceor and the zombies but with story.
00:15:07
Speaker
Zombie, but dead. I mean, even like Resident Evil isn't about zombies anymore. Like, um no yeah, seven and eight five dollars zombies in them. Yeah. But you fight like like seven. So much of it is mud men and weird yokels. Yeah. and but Yeah. Eight is like a hot, big vampires and werewolves. um And I mean, Resident Evil, though, as as you know, we we put Resident Evil five on the ah on the art, and you could argue five or six, but I feel like that's a similar... Talking about Lords of Shadow, how that felt like it wasn't, hey, what should we do with Castlevania? It was more of, look how much money God of War is making.
00:15:48
Speaker
what can we do in our IP? That's like that. And it's like, fuck it, we'll do this. And Resident Evil 5 and 6 very much felt like, ooh, the pendulum is swinging and people want these sort of like more ah Hollywood action oriented shooter experiences. This is the rise of of your Call of Duties and your gears and everything. And Resi 5 and 6 absolutely just felt like they they completely, 6 especially, like ah turned its back on the actual horror of the series in favor of Well, maybe more people will buy this. And it is true. Six did sell a shit ton, but people didn't really like it. Yeah. Six was like covering a lot of bases. They had like three different chapters, uh, playing as different protagonists. And in one of them, it was sort of like traditional zombie horror. I think go Leon's chapter was. for yeah Yeah. And then Chris's chapter was you were literally like, uh, in a Call of Duty game, but with zombies. yeah
00:16:40
Speaker
It's funny, that almost feels like the Sonic Adventure thing where it's like we can't decide on what our core gameplay loop is. So ah when you play as Knuckles, you're you're treasure hunting. And when you play as Tails, you you're you're in a robot, you're in a mech, and it's very bad. i it about I hated that shift in characters and don't make right five. Like I really enjoyed. I can't remember what their name is. The the weird poetry reading one with the summons VV. Fucking awesome. I loved him. And like I loved playing as him. And then every time we went back to um metal arm, baby, I was like, I'm here anymore. It's so funny because Casey feels the exact opposite every time we had to play as V in these streams, which where we're wrapping it up this week. Casey's like, fucking, I can't believe we're doing this again.
00:17:24
Speaker
And I'm like, just think of him as a Pokemon trader. like just you played this with the entire time And that mechanic and that character was explored to its fullest. Yeah. I think most people would dig it, right? But it's because it's that shift up that like.
00:17:37
Speaker
that shift in gameplay. It's like like this isn't what I expect from this. So one of the other one of the other things that will make cry did that almost ruin the franchise was, of course, the ah the ground up reboot. Yep. With completely different vibes. so yeah If you want, don't cry. People could say to almost ruin the franchise. ah People could say, DMC, the Ninja Theory one almost ruined the franchise. um Yeah, it's a funny It feels like almost every Capcom series has those those doldrums trying to kill the franchise. But yeah, yeah, for for different reasons. Marvel versus Capcom. um I mean, obviously we got the the the HD remake collection or whatever that just came out, which is great. But ah the the last proper game, Marvel versus Capcom three kind of.
00:18:24
Speaker
ruined the franchise because of Disney and Marvel and the MCU, because it was no longer like, hey, let's just throw all these fucking characters at the wall, all these deep cuts. It was, well, we only want to use the characters that we own properly and that we're not sharing with Sony. And so here's just a bunch of MCU characters and a couple of Capcom characters on the side, which isn't what that series was about.
00:18:47
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah. Where's my Frank West? Where's my Frank West in my Marvel versus Capcom? You just want Frank. He's just he's um he he covered wars, you know. Yes. You know, you're not really like a Frank West not to digress too long, but he's really unsettlingly weird looking for a protagonist. Yeah. Like you can't decide which part of his face is the most bulbous and weird.
00:19:12
Speaker
It would be funny if they shifted the bulbousness of his face each cutscene. They just shifted it. Yeah. Oh, sorry, Jay. I misspoke. Yeah, I meant infinite. If I said three, my apologies. so Please stop yelling at me and DMing me and yelling at me.
00:19:24
Speaker
It's very early. No, continue. No, stop yelling at me. um Other franchises we ah we we talk about a lot after that unceremoniously ended for different reasons. In my opinion, Metal Gear was just breaking up with Kojima. like I don't think there was... You know you can have you could you can ah prefer certain Metal Gear games over the other ones, but it never felt like...
00:19:47
Speaker
from one to two to three to four to five ah that it ever sort of completely lost its way. Maybe five just because of the... um Well, it never really found its way, did it? Every installment sort of like blazing its own trail in its own way. See? Yeah. That's the secret is you can't ruin a franchise if you just do something different every single time. No one knows what to expect.
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah, there you go. Yes, two is not three is not for now. How ah familiar you guys are with the monster hunter franchise, but um they do something similar, which is each installment, they'll create this completely new mechanic that's super, super cool and interesting and pushes the.
00:20:28
Speaker
series in a new direction. So for example, in their latest game, um, they added this like wire bug mechanic where you can dash around. It's just really fun. But every time they bring out a new game, they completely remove the new thing they've brought and bring in something else. Which in some ways is super bummed that like, it doesn't look like the wire bugs in, in wild. There's no, yeah, they've, have they've announced that there's no wire bugs in wild. So people are just like, why have you added this thing that like revolutionizes how we play the game and now completely removing it. Yeah.
00:20:57
Speaker
that At least they're experimenting and moving the the the you know the IP forward in a way. There's ups and downs. Okay, what else was ruined? Lost Planet. Did you ever play Lost Planet back in the day? Yeah, I don't know if I ever played Lost Planet. at three I liked Lost Planet 1 quite a bit. I don't know if I ever got to 3. I think I played Summer 2. I think that's another franchise that was sort of doing a completely different thing with every installment. Lost Planet 3 was, well, it didn't feel like what people liked about Lost Planet 1 and 2, I suppose. Yeah.
00:21:29
Speaker
was It was less of the giant robot stuff and more of the ah sort of dead space built with no horror or anything interesting to say about it. I mean, and then then Dead Space, the same thing. Dead Space, like one and And you got three and you co-op. That's another classic way franchises are ruined by trying to add a multiplayer focus to a previously single player franchise. See also the F.E.A.R. series. Yeah. Yeah. When they brought out F.E.A.R. three and suddenly it was all, if you're not playing two player, you're not getting the full experience. Yeah.
00:22:02
Speaker
Well, what makes you think? that death el for hor Because Resi did the same thing. Is that the death knell for or yes horror? i work on my play i I've always said that I think a different kind of horror works in multiplayer. I think something like Friday, the 13th, the game works pretty well. Sure. But this traditional narrative horror doesn't really work in multiplayer but because aura lives and dies on immersion and you can't stay immersed if you've got another person there constantly reminding you that you're not ah in the game, you're in the world and there's another person from the real world here with you.
00:22:34
Speaker
Agreed. Did Silent Hill ever go multiplayer? Was that shitty Vita game multiplayer, the top-down dungeon crawler one? Book of Memories? Well, if it wasn't, one wonders what the point of gifting the gameplay that much was. Yeah. But Silent Hill, we've talked about it at length, but there's a franchise that ah outsourcing the development to the West.
Pokémon and Potential Innovations
00:22:57
Speaker
Seems like, ultimately, after the first four games, that's ultimately what was the death now. um See, the first four games, they were all made by, like, different individuals. Team Silent ah had a lot of turnover, right? ah But yeah, ah just I guess it's just that an East Silent Hill game not made by Japanese people just kind of didn't really get it. You never see Western companies outsourcing games to the to the East, do you? Interesting. No, it's funny that. Yeah.
00:23:24
Speaker
I mean, it's weird because most Western animation is outsourced to the East. And the special effects so much of the VFX industry is ah is that. um I obviously, when writing a lot of these down, I was also thinking of Nintendo, shocking. um And the I even feel like Mario and Zelda never got ruined, but I think that they absolutely had like dumbbells that made me kind of question the the direction. um And with ah Mario, mine is just ultimately all of the new Super Mario stuff, like the actual capital N new. I hate that art style, and I just don't...
00:24:04
Speaker
Ironically, because we put up the battle masters episode today, which everyone should go watch on super mario the original Super Mario Brothers. um I don't like how that plays and I don't like the way new Super Mario, new Super Mario, you knew Super Luigi, you, whatever those games are. yeah I don't like how those feel and they feel.
00:24:22
Speaker
To me, they feel very restrictive. like You're even seeing the footage now. The one thing I love about Mario 3 and Mario World and Yoshi's Island is it feels like the world is big and expansive and there's there's stuff to explore above the top of the screen. Whereas with these games, they just feel almost claustrophobic, like you're going down a hallway. And that's something I never got from the 3D Mario games. um Well, the interesting thing is that Mario has sort of branched ah It's branched into tentpole Mario, which is where all the progress happens. Mario Brothers, Mario 3, Mario World, Mario 64, Mario Sunshine, Galaxy Odyssey. And it's and the other branch is nostalgia Mario, which is games that bank on nostalgia for previous eras of the tentpole series. Yeah, so in that you get your new move Mario Brothers series, which are mostly 2d focused.
00:25:13
Speaker
3D land games, which usually are evoking something between the 64 and galaxy sort of time period. And the sort of be all and end all of the nostalgia branch was of course Mario Maker, and Mario Maker 2. Because then it was like, we're done with 2D Mario, over to you. Yeah.
00:25:34
Speaker
ah there's yeah i I am convinced. I'm absolutely sure this is going to happen at some point. Who knows when they're going to do 3D Mario Maker. They can do 3D Mario Maker where you can make 3D Mario levels sort of with a sort of block based Minecraft like development system. oh you can make So you can make Mario 64 style levels. i mean there's already a right If they they're not planning to do it, they bloody well should be because that's that's free money on the table.
00:26:00
Speaker
Eric's brought it up. It already exists in mod for mods for 64. They make custom levels that are super, super difficult. There's, they're definitely doing it for sure. i you guys it you I do not think in the next 20 years, we will see a 3d official 3d Mario maker. I think you guys are going to win yeah i would i don't go how that this i reckon we're gonna get it in the next five years.
00:26:25
Speaker
That is insane. That is insane. There 2D ROM hacking tools for making 2D Mario levels before Mario Maker came out. Making 2D block-based games and empowering the user in a very simple UI is so, so, so different. And I know, i don't I don't know why I'm talking to you two about this. You two know a million times more about design than I do. But it is so much simpler and user-friendly, which is what Nintendo is all about. you're right I can't imagine Nintendo giving the tools to 3D user-generated content to players. like there's i just I can't imagine that. And it's funny, because um an interview with the the Zelda devs today leading up to to Echoes of Wisdom, which comes out later this week, came out. And they said, originally, when they were tooling around with it, it was designed as a 2D Zelda maker, which makes sense, because ah the Link's Awakening ah remake had a little bit of that, like kind of a little bit of like the dungeon creation, yeah like as a side thing. Um, and ever since Mario maker, people were like, do a top down 2d Zelda maker. Um, and so it, that makes sense. But again, like the shift from 2d to 3d to me, I just can't, can't wrap my head. ah My prediction, and this is, I want this on record. Um, we can date it today. My prediction is they will bring out Mario maker free.
00:27:42
Speaker
And it will be expanded for better 2D design. There'll be more you know custom levels and a campaign like they did in 2D. But they will also include a, and let's say, more specialized rudimentary 3D element maker and in it. So it's not the tent pole of how you make levels, but they give the the audience the the power to be able to do it. And the tools can be less user friendly and more, you know, rudimentary, because it's not the main thing in it. Well, you don't. Yeah, you know, I imagine there'll be a lot of limitations to it. Because as you say, you want it to be user friendly, like Minecraft, for example. Yeah. And you don't want the player base to be able to make anything more sophisticated than what Nintendo itself can make with the new Tenpal Mario games.
00:28:27
Speaker
Yeah. It'd have to be grid based. Um, yeah you'd have to be grid based. It have to be based on. Okay. Yeah. I'm i'm just thinking for rising how they could do it. And I don't want to go too deep into, into that. It'll get boring.
00:28:41
Speaker
I reckon it's gonna happen. I can see it. I don't see a Zelda maker working just because Zelda is much less primary loop focused than Mario. You can make a Mario level and just play it and bam, you've made a Mario level. Zelda is sort of built across multiple dungeons in an overworld, isn't it? yeah there's ah there There's some there's like a I think a game is literally called Dungeon Maker that looks at that where you just make kind of 2D top down Zelda-esque dungeons. And that is something that you could make like those kind of challenges. I don't think you could do that like story wise, right? You couldn't like create. I don't think the tools are there to make something sort of cohesive in between those. But I think as individual dungeons with sort of puzzles and enemies and and encounters, um
00:29:26
Speaker
I could imagine that wouldn't be as good as what gets stale very quick in the sense of. As a maker, you would only the thing that makes Zelda is getting all of the new items and seeing the new applications you can get through that, right? And a lot of the things that you do in Mario Maker or something along those lines is small bite-sized levels that have varying degrees of challenge. um Getting the same items over and over or like seeing the same bosses over and over as the climax of each section might become even more repetitive than ah like a Mario Maker. And I think there's just less you can do.
00:30:00
Speaker
um Yeah. Yeah, that's ah yeah, that'll be easy. Would you describe any Zelda individual Zelda game as ruining the franchise? So CDI just to get back on the c CDI. Yeah, those those kind of felt like.
00:30:20
Speaker
weird factotum blips that no one really pays attention to. I didn't so much ruin the franchise going forward as sort of take the franchise and put it through some hideous perverse filter.
00:30:31
Speaker
yeah I would say the the move that leaves the worst taste in my mouth, um looking back on it, is ah oddly enough ah the the gap between Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. Because talking earlier about chasing trends, that felt like Nintendo listening to the early online feedback of angry fans seeing Wind Waker and being like, this is not my Zelda. I want it to be realistic. I want to point to people and be like, look, the thing I liked as a kid, it's adult. This is not brown enough. Yeah. This needs to be browner.
00:31:09
Speaker
And it felt like they were like, all right, well, here you go. Here's here's Twilight Princess. And when I when I replayed all of the Zelda games the other year, that was my aside from Zelda two, that was my least favorite. And because it felt like they yeah they weren't sticking to their guns, it felt like they were making the game. We thought they wanted us to make. We thought we we wanted as opposed to the game they wanted to make. And even for all the finishes, Skyward Sword to me is better than Twilight Princess, because at least it felt like they had a fucking idea when they went out there and they stuck to us.
00:31:38
Speaker
It's astonishingly long Twilight Princess as well. It's like 15 dungeons or something ridiculous. Yeah. I think it was actually the longest of, I guess, unless you're only 100%ing Tears of the Kingdom in Breath of the Wild.
00:31:49
Speaker
And Wind Waker, still the best in my view, has what, five dungeons? Yeah, especially once they shored up the Triforce quest and everything and allowed you to quick sail, that game became much faster. Yeah. from more yeah ah In terms of like ah putting a game that that feels like it did kill a franchise that hasn't come back in the better part of ah a decade was SimCity 2013.
00:32:18
Speaker
Like SimCity felt like a thing that was going to be around forever. And then the 2013- Well, it's carved out a niche for itself, but then they put out a shitty one, and Cities Skylines jumped into the gap, and now Cities Skylines is is the thing that fills that niche. Yeah, yeah. And then that grave real quick. Yeah. yeah You gotta jump in fast like what Fortnite did to PUBG as well. Someone comes out of the niche but fucks it up so you kick them out of the niche and you sit in the niche. You remake, you basically remake ah one of the super popular AAA franchises and just wait for them to ruin it and then immediately release the like nostalgia base. Someone make an Indie Dead Rising game. There we go.
00:33:02
Speaker
Uh, we, uh, we glossed over it earlier. Uh, Jay, you, you obviously are, are a fan of the franchise. Do you think Pokemon is there an individual game where it's felt like Pokemon started to lose the goodwill or started to lose your goodwill or, you know, it was that recent. So you weren't, you were fine all the way up until like three years ago. too i saw I think Pokemon's been dead for years. Um, but the people just keep buying a corpse.
00:33:31
Speaker
including i You buy two copies of it. Yeah, I know. But but I buy it for and give the other copy to someone to play with so we can try the headdrug again, isn't that people want the IP and the games are sort of an unfortunate formality of the IP continuing to exist. Yeah. i him with Same with your nieces and nephews with Sonic. My kids love Pokemon. They never played any of the games. Well, they played Pokemon Snap a bit on the switch. They've franchised it to the point where they're touching so many bases that they can keep so many people involved. And it's just riding off of at the moment nostalgia and um and being kid friendly. So the kids are still into it because it's kid friendly and plushies and everything. But my kids have Pokemon pajamas. But don't play the games. so
00:34:16
Speaker
and Pokemon under pants. It's, um I don't think you could say they're riding, like they're riding off makes it feel like, I feel like creatively they are coasting. Uh, but like commercially they aren't like commercially that franchise is only it's becoming bigger and it's only becoming bigger. Um, for sure. But they're not, I think Pokemon has been hosting design wise.
00:34:43
Speaker
since it came out like they hit a formula and this is the thing like when we talk about them ruining a franchise what do they do because Do you stay true to what your IP is and what your franchise is to keep people invested, which I think is what Pokemon has done, but now everyone just complains, oh, they're reusing Pokemon. Oh, they're not adding anything new. But when they try and do something new, like with Arceus or the 3D stuff, people are just like, wow, this is garbage. I think the 3D stuff should have happened years ago.
00:35:15
Speaker
Um, but they're just not doing enough. Like it runs like shit. It looks like shit. Um, but the gameplay is still the stuff they've done to move it forward. Like the day they introduced the mechanic of having Pokemon's in tall grass and you being able to see them. It's great. Like that should have been a thing.
00:35:34
Speaker
in the beginning. And I'm glad they're doing it, but they're just not doing enough. And I know what's going to push game freak to actually where you could see the Pokemon was that sword and shield. So that's the first one. No, it was before that it was in a 2d one chat with me like X and Y or one of those might've been X and Y. Um, yeah, chat will know, but like, you know,
00:35:54
Speaker
No, why fix what ain't broke, I suppose. Exactly. But there's also a point of like, this is working, but we need to do more to push the franchise to the next level. And I think the 3D Arceus was just a cash grab. Terrible game.
00:36:10
Speaker
I guess we just need to design another 150 of the buggers for the next one. I do not think Arceus was a cash grab. I fucking hate Arceus. I don't, you can hate it, but I just, I tried something different, whether it's a female. It feels... It feels... It feels sort of chilled, right? Oh, not sort of chilled. I don't know. I don't know. Arceus felt cheaply made to me. It felt like it was like their heart...
00:36:38
Speaker
It was a parasite for Violet and Scarlet, and they decided to charge money for it. and But it doesn't play like Scarlet and Violet. Yeah, but that's because they they then put a few more years into its development and turned it into a game.
00:36:53
Speaker
rather than like i mean this Let's not get into a big argument over where and when Pokemon was actually ruined. because want to say My last ah last big theory is Pokemon's 30th anniversary is going to be ah in about a year and a half.
00:37:10
Speaker
And I think that's going to be the next mainline Pokemon game. I do not think we'll come out until then. And I think it's going to be a fucking 10 out of 10 game of the year. I mean, I hope so. i want the They're doing it. OK, well, here's something that I often ask people when they propose tonight that. ah Do you think that's going to happen because it's likely to happen or because it's the thing you would like to happen? Yes.
00:37:39
Speaker
Yes. so That is the thing I want to happen. I want to believe as a kid 30 years ago. I fucking love those little guys. I remember like when the cartoon aired and I had this like Ariel antenna on a TV and trying to pick up a channel a couple towns over that was in the cartoon and it just felt magical. Even like even in these situations where we're discussing franchises that died who who may have not deserved it or deserved it or whatever. I think at the end of the day,
00:38:07
Speaker
We all want games to be good. um i was talking I was talking to a ah dev who messaged me recently. I can't say who they are because of NDA things. But um we were just talking about a big project um and you know its potential and stuff like that. And i was getting we were getting kind of negative in how we were talking. But at the end of the day, I had to reiterate, I want this game to be good. I want all games to be good for the players and the devs, right? We want this industry.
00:38:34
Speaker
I mean, um every franchise we brought up, we brought up because there was some, at some point we really enjoyed it. yeah oh yes you can aio or his elder like Yeah. You can't ruin what hasn't, like you can't ruin a cake that hasn't been baked yet. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta have some time to put in the cake.
00:38:52
Speaker
The reason we didn't bring up like sports games, I'm sure like people who play sports games every year could be like, ah, it was, oh, Madden. It was pretty much when EA bought the NFL license and there was no competition anymore. And so they could rest in their laurels. But, um, you know, if, if we don't care about that franchise, that's why we're not talking about it. Those are the examples of games that have just, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Right. to to me If there's no competition, why anyone yeah I should go keep playing it. Yeah.
00:39:20
Speaker
Well, the chat's got a whole bunch of suggestions. So I think we should go through the super chats that I'm seeing on the horizon. and We start by Jacob Kitty who gives $2 and says by selling it to Disney. Well, but that wasn't Ubisoft's fault when they had to make Star Wars outdoors.
00:39:38
Speaker
Oh, just every franchise as a whole when they sold the Disney. yeah I mean, the, but I would say Marvel movies got ah pretty damn good for a while when they sold the Disney that gave us the sort of three phases and we're phase two and three at least. But then they had to keep going because there must always be more. There must be more. Uh, Andor is cool. So we got one very, Andor and Last Jedi, we got two very cool Star Wars things out of, uh, Look, if you keep throwing shit at a wall, sooner or later it's gonna fly out the window and hit a person you hate in the face. yeah But 90% of the time you're just gonna end up with a very shitty wall. Yeah. Aww.
00:40:16
Speaker
ah Dr. Dio, remember from a Bunsen tip jar and then gives a $5 super chat. Oh, he didn't need to do that. And then says, I wonder how they'll handle an RE5 make will they make the single player more bearable? Will it be forced to play? Or will they keep the boulder punching? They're not going to do an RE5 make Dr. Dio. I think the thing they're most likely to do is sort of start a new continuity off the Resident Evil 4 make but they're not going to remake the original Resident Evil 5. They just aren't. Yeah.
00:40:41
Speaker
Maybe like a Leon ah leon-centric, campy, new game off the ice. Or like, what what's Jill been up to? Well, ah she was getting brainwashed when she got possessed. She got possessed. Yeah. She got brainwashed and then had to run around with a very skimpy jumpsuit with the the zip pulled all the way down for a while.
00:41:05
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, yeah, it's, oh God. Uh, yeah, it's interesting because it feels like they still have like a little bit of a holding pattern because they can still go back and futz with, uh, are you zero code Veronica? And I honestly do think they're going to just go back and re remake one. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. does that like Look and play like the two and three remakes. Oh God.
00:41:30
Speaker
Yeah. Like, they remade King's Quest 1 in the SCI engine. But then they developed, you know, VGA technologies and then they they'd blown their remake load too early. Yeah. I think there was a... I think it was fan made actually. They made a remake of King's Quest 1 in VGA. Sometimes further down the line, but it's going to be like that. They remade RE1 too early. It awaited. That was the problem. ah The RE remake is so good.
00:41:59
Speaker
ah have days ah Yeah. ah Dr. Theo gives $5 and says, on the topic of ruined franchises, I cannot look at Overwatch the same again. That franchise died when they introduced roll locks did f five f five v five and Is this outside our purview?
00:42:17
Speaker
No, i I was quite big into Overwatch and Overwatch 2. I played it a little bit. I remember playing like having fun for a while playing a Soldier 76 because he was just like easy mode. Yeah, playing a shooter. When they did 5v5, was it not 5v5? No, it was 6v6. You had two tanks in Overwatch 1 and then they changed it, but they may have changed it back now. I'm not sure. Anyway, when some of the devs left and they started people started changing everything. But what I think were legit reasons, um I think the reasons were when you had two tanks, the games turned into like stalemates where there was just too much health and too much, you know,
00:42:55
Speaker
um of that so they tried to make it more swingy by having one tank and boosting the tank's power. ah Ruined the franchise for a lot of people but at the end of the day I think Overwatch was ruined via its monetization and promise of a narrative mode and then we completely removing that. um yeah Rather than just one thing. It's a whole host of things for Overwatch rather than just one thing in isolation I think.
00:43:21
Speaker
SUSSCURU2000 gives five euros and they nominate Command & Conquer. They've ruined CNC by turning it into mobile garbage. haven't blamed my now I'm curious, now I'm trying to think, because there have to be a lot of example or a handful of examples of franchises that got ruined by chasing the infinite mobile money, like the free to play mobile money. um Not that it's that's necessarily poison, but most of the time, it feels like poison, right? Well, that's sort of the live service area, isn't it? Dungeon Keeper, Eric brings up. Yeah. We tried to make and like a mobile version of that. that Yeah. Went to along the way those games are usually made. Yeah. And that's sort of Facebook Farmville style. EA's kind of dug early graves for a lot of things. That sort of thing doesn't usually look pivots completely to it. They just sort of spin off into it.
00:44:14
Speaker
Yeah. In the same way, you know, with Blizzard, we had the Diablo immortal, which people were like, this ruined the franchise and the Diablo four came out and sold a shit ton. And over what people seem to yeah i like, people do not like Diablo four. That's a game series that I was going to mention that ah is trying to kill itself repeatedly. Three tried to kill itself. Stop buying us. I want to die.
00:44:36
Speaker
Yeah, three, immortal, four, they were all in their own ways, tried to kill the franchise, but- It's funny, it seems like the sweaties don't like Diablo 4, because I know a lot of casuals so fucking love Diablo 4. Yeah. They're not online, they're not, they're just like, this game is sick as hell.
00:44:53
Speaker
Yeah, no, I can dig that. I was one of the sweaties who did not like Diablo 4, but was big into Diablo 4. I didn't mind Diablo 4. There's a lot of things I didn't like about it, but you know, I could, I could sort of miss your podcasts and click through it. I remember being really annoyed by Diablo 3, by the suddenly always online.
00:45:13
Speaker
thing. yeah We didn't complain about that enough and then that became the standard. I mean, stick it with Blizzard, you could say, when we talked about this, Jay, when when and we were streaming the the latest expansion, that World of Warcraft kind of inadvertently killed a lot of the other Blizzard franchises because so many of the releases went towards WoW and they started viewing everything as if you don't make as much money as this, why are we putting time and effort into it?
MMORPG Shifts and Creative Integrity
00:45:39
Speaker
yeah Because WoW is so big. Yeah, WoW tried to kill itself. um yeah Anyone who plays WoW will know that um there was a string of bad expansions um leading up to Shadowlands.
00:45:49
Speaker
And um a lot of people left. It's one of the main reasons why um Final Fantasy 14, which started garbage and then reinvented itself, why so many paid players jumped ship to that game um was because the Blizz devs, I guess, just um it it could have been direction. It could have been because they've been doing it for 20 years. Right. um But it was dying, but they've, they've turned it around. Um, and that's what I want to see with franchises. I want to see them fall into these slumps. Well, I don't want to see that, but see them climb out. And I think that's what encourages new and exciting things in the industry. When these big franchises start to lose their players, they have to reinvent themselves and do something new for them. And they either die or they come out of the ashes and it's always good to see them go out the ashes.
00:46:37
Speaker
FoxD is fatalist, says, thinking of a work of art as a franchise or a media property is a sign you've already ruined it. Buzzwords are poison to art. See, I was about to say Counterpoint Back to the Future 2 is better than Back to the Future 1. But then I realised Back to the Future is still, I wouldn't call it a franchise, it's just a serial. It's ah it's three films that tell one story from start to finish.
00:47:02
Speaker
And Robert Zemeckis has worked very hard to ensure that nobody tries to reboot or remake it at any point. Yeah, which is actually commendable and kind of shocking commendable also because he's, he's made some bad movies of the last 20 years. So it's commendable that he hasn't tried to go back to that. Was it you that we had the conversation where you were like name of Robert Zemeckis movie in the last 20 years? Is there a good one this century? Yeah. We had the chat. I didn't believe you until I looked up is recent. Like, oh, damn. All right. Tell me back to the future two better than one is a hot take didn't have a feather. I mean, you go back to the future two is better than back to the future one. There's like four different time periods. There's that joke with the hologram jaws bites Marty McFly. He says the shark still looks fake. How can you lie back to the future two less than the others?
00:47:54
Speaker
I mean, I know some people who like the first, I think saying three is the best one is a hot take. Saying one or two is the best one is not a hot take, in my opinion. I think the remake that's not out yet is the best one, honestly. It's funny because all three sort of do their own thing. Well, three hits a lot of the same points as the first one, just in old West times rather than the fifties, but they're all sort of unique in their own way. Would you guys be against a Back to the Future limited series?
00:48:23
Speaker
Very Tom Holland. Yeah, sorry Tom Holland. One that just tells that narrative over like a season of a show rather than movies. No, no. Shut up. It is perfect forever. Back to the future. You need to see what Sophie does with his mom. They didn't go deep enough into the mom stuff that was going on. Moving hastily on. Yeah. If I book the hair that Uncle Hight gives two euros and says, I got nothing today. Say something you want to hear.
00:48:52
Speaker
um A-woo-ga, a-woo-ga. Yes. Your turn. I read a script this morning that had the word hyuck hyuck hyuck in it. Shout out to Jesse Schwab. ah so And I heard that in ah Goofy's voice. And so I liked the hyucks. Oh, I came up with a joke. I'm writing like a review of the Dead Rising remaster. And I wrote a joke about the mini chainsaw that made me laugh.
00:49:16
Speaker
as Because I think they'll reduce the damage for it in the remaster, so I made a joke that goes, that thing used to fuck up psychopaths like a Dead by Daylight balance patch. Aaaah, Abadumitch. Yes, I was proud of that one. ah The thing I want to hear is someone telling me be Beyond Good and Evil 2 is coming out, but we know that's not happening soon. That stays the one, thanks. Well, like I said, ah in my Beyond Good and Evil, fully ramblamatic, let's just pretend something was Beyond Good and Evil 2.
00:49:44
Speaker
Like you would like Kina bridge of spirits. That was about a lady with dark hair who used a staff. Just yeah pretend crash about pretend she crash landed on that planet. Yeah. Yeah. Pretend that's young and evil too. Hey, yeah, I'm going to go play that.
00:49:58
Speaker
Okay. yeah Sovereign gives five euros and says, Marty, can you please yell? He can't keep getting away with it. It refers to the day. Spoilers. He can't keep getting away with it. No, he's not going to win. I don't think he wins the next one. Oh, no, wait. We don't know what the next one is. no We don't know what the next one is. Because we've got one in the tank, but we're going to do another one before that one for Halloween.
00:50:26
Speaker
is the plan. You son of a bitch. Have you done your one of that yet Jay? No, I've been moving house. So it's, uh, which has done a good cause we, we redid the rules, but, um, no, I'm, I'm in the process of, uh, setting up. I need to download the game and get it done. But, um, yeah, it's going to be interesting. Uh, I don't want to say things and ruin it. It's, uh,
00:50:47
Speaker
and It's good. I love Battlemasters. It's actually my favorite thing. Everyone watching this episode on the original Super Mario Brothers and the conceit is get as far as you can out of single life without killing any enemies. And let me tell you, yes you need to rewire your brain playing that game as a pacifist. Everyone go watch Battlemasters so we have an excuse to keep making it because we all love making it.
00:51:10
Speaker
Anyway, Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says going 3d but it varies good for Mario bad for Sonic. Mario did it by locking itself in a room for like a year and iterating until it was actually good. That was like one game that forgot 3d platforming to work.
00:51:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's funny for as I talked about this in my Mega Man Legends episode of the archive a month ago or whatever, but um yeah, for every example of like a Metal Gear Solid or a Final Fantasy or a Zelda or a Mario that gracefully moved into 3D, you know, you have your Castlevania's, your Earthworm Jims, your Sonics that um did not move so gracefully.
00:51:53
Speaker
there's that There's a million 3D platforming franchises on the PS1 that didn't survive past the early PS1 era. But you know what's coming back? coming back. Croc. Yeah, that brings to mind. Croc. What's that one punky skunk? Or the skunk that's a punk?
00:52:11
Speaker
that you made, you absolutely made up Punky Skunk Cohen, the skunk that's a punk. And you smell toast. Yeah. Punky Skunk, the skunk that's a punk. Look, I was googling images of shitty PS1 mascot platformers to make a point in my upcoming Astro bar review. And one of them was just something called, it was something like punk, Punky Skunk.
00:52:33
Speaker
Punky Skunk. Oh, I remember this little skunk. Somebody call a Bondulance. We're having a a collective stroke. Honky skunk. what remember this card It was called Punky Skunk. Yeah. a skunk I believe it was it was a 2D platformer though. Oh, okay.
00:52:52
Speaker
yuki your toy I sort of called him like metal marsupial. The developers, speaking of metal, there was the same developers of metal slug. They created metal slug. They made a whole metal slug. Do you remember shadow man? I do remember shadow man. That was basically a 3d platformer. That's true. Yeah. Sort of in that sort of American McGee's Alice sort of fucked up thieving kind of way.
00:53:14
Speaker
and A lot of forgotten sort of dark, M-rated, gothic horror platforming games of that era. Do you remember Apocalypse? Do you remember Apocalypse starring Bruce Willis? Bruce Willis? Yep. Oh, man. Yikes. Yikes, indeed. Fungus Finder gives to... Oh, hang on, miss one. FoxD gives $5. There's too many franchises follow an arc. One, great idea. Two, improves on one in every way game of the year. Three, tries a new direction, fails horribly ruined.
00:53:46
Speaker
What do we got? We got dead space there. Yeah.
Franchise Changes and Impact
00:53:49
Speaker
Or three keeps trying to do the same shit that worked the first two times and eventually going stale like Resident Evil. And then like the arc begins anew when they get back around to the great idea part. If you had to put one point where it kind of lost its way for Assassin's Creed.
00:54:07
Speaker
Ooh, three. here You think three last its way. Yes. Cause the historical period they chose was too boring. Yeah. And the game play was too forgettable. Wait, is free brotherhood or is free the one we're in America? Three is three. Three is yeah the one yeah American history. Yeah. Yeah. American war of independence.
00:54:32
Speaker
um Because the American War for Independence, bad subject matter. It was boring. Mostly a political conflict. Should have gone with the Civil War. Much, much more on theme. ah So i while while I'm not crazy about three, I feel like they pull up from the nosedive really well with Black Flag. i amm I'm an ardent defender.
00:54:56
Speaker
As I keep saying, Black Flag is a great pirate game, it sucks when it's being Assassin's Creed. When you're on land, yeah, when you have to tail people. yeah I'm a Unity defender and I fucking love Syndicate. It lost me when it became an open world RPG with Origins and Odyssey and Valhalla. That's when it lost me. I've never played any of the RPG one. That's when it felt like it was trend chasing. That's when it felt like it was like, well, fuck, the Witcher is the biggest game. People love the Witcher. They love Skyrim. We got literally killed it for me. I haven't played Black Flag. I haven't played any of the, i'm played unicy syneca I haven't played Syndicate. You've played Syndicate. You probably hang out with Jack the Ripper. You're in, you're in you're and um mean mar out England. Yeah, exactly. Listen, if they made Assassin's Creed, uh, Wisconsin, I'd be all over that.
00:55:41
Speaker
So much cheese. So much cheese. Tons of serial killers here to chase down. yes totally Yeah. Yeah. So it's a golden day. What are you doing today?
00:55:53
Speaker
john Having to tell Jeffrey Darber through downtown Milwaukee. i and im in engage that Sounds Yeah. Yeah. Fungus Finder gives $2. It says there is literally a gene named Sonic Hedgehog.
00:56:08
Speaker
Fancy that. A gene? Yeah, I guess some some nerd whose job was to name a gene at some point named it Sonic Hedgehog. The way sometimes when people have to name animals, they name them after famous things. So to be to be clear to people listening, this is G-E-N-E, not like denim jeans. Yeah. Somebody's name is Sonic Hedgehog.
00:56:31
Speaker
i know half yeah And half the asteroids are named after Hanna-Barbera characters because they were named by, you know, scientists who were watching Hanna-Barbera cartoons in the 60s. Yeah, I really wanted to impress their kids. I i hope the sonic the Sonic hedgehog gene becomes so big that they have to reference it in Metal Gear. Brother, we have the same Sonic hedgehog gene. Now I'm just imagining that whole dynamic but with Sonic and Shadow.
00:56:58
Speaker
but ah Alex Armstrong gives $5, so Sonic still exists today because of fans which is a double-edged sword. You get good games like Mania, but 06 Boom and Forces get made. No middle ground. What the fuck is Boom? Yeah, it's very of easy yeah it's so sonic yeah i think boom it's pretty easy to just not play the games made by Sonic Team and only play the games made by fans like Sonic Mania. i I did a marathon that I did Sonic Adventure 1, Sonic Adventure 2, and then I stopped.
00:57:27
Speaker
but so my birthday two game But then I jump back in for frontiers and I loved it and there's a sonic sonic presentation I believe either tonight or tomorrow morning and they're gonna show off the future of sonic and let me tell you we afraid is get more frontier can just put it down in the calendar Is he still a teenager he's gonna be like 45 by now all the games he's been in Sonic old man sonic he stopped being a teenager when he kissed that woman and yeah That's what he came of age. He got his first erection. The only thing that would make me respect the Sonic franchise is if his age was canonical and over the games he's been getting slightly slower each time. What's that? What's that Sonic mod where they replace the rings with onion rings and if you eat them, you get fatter. Sounds great. Sounds great. That sounds great. Sounds like a Carl's junior tie-in.
00:58:21
Speaker
Please, Eric. Oh, also, before we move on to the next one, we got a Ko-Fi donation from Tungsten. right miss white Thank you so much, Tungsten. Their message, EA fucked over Respawn and Titanfall 2's release date and the success of Apex meant that developing a new Titanfall game is extremely unlikely as the studio is now split working on Star Wars and Apex would have really liked to see what level design the sequel would have had. good If you want to learn more about that, DevHead's one of our fellow ah Creators Tina worked on Titanfall 3. So oh really yeah, and then went to work on what it's spanning to Apex Legends. Like she was a producer on it um and has spoken extensively on this topic. So if you want to learn more about how, you know, these things together and what happened, check out that. I really, I really liked Titanfall 2. I'm fine with not having any anymore. People should stop just demanding more of what they like.
00:59:17
Speaker
ah But I want a sick-ass eight-hour single-player first-person shooter campaign, and no one's given me that. That's what Titanfall 2 was. Just enjoy Titanfall 2. I want more of it. I want one every... Just give me one every five years. It's fine. and Well, play indie shooters. I don't know. Oh, the campaigns aren't as good. Listen, indie games are great at a lot of things. Replicating what I want from my big ol' summer blockbuster is not one of them.
00:59:42
Speaker
Oh, well, fair enough. We could give a few more years. They'll probably yeah id unlock some unity asset packs in the store that lets you make Titanfall. We're not getting 3d Mario maker. No indie team is making the next Titanfall two. I need, I need my Johnny EA to come e needs to save me.
00:59:59
Speaker
ah Race Car Lock comes along with $5 and says, you're not getting out of here without a Silent Hill rant yards. Silent Hill 1, 2, 3 and 4 are good. I like 2 best and then 4 and then 1 and then 3. The west ones are all shit. The best one is probably Shattered Memories and only Marginally. ah And the new remake's gonna ruin everything. The remake of Silent Hill 2 is going to ruin it.
01:00:26
Speaker
However, if you're PR for Konami, please send me a code because I've been trying to track down who who works PR for Konami and they just don't mean exist. Are we holding out much hope for a review code for Zonal 2? I can't find out who represents that game.
01:00:41
Speaker
Like I've never got an email. on hill too If he represents handheld to get in touch, in touch with do get in touch with me, don't get in touch with ya gives me. me i get touch hey i but i was I was like talking shit about the RE4 make long before it came out. And we were like, one of the first ones to get a review code. I think because of that, they were like, Hey, here's the guy we need to convince Sion Hill to give me a code. Cause I'm the guy you need to convince. I'm the guy you need to win over on this.
01:01:10
Speaker
What was the representative is Kojima? Oh, no. He was really good. I am so excited that ah we're getting a Death Stranding presentation. So this week is TGS, the Tokyo Game Show. A lot of weeb shit. A lot of weeb shit. We're getting our Sega present. Did you see any Yakuza game that got announced? Fucking pirates? No. Yes, yes. They're getting some more mileage. Getting some more mileage out of the map of the previous game like they always do, I say. Smart. Smart. Reuse it. It's like modern day Hawaiian pirates, but like with pirate ships and shit. Seems great. Yes, yes. I'm so down.
01:01:51
Speaker
up as hell. Is there actually gonna be like ship sailing mechanics? Because if there is, I'm down. Ooh, I actually don't know. That'd be good. It'd be weird. Black flag. Black flag but with Yakuza story. That sounds yeah. Yakuza. It needs to be killed. That's a great name. Absolutely. It's good. Well, it doesn't translate so well.
01:02:17
Speaker
so A hairy son 94 gives $5 and says, Jamaics, what's your fave Jojo part and your fave Jojo protagonist overall? Mine are part seven steel ball run and part four's Josuke. Also love you guys.
01:02:32
Speaker
so let me say um My favorite part is, um, I can't remember the names, uh, the names of the parts. Um, but the, the one with, um, Joe Toro going to Egypt, that whole part is, is my favorite when they introduced stands and my favorite.
01:02:52
Speaker
protagonist is probably G Giovanni. And, uh, my favorite villain, um, is Kara by far. Oh, all right. Shut up your weaves. It sounds like it sounded like you were trying to ah make up a bunch of names. Um, but that's Joe does because all of the characters are named after bands.
01:03:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's like bizarre. It's closing the name there, Barty. Some of the villains are Dio, ACDC. Like, they're they're just named after the bands. it's It's dumb. Yeah, isn't there a main character called REO Speedwagon? REO Speedwagon's one of the characters from the first part, yeah. Very easy.
01:03:40
Speaker
ah Fox D gives $5 and says how to kill a sports game franchise in one stroke get the exclusive license. Madden's been trashed since 06 and MLB last good game was MVP 2005. Okay.
01:03:52
Speaker
place there for nerds I feel like people like the modern baseball games, but I also don't play the baseball games. So as a brain never played one of my life. You know, the worst thing about sports nerds is that they don't think they're nerds. Yeah.
01:04:07
Speaker
Agreed. You just said, I don't play it. I'm not a nerd. Yeah. then People who are really into sports are nerds, just like any other kind of nerd being someone who's really into something, but sports nerds are the worst because they for some reason think it's not nerdy to be a sports nerd. They think it's some kind of masculinity thing. I cancel it out because I spend Sundays watching football while playing Zelda on my switch. So those cancel each other out. Yeah. Yeah.
01:04:38
Speaker
Anyway, rude. I mean, how is wearing the the kit for your team different to cosplay? and i don't know I completely agree with you. Yeah, I will leave you to contemplate that particular question. Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says crash stroke Spyro feels stale because of greedy publishers. Oh, you say that but both of them appear in Astrobot. So They're actually very fresh and interesting. And they're both owned by Microsoft now, which makes it interesting that Microsoft cares. I also just think there's not much you can do with the franchises. Hence why they've just kind of like, the devs want to work on other stuff, which is what's happened to those devs. Like, in some way they can naughty dog them. They've just fallen back on remastering the originals and sequels that feel uncannily like the originals, like Crash Bandicoot 4.
01:05:31
Speaker
you know what ah You know what's ah weirdly missing from ah Astrobot without spoiling? There's no Square Enix representation. No Final Fantasy.
01:05:43
Speaker
No, anything. And there was a, there was a final fantasy seven nod in the original Astro bot, like the, the, or not the original, the PS five launch. Yeah. There was a cloud or wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. Lara Croft appears in Astro bot and Lara Croft's an hour Square Enix property. Well, not anymore. I believe they've sold her off to do something or Amazon crafted.
01:06:06
Speaker
Who can keep track of these things? The real, the with the real like, weird oversight in Astro Bot? Twisted Metal. Oh my god, there's no clown? They just own that, too. Yeah, and but there is no Twisted Metal in Astro Bot. Too many, they they they wanted a half-naked murderous clown in the game, and they were like, oh, maybe this doesn't. and There's plenty of murderers in the game, though.
01:06:34
Speaker
Fuckin' pyramid heads in there. adam em know I played through the whole game hoping there'd be a James Sunderland bot, but there wasn't. There was just a pyramid head bot. And you would just unlock ah a pillow that he can use too.
01:06:49
Speaker
Uh, Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says modern Naughty Dog wouldn't make Jack and Daxter today. Well, only because they ruined it with the second one by making it all dark and gritty. Chasing trends. Exactly. she Also, I think If I have the numbers correctly, ah every jacking combined has sold 10 or 12 million copies, and The Last of Us Part 1 sold like 30 million copies, so I think you just go where money is. um I guess. i kind I respected Naughty Dog when they like restricted their franchises to one per console.
01:07:23
Speaker
yeah Crash Bandicoot, a PS1, Jak and Daxter, a PS2, Uncharted on PS3, and then PS4 fucked everything up, because there was an Uncharted on that, and then The Last of Us was on that, and The Last of Us won PS5 as well. yeah i there twelve Now it's all fucked up. What would have been Naughty Dog's PS5 franchise if not ah The Last of Us? Yeah.
01:07:51
Speaker
It should have been Last of Us only on PS4 and PS5 should have been something new. I reckon we're going to see a revitalization of the 3D platformer. Do you reckon we'll get a Jak and Daxter after Astrobot and stuff like that's done so well? I think well Astrobot's only done well because it rips off Mario Galaxy, isn't it? And Mario's always been around.
01:08:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because, you know, Sony has Sly Cooper, they have, uh, Ratchet and Clank, but again, all those games, like, uh, they're all super old. Yeah. And Ghost of Tsushima way outsold Sly Cooper and the Spider-Man games fucking bury the Ratchet and Clank games in terms of sales. So I mean, it's an astrobus good astrobots good, but it's weird that it's the cheerleader for the PS5 because it's so unrepresentative of what most PS5 games are these days. Yeah.
01:08:39
Speaker
5S Games. and You watched my fucking Astrobot review this week. i ice covered this stuff That God of War PC port did. Oh yeah. Terrible. like It did terrible. Yeah, I can't remember if it was Ragnarok or the first one. Ragnarok just came out. Yeah, the PC sales are like 30k or something, which is like a good really bad for a ah I guess everyone listened to my review when I said it was too boring and long. Absolutely too long.
01:09:11
Speaker
ah Gildon Yiddish gives $5 and says, beyond good and evil is a good example. Be so apprehensive about ruining your perfectly good franchise that you ruin it by never releasing anything. ah don't know does always happen That was almost how Duke Nukem ruined itself as well. And then it ruined itself in the traditional way by bringing out a shitty game. Yeah.
01:09:32
Speaker
and there's There's lots of reasons for why Beyond Good and Evil 2 isn't out. And I think being scared of ruining it. We need to remember with Beyond Good and Evil, it was an incredibly niche game. like It didn't do really, really well. You didn't say that, but I think it's it's so sort of ahead of its time. It's reflective of a lot of the trends of modern game design in that it tries to do too many things at once. Yeah. That is very true. It does.
01:09:59
Speaker
That's probably why it's apprehensive about coming out because it's not ahead of its time anymore.
Prince of Persia Reflections
01:10:06
Speaker
Acoustic sub-ager gives $2 and says, did Prince of Persia get ruined? Oh, multiple times acoustic goes to major. It's the another one that will always come back to on strength of name recognition alone.
01:10:18
Speaker
I want to go back and play Prince of Persia 2008 one of these days, because I remember mainly hating it just because it wasn't the Sands of Time, but I think it deserves another look. I don't think the combat sucked there. That would be a fun... Did you review it originally? Yes. That'd be a fun like revisit review for a slow time. yeah Maybe. be i and yeah prince yeah Before Sands of Time, it was ruined by Prince of Persia 3D, which was sort of ah trying to rip off Tomb Raider after the Tomb Raider was successful.
01:10:47
Speaker
And now of course it's a 2D platformer again. So it's really good. I love Prince Persia and Metroidvanias. I need to play it. I keep forgetting that was this year. That game was great. I really need to play it. My personal channel before I came to the escape system and second wind and stuff, my first ever videos to ever do well was a trilogy of videos on Sands of Time, War Within and Two Friends.
01:11:11
Speaker
I really, really like the franchise. It's a really great trilogy there. I would think if you cherry-picked all three of those games and smashed the results together into one big game, you'd have as near to perfection as makes no odds. I agree. They all individually have a lot of flaws, but they do there. Sounds of time. Great story. Great. Warrior Within makes the combat really good. Yep. Two Thrones. OK, just the first two.
01:11:41
Speaker
I like the aesthetic of the bird, and the the the level design is really good. um I also like the inclusion of some stealth elements. um The level of design in 2 is just absolutely mental and crazy. It was almost Metroidvane-yuri. Yeah, the time switching. it's it but It's wild. I sort of liked that.
01:12:03
Speaker
but well Me too, it just gets very confusing, very quick. and i've I've spoken to, while I was on the Sea of Stars dock, um i was they were like, oh, do you want to talk to our level designer? And I was speaking to him, and turns out he was the level designer on all three of those games. And I was like meeting all my heroes. The original Sands of Time team is all over the place. I used to be friends with a dude in back in Brisbane who apparently only worked on the chariot racing sequences in Two Thrones. and You told me that, Wild. Yeah.
01:12:32
Speaker
and he'll never love the fred energy right he never let me forget well we were mates but he never let me forget that i talk shit about those in my review he specifically talked shit about the stuff he worked on yeah yeah thats no offense to the dude but those chariot races are just fluff Yeah, he asked me to um ah give me my opinion on his the draft for a novel he'd written and that kind of sucked as well. All about chariots. Sorry.
Gaming Legacy and Tool Development
01:13:02
Speaker
Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says valve games aren't exactly ruined but halted for money.
01:13:09
Speaker
Does it did has ever ever have a stumble in your mind? No. Half-life never, there was never a bad half-life. They've just sort of gotten the big on good and evil two problem where they don't want to put anything out in cases, anything less than perfect and more breaking.
01:13:23
Speaker
mold breaking is why I think they've done it and their internal structure of Valve is just so... but you It's a utopia and hell at the same time. So nothing's getting made because yeah they're not breaking the mold enough for them to feel like it's going to live up to any kind of expectations rather than money. Half-Life 1 and 2 were both pivotal games in the history of PC gaming. Half-Life 3 could never be the same.
01:13:49
Speaker
If we would have never gotten ah if we would never gotten episode two, I think I would have set up episode one was pretty... Half-Life 2 episode one was pretty unremarkable in my mind. Yeah, it's very interstitial. Yeah, yeah.
01:14:02
Speaker
um
01:14:05
Speaker
It is insane to me that they they were like, well, the future is episodic gaming, and then they release two, and they're like, we're done. yeah we want design with um you like I mean, in theory, it meant so they could bring games out faster, but didn't really work out in practice, did it? Yeah. Yeah. And they were like the Futures VR release, Alex, the best VR experience ever made. And then was like, oh, we're done. Future is over. We are done. donate Too nice. Too nice. Should have waited until everyone has, you know, matrix plugs in their spines.
01:14:40
Speaker
Anyway, ah Mr. Sadface gives $5 and says Ninja Gaiden 3 tanked without any involvement of Itagaki, though on the other hand they moved on to Neo and heeded Devil's Third, so there's that. Yeah, Devil's Third really sucked.
01:14:53
Speaker
You might as well just excuse me for another language. A Wii U exclusive of all things. Yeah. Devil's Third was a third, it was a Wii U exclusive third-person hack and slash. That's why I never played. The third-person melee and shooter. It's one of the most valuable games if you own a physical copy of it for the Wii U because they produce so much. I'm not surprised because they sold such like dog shit as well. Yeah. Sounds cool.
01:15:24
Speaker
I told this story before, but ah ah back at IGN, we had that game on our live show at E3 and it was like early in the morning. And so they came to our studio and there was probably like, we had like probably 75 people at the studio doing all sorts of different things and they catered lunch and dinner for us during E3. And so lunch came or or breakfast came and Itagaki came for the live show with an entourage of like 20 people deep ah He did a five minute segment and then his entourage just fucking took all of the food and left.
01:15:58
Speaker
It's so funny. For the fucking devil's third, Itagaki and his posse came and ate all of her breakfast while we were like writing news up for like the Nintendo director, whatever. Yeah. Amazing. Rockstar move. Yeah. Classic Itagaki. We started calling him Shitagaki after that. And we called it Devil's Turd. So there you go. Didn't we all? That was the road! That was where he took our breakfast. That was it. Eric, you fucking leaf.
01:16:25
Speaker
yeah Ian Weeks gives higher dollars and says, love the books, Yahtzee. I was wondering, how do you spell the name of the ferret in the third galaxy book and how tall are they? This is embarrassing. I've actually forgotten what the name of that character was. And I'll tell you why I've forgotten, because they didn't have a name until after I finished the first draft. And once I went back to it, i was I remember thinking, boy, this character ended up being kind of important. I should probably give them a name. And that was like a last minute thing. So now I've forgotten what the name was. It didn't stick. Well, how tall is he?
01:16:56
Speaker
Oh, she was very small. They were like a little magenta ferret, like the size of a normal ferret. A sentient alien- Like the size of Daxter from Jak and Daxter? Yeah, if you like. They were a sentient alien magenta ferret. I think in the original draft, they were like a human, but then I was thought, no, let's make it more interesting. They're a ferret now. I mean, it works, right?
01:17:21
Speaker
as a rather gives five hour dollars and says about a user friendly 3d level maker, there's a pretty fine one on full guys, Nintendo could pull that off. And for the topic alone in the dark.
01:17:33
Speaker
legible with three sheet load our eman best The trouble with 3D development tools is that ah once you want to give people like a degree of freedom ah for with creativity, but the more of that you give, the more the harder it is to teach people how to use the bloody thing. It's messy and Nintendo doesn't do mess. Dreams brings to mind.
01:17:54
Speaker
Yeah, controllers are the issue. I think with a mouse and keyboard, it's it's way more doable. But yeah, the controller, I mean, Tony Hawk did it well on on consoles with a controller back in the day. Yeah. And as for ah alone in the dark, there was never a good one to ruin. If you ask me.
01:18:15
Speaker
Because, you know, it was like a pioneer. It was like the first 3D survival horror, arguably. But in retrospect, it's aged like milk. And there was never really a good one that took the name after that. Yeah.
Franchise Downfalls and Humorous Takes
01:18:31
Speaker
Anyway, a Double Finger gives five euros and says, did Borderlands 3 hurt the franchise? On the other hand, is Borderlands even a successful franchise? It had one beloved game and a bunch of so-so ones.
01:18:43
Speaker
Well, there haven't been any Borderlands games since three, so probably, I remember a lot of people were down on it. Oh yes, but that was its own thing. Yeah, and then Borderlands 4 is in development announced. um And then the movies sort of tainted the IP to a certain extent. Yeah, I mean, Borderlands 3 still sold crazy amounts. Like, Borderlands 3 ah but I'm sure sold more than, it's probably 15, 20 million. And so it's sold more than every Jack and Daxter game ever. So I guess what's your what's our definition of, I don't know why I'm going after Jack and Daxter here. I really like Jack. um I guess what's our what's our definition of of successful? Is it critical? Is it commercial? um it Has it meant the developer got sold to a Chinese corporation? yeah That's true success. No.
01:19:33
Speaker
Gearbox still their own thing. Last I checked. but de road for by someone gross probablyly but we all know yeah They all are, but they're still permitted to have an identity at least. yeah it seems Hunter Road, remember for 10 months in the green gang says, as much as I love the game, Saints Row 4 killed Saints Row.
01:19:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good way to kill yourself. That's like, and you know, that guy who committed suicide by gluing his hands to his head, tying you and like a piano wire noose around his neck and then throwing himself off a building. So he ended up bungee jumping off the building with like his head in his hands. That's, ah that's the way Saints Row 4 killed itself. The best way, the best way possible. It didn't ruin the franchise. It ended it the way franchises should end. So, Mel, what?
01:20:25
Speaker
This is going to be a new semi-realmomatic all about this guy. Incredible. That's mental. I don't know if it actually happened. I just heard a story about how like the most perfect way to kill yourself. Piano wire, garage, bungee cord that's slightly longer than the piano wire cord. I think super glue your hands to your face. I love it. I've ended up off a building. Yeah.
01:20:56
Speaker
Um, Tsunamidusha gives $20 and says, nah, I think, as is his want. Thanks, Tsunamidusha. Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says, what would be your last meals? Go as big as you want. Oh, wow.
01:21:13
Speaker
Well, there's a super duper burger near where I live that does a really good grilled chicken sandwich. I'm kind of been craving one of those for a while now.
01:21:23
Speaker
she You know what? Treat yourself because you come on today. I don't think comfort wise, I think I'd have bang is a mash, but a real good one. And because of that, I'll cook it. Give me the ingredients. I'll, I'll do mine. and I might, I might want a Japanese chicken katsu curry a make a bean car of a car with a big pile of rice and chopsticks to eat it with maybe some made of mommy beans.
01:21:54
Speaker
Maybe like a key buried under the rice that I could use to escape death row.
01:32:20
Speaker
Dale Mallows gives $2 and says fart fart fart.
01:37:53
Speaker
Ooh,
01:38:01
Speaker
those are some good October streams. Let's get some saw up in this.