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Episode 9 - Clair Obscur, Oblivion, GTA V, Borderlands 4, Gears Reloaded, Ghost of Yotei

S1 E9 · Detroit Gamesters

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Clair Obscur, Oblivion, GTA V, Borderlands 4, Gears Reloaded, Xbox Price Hikes, Ghost of Yotei

Transcript

Arjun and Shamir's Return & Writing Convention Insights

00:00:01

Shameer Mehdikhan

Hey everyone, this is the Detroit Gamesters. This is Arjun and I'm returning back with my co-host Shamir. It's been a while since we've done our last episode and don't want apologize for that. What's up, what's up everybody? yeah Yeah, we've had a little bit of a delay. There's been a lag of news and just some time too. Like we've been a little busy. Yeah, I feel like my personal life I've been kind of busy. So I mean...

00:00:23

Shameer Mehdikhan

this might pique people's interest. I went to my first writing convention. ninety Yeah. So that was interesting. you know You know, it's kind of a spur of the moment thing. Like, I feel like I've just been busy, like juggling different things like work, you know, hanging out, you know, trying to do this podcast, having my games, keeping up with games.

00:00:42

Shameer Mehdikhan

And I just haven't been able to write as much. And so i was like, you know what, fuck it, you know, let's go to this, this convention and maybe pitch some agents. So It was interesting, you know, there was, so we're in, you know, obviously Detroit games or so, Metro Detroit is, you know, i and I thought it was kind of interesting, like, uh, and again, to give context for those that don't remember, I think we said that someone

Importance of Stakes in Storytelling

00:01:05

Shameer Mehdikhan

likes to write. Yeah. he's a dual major.

00:01:08

Shameer Mehdikhan

Yeah. So, I mean, back in the day I had, you know, big dreams of making out the Hollywood and wrote a screenplay and it was pretty trash. So that didn't work out. So now I'm just trying to get better at writing my novels.

00:01:20

Shameer Mehdikhan

No, this is an aside, but writing screenplays is hard, bro. Like writing novels is in a way kind of easier, like even though they're longer because you have a lot of space. So you don't have to like really worry about making everything super focused. Like obviously you shouldn't just blab, but with screenplays, man, every page counts. And at least if you're following the formulas by like save the cat and like these other people, like by like page 25, this should happen. Page 50, this should happen. And so,

00:01:49

Shameer Mehdikhan

Like you have to make sure everything is concise. Now, I don't really think Hollywood follows all that or, you know, or they're just being so formulaic. They're just trash. But man, writing screenplays is really hard. That's probably the most hardest, like the hardest thing I've had to do, like between like poetry, short stories, books, like that was pretty tough. So right now, I don't I'm get back into it.

00:02:08

Shameer Mehdikhan

So yeah, no, I'm mainly working on novels. I got two done halfway through the other one. Wow, that's two more than George R. Martin's doing right now. Although his one novel is bigger. His half complete one novel wins a winner. It's probably bigger than all of mine. I'm trying to gas you up. Come on.

00:02:24

Shameer Mehdikhan

All right. Thanks. Thanks. But no, I went, you know, it's kind of an interesting hybrid. Like I feel like a lot of it was just talking about like how to pitch agents and like talk to agents and stuff like that. And I met a couple agents, pitched my stories.

00:02:37

Shameer Mehdikhan

that was nerve wracking. Yeah, it was all. The first one I was just absolutely terrible about. My book is like 108,000 words. And I said it was like 10,000. And she was just like, so confused. It's just like either he misspoke or like, he's just an absolute like idiot who does not know his genre.

00:02:53

Shameer Mehdikhan

But no, the first person kind of like tore me apart and it was really good feedback. And I went to her lecture afterwards and I was like, oh, and this is something I wanted to also talk at some point in our podcast is just like how important stakes are.

00:03:08

Shameer Mehdikhan

You know, because i think a lot of the prompts I have with stories is when you're just like, okay, like, why should I care? Like if this character doesn't do X, Y, and Z, like, why should I care? Like, how is this world going to change, you know?

00:03:20

Shameer Mehdikhan

And then I noticed, I was like, man, like that's something I really need to make better in this story. and It's one of those things that you you get so engrossed in the work you do and not to say that you lose focus or you go off track, but it's nice for someone to just simplify things and take you right back. Like what was that original? It's kind of the basics. And like, and then she was talking a lot about Hunger Games and she just, I guess that's like her best example. And it's, it's a good point. You know, you can look at like the character's motivation, like, okay, why does, you know,

00:03:49

Shameer Mehdikhan

Jennifer Lawrence do what she does and you know all the different characters but then it's like stakes is like okay if she doesn't do this what will happen and why should we care you know and if there's no like internal stakes like why she cares or external stakes like consequences in the world then you're just not going to want to watch you're going to get bored and disinterested and I was like oh my god that's such a good point Cause like, for me, like when I'm trying to like win people over with my story ideas, I try and come up with like the coolest setting with like the most badass things happening.

00:04:18

Shameer Mehdikhan

But then like, if there's no stakes, right. Then there's no tension. Then people like, okay, like this is a cool world but like, Why should I care? Like, why should

Stakes in Different Formats

00:04:25

Shameer Mehdikhan

I stay here? You know, just to kind of reflect a little bit, like when I watch a movie and normally most movies on average are like two hours, sometimes an hour and a half.

00:04:33

Shameer Mehdikhan

I don't feel like that's enough time to, to introduce some stakes that I would care about. when When you have a show that's eight episodes or times or a book, that's hundreds of pages like that's a lot more time to develop those things and can care about yeah and like so for the hunger games like if she doesn't do something like she's gonna die her family gonna die her place you know everyone in her safe town is gonna die so like there's a lot more stakes so then people are like oh my god like she actually has to figure this shit out she can't just like sit around and be like well, what do I want to do with my life? Who oh am I? Yeah, true. But I guess like, i don't know if you've read the books though.

00:05:06

Shameer Mehdikhan

Like, I feel like maybe if you read, like maybe we'll use Harry Potter's game because I think you've read the Harry Potter books. Is the tension and the stakes make more sense in the books versus the movie? Do you think the movie does an accurate job of reflecting the stakes?

00:05:20

Shameer Mehdikhan

That's a good point. Like, I feel like that is sometimes something that can get lost in translation, right? Because you know, books are kind of longer, and movies are shorter, and sometimes you don't, like, have that, like, grip, like, why do I need to watch this, you know?

00:05:33

Shameer Mehdikhan

and i And even though, and I don't think every movie or book needs to really have, like, these crazy stakes, you know? I just think, like, for most stories, it really helps. But for Harry Potter, like, you know, maybe I'll get a lot of crap for this, but I just feel like for the first one, you know, didn't really notice as much the sense of stakes because, like, you know, to me, I like, okay, if Harry Potter doesn't do anything.

00:05:55

Shameer Mehdikhan

What happened? What happens? You know, and like in the first like half of the movie, like it doesn't become imminently clear, like, OK, like some serious bad stuff will happen, you know? And so like you don't feel as glued. But then for Harry Potter, it's OK because it's such an amazing, magical world. Like, you know, you're OK with just like hanging out in the setting, learning that the characters. And I feel like with Harry Potter, those characters really carry it. You know, like the three and their friendship. Like, yeah, that is really what carries that story. no That's an interesting one. so you would you say like at least the first movie or even the first book, like the stakes really were, they would lose this beautiful friendship, like, like this connection that they all three had. I mean, actually at points, like that's a good, fair point. Like she was like the person who was like, talked to us. She was like, stakes don't always have to be this like universe divining, defining thing. Like everyone will die. Like it can be as simple as like, oh yeah, like our friendship will break or like the person I love will no longer talk to me, you know?

00:06:48

Shameer Mehdikhan

Like, even if, like, Ron, Hermione, and Harry, like, if in the end of the book, like, if they don't, like, walk a fine line and, like, figure their shit out, like, you know, like, their friendship only almost broke because Ron got jealous, right? So, like, and that, even though, like, no one's dying, like, that hit the core of its readers so much more because they're like, man, this is personal. It matters to the characters.

00:07:10

Shameer Mehdikhan

And that makes them feel real, right? And that's what you want, right? It's like an illusion, so... But anyways, it got really

Shamir's New York Experience

00:07:16

Shameer Mehdikhan

sidetracked. But that's partly why I was busy because I was preparing for that. And then I talked to a second agent and they actually want to see my stuff. So I'm just preparing that and sending it over.

00:07:26

Shameer Mehdikhan

So I've been a little busy with that. I mean, honestly, I should have probably sent it like right after because some of the agents were like, okay, I don't know why I'll tell a writer to like,

00:07:37

Shameer Mehdikhan

send me their chapters and then they get back to me like six months later. so I probably need to do it ASAP. I'm going to try and get it done in the the next, in this week. So, so anyways, that's that. So that, I think that kind of kept me a little busy. So that's where kind of late, but I feel like in a way kind of worked out because it gives us a lot of,

00:07:56

Shameer Mehdikhan

stuff to talk about you know because there's been some interesting developments the last few days yeah and it's same for me like i went traveling to new york for a couple days quick trip but that was on my mind i like 25 000 steps in a day dude oh my god the amount of honestly again because i'm not from the area like using the subway system too just honestly so astonished by like how this was all built and like again it's just like mind blowing to me. It's so funny. like The first time I went to New York and i didn't really travel much and I went with my, she was my wife at the time. you know

00:08:28

Shameer Mehdikhan

She was just amazed. like She was like, oh my God, why are you so shocked by everything? like the The transit. I'm like, dude, it just blows my mind that like I don't have to worry about being drunk and driving home. I don't have to drive. I don't want to drive through traffic. You just get on subway, go wherever, and everybody's there. And it's not just get on subway.

00:08:46

Shameer Mehdikhan

It's go underground. And people know what to do. And they know what to do. But you could get so lost because there's so many different... After every stop, you could go on like a bunch of do I was an anxious wreck the first time because I was like, oh my God, what if I take the wrong subway? but so Here's the funny part.

00:09:02

Shameer Mehdikhan

Google has gotten so good now that it knows exactly which stops, which trains, which exits you honestly google dude aie' nice phenomenal and it's made it so much easier yeah will say the worst subway experience i just so so random but the worst subway experience i ever had was in paris because like that's i kind of feel in myself as waym when i go around new york you know feel my i know my way around subways and then paris was so stressful bro because like i think ever ever yeah exactly like other like transit systems in europe will actually have like something in english like even japan there might be something in english but like

00:09:37

Shameer Mehdikhan

In France, they're like purposely like, screw you, England. We don't want any English anywhere. they're like It's all French. You know, the people who like, I think when you're going to the airport and back, like on that line, like the person will actually say English at the end.

00:09:50

Shameer Mehdikhan

But every other one, like they just speak in French. They speak any language. In like other major countries, they'll speak in other languages. Wow. So oh man, I took the wrong train there. I got so lost. and They're like wee we we see who played like I know brother that was so bad. Yeah, that's so yeah I was doing that plus just work stuff So I actually haven't had a chance to play I've been playing it feel like I've been playing ninja gated for like five months and I cannot be I'm only halfway through where are you stuck at right now? what they So I just yesterday night I beat this wall dragon and this boss full of like bones and skull oh my my god bro you're not even close yeah i'm about to buy that lycan basically that's a halfway through yeah that was like probably my favorite boss fight yeah oh okay really like yeah i just thought like the whole setting was so yeah you know it's it's so epic i mean i think there's other boss fights that were like harder uh but that one was just so epic bro i don't want to ruin it for you it's

00:10:44

Shameer Mehdikhan

ah ah Have you gone to the Coliseum yet? not yet. Oh bro, it's so epic. That is like probably the most epic moment in the Ninja Gaiden. Okay, so I'm excited for that. i'm I'm still liking it, so when i play in the short verse, I do like that.

00:10:59

Shameer Mehdikhan

all over the place it's hard for me to want to play game consistently if i'm like have to do some other things so i'm glad that i can finally get back but do you feel like if you get away from it for while and you get back into it like it's hard to do good in the game because it's like a harder game yeah sometimes it feels that way so then what i try to do is like i'm trying to practice all the move sets and luckily in ninja getting black like they have a tutorial section that shows you all the movesets and it's not difficult so it's Dude, that staff is so OP. good. So good. Maybe pop people's heads like grapes.

00:11:30

Shameer Mehdikhan

Yeah, it's not even worth upgrading any of the other weapons. Like, this weapon is so... so using a I used, like, the big greatsword because it made me feel like, you know, Guts from Berserk. You know me. but But after a while, I went back to the... Dude, that staff is too good. staff is good.

00:11:44

Shameer Mehdikhan

But no, I get what you mean. cause like And I guess that kind of goes into what I've been playing most recently. Like, I've been kind of alternating between Oblivion Remastered and Clear Obscure.

Gaming Styles: Story vs. Exploration

00:11:54

Shameer Mehdikhan

So you know how hyped I was about Oblivion Remastered when it came out.

00:11:58

Shameer Mehdikhan

So yeah, I mean, I started playing it right away, you know, day one. And, you know, I think everyone probably hates, you know, Bethesda fans definitely hate me as a gamer when I play their Bethesda games because I literally just...

00:12:11

Shameer Mehdikhan

went straight through the main campaign. I did nothing else. I beat the main story in like seven hours, yeah which everyone is like, how can you play Bethesda game and beat the main story in seven hours?

00:12:23

Shameer Mehdikhan

But you know, it's like you're missing out the core experience, the things that made the game great. Potentially. I mean, the guilds, the, uh, all these other things. But that's the thing. It's like, what brings you into the game? And like, for me, like I, I grew up in like the 360 era where we had these like really epic, like Hollywood, like movies where it was just like good pacing.

00:12:40

Shameer Mehdikhan

blast through a main story, you know, like Halo, Resistance, Killzone, Uncharted, you know, and it just like was like an adrenaline rush sure until the end. And so for me, like whenever I play like games now, like I just want to blast through the main story because I really want to digest the whole narrative.

00:12:54

Shameer Mehdikhan

You know, i feel like if I get lost with all these side quests and like I don't really pay attention to like story beats, like why is this character doing that? You know, I get distracted. So like for me, I just blast through the main story. And then if there's good side content that's good enough, then I'll do it. So Like, for instance, I know everyone hates on Starfield, but, like, i actually thought the main story in Starfield was pretty good, and, you know, I actually think the main story in Starfield is better than the main story in Oblivion.

00:13:19

Shameer Mehdikhan

But people might hate me for that. Well, I think people more or less are comparing Oblivion to Skyrim, and I think they like Oblivion better than they do Skyrim. I think, and mean I mean, was watching you Mr. Matty Blaze, and I think he likes Skyrim more, but i think when it comes to the campaign, most people will say the Oblivion campaign is better.

00:13:34

Shameer Mehdikhan

mean, it's good. It's just, i actually thought Skyrim's, sorry, Starfield's campaign was pretty good, And then for me with Starfield, like I understand the exploration sucked, but some of their like, you know, side content quests were really good. Like the Terramorphs or whatever, it was like this alien you had to hunt down that like totally felt like aliens. and It was like creepy.

00:13:53

Shameer Mehdikhan

That was good enough that I thought it was like having two main stories, you know, and it was so epic. And so after I played that, I was like, okay, like I actually want to do all the other, you know, side quests and, you know, and then I did all the,

00:14:08

Shameer Mehdikhan

different faction quests. and Some of them were not the best, but definitely those two, like the main story and the, the Terramorphs just absolutely were really good. And so when it came to oblivion, like I blasted through the main story, it was decent. You know, I think it really shows its age, especially near the end, because like the final boss battle, if you could even call it, that was really anticlimactic. And I was like, okay, I thought I was going to fight this massive thing, but I guess not.

00:14:34

Shameer Mehdikhan

So, you know, I guess kind of spoilers. So, but I had fun. And the thing is like with oblivion, like when I started playing it more, like I actually started to understand why people like Bethesda games, because for me, I was like, man, i don't want to stop and smell the flower flowers. Like as I'm going and doing what I need to do, like, I don't want to just like get lost in these million different things.

00:14:55

Shameer Mehdikhan

But man, when you play oblivion and you're just like going between one town and another, it just seems like you are truly in a fantasy land. Like you just feel like you are lost in this land of endless possibilities.

00:15:08

Shameer Mehdikhan

And there's just some way that Bethesda does it in like Oblivion and, you know, Skyrim in those games, like really where just seems like there's endless possibilities. Yeah. and I think like, so there's another thing that think people think find popular

Game Design Critiques: Oblivion to Ninja Gaiden

00:15:20

Shameer Mehdikhan

in the games, like the Coliseum, which I don't know what you can do with the Coliseum, but that's another thing.

00:15:25

Shameer Mehdikhan

Again, it's a side activity. i remember that from the first time I played it, but I haven't played it in the, But it's a pretty big thing. And I think maybe what you're talking about, like, kind of blasting through the story, it's like a symptom of, like, where we are again in our lives. And I think if you were playing this 20 years ago when you were younger, you might want explore all this. So actually played it when I was 20 years ago, that's what I did, you know? And that's why I was like, oh, my God, like, Oblivion is such a long game. And I remember when I got near the end of Oblivion, it felt like I had just completed a marathon. Right. And I did stuff like the Coliseum. And the thing is, like, back then I was kid, you know? And I didn't know how to, like...

00:16:00

Shameer Mehdikhan

figure stuff like all this stuff out i didn't have the same gaming iq i didn't i couldn't just look shit up yeah so like for instance like if i need to find like a silver sword to kill something like a zombie like okay now it takes me like 20 minutes can i just look at the easiest way of getting it Back then, I remember I had to kill a ghost and I'm like trying my best. And I'm like, why is this ghost not dying? And it was so frustrating. It took me forever to figure out how to kill ghost at that game when I was a little kid.

00:16:26

Shameer Mehdikhan

That's actually really funny. But then that would also distract you. You'd probably a different mission. You're just like, I don't want to do this. Let me go on that. Yeah. That makes sense. And I guess I was also comparing it a Vowed in my mind. And I actually think the two of them are similar enough but different in part that I'm happy I got both of them.

00:16:44

Shameer Mehdikhan

And I actually think there are some things that Avow definitely does better. Like I have way more fun with the combat, which is not surprising, right? Because obviously Avow is way newer. But the one thing that I noticed about Oblivion, like, and I guess this is both a pro and con of Avow, like in Oblivion, like with the way the level design is, like whenever there's like looch or stuff like that, there's not always like a recognizable pattern to where the loot is going to be.

00:17:09

Shameer Mehdikhan

And, you know, there might be like some interesting side path that you can take, but at the end of it, you might not necessarily find anything interesting. Right. So you never really know where something is hitting.

00:17:20

Shameer Mehdikhan

Right. Um, then that, I think that makes it feel more realistic, right. Because in the real world, it's like, not like you're going to have a you know, treasure chest everywhere. Yeah. But you know, it doesn't necessarily feel addicting to me in the same way. It just feels like more open and like interesting, you know?

00:17:37

Shameer Mehdikhan

In a Valve, it's very obvious like where gear is going to be. And it's always there at like a good speed. you know So you you know that when you go exploring somewhere, like what paths will lead you to some new gear.

00:17:51

Shameer Mehdikhan

And every like three, four minutes, like it's like a dopamine rush. Where like you know, like hey, I got this tier. Oh, here's this box. Am I going to get a purple item? Am I going to get a mythic item? And so like it kind of has that like newer looter shooter element. Yeah. So it's a more modern version of the game because you can tell they focused on this quality of life things and the core gameplay loop like what keeps players engaging out back when created oblivion i don't think they were thinking about some of those things right Of course not, yeah. So I feel like, and also having played Oblivion Remastered, I can say that the one thing that did not age well in that game is the the dungeon design. Oh my god, like like, you'll do a main quest, like you're in the sewers, or you're like in some catacombs, and then you finish the quest.

00:18:35

Shameer Mehdikhan

And then you can't just fast teleport out of there. You have to literally backtrack and then get back to the surface and then you can go. And then it's like, Oh my God. And because it's old, right.

00:18:46

Shameer Mehdikhan

Even though they remastered it, like a lot of the walls all look the same. So you're just like, going around like the sewers where everything looks the same where you're going and you don't know where you're going and that's funny let's talk about that all way because like the commonality between that and now what i've been playing ninja get is they took this game they wrapped it around with unreal engine with the models talked

00:19:09

Shameer Mehdikhan

i find this interesting that you're in an area where you're like, wait a minute, there's still problems where, but the thing is like, and and maybe it's because like, this was an open world game. And it was so hard to make an open world game work on those consoles, like the 360 and the, you know, the PS3.

00:19:25

Shameer Mehdikhan

But Honestly, I feel like Ninja Gaiden 2 has held up so shockingly well. It does. Like, the level design is still fantastic. yeah You know, the combat is fantastic. I think the only gripe you could say is the the lack of a locked-on camera. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think that's the only thing I can say is like, okay, this is something they should have really updated.

00:19:45

Shameer Mehdikhan

But other than that, bro, this is almost the exact same game we got. Yeah, and it feels modern. They just spruced up the menus and like... You know, and and and and it's amazing that that's how advanced that game was almost 20 years ago, right? Like, that's crazy. And like, Oblivion, like, it was very advanced for its time, yeah, but like, just showing they did it it is showing its age because I feel like open world games have gone come so far. And I, you you know, maybe this is just my theory, but I feel like the golden era era of those linear action adventure games were really around, like, that generation with the 360 and PS3.

00:20:20

Shameer Mehdikhan

So they really, like, kind of became They almost perfected themselves, right? And they advanced so far in that generation because PS2 was great, PS3 was great, right?

00:20:32

Shameer Mehdikhan

And then after that, like we haven't really like had linear action games like that, right? So there hasn't been that much advancement in their level design and combat and things like that. like you know don't get me wrong like platinum games has definitely advanced things right but because of that like that's why it it doesn't feel so outdated because it's not like there's been that much substantial growth because it was already really good and near perfect open world games i feel like only now because technology is getting better and better and better like now they're really coming into their self into themselves yeah and i think

00:21:06

Shameer Mehdikhan

so here's going to be the that we've seen this and they brought it back how is the new elder scrolls game going to be right like i do think we're gonna see huge advancements in their like level design and their dungeon design and their uh you know just everything combat gameplay like i'm really curious what they're gonna do with their graphics though because you remember demon souls like yeah that looks so good yeah elden ring didn't look that good yeah you know it was different it was kind of odd yeah like you took an older game and you're so that that'll be one but i do think like from a game there yeah and then another thing and i and i kind of hope i mean i don't know i feel like bethesda they kind of take pride in like doing their own thing yeah like for instance like they like todd howard made it a point to say that like we got starfield shooting as good as it is without really getting that much help yeah you know from id

00:22:00

Shameer Mehdikhan

Which, is i mean, yeah, it's a point of pride, but, like, that's not a point of shame to get, like, literally the best people at, like, um making shooters to help you. So I say that because, like, you know, if a Vowed has, like, you know, had more time to kind of develop, like, their action combat, right?

00:22:15

Shameer Mehdikhan

And now you're making, you know, Elder Scrolls 6, like, it's not, like, necessarily, oh, competition. Like, bro, just, like, call them over and be like, hey, like, we liked some of the things you did. we want to do something different. Like how can we learn from you guys and make it even better? Like that's the whole point of all being under the same umbrella. Yeah. I hope they do stuff like that. And who knows how the collaboration will be, but you have these people, you have direct access to these people to use them.

00:22:37

Shameer Mehdikhan

Um, so another interesting thing to talk about before we go off this topic is what do you think about the fact that they quote unquote shadowed out? It was late right around the same time clear obscure was coming out I think like this is a weird scenario because just looking at the numbers, I think on steam, uh,

00:22:54

Shameer Mehdikhan

oblivion sold or had more than a million people playing just on steam alone like that's utterly insane so i bet you through there's like a lot of people played through pass and game pass and bought it and then with clear obscurity had over 700k on steam so like it's kind insane that they both did well it had that many yeah and they just announced that clear obscure has sold two million copies yeah that's that's amazing so i still know i think that's excluding game pass i think that's just two million sold yeah oh sorry yeah so it's it's interesting to know that like they would still drop it and I get Claire as a multi-platform game, but like you have it, you're marketing it with Game Pass. It's like give it, it's time to shine a bit. You know, I still have to think more about that, you know, because this was such a strange strategy. Like it's just, it it's bonkers to me. Like it doesn't make any sense why Microsoft will do it. And maybe like a year or two from now, like it'll make more sense.

00:23:44

Shameer Mehdikhan

And I just kind of get the feeling that like Microsoft inside, like, I mean, this is, this is, Totally speculation. It's totally speculation.

00:23:55

Shameer Mehdikhan

But I think Satya is basically telling him, like, look, like, put the, get you know, pedal to the metal. Like, let's let's go. You know, like, yeah we're not waiting. in You know, we don't care if games are falling on top of games. We don't care if, like, it hurts, you know, this game hurts that game. We're doing the pedal to the metal. We're just going to blast out so many games that we're going to change the narrative and everyone is going to be too busy playing games to talk shit.

00:24:21

Shameer Mehdikhan

You know, because other than that, I don't get it, you know, because it's just been like, oh man, it's been like a rocket ship. It's just like boom, boom, boom, boom. boom You know, like it's not even like I'm an Xbox fanboy, but it's like a lot of what we end up talking on every game, like,

00:24:36

Shameer Mehdikhan

talk show is just it's xbox you know because they're just they're really cranking stuff out and i guess maybe it's because they have 30 freaking studios 30 plus studios but but anyways like mean it's such a strange strategy you know yeah what i will say is satya blasting games out and cranking one out pause no ditty that was kind of gay but yeah far what can't be cracky junks like this one But what I will say is you're right. I do, course, you based on is the way he's talked to the public now about games and him being so involved with it is, yeah, I don't think, not that they don't care.

00:25:11

Shameer Mehdikhan

They just want to put out whatever they can and they'll let the cut consumers decide what they want. and if they can afford more than one game, they will. and if they can't they can't so his philosophy is like give as much content and digest it as you please.

00:25:22

Shameer Mehdikhan

It's almost like Netflix. You know, Netflix just does not care. Like, I feel like they just, whatever, they'll just throw it on there because they know that it's going to stay on there and people will just eventually get around exactly watching it or in this case playing it. So, but, and you know, people are saying like, oh, it had a Barbenheimer effect. Like,

00:25:40

Shameer Mehdikhan

you know, I don't know because like how would like I feel like with Barbenheimer it was like very obvious that these two truly feel themselves because that's all everybody was talking about for this like I don't know I really don't know how these two would have done independently because I feel like they're both strong enough that they would have definitely been able to like stand on their own yeah and sustain for a while and I wonder if Microsoft was like okay we really wanted this to come out last year you know with the Oblivion Remastered they missed their date and then now i can see that and now they're like you know we really want to change the narrative whatever we're just still living out there you know again sucks that it it was spoiled that it was leaked that this thing was coming out and i think it would have been even crazier if we just the day before we're like oh my god but but i kind of want to transition out to talk about click think this is a good point to do that because i want to say like again i haven't played the game yet but based on gameplay videos and people talking about it i think it looks

00:26:34

Shameer Mehdikhan

cool it reminds me of final fantasy oh yeah And just to give some context to people that are listening right now, apparently a lot of the team, and it's a small team, are made up of junior developers from basically Ubisoft, and they found people on Reddit.

00:26:45

Shameer Mehdikhan

They found random people online to help with music, art. So it was just a very, don't want to say like naive. Sounds like a grassroots type of thing it is grassroots but they they were very young developers and the fact that they all came together to put this together and ah ah and it took them years to do it but and be successful like just kudos to that team um so like just want to like start with that like what a great accomplishment yeah so i mean clear obscure i definitely have really sunk my teeth into it and i really am liking it how many hours you in oh i don't know

00:27:15

Shameer Mehdikhan

I mean, I beat the Geppetto Forest, if anyone knows where that's at. So I think that's like the second main boss. But like, you know, I got kind of lost in like, you know, going in this direction and tweaking my gear and stuff like that.

00:27:28

Shameer Mehdikhan

I guess like, and maybe this is cliche to say, i really hate being that guy who's like, nostalgia driven and like, rock movers. But uh,

00:27:39

Shameer Mehdikhan

after I probably got one hour into clear obscure, like my first thought was like, man, they don't make them like this anymore. You know, we don't get these like, you know, like not just amazing settings, but just like well-written games that truly feel like movies. Like, you know, I think like the only one who's really given me that feeling for a while has been Sony, right? Like, and specifically I have to say like God of War and, um, and,

00:28:07

Shameer Mehdikhan

And Last of Us, you know, for as much hate as it gets, like it really, you really feel like immersed in like this, like

Clear Obscure's Impactful Storytelling

00:28:14

Shameer Mehdikhan

movie like thing. And, and for this game, like as soon as I started playing, I'm like, oh my God, this is like good writing, good characters, fascinating story premise, like good pacing, like high stakes, like the tension is there. Like I'm actually like,

00:28:28

Shameer Mehdikhan

it's funny at times, like, bro, these were like the banger games that we used to get out on the 360 and PS3. And like, we just took them for granted. And it's like something changed where like, it used to be just like games that were both like high quality, like amazing story and fun.

00:28:44

Shameer Mehdikhan

That was like PS3 and 360 to me. And then when it transitioned to PS4, it just felt like all we were doing was making HBO. And I guess maybe I sound like a little like paradoxical here because I do think that like,

00:28:56

Shameer Mehdikhan

you know, clear obscure isn't exactly the same as like God of War or Last of Us. Cause you know, though games are like fun, you know, but like the games in a way, like Sony games have gravitated less from away from like, let's just have pure fun and have a good story to now let's just have these like HBO type releases.

00:29:15

Shameer Mehdikhan

Yeah. I mean, so again, just that,

00:29:20

Shameer Mehdikhan

only the first couple hours of the game, does it have those high fidelity pre-rendered cut scenes? And then everything after that is in engine. So it's not like what you're seeing, maybe in the first couple hours might not be the indicative of the entire game.

00:29:33

Shameer Mehdikhan

So that could change. I mean, for me, like, yeah, the, the cut scenes for sure, but it's just, I mean, I don't want to spoil any, anything away, but like after i played like the first hour, bro, like, i was with like I was with my wife and like, bro, after, like within the first hour, I had to put the game away. Like it made me emotional.

00:29:48

Shameer Mehdikhan

yeah And I was just like, oh my God, what is this game? But again, i'm what I'm saying is it can change because again, that's not like that throughout the entire game. Second, um've had friends now but aren't tar pages at all reach out to me and say, hey, what's this game? Have you heard of it?

00:30:02

Shameer Mehdikhan

Kind of crazy, because I'm like, how do you how are you hearing about this? And it's spreading quickly, so I think this game is going to do even better. It's going to long legs. hope so. But three, the other thing I was going to say about this game was, darn, I'm already forgetting.

00:30:14

Shameer Mehdikhan

Oh, this is one of the highest rating rated games ever on metare yeah Like this is kind of insane. like so from I think I was reading that like, yeah. and A 92 and user scores at 9.7. I think it might be higher. I think I was just reading an article that it is actually the highest rated game based off user scores. Yeah, and it's a 9.7. That's insane.

00:30:32

Shameer Mehdikhan

the fact that like that's the highest um we're like from again user squares but and they kind of almost correlate with critics like the consensus is pretty much similar and so i mean the thing is like i you know and i feel like again cliche to say but i feel like this is the baldur's gate three of this year like i think it's only going to get like bigger and bigger it's going to keep snowballing and it's really going to revitalize turn-based rpgs like we're definitely going to see a lot more and i would love to see some western turn-based rpgs you know like that sounds amazing you know but man like

00:31:03

Shameer Mehdikhan

you've you've got to play this game. Like, I know I tell you a lot of times, like, you've got to play this game, but man, this it's this is a special game. Yeah, because most your recommendations are horrible. No, I'm just kidding. No, but for sure, this is next on my list. I think what I'm going to do is, once I beat Ninja Gaiden, I'm going to play Doom first, and then So I think that's kind going to be my backlog.

00:31:22

Shameer Mehdikhan

And just to put it into perspective, like you know how much I love Doom. God, I love Doom. And I was so excited for the next Doom, but honestly, I'm so into this game. I think im I might not touch Doom for some time. That's fair. Give it the time it deserves.

00:31:37

Shameer Mehdikhan

I actually even want to do the side quest. like I just want to like sink my teeth into this. like you know We don't get games like this often. We have very limited time as a adults. Enjoy the games for what they are and don't rush them. So if you find a game that you find like this is amazing and it stands out like a gem compared to other things that are like that you expect to be good, play it through completion, beat it 100%, do whatever you got to do because you'll remember these games.

00:31:59

Shameer Mehdikhan

I mean, who knows? This might even end up in like my top 10. It could. Because I don't know about you. Well, maybe you know kind of switching gears a little bit. might be fun. What is your favorite turn-based RPG?

00:32:11

Shameer Mehdikhan

Turn-based RPG. Oof. I have to think about this. I mean, I had my first answer, but now I might have to revise it. I mean, Pokemon's up there for me, but it's degraded over time.

00:32:21

Shameer Mehdikhan

I guess you can call Pokemon a turn-based RPG, but I never think of it that way. God, what else? don't have to think about it. Well, maybe I can answer and you can think about it. So originally I was going to say Lost Odyssey. I really loved Lost Odyssey. Lost Odyssey is a good game, And that actually... going to similar vibes.

00:32:37

Shameer Mehdikhan

Yeah, yeah. And and I think with Lost Odyssey 2, there was a ah timing mechanic as well. i Oh, where you can do like quick time events you're playing? Yeah, the quick time events, and it helps you do more damage, if I'm remembering. But it wasn't like a blocking type thing. Well, just to give some people more context.

00:32:52

Shameer Mehdikhan

In this game, you can parry, i think, and dodge while even doing turn-based combat. Yeah, and and it's actually, maybe I just suck, but the parrying is hard. Like, you really have to learn the like the enemies and learn their parries and their timing.

00:33:06

Shameer Mehdikhan

But no, I really love Lost Odyssey. I love the story. Just the premise. The action was good. For the time, the graphics were fantastic. I thought that was a super underrated game.

00:33:18

Shameer Mehdikhan

So I love that. And then, yeah, I mean, I love the old Star Oceans. Oh, those are so good. Like, Star Ocean 1, 2, 3. Oh, man. So not to go off on a side tangent, but I think they just remade Star Ocean on the Switch. They did, yeah. I picked it and looks great because it looks like a 2D remake or something, and I'm like, damn, this looks good. Like, going to play this.

00:33:38

Shameer Mehdikhan

I have already lost so much of my life to those Star Ocean games. As soon as I saw that was coming back, I was like, can't. Best games to play on a hacked PSP. Ugh. I mean, I don't know if I can, you know admits you know, say I did anything like that, but from what I've heard, you know, that was pretty boss.

00:33:55

Shameer Mehdikhan

kind translate of my games or my top 10 games ever of all time i want to talk about a game that i thought was going to be one of the best games of the year uh gta 6 because we just found out it's been delayed so i'd like to talk about that a little bit here so yeah how do you feel about that yeah interesting enough you know rockstar said they're delaying to may 26 2026 They're saying they need more time just to, I think, polish and they don't want to crunch.

00:34:25

Shameer Mehdikhan

And on top of that, they randomly dropped a trailer a week after the fact. So did you see the new trailer? I did! oh my god! Everyone's talking about how thick and juicy it is. Yeah, a want to as outut to lucia like a lot of lot They know their audience! Yeah, but dude, holy shit. So they also set after the fact that first of all there's gonna be six explorable areas and I don't remember all of them. Six? Oh my god. Yeah, six. Wasn't there like three?

00:34:49

Shameer Mehdikhan

Yeah, in the last one? Yeah, in the previous three, yeah. So this is huge. on top of it all of it was int engine on a p s five base model insane insane and it looks phenomenal did you watch a digital foundry video about it i still haven't i just saw like little parts of it i was like skipping through it and when they were seeing it they're like yeah this is like you know there is some artifacts there are some problems here which is promising because then it looks like it's actually running in the game yeah and they pointed out that like you know there's definitely upscaling here like you can see you know where it's going down but man that game looks fantastic and if that's like ps5

00:35:22

Shameer Mehdikhan

I mean, PS5 Pro is going to look fantastic. And then eventually when it comes out on PC. PC is going to look better. And who know I'm not saying this is going to be feasible, but maybe one day five, you should to get it running on the Switch too.

00:35:33

Shameer Mehdikhan

You never know. Yeah, maybe.

GTA 6 Delay and Trailer Excitement

00:35:35

Shameer Mehdikhan

But you now that I think about it, like if that is coming out in 2026 and we're thinking the new consoles are coming out in 2027, What in the world? Where are we going to have another? Oh my God. They're repeating what they did with GTA. Yeah. And they'll do three generations.

00:35:50

Shameer Mehdikhan

Like insane. i don't know. It's going to be stupid. And let's tie another topic into this, which I think is not ridiculous, but I think may upset a lot of people is price likes for a current generation console. So we're five years into the current generation. And right now, maybe because of tariffs maybe because of other reasons yeah xbox is getting a price high to $5.99. So this is the first time ever where a console fires into the generation that's gone up not down. Don't forget the Quest 2. Well, forget the Quest 2.

00:36:17

Shameer Mehdikhan

But besides the Quest 2, let's not include that. And I'm so used to, over the last 20 years, getting a console with a slimmer version price reduction, etc. Nintendo Switch was the first console. saw that just didn't go up or down, just remained the same.

00:36:31

Shameer Mehdikhan

But this is the first time. An Xbox Series X 600 and the 2TB model is more seven hundred thirty m which is more than the PS5 Pro. Utterly insane. Dude, I feel like Microsoft at this point, they're, you know,

00:36:45

Shameer Mehdikhan

it's almost It almost makes me laugh.

Xbox's Pricing Strategy and Microsoft's Release Approach

00:36:47

Shameer Mehdikhan

They're like, you know, we have read you internet trollers, you keyboard warriors, you know, get your picture for you. Let's go. We want all the smoke. Let's go. Hold on, hold on. They were just throwing off their gloves.

00:37:01

Shameer Mehdikhan

They're like, bro, we're about the bare knuckle, guys. Let's go, bro. So here's the funny part. You got so much good wealth from Xbox releasing all these fucking games, all these goddamn things. And then they go, oh, yeah, but you do pay extra ten dollars eighty dollars you're to have to pay more money for a console.

00:37:15

Shameer Mehdikhan

Bro, I literally just got an Xbox Series X last year for $350. And now you're telling me to pay $600 or $700. That's so funny. But you know what? I feel like Microsoft does the whole, like,

00:37:26

Shameer Mehdikhan

good, bad, good sandwich, like better than anyone else. they really do Being an Xbox fan is like being in a relationship with the most psychotic girlfriend I can imagine. Like she's just back and forth, back and forth. It's like, all right. Like everyone's given hope all of a sudden shout out. You get all these banger games. Like, and and I feel like when you have good games, they kind of like float everything up, you know? So like about game out. Okay.

00:37:52

Shameer Mehdikhan

People weren't feeling it that much. I loved it. I give it a 9 out of 10, you know, in my mind, but whatever. Would you call that an $80 game? I'd pay $80 for it. For how about? You would?

00:38:03

Shameer Mehdikhan

I would, but with most people, no. I mean, I think that's a $60 game, but I would pay $80 because, I mean, I paid extra money to play it five days earlier. Okay. Because that's how much I was looking forward to it. But no, I don't think it's working like worth $80. I based off i you know i think based off of you know, people's expectations on the amount of content and value they should get for a $60 game, which has changed over time.

00:38:28

Shameer Mehdikhan

I don't think people are going to think a game like that is worth 80 bucks. But, you know, anyways. well Well, look at the best song games in the last year. Some of them were $30 and $40 and $50. Claire Obscure, and I forgot it was like $40, and then the other game I forgot, but like $50. Don't forget Last of Us Part 2, Remake 3, you know.

00:38:48

Shameer Mehdikhan

fuck out here. Not with even more HD graphics. God. They're still selling those things at full price. By the way, people, for those that don't know, they're packaging Last of Part 1 and 2 for $115.

00:38:59

Shameer Mehdikhan

Bro, this game? This game's five years old. Take my money right now. Like, insane. But, I mean, i mean in the end of the day, what you think is worth it is subjective, right? Like, you know, I can kind of say, you know, based off of what most people say, i don't think they would think a game like that is worth $80.

00:39:17

Shameer Mehdikhan

I loved it. i would pay for it at the same time. Like everyone gassed up Baldur's Gate 3. i didn't have that great of a time with it. I think I wasted my money on it but you know,

00:39:28

Shameer Mehdikhan

the vast majority of people would say, oh my God, I'd pay a hundred dollars for that. You know, that was amazing. So, but anyways, the the point I was, I was trying to get at, you know, what Microsoft does so good. You know, it's like, you know, they hit us with a wow. People are feeling it a little bit. Then they hit us with South of Midnight. You know, people were like, okay, know, it's maybe a seven out of 10 game. I'm disappointed.

00:39:47

Shameer Mehdikhan

And then all of a sudden they drop, You know, Oblivion remastered. Oh my God. Now we love Microsoft. We love Bethesda. And all of a sudden all of the other games look better in hindsight now.

00:39:59

Shameer Mehdikhan

And then all of a sudden we know clear obscures coming out. Oh, i get this on game pass as well. And I get do and I get Tony Hawk coming up. Everyone's so happy. Then they hit us with the price hike and everyone's like, Oh my God, what in the world?

00:40:11

Shameer Mehdikhan

But then it's like, I can't even be that angry at Microsoft because I'm also very happy. And then right afterwards they hit us with the Gears of War news. And it's like, oh my goodness. It's like but it pulling me in every direction. So this is the funny part. Like that's considered first party. And they seem to be adopting a variable price strategy, which is what Nintendo's doing. So Nintendo just announced with their Switch 2 that most games will probably be 80, but not all of them.

00:40:35

Shameer Mehdikhan

And then you get Gears of War Reloaded, which is $39.99. And it's free for those that already have the Ultimate Edition on Xbox. So this is more for like the PC and PlayStation crowd, right? Which is interesting enough, they could charged 70 or 80 bucks for that, you know?

00:40:48

Shameer Mehdikhan

But I'm happy they didn't. The only thing I'm disappointed about, even though it looks but all the changes that you're doing obviously seven point one duby atmo hundred ah and twenty FPS multiplayer, 60 FPS campaign, and no loading screens.

00:40:59

Shameer Mehdikhan

But... I like those loading screens though. Yeah, actually do I actually do like the loading Funny enough, I do like those loading screens. They're great loading screens, but anyways. But it doesn't include Gears 2 and 3. I know. Which is very disappointing. But also, it's because we got hyped up on the leaks...

00:41:12

Shameer Mehdikhan

You know, we're on that Hopium. agree. And we were thinking we were going to get all three they were going look at as good as the Ultimate Edition. here's the funny part, because ah Mr. Incognito, who podcasts with Mr. MattyPlays on a weekly basis, he said he had a good authority. And by the way, he's a very well-known, like, credible leaker, that it was the Gears collection, 1, 2, and 3, and it wasn't multiplayer. So someone from, ah I I bet you an official source, like from Xbox, was leaking fake information, most likely to everyone.

00:41:37

Shameer Mehdikhan

Oh. and Or they pivoted. or they But how would they pivot that quick? do You know what I'm saying? I mean, instead of having all three games in one browser, they're going to give us all piecemeal.

00:41:48

Shameer Mehdikhan

So you think they're already working on two and three? I think it would be stupid for Microsoft not to release Gears of War 2 and 3. Like, I just, I don't see a world where in the next five years they do not release a Gears of War 2 remaster.

00:42:01

Shameer Mehdikhan

Yeah, I would. After they see the success of Oblivion, how much everyone is clamoring for follow. And the thing is, I think that just. maybe there's a blanket statement for Americans in general. Like if you give us enough time away from the things we love, then we'll just be like, Oh yeah, just give it to me all over again. You know, like I was so annoyed at star Wars, you know, and now I'm hearing good news by indoor and I'm like, and you're like i that's only that's how okay, you know, and, and, you know, I feel like it's the same. Microsoft is noticing that like everyone had a blast with gears and halo.

00:42:37

Shameer Mehdikhan

Then everyone had even more fun making fun of Gears and Halo. yeah and now people don't even want to talk about Gears and Halo, right? And so now the cycle restarts, you know?

00:42:48

Shameer Mehdikhan

It's been a while. So I i will say this, miss Gears. It's been over seven years or six years since I've played the DLC expansion for Gears 5. I mean, interesting enough, I will play it, not for the story, even though the improvements look good. Maybe maybe I will. It's a short campaign, but I really want to play multiplayer. I think playing cross-play with PlayStation PC is going to be great. There's gonna be a bunch of noobs to Nash and just wall bounce on, and I'm definitely into that.

00:43:11

Shameer Mehdikhan

Because right now the the online multipplay is debt and yeah and what I will say is this is interesting enough. They said, I think August 26th is the release date. There's now multiple games coming at the end of August. And I don't know if it's a coincidence. You got Gears of War, sorry, Gears of War Reloaded. You got Metal Gear Solid Delta. You got Shinobi.

00:43:27

Shameer Mehdikhan

And then you got, there was one other big prominent game, which I'm forgetting. So I don't know why everyone's doing end of August. Well, I think everyone thought that Grand Theft Auto V was going to come out in October yeah and or September. And then they were probably thinking, oh my God, what if we get another Call of Duty in November?

00:43:44

Shameer Mehdikhan

Like, how are we to deal with this? So then they were all thinking, let's do August and September. You're right. so Oh, was it Borderlands? Oh, Borderlands. And Marathon. Are they both coming out with that same one? Yeah, as well. Well, Borderlands, September 12th, got pulled up.

00:43:55

Shameer Mehdikhan

Marathon around the same time, September. It would be nice if some of those are going be up pulled up to early summer, like next month. Yeah, I think some of these dates are going to move, like, especially if Grand Theft Auto 6 has moved. Middelade, yeah. Oh, man, absolutely. People going to start moving their dates around.

00:44:07

Shameer Mehdikhan

Or like if Mafia, they haven't even released a date for Mafia. Yeah, I was wondering if was not. they have a, a state of play, but they have a, deep dive i think next week for it maybe they june july they'd fill the void there's really nothing coming out those months besides nintendo switch games i feel like that would be a nice you know that makes sense because i think everyone's trying to avoid the switch release and then they were trying to avoid grand theft and the potential and i think that's why everyone is just slamming into those months and now we're actually going to get it a little more spread out i wonder if that's why like you know

00:44:37

Shameer Mehdikhan

March, April, May have been, and mean especially April, May have been kind of busy, you know, because they're trying to avoid those two big days. Yeah, agree. You know? Another thing I will say is I think Gears is big enough that it will sell multiple i will say millions of copies on playstation and not not Like, can't see one or two millions easily. Yeah, I think people sleep on how popular Gears is. Like, I know multiple people who are massive Sony fanboys and they talk smack about, you know, Xbox.

00:45:05

Shameer Mehdikhan

But they'll tell you, like, oh, yeah, man, I remember playing Gears back in the day, bro. That was fun. And the thing is, it's because, like, even after all this time, there is truly nothing that captures Gears.

00:45:15

Shameer Mehdikhan

You know, there's nothing that has that same third-person action, over-the-top, like, masculine attitude, like, great blood, guts, you know. You know, like Doom, you can kind of argue is kind of like Gears, but that's first person. And they're multiplayer. You know, Warhammer kind of had that feel, but, you know, that's the closest we've gone, I think, in all that time.

00:45:35

Shameer Mehdikhan

And what other great third-person shooting game is there with a good multiplayer? 100% nothing. It's literally just Gears. It's just Gears. It's so unique, and whatever they had created at the time was like lightning in a bottle and again it's unparalleled. so now And no one's really been able to compete with Gears like all this time like Mass Effect had a great, Mass Effect 3 had a pretty good combat system. They tried to do some, like, you know, multiplayer stuff. But, you know, Gears was so good at what they did. And then they had Horde mode, Beast mode, all those things. Like, you know, everyone copied the Horde mode. But, like, no one no one tried to go toe-to-toe.

00:46:09

Shameer Mehdikhan

Especially when it's been this silent for years and you still couldn't release a project. And if you think about it, like, I think that's why Xbox Fanboys is so big on, like, Halo and Gears. Because at that time frame, like... There was no competition. There was no third person game that was trying to be like Gears and succeeded. There was no first person game that was trying to be like Halo and succeeded. yeah right It also speaks to my childhood because for me it's nostalgic where I was in the middle school and high school i'd come home every day Gears for like, I'd eat dinner and I'd pick Gears for two to four hours a night.

00:46:41

Shameer Mehdikhan

And I would then sometimes hang out with my friends over the weekend and eat, get food and play that game over and over again. And that and Halo. And it's just like, it just reminds me of a time where like that game is now associated with the best moments of my life. I mean, that's the nostalgia, man. That's the nostalgia. That's the opium.

00:46:56

Shameer Mehdikhan

And you know, for me with Gears, I probably won't play this campaign. And it's solely because back when I was young, you know, we didn't have things like Game Pass, you know, my parents didn't buy me that many games. So I would get a game and I would play that campaign like crazy. yeah So tis specifically, i played the Halo 1 and 2 campaign so many times.

00:47:17

Shameer Mehdikhan

Played Halo 3 a lot to the campaign, but really I just played that one into campaign like crazy. and Gears 1 campaign. I played that so many times. I probably remember like every freaking room and who's going to spawn when. It's just absurd.

00:47:29

Shameer Mehdikhan

And so because of that, I'm like, I really don't want to replay it because I've played it so much. Like I really want to replay 2. And even 3, but really, Gears War 2, I want to replay that so bad. Yeah, 2 and 3, I want to replay that so bad, especially 2. But what I will say this.

00:47:43

Shameer Mehdikhan

This game, I think, this remake or remaster has been made in conjunction with Coalition and two other studios. So it'll be interesting to see what they take from this and putting Gears, eat it. Like the new one coming out next year.

00:47:54

Shameer Mehdikhan

and Oh, I don't know if you heard, but you know how they were talking about people who can fly or whatever? They have like a secret Xbox game? That was this. That was this, yeah. So I wonder... Does that mean that if they're really leading the charge, that year six is farther along in development than we think?

00:48:10

Shameer Mehdikhan

Gear six? Yeah, gear

Franchise Loyalty vs. Platform Preference

00:48:12

Shameer Mehdikhan

six. Okay. Like actually a gear six, like a sequel to gears five. So do you think that like they'll do gears, eat in a year later, gear six? I don't think it'll be a year. I mean, if my, if that's Microsoft strategy, then that's really smart. Like if they were planning on doing like, you know, gears, your E day followed by gear six, and they're planning on doing like Halo one, you know, remake, which is what I'm speculating. Right.

00:48:33

Shameer Mehdikhan

and followed by Halo and Infinite 2, again, speculation. That's smart to keep the hype train going, but I don't think they'll do that. I think game development takes too long. Even if they wanted to do that, I think they would space it by two years just because it takes a while.

00:48:46

Shameer Mehdikhan

But if you think about it, like if it's been how many years? Like five years since Gears 5? Six. Six years since Gears 5. And if, you know, they have a pretty big studio, right?

00:48:58

Shameer Mehdikhan

And I know Rob left, but still they have pretty talented people out there. And If they're not even doing the primary development on Gears E-Day, and you know it didn't take them that long to make Gears 5, they made it pretty fast. They made it like three, four years.

00:49:13

Shameer Mehdikhan

there's To me, unless you just scrapped Gear 6 a million times, they have to be fairly far along. I would agree with that. like This remake probably was a small team dedicated to it with the other support studios.

00:49:27

Shameer Mehdikhan

And then you split your time between E-Day and a a sequel. And I think, okay, what I want to say is like based on what they're doing with this remake, I think they need to go back to the basics in terms of the multiplayer. That's like the actual...

00:49:38

Shameer Mehdikhan

while the story is good i think it's associated with this multiplayer so if you're gonna do a new game like eat it or six, the multiplayer should be reminiscent of that. You don't need it to be an esports or competitive like game.

00:49:48

Shameer Mehdikhan

You just need it to be fun. Yeah. I mean, honestly, even if you do a nostalgia play, that's just a little bit more advanced. Like people will soak it up because they haven't been able to play anything like that in a long time, you know?

00:49:59

Shameer Mehdikhan

and you know And I guess this is kind of related, but you know as an Xbox fanboy, for a long time it really bothered me that like the console was dying and this and that. and And for me, I think I've like gotten in my pace with it. you know For a while it bothered me for like a number of reasons. like One, I realized that Xbox is dead.

00:50:17

Shameer Mehdikhan

You know, like Xbox has resurrected itself because Xbox should have died. And it did die in like 2000, whatever, 17, 15. If Satya is going to, you know, Phil and basically saying like, we're going to pull the plug, you know, and that Phil is like, listen to this crazy idea yeah I have, you know, honestly, it should have died then, right? Based off the numbers, like Halo, Gears, all those things, you know, and the fact that as a fan of those franchises, I'm still getting those games and, you know, I'm still getting something.

00:50:50

Shameer Mehdikhan

To me, i that's a miracle. You know, that's amazing because like it could have went the way of not just Sega, but like ah ah so many other game companies, right? I mean, they spent half their work just to resuscitate the whole thing. So like, yeah you're right it could have it was either do or die like and so for me i'm like you know the fact that microsoft is still a player in the in the game that's huge you know and so really like we shouldn't even be getting new halo and gears games regardless of what their quality is like you know it's a surprise that they are so that's one thing and then you know it makes me so jealous that we haven't done a resistance game again don't even get me started about that i need a new resistance game and a new kill zone and sorry i feel like i have adhe right now i'm just going everywhere but uh

00:51:28

Shameer Mehdikhan

Have you seen those clips when they compare, i don't know who is doing this and I'm getting targeted with this. They show Metroid Dread, the two, not Metroid Prime 4, and they compare the gameplay of that to Killzone 2.

00:51:42

Shameer Mehdikhan

And then they're like, oh man, look at how crappy games are. You know, we haven't even advanced past Killzone 2. And I'm like, all right, cool your jets, guys. It's actually kind of funny. But no, I say like as an Xbox fanboy, like, yeah, the death of the console really bothered me.

00:51:55

Shameer Mehdikhan

yeah But then I realized like now I'm more loyal to the franchises, like especially when now these franchises are exiting the game world and they're even going into movies and television and stuff like that. Like, you know, now I'm more loyal to like Gears as a franchise, Halo as a franchise, you know, or Fable as a franchise, you know, Perfect Dark as a franchise, not necessarily to like the the box where that franchise lives.

00:52:21

Shameer Mehdikhan

And I say that because sometimes what's best for the franchise is not what's necessarily best for the parent company or even for the console, right? Yeah. Like to me, like objectively, what's best for the Gears franchise is releasing, you know, this remastered version on the PS5, right?

00:52:38

Shameer Mehdikhan

Because now for the first time in such a long time, like Gears is hot, you know, like people are talking about it. They're curious, they're interested. I mean, yeah, like, you don't get me wrong when Gears Eday showed off its trailer, oh man, like people were hyped. Yeah. But from what I was hearing, like even, you know, the amount of people who are playing Gears 2, you know, like the original version, you know, that's gone way up, you know, across the board, there's a new enthusiasm.

00:53:05

Shameer Mehdikhan

And so for me, like if you're getting a bunch of new players in and now we don't have to worry about like, you know, Microsoft, Sony fanboys fighting it all over what's best and everyone's just playing it.

00:53:16

Shameer Mehdikhan

I think that's objectively better for the Gears franchise because, you know, for a while I wasn't sure if the Gears franchise would continue. you know Yeah, honestly, that's why I'm so upset that we're not getting even a remaster of fucking games.

00:53:31

Shameer Mehdikhan

i love that mu have fuck the multi just remaster the fucking stories or a kill zone like you can't tell me that as selling they've so prioritize all these new IPs. They're like, we can't go back. Yeah, you can.

00:53:41

Shameer Mehdikhan

Microsoft is doing it. Nintendo is doing Nintendo has the lineage of constantly remastering old games and making new ones on top it, even if they don't sell well. So like, I don't understand with Sony, they're like, they're always so risk averse to like taking old IP and nostalgia and saying, yeah, it's just, we know it's not gonna sell it. Like, dude, how do you know that? Like,

00:54:01

Shameer Mehdikhan

I don't know. i just feel like I wish Sony would take more risks. And maybe you can say they're taking risks by making new IP. But in my opinion, they're being safe because most of those new IPs were selling a lot of copies compared to their older franchises.

00:54:12

Shameer Mehdikhan

Yeah, I mean, it's a strange business tactic. I really don't understand why Sony doesn't go back into like their beloved collection, you know? There's so many games. Especially for me, Resistance and Killzone is one where I just cannot comprehend it. Yeah, I literally cannot comprehend Even like Jackson Daxter, like,

00:54:29

Shameer Mehdikhan

fine you know like ratcheting bank is still alive so why not check and down street well so funny thing is what was the company we just talked about that's make gears eating oh people can fly they're also now working with sony on a ip like an existing ip and they haven't announced what game it is and i hope they got it siphon filter well it's probably going to be a shooter because they're they're experts that's either siphon it's either siphons sorry siphon resistance or kill zone and i hope it's resistant i i feel like it's gonna be but like if you look at the three out of all three why siphon why do siphon because okay if i'm remembering wasn't siphon filter wasn't that third person it was third person and it was made by the people made days gone look i i feel like in their logic you know they're gonna say okay like people aren't playing you know story-based first person shooters and the first person genre i think and

00:55:21

Shameer Mehdikhan

I kind of see this too. I feel like the first person shooter genre has really been evolving quickly. You know, it's like, by the time you, you know, get on the battle of Royal, you know, train, either you release the half-baked game or now we're already moving on to extraction shooters.

00:55:36

Shameer Mehdikhan

No. And so, I think especially Sony, like they're not about that. You know, they don't want to, you know, bring Killzone back and invest heavily in their multiplayer. And by that time that multiplayer comes out, who knows if that's even the fact, you know? And I feel like with Helldivers too, like that was the exception because they really didn't expect a ton, you know?

00:55:56

Shameer Mehdikhan

I don't think anyone did, you know? And that was just like oh my God, this blew up, right? so I think because of that, like, I think their calculations are a little bit more careful about, you know, Killzone and Resistance, which sucks. I would love to have them back.

00:56:09

Shameer Mehdikhan

And for whatever reason, like, Sony just does not do AA games, you know? Like, they really want to make every game into, like, a, you know, AAA, like, blockbuster hit, and then they always want to release two every year, you know? Like, that's their cadence. It's just unfortunate. And...

00:56:24

Shameer Mehdikhan

I mean, I look at this too, like Ted Price, who just announced his retirement from Insomniac, the ah ah studio head basically said, we pitched a resistance Ford to Sony. We got shot down. We had an idea for the story and they would continued it.

00:56:36

Shameer Mehdikhan

but they're like because the other ones didn't sell well we just were shot down and then the days gone developers what's the studio's name? Sony ban? Sony ban? No no is it Sony ban? Yeah Sony ban. They pitched a pitch they open world resistance game and they also got shot down that's when they did I don't know why they don't like resistance like did resistance just not do good numbers for them?

00:56:56

Shameer Mehdikhan

Well resistance they have all three of them sold the worst they only sold like 1.5 million copies the other two were like two to four million each but it's not horrible that's actually way worse than i would have thought yeah it's it's worse than i thought too but still like that that genre is like still my like returnal to me doesn't fill that itch you know well you know this goes back to what we were talking about with stakes like yeah like when we were talking about stakes like you know those old alien invasion video games like that's such a primal thing you know like we have to survive the alien apocalypse you know and we used to get a lot of those not even in hollywood and even you know in video games and like you just don't see that as much anymore you know it was just it was just kind of sad you know i feel like that was so popular in the 2000s and you know maybe people were just got sick of it and now they're like moved on to other stuff and i'm sure it'll come back but

00:57:47

Shameer Mehdikhan

But like, if you're, again, it's so hard to just pivot now. Look at Sony taking risks with Bungie with, and two or three other games. Was it Fair Games and then Concord and all these things. And if those are failing, like why would they want to go back to some of their older, you know?

00:58:03

Shameer Mehdikhan

and And who knows? Maybe they do it. I don't know. Maybe it ends up being more successful. But gonna be hard to market. I don't know. Oh, this is so random, but I just heard about this. I think the news broke today.

00:58:14

Shameer Mehdikhan

Did you hear about the the new Sony studio? No. Okay, I guess I don't know if it's actually a new. You can call a new Sony studio, but yeah, I just pulled up the article. PlayStation has a new internal studio spun out from Bungie.

00:58:27

Shameer Mehdikhan

So it's called yeah Team LFG. Okay, but is this the one making Gummy Bears or is this the new one that's making that prototype game? What you mean Gummy Bears? So there's a another game being made by Bungie that's it's a codenamed Gummy Bears.

00:58:40

Shameer Mehdikhan

And then there's another team-based spun off. They announced this last year. I think this would be the team-based game. I don't know because all I see online is it's Their first project is a team-based action game that draws on fighting games, platformers, MOBAs, life sims, and frog-type games.

00:58:57

Shameer Mehdikhan

Okay, so this was the second team. So basically, they took a group of, I think it was a very small team of 10 or 20 people, and they spun that up because they were working on a prototype Bungie and they saw enough potential in there that they made it their own studio. So it's not a beefed up studio and I wonder if they're gonna say, hey you create the prototype and then we'll outsource the rest of the work. You know it's weird that they they maybe, i don't know if they're just trying to get more attention by calling it a new internal studio, but I mean is that not very similar to what like Grounded was? Exactly.

00:59:28

Shameer Mehdikhan

It's just like a small team that's working, you know, but they plucked, they see the difference is they plucked them out because they were downscaling Bungie at the time and firing a bunch of people last year. So they just took them out and said, we want to spinning off and maybe because they weren't confident leadership or something like that.

00:59:43

Shameer Mehdikhan

Yeah, kind of protect them from like the rest of the mascot as Bungie. That's interesting though, now that they officially announced like like okay this is the inspiration they're taking from for their game, but who knows when that will so actually come out. so i guess i Since we're talking about Bungie, what did you think about that new Destiny trailer?

01:00:02

Shameer Mehdikhan

I thought Destiny was done. I didn't realize they were really going to at it. This is another thing Sony announced last year when they they were doing the changes. as They're still going to do two expansions a year, or roughly two expansions every year now is this actually officially a cross-collaboration with Star Wars because they have what looks like... It seems really to legitimate, honestly. like the The masks and stuff look really like Wars. Yeah, so if you go to the front page of the PlayStation Store, you got one of the...

01:00:28

Shameer Mehdikhan

characters holding a lightsaber and then you got another one that has like a gun so it looks like Han Solo so I think this is don't know if this is an official Star Wars cross collab I don't know I mean to me it didn't seem like it was an official collab but then the items were so Star Wars was like how can you be this Star Wars yeah you know without it has actually being an official collab so I mean I thought it was interesting I don't know if they showed off gameplay or not I think they did a very little honestly like every time I see something in from Disney I'm like I want to play it but Like, how do I get it back into it?

01:00:59

Shameer Mehdikhan

Because I don't think you can just start with it. Yeah, I mean, I think I'm kind of done with Destiny for now. Like, I thought about playing the last expansion because I got good reviews, but, you know, I don't know. I just feel like I've spent so much time with Destiny and every time you leave it for a while and you get back into it, like, it just feels like too much of a mountain to climb, you know?

01:01:18

Shameer Mehdikhan

And, I mean, the the trailer actually, to me, looked better than I expected. Now, again, my bar was so low because I expected nothing. yeah And so the fact that it's... Seemed like there was new guns that looked interesting. Yeah. A bit of a story. i was like, okay, like I guess Destiny is not dead. Yeah.

01:01:35

Shameer Mehdikhan

But I don't think I'm going to get back into Destiny 2. That or even Marathon, just to again, side tangent, but like I've been hearing out people playing the closed alpha and they are saying it's unique enough that they don't think there will mass appeal for the game. And it's interesting. They didn't do an official state of play for it.

01:01:49

Shameer Mehdikhan

And I think I'm starting to understand why it's like, it's not a hardcore game, but it's not yeah for the faint of heart. It's like, Yeah, I think you you were right. I think I was wrong. Like, when I was saying, eight what did I say? 800 something? Oh, my God. No way. It's going to be like 100, 120.

01:02:04

Shameer Mehdikhan

You know, it's going to, I think it's going to be successful, but it's not going to be this just massive thing. I think it's going to be like an addition to the sandbox of different games, like not like the biggest leader, you know? they'll find a way to monetize it. So over the long period or a long time, they'll have a long lives to make. mean, I think like the way they see is like, what's the upshot? Like, oh, could this become like,

01:02:25

Shameer Mehdikhan

Fortnite, you know, like that's of of the extraction genre. last time And then they're like, okay, like that's the upside. That's pretty good. Okay. Like what's worst case scenario, you know? And I don't think they think it's going to like completely fizzle out and have nobody. Right. Because like you look at escape from Tarkov, like there is a dedicated fan base that loves extraction shooters.

01:02:45

Shameer Mehdikhan

There's no, you know, real competition except for, you know, escape from Tarkov. So, you know, they'll probably be able to carve out enough people who stick with it long enough.

01:02:56

Shameer Mehdikhan

And then they're early enough that, it you know, who's, When's the next extraction shooter really coming off? I mean, it will be interesting. I think the only thing that could completely screw them off is if Arc Raiders just ends up blowing up. If that blows up, then that would suck

Titanfall's Unrealized Potential

01:03:12

Shameer Mehdikhan

them. Well, that's another funny, interesting thing is EA just had Respawn working on an extraction shooter in the Titanfall universe, and they just fired 300 to 400 people and they canceled their extraction shooter. Crazy, man.

01:03:25

Shameer Mehdikhan

Crazy. So that could have been competition there. I know. you know God, I mean, that that one actually heard. I forgot about that. But, mean, i love Titanfall 2. I really do. And I think it's so sad what happened to Titanfall. Like, the original one it was an Xbox exclusive.

01:03:41

Shameer Mehdikhan

Really, that could have been, like, the next big game. Could you imagine if we were alternating between... halo gears and titanfall i know oh man and that would have slotted in perfect with the repertoire and funny enough we talked about earlier about releasing claire obscure and oblivion remember when they released timefall 2 and battlefield 1 at the same time you know i'm so happy you brought that up because when they announced those two going out that was one of the things i thought about about i was like oh my god i hope this is not a battlefield moment and a timefall moment but you know i don't know why nobody really paid attention to timefall 2 you know

01:04:13

Shameer Mehdikhan

They are kind of different games, but I guess, you know... it was such a It was such a young studio that that was their first output when they joined EA. Yeah. Oh, didn't realize that. Yeah.

01:04:24

Shameer Mehdikhan

but and And the thing is, the game was really good. It's just, man, like, I guess... it's the same type of gamer who's interested in both, but maybe it's not the same type of gamer who's interested in both Claire and Oblivion. Yeah. I don't know.

01:04:38

Shameer Mehdikhan

Maybe it's more the nostalgia heads who are playing Oblivion Remastered and Claire is more a game for people who like JRPGs. Yeah, exactly. So maybe there was like a separate, yeah, it's, that was hard to say. I honestly can't even justify why, like, cause like imagine, imagine you're someone with inflation now, cause back then it was different you only have enough money to buy one of those two games oblivion orlar and then you go i'm getting both or there's enough people to say i want yeah i don't know that's that's a tough one i i it just still blows my mind that time paul 2 did as terrible as it did i mean i guess back then like call of duty was also a juggernaut right yeah and so i mean it still is but back then really like there was everyone was just buying copies of games right like they weren't playing war zone so well funny enough both ips have essentially died but guess what they're bringing back that

01:05:25

Shameer Mehdikhan

Out of the two, they decided to bring back Battlefield. Well, I think Battlefield is definitely the most more popular one, right? Like it's had way more releases. I think there's a more dedicated, larger fan base, you know?

01:05:37

Shameer Mehdikhan

you bring that back, you're definitely competing against COD. Like that's a conscious decision. Oh yeah, I think that's always been their answer to Call of Duty. But I guess for me, it's just so sad. It's like they never let Titanfall just...

01:05:49

Shameer Mehdikhan

have a chance every time

Borderlands 4 Reveal and Reception

01:05:51

Shameer Mehdikhan

they just kill it at the knees man every time and it's like they didn't let Titanfall 3 happen and then Apex happened which was kind of you know you know stealing some of the things from Titanfall and now like a Titanfall extraction should have could have actually potentially been good yeah think I think could have they've already like with Apex it's basically taking Apex and probably like altering it a bit I think Apex like when i played it at the time it was unique it was interesting it just wasn't my type game I mean i'm not into Battle Royales but I feel like out of the ones I played, Apex was one of the ones that I enjoyed more. Yeah, exactly.

01:06:24

Shameer Mehdikhan

So like if they put a twist onto that and made it next turn, I'm like, i could I could have seen it. And again, in the Titanfall universe. and Interesting. Yeah. So yeah, another game to talk about because we've been talking about Destiny and games similar to it is Borderlands 4. So PlayStation just recently had a deep dive on it. They did a dedicated state of play. They also posted the deep dive on the, what was it? not the epic, but Gearbox channel on YouTube.

01:06:48

Shameer Mehdikhan

It was about 20 minutes long. i found it interesting. Again, the funniest thing about Berlin's is the cover art is always so unique. So I don't know you've seen the new cover art. I not, no. It's one of the, you know, the characters with the mask, they're hanging by like a chain and it's like all red. And it's like, man, the cover is always so good in some way. The last one was like one that looked like Jesus.

01:07:08

Shameer Mehdikhan

And then the one before that was like really funny too. so it was just like, don't know. I always liked the cover art. Yeah. Yeah. Huh, okay, yeah, I was just looking it up. That is interesting. Yeah, so that that was interesting. I would say the one concern I had from watching the deep dive is...

01:07:23

Shameer Mehdikhan

The performance didn't look good, and they're talking about how they're pulling up ah ah the game ahead it of time, two weeks. So it was September 23rd, now they're pulling up to September and Randy Pitchford basically said that's based on the team just being very confident game. So performance look well. If the game is completing, they just have to optimize it for frame rate and stuff like that, then they could potentially get it done at that time. Yeah, that's possible.

01:07:44

Shameer Mehdikhan

The one thing I did like is the UI seemed very overhauled. I just beat Borderlands 3, so I can... probably make some comparisons. The biggest complaint was Borderlands 3 had the drop rates for legendary guns.

01:07:55

Shameer Mehdikhan

It was just too often. Like you could find them so easily to the point where they became useless in a sense. Like I could, I beat the game because I found so many legendaries at the beginning of the game. I just just slaughtered everything. So it wasn't really a challenge.

01:08:07

Shameer Mehdikhan

They said they're definitely working on that. So i think f based on what they said in the video it sounds like orleans sport iss going to be a true successor to two and since that they're adjusting drop rates, they're giving people more of what they want. So verticality and movement, they've changed it in a way such that it kind of feels like destiny now.

01:08:24

Shameer Mehdikhan

You can literally glide, you can dash, you can, what else? There was another another type of movement. It was all similar destiny. So that's why I'm happy you brought it up because after, okay, so You know, confession, I had no intention of watching the Borderland 4 video, right?

01:08:40

Shameer Mehdikhan

And now that we're doing this podcast, I was like, okay, I know Arjun's going want to talk about this for sure. And I was like, okay, I should probably watch the video, you know, but I had no expectation. i I'm not even exaggerating. i had zero interest in buying Borderlands this year.

01:08:56

Shameer Mehdikhan

you made me buy Borderlands 3. I never played it. Then I reselled I don't think I ever even took it out of the wrapping. And it's because like, i I don't know, when I was younger, I tried like Borderlands at my buddy's house and i just, for whatever reason, I couldn't get into it.

01:09:07

Shameer Mehdikhan

But man, when I saw that, you know, deep dive of Borderlands, I was like, man, am I just an idiot? Like, did I just miss Borderlands this whole time and not realize that it's actually something that totally is my niche, like something I would love.

01:09:21

Shameer Mehdikhan

And when I got done watching it, I was like, bro, like this is what Destiny should be. yes This is what I've always wanted Destiny to be. be And I just felt like it was an absolute slam dunk. And again, maybe it's because I had such low expectations. That's why I was just so blown away. But I was like, okay, combat looks amazing.

01:09:37

Shameer Mehdikhan

You know, the fact that they have unique legendaries, that's awesome. They look like they're fun to use. You have a bunch of different, you know, people that you can be, and they actually have really fascinating abilities.

01:09:49

Shameer Mehdikhan

They have like... an RPG-like tree yeah that can like significantly change the way you play your character. I'm like, that's insane. Co-op, okay. And then, you know, the one thing that I was curious about, i was like, okay, the premise is interesting. Is the story going deliver? Because I just feel like a lot of games, the story just has not delivered the same.

01:10:10

Shameer Mehdikhan

But overall, like it went from something that I had 0% interest in buying and playing. And now, you know, you know I might actually buy it. you know I think I'm still... It's one of those things where it's like, I want to see what the reviews look like because it's not a game that has always caught my attention. So I don't want to run out and buy it and then get disappointed.

01:10:30

Shameer Mehdikhan

But man, I just felt like that is how you present a game. yeah like And I was like, I wish other developers learned from this. Like, this is how you show off your game. Yeah, 100%.

01:10:41

Shameer Mehdikhan

Like, to me, Destiny always felt like a half measure. Like, the gameplay was very tight. The experience was tight, but the story was told through the grimoire. And the grinding? Oh my god. With Borderlands, you have a true RPG system, right?

01:10:54

Shameer Mehdikhan

And on top of that, the story, even though some people complain about, like, three stories, like, all of them had a very great, unique story. story from start to end. Like it was good enough that it's like I'm experiencing like a whole like movie or like a whole arc and these characters are growing and you're like okay like I see it even when I played Borderlands 3.

01:11:12

Shameer Mehdikhan

For the most part, I really enjoyed the story and it took 30 hours for the main path without doing any side mission. You know, I'll be honest, like when you were telling me, yeah, I'm getting back into Borderlands 3 and when I'm playing, I'm like, what is wrong with this guy? I'm like, he has to play freaking Last of Us. We're harassing him to play High Five Rush.

01:11:29

Shameer Mehdikhan

What is this guy doing? Why is he playing Borderlands 3? So... you know maybe i'll i'll try out borderlands 4 and then i'll be like okay now i get it now i see why it's so famous well well let me say this there's a reason why they try to make a movie off of work yeah right it's a very popular successful love franchise yeah and and and i'll say this like i know this game from a gameplay perspective is going to be good cause they're going to take what didn't work in three and improve that and what did work good in two and improve that the question now is how will the story be and i think i'm i'm confident that the gameplay is gonna be very good i'm not worried about that. What I'm curious about is just starting an even its core. If the story isn't the best, it's still going to be a great game overall. And and I think it's, i really think it's going to be a slam dunk.

01:12:12

Shameer Mehdikhan

I mean, we'll see. I, know, I i said 870,000 people for marathon. So don't always have the best predictions, but you know, I mean, now that Destiny is fading away, like what is Borderlands competition? Exactly, nothing.

01:12:25

Shameer Mehdikhan

And the funny thing is every Borderlands game has sold at minimum 10 million units, at minimum. So I think from a franchise perspective, they've sold over 40 to 50 million in total for the four games, and that averages out to 10 million per, but they've also announced that too. Like that's that's been their biggest moneymaker, and the fact that Take-Two then bought Gearbox from, what was the, Embracer, tells you that they saw the potential in it too. So I'm not too worried. The one thing I'm curious about is they didn't announce a real estate for the Switch 2, so they announced that it's coming to the Switch 2, but it's not coming out day and date. Borderlands 4? Borderlands 4. And I'm wondering, like should I wait to get it on the Switch 2 or not?

01:13:01

Shameer Mehdikhan

Well, it's cross-play, right? It's cross-play, cross-progression. and the cool

Anticipation for GTA 6

01:13:05

Shameer Mehdikhan

thing was i played Borderlands 3 portably on the ROG Ally and something like i love that but it's not gonna look as good on the switch to that so i mean for me I mean it might be different because it's a shooter and you want it to be precise but honestly my preferred way to play nowadays I just buy it on my Xbox and then I can you know play on my big TV And then with my ROG Ally, like I can just easily stream to it. And it's pretty good. You know, I'm streaming at home. So the connection is pretty good.

01:13:33

Shameer Mehdikhan

There is some lag, but it's not terrible. And I'd rather not do it on the PlayStation because I just think it's beyond stupid for me to have to buy another PlayStation portable. for the sole reason that playstation is making their streaming app really shitty yeah you know and the xbox streaming app just works you know exactly and again they always it's so funny because the streaming app on game pass says beta like whatever you do shit but it's like it's so good it's like it's just fine so so that's probably how i'll buy it and play it but uh i mean honestly i feel like if you even just got on steam that's not a bad way at all to play it's not it's not and i like that again this game is a four-player co-op game how many and split screen two-player split screen so again i just i'm excited and i love that i actually beat borderlands this year i know it took me seven years to play that game but like i'm actually happy that i finished it this year because had i not i think with all that time elapsed i don't know if i would have got back into warland yeah so i guess like i mean getting back to one of the things we were talking about earlier grand theft auto 6 right so you know

01:14:35

Shameer Mehdikhan

Honestly, I feel like Take-Two, we were already thinking, alright, you already have enough releasing this year, like, do you really need Grand Theft Auto 6? I guess this does give Borderlands 4 and Mafia has some more time to breathe, right?

01:14:46

Shameer Mehdikhan

I think that it's needed. Like, have had they pulled up Borderlands, but then they go a month from that, they go, oh, here's GTA 6. Regardless of if they're the same genre or not, it would have been drowned out. And I think this this was smart. but And the thing is, with Grand Theft Auto, like, I feel like Grand Theft Auto 5 was so polished, and Because of that, the expectations are so high for Grand Theft Auto VI.

01:15:07

Shameer Mehdikhan

Not only do you have to you know wow us by taking us farther than Grand Theft Auto V, but the level of polish in those games, or like Red Dead Redemption is so high. you know like You can't release a half-baked game. You can't. know like And my expectations are high. I played Red Dead 2, two years I think after it launched, and oh my god, even though it was a 30 FPS, the game looks so good. beautiful and the story was so engrossing i was so attached to that game and i only played a game like two hours at a time like from week to week but my god i felt like i was watching a movie every time i played that game and this like i never beat that game yeah oh really yeah i just couldn't get over the fact i was in the icy area and i just i finally got past it yeah don't know i just i think i maybe don't know i just i don't know why i couldn't beat it i think

01:15:55

Shameer Mehdikhan

it was just moving kind of slow in the beginning. The beginning is slow, but once you get past it and you get into the, like the town and stuff, man, just like every mission was just so like i don't know amazing and out of this world like they put so much thought and care into the writing and the characters and then they tie it around to the first red dead game so i have so many high expectations on gta 6 yeah that they'll find ways to tie it to some of the older games the exploration will be more dense yeah they'll the ai will be better and then you're just gonna have this game that you could probably sink hundreds of hours into because gta 5 was like that and i wonder how the multiplayer is going to be because this that was a big gta online is still so successful right like i wonder what they're to do or i'm

01:16:35

Shameer Mehdikhan

I mean, do you think GTA 6 launches with no multiplayer? I think And then they just release more expansions for GTA Online? I think so. I think they release without a dedicated multiplayer component, but I don't think they'll release more for 5's multiplayer. I think they'll just like... Call it like a GTA Online 2? Yeah, and then they'll say this is like a 2.0 update, and then this includes GTA 6 content.

01:16:56

Shameer Mehdikhan

But yeah, I don't foresee it launching with multiplayer. But what did you think of the the trailer for GTA 6? Interesting. Like it didn't give us much more than the the first trailer. I'll be honest with you It's just like, hey, clearly something has gone wrong. We did we did some heist and it didn't go as planned. And now we just need to redeem ourselves. But by redeeming ourselves, we find out there's like much larger crimes going on within the city. So it sounds basic, but it's going to be... i mean, I don't know about you, but I wasn't expecting as much of like the romance element.

01:17:23

Shameer Mehdikhan

felt like it was kind of like Bonnie and Clyde, you know? Yeah, it does feel like- Which I'm okay with, you know? I actually, after I was done watching that, I was like, oh man, I feel like the internet is just going to find something to complain about and go crazy with this. But they didn't.

01:17:35

Shameer Mehdikhan

Maybe it's because, you know, they made sure everything was thick and juicy so people wouldn't complain online. There's some thick and juicy shots of that bitch. You know what I'm saying? No, but, no, I think that's an interesting pivot for them, though. Like, you know, when I think of the other games, like, it was just like a bunch of dudes, you know, and then, you know, and older dudes too and like now they have their first female protagonist yeah and it's like a Bonnie and Clyde type of story it seems like and like that's kind of interesting vivid yeah I mean definitely in all the games there was always a love interest but they just weren't the main point or focus so now that the fact that they do have two you'll probably get to play as both i'm assuming yeah not just one i don't know but again not like it doesn't really excite me it's just the what excites me more is how dense the game looks again i agree like i think it's i think it's interesting i mean i was a little nervous because like i mean is this kind of a cliche story like hasn't this been done a lot but you know i think rockstar definitely like they've

01:18:30

Shameer Mehdikhan

had so many successes, right? And

Sony's Game Showcase Strategy

01:18:31

Shameer Mehdikhan

they've been so good for so long, like, I'm not going to question them. And I was just blown away by like, the world just the graphics like you Yeah, the graphics are so insane.

01:18:42

Shameer Mehdikhan

I think like, again, I've never played a GTA game actually, like from start to end. And this is the first one that I will and I have i bought GTA 5 I've been wanting to play it, but i think I'm just gonna wait for You know, it's so funny, the only GTA games that I've actually finished the main story are the PSP games.

01:18:59

Shameer Mehdikhan

That's funny. I've beat all of their stories. I never beat the story for GTA 4 and 5. And I think it's just because get... i get That is actually one game where I get very distracted in and then I'll just end up causing mayhem.

01:19:12

Shameer Mehdikhan

Yeah, exactly. Get caught by the cops, et cetera. Yeah. You know, you punch a hoe or something. Oh my God. So yeah, i it'll be interesting. So Borderlands now gets some breathing room and so does Mafia. So we'll see how that goes.

01:19:24

Shameer Mehdikhan

But another game that's going to get some breathing room that we haven't talked about is Ghost of Yotai. They announced a release date. I think it was October 4th. Yeah. I think I was messaging you right after I saw that trailer and I was like, why?

01:19:36

Shameer Mehdikhan

couldn't they have just included this in one of the showcases? Yeah. That was a blog post. Right. I think they wanted to give enough room to breathe for some of their other stuff, but it's like, but because when when is Death Stranding 2 coming out?

01:19:48

Shameer Mehdikhan

It's coming out in July, June, something like that. But, I mean, I understand like when they had that trailer for Saros or whatever, you know they wanted to that to be like you know the drop the mic moment, let's give it all the attention. And I guess they did succeed in that because that's what everyone was talking about.

01:20:05

Shameer Mehdikhan

But honestly, if they had just included Ghost of Yotai in that showcase, would it have actually hurt Saros? I don't think so. not at all. Because the news cycle for that game hasn't even started. And the hype would have built up anyways for that game.

01:20:21

Shameer Mehdikhan

So I just, I think that was a weird decision on why you didn't include on your showcases and just randomly dropping on blog post. Oh yeah. So I'm just going, it's like Death Stranding 2 comes out June 26th. I feel like now that the fact that they dropped this through a blog post on PlayStation blog, they're not going to do summer showcase.

01:20:37

Shameer Mehdikhan

And if that is indicative of that, again, another year where we don't really know what Sony is working on for and up to games up till past this year. And it's disappointing because like, dude,

01:20:49

Shameer Mehdikhan

like yeah ghost of youide looks interesting looks interesting but I just want to know like you've shown me Wolverine four years ago I literally have no idea yeah I was just thinking like is Wolverine something that can honestly just randomly get dropped in like November like what is going on with that game that plus again i we know Saros is they're gonna show more game him but like i don't like that they're doing blog post drops that's this is not a game and you just say here's a blog post about.

01:21:16

Shameer Mehdikhan

And if you want to get more attention to it, like do a small state Maybe they just think that it's such a beloved, like Oblivion remastered. Who cares? The internet has been waiting all day anyways. We'll let them advertise for us. But I just don't get it because then they waste spend all this time advertising other things when you have bangers that everyone's asking about. It's just strange. Well, you also just had Days Gone remastered release a week ago and no one, or two weeks ago, no one's talking about it.

01:21:42

Shameer Mehdikhan

That could have been part of this show. read by oblivion that's so sad it's like dude like i don't know i just hope sony does come out in a month and says oh we are doing another state of play it's 40 minute thing and we have couple more games i feel like they will you know i mean they randomly Astro Bot was just chilling and nobody knew about And then all of a sudden, boom, here we go. Showcase and Astro Bot's coming out few months. Well, again, even if there's no other games coming out as well, it's fine. But show me updates on games that you've previously hinted about or talked about.

01:22:10

Shameer Mehdikhan

mean, I kind of get the feeling that Sony was not going to do anything Ghost of Yotai related. And I think the original plan was let's just talk about Death Stranding 2. Again, this is my speculation, maybe because I'm an Xbox fanboy.

01:22:23

Shameer Mehdikhan

And I feel like Sony felt the narrative was switching away from them too much. yeah Everyone was talking about Switch 2 and Xbox. And they were like, okay, we need to remind people that we are Sony, you know.

01:22:35

Shameer Mehdikhan

But I have the set feeling that. They were probably always planning on like announcing this like right after Death Stranding 2 or like right before. you know And they were going to really wait until the summer to even say anything about this game.

01:22:48

Shameer Mehdikhan

Yes, yeah. I mean, they're basically announcing this five months before it comes out. I'm assuming they'll have... I mean, like, Astro Bot. Wasn't that like literally like three months? Yeah, i think it was like three. This game will definitely do a state of play to show more combat and like a 15-minute thing, I bet you, in September August. hope yeah.

01:23:05

Shameer Mehdikhan

Which, again, doesn't then help us much with the summer showcase because if they don't do in June, and they're probably not going to it in June. Yeah, so, I mean, we're basically just waiting until 2026 to see what Sony's cooking. And I imagine, I mean, 2026, hopefully it'll be, like, a really bang-a-year. it'll bigger, yeah. Because you're going to get Wolverine, I feel like, for sure.

01:23:22

Shameer Mehdikhan

I don't know. don't There's been rumors that the game's already been rebooted a little bit because they've already had multiple directors leave or a director leave and be over creative differences. I don't know, then. I honestly don't know.

01:23:33

Shameer Mehdikhan

And I was just thinking about it, like... it's actually even been a very long time since horizon came out forbidden less. Like that feels like it was yesterday, but hasn't it almost been like three, four years, four years. Yeah. twenty 2020. No, that 2020 as well. I thought it was 2021, but,

01:23:48

Shameer Mehdikhan

but but uh yeah so that

Xbox Handheld Speculation

01:23:51

Shameer Mehdikhan

there's those i mean and there's another topic that i' want to talk about and maybe again doesn't pivot the best into this but like we we just found out about some xbox prototypes coming out like with asus yeah did you see the picture yeah i saw picture what did you think about that ugly i thought it was terrible looking i felt like it was some frankenstein frankenstein thing like you know someone was in their lab and they just took a scalpel yeah just like cut out the yeah like so i think computex is a conference that happens every year end of may so they could announce it then and say it's coming out a couple months they did show up based on the prototypes you can see there's a clearly a button for the xbox yeah button right and i guess with the fcc leagues i think it's going to have the z2 extreme version we' have 64 gigs of which is insane

01:24:38

Shameer Mehdikhan

Why would you even need them to RAM though? Yeah. And with a 36 watt TDP, I'm like, dang, this is insane. Well, i wonder if what they're doing is, you know, a system on a chip or whatever, you know, like M4 and stuff like that. Like what if they're, cause didn't AMD just release their first like real system on the chip where everything was integrated And they put it in that tablet, and that tablet's like crazy powerful. So they're going to have two versions. So the second version of this prototype is going to have an AMD Aerith, which is a little weaker.

01:25:05

Shameer Mehdikhan

So yeah, they they probably are doing like an APU on a SOC. But don't know. It's just like, I would only be interested in this. Okay, the Z2 Extreme seems very interesting. But what I'm really curious about is is if this is going to have an Xbox OS designed specifically for it.

01:25:19

Shameer Mehdikhan

If they still do the same Windows PC shit, honestly, I am not going get it. Yeah, I mean, I don't think I'm going to get it because... I already have an r ROG Ally and you know yeah perfect is it really worth it for me? Because the thing is, how how much better can it be? Because it's not like it's going to be more powerful than Series X or Series X, right? no but And so, A, and then really how much better is it going to be than ROG Ally?

01:25:43

Shameer Mehdikhan

It will be. will be significantly stronger because of the Z2 Extreme system. cpu but and the the lot more and a lot more RAM. But the thing is, if you can't allow me to resume and put a game to sleep, then I don't care. yeah like I guess the point I was trying to get across, like with the scalability that games have to have nowadays with Steam Deck and Series S, I find it hard to believe that future Xbox first-party releases are not going run on the r ROG Ally. right So what I'm getting for upgrading is better graphics, but not better

01:26:18

Shameer Mehdikhan

than my console yeah and better battery life maybe maybe or just about the same just about the same so and and for me if the price wasn't crazy i would consider yeah but you know it's gonna be like a 900 or a thousand it's gonna be crazy expensive it's gonna be thousand i 100 guarantee it and so and i think this is gonna be like that niche thing like You know how real Surface fanboys were getting that what, Surface Duo? Yeah, Surface Duo, yeah.

01:26:46

Shameer Mehdikhan

I feel like this is meant to be more of like a, you know, kind of a showpiece, you know, than really a practical device that's going to sell a lot, right? Exactly. Because to me, that's going to be the true Xbox handheld. I feel like this is an in-between learning device because feel like it's low-hanging fruit, you know, a rebranded Asus ROG,

01:27:07

Shameer Mehdikhan

Instead of making ROG 2, let's just make it an ROG Xbox, basically. Well, again, this should be a learning experience for Xbox or Microsoft. If you can perfect your OS on a PC-like application or hardware, then you know what you need to do going forward and how to streamline that on PCs. Because if you just noticed this, I think, I forgot which game was just released.

01:27:26

Shameer Mehdikhan

They said releasing on Series X, Series S, and Xbox PC, the rebranding is. Windows PC now, they're calling it Xbox PC. So I found very interesting. So I feel like maybe at the end of the series, they're gonna be like, yeah, we're not calling everything Xbox PC because we have a new OS.

01:27:40

Shameer Mehdikhan

You can now put this on multiple pieces of hardware machine. Maybe you can put on the Steam Deck, who knows? You know, I never even thought about it, but what if they actually rebrand into Windows PC and Xbox PC?

01:27:52

Shameer Mehdikhan

Right? Like, if that's what you're kind of implying. And then the Windows PC is running on, like, a you know a certain type of OS. And then it's not that the Xbox PC is running on a reskin of Windows, right? It's, like, a substantially different enough Windows that it actually does what it needs to do.

01:28:08

Shameer Mehdikhan

That could be fascinating. yeah That really could. And honestly, Don't think people would care that much about like the crazy amount of cross compatibility with apps because it's not like everyone wants one drive running on their own GLI. Right. and And so that's the problem Microsoft has with Windows because they can't change it too much because all the legacy stuff has to work for their business.

01:28:29

Shameer Mehdikhan

client right if you if you strip it out and streamline it and say hey you convince me to buy a thousand dollars midran a pc just to play game you know what? Great. i'm I'm actually, I would actually consider that. That's an ask. I never thought about that, but that may be a fascinating idea because like, you know, and I think that's kind of me as well. You know, people who would want to buy prebuilt gaming PCs and stuff like that, they're like a little hesitant to just build it all yourself. So people who are more enthusiasts can do that. you're,

01:28:58

Shameer Mehdikhan

windows pc software and then other people can just basically get an xbox pc right and you connect to your tv oh my god and then you just play indiana jones at like high settings and you guess you know it looks good oh my god arjun they should hire you at xbox i can actually see that as a merging of everything they're trying to do that makes sense and the xbox pc could be either A console, or it could be a tower, or it could be a handheld. Exactly. So I think we're going to hear some interesting news by either the summer for their summer showcase or end of the year.

01:29:33

Shameer Mehdikhan

Rising Game Prices and Development Pressures

01:29:34

Shameer Mehdikhan

All right. And then I guess like since we've been talking about price hikes, how do you feel about the fact that games are now maybe going to $80? I mean, like I said, if they go with a variable approach, I'm okay with that because all depends on the value being provided. and I think that's what they'll do.

01:29:50

Shameer Mehdikhan

Games, $80 now, like adjusted with inflation was probably 60 to 70 couple years ago. I mean, it's keeping in line with inflation. Yeah. and And I get that argument because, i mean, again, if we're spending like $15 on a movie theater. Yeah.

01:30:04

Shameer Mehdikhan

Right. Like I get it. Right. You know, when you look at how many hours you're playing. Um, I think for a long time we were able to hold steady at like the $60 game because, and then, then the 70, because a lot of times like they would just start making deluxe editions and stuff like that. And that would kind of like fill that niche. Right. Yeah.

01:30:22

Shameer Mehdikhan

But, uh, you know, I saw, I thought this was inevitable. I do think clear obscure is kind of a one-off, like it shows that there is a possibility. to make lower price games that feel like AAA games, yeah there is absolutely that possibility.

01:30:36

Shameer Mehdikhan

But the thing is, game development to me is kind of bloated. And, you know, I think Clare Tkiru had a very clear vision of what they wanted, right? And it just worked. And, you know, there's always going to be people who have that clear vision from the get-go.

01:30:53

Shameer Mehdikhan

But I think in any creative project, there's a certain amount of chaos and turnover that's kind of, built into budgets you know and if you know exactly what you're doing and you hit the ground running you know then i think you end up with a game like there's what's that what's the one game that you like the pinocchio game the uh lies of the the studio that made it it's like look think about this you sold two million copies of clear obscure plus game pass the bag so you've already made like 80 million plus couple more million let's say you're at 100 million right yeah for sure the game cost me maybe 50 to 60 million.

01:31:26

Shameer Mehdikhan

Let's just say you, I'm afraid that like, yeah, you're in a good place, but I hope they don't get enough pressure. But are you going to make a secret? Like maybe make an expansion. If you can have some time, then think about if you want, that's what happens. Right. Because like, you know, just cause you had one great idea, it doesn't necessarily mean that every idea is going to be great. And like, if this was created by like the original idea was like very passionate person.

01:31:50

Shameer Mehdikhan

And this idea was percolating in their mind, you know, for a long time, now that they got it out there, like, is there other things that are percolating in their mind? Maybe, maybe not, you know? Sometimes people are one one hit wonders, you know?

01:32:03

Shameer Mehdikhan

think i was listening to uh the guy what is it david jaffe the guy who made god of war and he was saying that like yeah i had to step away from like game development because realized that i can never i could no longer tell the difference between which of my ideas was god of war and which of my ideas was going to be game that would not be successful at all right that's understandable he he probably had thought about that because he had worked it for like 20 years exactly you're so engrossed in that you know that you're like how do i pivot and then and the games he did pivot from that he made were all horrible yeah and I think that's what his point is like I legitimately cannot tell the difference because I think every single one of these is going to be God of War and then they're not so here's the thing he helped make Twisted Metal which was a decent game but then the game after that what was that when he draw him to light or draw him to death that was horrible I think that's one he was talking about because like to him it felt like it was going to be an absolute banger idea and then you know it just wasn't beloved in the same way so I think we say that because we just kind of assume like this is how creativity works you have one great idea you are just creative genius and

01:33:03

Shameer Mehdikhan

You're going to just keep putting all these ideas together. So, I mean, I am happy the studio got to do clear obscure. You know, I am excited to see what comes next, but you never know. pressure You never know. And it's a lot of pressure. And I think that's what happens. You know, that's a new cycle with a lot of these studios. Like they end up being like everyone's underdog, you know, hometown hero.

01:33:23

Shameer Mehdikhan

And

Entertainment Catch-Up: Shows and Games

01:33:24

Shameer Mehdikhan

then they get super famous. And then everyone's like, oh, now they're overhyped. Eventually they're the villains, right? Yeah. i'm I'm okay with the idea that when, especially if you're in new studio, take what you just made, which was great and expand it and change it up and change up the formula a little bit so that you have expansion sequels that are, Hey, I really innovated.

01:33:43

Shameer Mehdikhan

You don't have to go on a completely different direction but with sony because they've been making some of these ips and franchises for 20 years i am sick of the same stream making last house one two thirty four but make me goddamn different you know although i was gonna text you this i know you didn't want to talk too much about last of us the tv show because you want to you want to wait until we're farther along so we can kind of analyze the whole season but man i remember watching the show with the wife and the wife was like asking me all these questions like hey like why does this happen why does that happen what happens next all this stuff and was like man

01:34:16

Shameer Mehdikhan

don't want to play Last of Us 2 again. And then i was like, dude, what was wrong with me? Oh, God. and Am I going to be the guy who spies this game again? Yeah, you are. You're going the one. All right, let's see. Any other things you want to talk about or you want to just talk about what we're going to probably play or watch going forward? yeah just talk about what we're going plan watch going forward. Honestly, like going forward, I'm going to finish.

01:34:37

Shameer Mehdikhan

I started watching you season five. Which really want to talk about with you, but you're going to frigging finish it. I will, I will. I'm on f episode three. There's only eight or nine episodes, but seems interesting it's the end of it i'm curious to know what twist there's gonna definitely going to be twist because the way they set up those characters always like hey you try to become good you have a troubled past and don't worry you can redeem yourself in sight i think there's a lot for us to talk about with that show when it comes out because you know i talked about it a lot with my wife like after we got done so well i i like the fact that in season four he did definitely have this identity struggle where he's like

01:35:12

Shameer Mehdikhan

i thought i could change and be different and be a good person and his other side of his person just took over and like no I just can't and like I'll be curious to know how he ah ah thinks he redeems himself because I think at the end of the day he will die in some sense and someone's going to get on to finally I mean we know it's the end of the series right so they have to have some sort of definitive ending yeah I'll let you catch up I mean we binged it and so I mean I don't think this is spoilers but I think in the beginning we liked it I was really watching every episode

01:35:43

Shameer Mehdikhan

The middle, I think some things were just bonkers, ridiculous. And I think that's why I got really bad reviews on a lot of websites. So then we started fast forwarding through some of it. And then I actually thought it ended in a, I actually liked the ending.

01:35:57

Shameer Mehdikhan

So I'll just say that much. I like the ending. So I really want to get your thoughts on it when you're done. Sounds about right with the reviews mixed. So, you know, I don't know if there's any show I'm necessarily going to watch. No, I thought about getting back into wheel of time and finishing the season because started off pretty well.

01:36:11

Shameer Mehdikhan

no, I don't think there's any shows really. I think I'm really going to just be writing more. Maybe I'll game some, going to play some more clear obscure. I don't know if I'm going get into doom yet because I really want to set aside some good time for that.

01:36:23

Shameer Mehdikhan

And, uh, The last thing I was going to talk about, and this just you know shows you my fanboy self, I was watching the new trailer for Halo Infinite and man, this is the first time in like two years I actually thought about re-downloading and playing. Oh my Because the new weapon actually seems really fun.

01:36:42

Shameer Mehdikhan

the the The new weapon, okay, you've got to hear about this. It's a double barrel shotgun, right? So it's like they brought back the original shotgun. It has your normal fire, which is one bullet, and alt fire, you shoot both of them.

01:36:53

Shameer Mehdikhan

But The melee is basically gravity hammer. Interesting. And so it looks really fun to use. It's like the first true new weapon we've had in a while. still are going strong with all their Forge content. you know For me, I've played so much Halo in my life and so much Halo Infinite. like I'm not joking. I've probably put like 200, 300 hours in that game.

01:37:12

Shameer Mehdikhan

I think outside a Halo 3, my most played game ever is Halo Infinite and then Destiny 2. So i'm I'm probably not going to redownload it. If it was already downloaded on my Xbox, I would probably like it in play. But right now I'm like, ugh, do I really want to download 100 gigs and then just to delete it a few weeks later?

01:37:32

Shameer Mehdikhan

But that, I don't know, maybe I'll dabble into it. That'll look kind of interesting. Okay, that's interesting. I mean, for me, have like 100 shows on my backlog. So I think what I'm going to focus on is after you, I'm probably going to watch another season of Goosebumps that came out in 2023 on Disney+, then watch Star Wars and or season one and two, and then maybe Arcane, I still haven't watched season one and two.

01:37:52

Shameer Mehdikhan

That's just for so many stuff. I have, and I still have like 90 other shows. I mean, if you want, my opinion, would tell you scrap all that and watch invincible, but you know, whatever you think interests you the most, because I like that show the most. I'm going to eventually watch it. I have literally a hundred shows.

01:38:08

Shameer Mehdikhan

I just feel like from your taste, knowing your taste, like probably those shows you mentioned are really good options. You know, i think you're going like all of them. I think the objective best show out of all of those is probably this first season of arcade.

01:38:21

Shameer Mehdikhan

but my favorite is probably Invincible. I'll watch that too. It's a silly show. It's a dumb show at times, but man, it's a great show. I'm going to get to it for sure. i would say this there's a movie that just came on netflix called the match it's with that really famous korean actor Cobra Kai that plays the white ninja. What's his name? Byung.

01:38:40

Shameer Mehdikhan

No idea. The guy that's in Squid Games. That's the the dude with the black mask. Oh, okay. yeah So it's a movie about Go. So for those that don't know, it's like a Japanese like, it's almost like checkers in a sense. i don't know if anyone's ever played Go. Wait, is that like Mahjong or? Kind of.

01:38:55

Shameer Mehdikhan

Yeah. So this movie, it came out today on netflix it's basically about he's a professional go player he trains this kid and this kid eventually challenges him to a professional match and he's like oh this my protege he's still too young he'll never beat me he's like 10 years too early but i'll entertain it we get into a tournament we end up bursting each other he ends up losing and it breaks and shatters his whole life because he's like how could my protege who i think is still way too young and naive beat me at my own game and then it's a journey about how he rediscovers himself and then ultimately ends up challenging

01:39:27

Shameer Mehdikhan

this project years later down the road to try to beat him again. So I've always been into go because Hikaru Noga was one of my most favorite. oh yeah I love that anime. And so, and the fact that this is one of my favorite actors, I'm definitely gonna watch that this week too.

01:39:41

Shameer Mehdikhan

Okay. Yeah. maybe maybe I'll look out for some reviews on that. I never even heard of it. So it's called the match. it's like a All right. Take care, everybody. Take care. See