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gamescom
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Join Dave and Jake as they talk about their positive and not-so-positive impressions of gamescom 2024 in this week's episode!
Intro:
- Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards - Aqua Star [Map] Theme
Outro:
- Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards - Aqua Star Theme
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Rituals
00:00:31
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I am joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going to tonight, Dave? It's going spiffy. Spiffy? Oh yeah, no follow up to that. I also have no up. It's the word I chose. It's very much any time that we talk about, I think it's by nature we ask how I ask how you're doing. The number of meta-commentaries we have on the nature of doing well, or some other state of being, as the opener for the podcast is significant. like Yeah. But I mean, like people don't want to know that my back's been hurting all day. ah Cool. but yeah we But we talk about like the words that we choose, or why we're doing like feeling a certain way, I think more than
00:01:23
Speaker
any podcast that had like a concrete focus would. Yeah. Yeah. You just embrace the tangent. You're like time you say, uh-huh. That's made up. That's a, that's a figment. I feel like sometimes it's podcasting. We're like that.
00:01:42
Speaker
That dad who doesn't want to be home to deal with the children, he just wants his wife to, so they find excuses to go out and run errands and stuff.
Family Stories and Childhood Antics
00:01:50
Speaker
Honey, you said you need a new ah carburetor for the ice cream machine? Yeah, I'll be right back. Yeah, yeah. I don't even have an ice cream machine. That's something I gotta work on.
00:02:02
Speaker
I don't think anybody really does because it's so much easier to buy ice cream. So when I was growing up, my parents actually had an ice cream maker. And the problem was like it basically was a scam because the amount of effort it took to like whip up ice cream was absurd. It takes like a crazy amount of salt and ice and all this. ah I don't think the salt goes into the ice cream. Maybe it does. I don't know.
00:02:33
Speaker
What else are you doing with the salt? and So, so I don't know. im I'm, I'm digging deep in these memories. Um, but I, I remember salt being important. Oh, it lowers the freezing melting point of water. So what happens is you actually, like yeah, you put it on like the outside of the spinner thing. Um, so by the way, that's here.
00:02:56
Speaker
Did you ever do this as a kid? If so, you're an asshole. Uh, if you want to out yourself, this is like me telling you don't. Um, but if you ever like put like some, a little bit of salt water on somebody's like hand and then like you put like an ice cube on it type thing. Ah, gotcha. I'm making them pee themselves soon. No, that's a different thing. That was the, but that was the cup of lukewarm water while they're sleeping or something. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Um, no, never did any of that. Okay, good. Um,
00:03:24
Speaker
I was definitely in a hole as a kid though. Cause I had a younger brother. There you go. That's in the full context. That's all it takes. I had a younger brother. I no longer do. Yeah. The rest is, uh, uh, I don't want to be culpable for it. So I got to mention it now, but, um, very much like sibling rivalry type stuff, like love them, obviously. But yeah, you do little,
00:03:55
Speaker
Assholely things to each other yeah and get away with it. I really get away with here And they kind of stick out like I'm sure that he's forgotten a lot of them But there are like they they they they stick with me especially if he ends up getting hurt Which looking back on them again kids really stupid yes, but like Those are the things I regret at the time. It's the engine I'm getting hurt. um But he's alive, I think. So it's all good. But that's good. ah So I'm not culpable.
Gamescom Highlights and Announcements
00:04:27
Speaker
I want to talk about Gamescom. Sure. Yeah. ah Some games were announced or for some things upcoming and some other stuff as well. There's apparently going to be an animated series about the writers of Roharim for Lord of the Rings. I've heard of i've heard of ah lord Lord of the Rings. Yeah.
00:04:47
Speaker
I remember clicking on it thinking it was a game trailer. I'm like, what is this? So what is it? No, it's like an animated. I think it's like a short series. OK. Yeah. But I think it kind of goes over some of the content from late second movie, early third. Interesting.
00:05:08
Speaker
i sure Not entirely sure. We don't have a friend of the show, Nerd of the Rings, on a great YouTube channel. If you don't know, just listen to Lord of the Rings lore. Go check that out. um So I can't really comment on anything from Lord of the Rings, because like my exposure to it was my sister read me part of one of the books when I was a kid, and I treasure that memory forever. And I saw the movies. Yes.
00:05:36
Speaker
ah I feel like that's a lot of people's experience is just having seen the movies. Yeah. The weird thing is it is everyone's experience. It's always the same section of the books, like with Tom Bombadil and the Barrow Downs and stuff like that. And you're like, huh? Oh, by the way, a fun Tolkien fact. Did you know that Tom Bombadil is not his original name?
00:05:58
Speaker
No, it was originally going to be Tom Bomba bread and butter. Ah, okay. Yeah, that didn't, that wouldn't work really as well. Dave's mouth is like his jaw is entirely detached. he He's graining so much you could eat an entire egg.
00:06:15
Speaker
so Um, but yeah, the the one thing I do know about Lord of the Rings is that like, the the other series that came out recently like the Ring of Power. Rings of Power, yeah. Rings of Power, yeah. Like they specifically, the area that the IP is sort of split up in is such that they can't, yeah they couldn't use certain things from the book, so they were using like the Cimarillion.
00:06:41
Speaker
um which is the the much larger precursor. Yes, exactly. A lot lot of history in there, less engaging for the sake of movies, but it's a lot more like um ah numbers from the Bible for the biblical nerds and stuff like that, where they're just listing out like, hey, these people had this kid and these people had this kid and these people had this kid.
00:07:04
Speaker
Except Tolkien did that for entirely fictional characters. Yes. Just cause. Like, why not? um Never have I seen the word be cat so many times. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. but Sorry, I immediately tangented.
00:07:23
Speaker
Again, got to chase those threads. But there were some game trailers there as well that really did catch my eye. yeah Jake and I watched some of them just pre-recording. It's like, Jake, you got to see these.
00:07:36
Speaker
um One that I thought was super cute was hella. It was hella cute. It was yeah ah spelled H-E-L-A. Yeah. And basically it looks like a mouse co-op game, but kind of like very realistic. You're tiny mice in a pretty standard world, exploring barns and tall grass.
00:08:01
Speaker
Did you ever see Fievel Goes West or any of the Fievel series? I am familiar with Jewish-based lore. yeah Yes, that's fair. That's kind of like what this reminds me of. There's something of, I guess it's that and like the Mouseketeers and There's something about little mice and adventure. Yeah. That just like fit together so well. Red Bull. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. The latest magic set. Yeah.
00:08:34
Speaker
um And I was absolutely getting the vibe for this like obviously stunning trailer very beautiful um They had some gameplay there the frame rate looked a little choppy to me in the frame rate But that could have just been buffering and also super pre-alpha But and things to things to resolve but I it has It has a really cool design. um I don't usually immediately opt into your adventuring as an animal genre of games because there was that cat game and there's always going to be something there. um But it does look it does look pretty cool. um So we'll see where it goes.
00:09:16
Speaker
right now for the amount of context I have, I would definitely consider it to be a cute couples game. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, Hey honey, let's play the mice game and and adventure together. Cause it seems like it's designed as a co-op experience. They're always showing two mice. Right. And they have like a little tether system.
00:09:34
Speaker
So you can like swing somebody around or you can kind of just cause to tether to them as they're tethered to another animal that's running around. the Yeah, like steal steal the car from like the other small rodent. Kick him out of the car. by the ban yeah Attach him to a rocket, launch him.
00:09:54
Speaker
Yeah, I'm curious to see a little bit more as far as actual gameplay, but as far as like the trailer and design and what little they showed, it looks very cute. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. They don't look like they're playing it super safe. There was like a little bit of speed to it, some verticality, things like that you would expect with the tether. So.
00:10:11
Speaker
We'll see where it goes, but um definitely good enough for a first trailer and it's not just a teaser either, right? Like there's actual gameplay and anytime a company actually shows gameplay and it's not just the teaser, it's like, okay, you get some credit. It's a lot more promising. Yeah. um There's enough vaporware out there. We don't need more of it. Do any of those catch your interest that we had watched?
In-Depth Game Discussions
00:10:37
Speaker
Um, so that one, uh, obviously did, uh, like the mouse stuff. Um, the other, the standout one for me was, uh, we harvest shadows. Really? Um, yeah. So that was, uh, one opens with the teaser portion. The thing that I was just saying, we don't give them really credit for, uh, a bunch of pre-rendered cut scenes of a guy in a room that, um,
00:11:07
Speaker
He, it doesn't really describe why he's there or what's going on, but he mentions that he was going to be in the, in this farm until he, he dies. You can, uh, the scene cuts and you see like outside of the farm and the, like the fields and stuff like that. And I'm thinking like, okay, like narrative game. Right. At this point, it really seems like it's going to be a narrative game. Um, it opens with like, it was like a farmhouse horror.
00:11:36
Speaker
What was the last word? Analog. Analog. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, I don't know what that means. That sounds pretentious. Jonathan Blow wrote that. No, but I hope it was analog. I now need to double check. Yeah, you could, you could, you could, uh, sanity check me, but, um, it kind of like, he has a to-do list and the only thing on the list is leave the house, which is also like,
00:12:00
Speaker
we could like We could talk about the very nature of horror, but the most important thing in horror is deprivation of information. Yeah, the the less you know, the more your brain will kind of fill in the gaps. Exactly. And usually put terrible things.
00:12:19
Speaker
But I mean, so far it seemed, at least from the trailer, like he was specifically he wanted to isolate from people, which is why he went over to this like abandoned farmhouse. um But it also talks about him having insomnia. Right. And he thinks that could be attributed to like, it feels very unsettling in the night and you'd like see some dark shadow appearing and something peer out of the closet to give you some a little bit spooky vibes. Right.
00:12:46
Speaker
And then they just write right angle. So thinking it's a narrative game, thinking it's like a horror game, something like that, it immediately goes to like farming simulator, first person type stuff. He's tilling a field ah field by hand. And he's got some farm equipment. And he's gathering tomatoes and stuff. It shows him dropping off crops.
00:13:10
Speaker
in like a wagon or something and then at least in this phase of the game immediately like there's dollar signs popping up like it's GTA like he just got like five bucks or whatever for like dropping the crops off like it's Stardew Valley or some nonsense and you're like that's weird it's kind of like everything else seemed pretty immersion focused And then it's just a very gamified, put it in the receptacle, we'll pay you. It's like the mission complete thing pops up and you hear the GTA music, the the stinger, you're like, no, doesn't really fit. um But it seemed so this seems like much more a if not survival than sort of like strategy kind of simulation type game.
00:13:58
Speaker
um And then there's the third right angle turn which is like there are actual monsters Yeah, it's like in the nighttime He sees some things moving around you get some quick jump cuts of like a monster come out while he has a gun um So I'm theorizing currently that there's probably going to be a day night cycle right where during the day um You are essentially working a farm to accrue money for something. Mm hmm. And maybe you spend that money on supplies to help you survive the night is my guess. But again, um ah just a lot of mystery still in that. So I had to I had to Google this because I couldn't remember the name, even though I've literally played it. But the one that this kind of reminded me of and you might have you might have heard it. One of the YouTubers that we follow might have made a video on it, but ah Darkwood.
00:14:51
Speaker
on Steam. It's like a top down horror game where you in the same thing you're describing, there's the day night cycle. um At nighttime, you have to come back and use the resources like field power generator and you know, food or whatever else you scavenged and ammo and whatever you could trade with like B-Steel merchants that'll like come by and stuff. um And then at nighttime, you're just locked inside and you can literally push things up against like walls and windows and things to like barricade them. And we're not talking about Darkwood, but like like I legitimately,
00:15:34
Speaker
At some point, I'm going to have you just like look at some of the gameplay um and we can just talk about it because it it's the it is the horror motif. like you only see what your character would see field of view wise, right? o okay So like you have your periphery and then right in front of you, but something can just come up behind you in this top down game. So naturally you want to like back into a corner. So they swivel constantly. Exactly. Or swivel constantly. And as things like move around the house, they might break in at certain points. If you can make it to daylight, you're good.
00:16:08
Speaker
Right, it's the same things, I guess. It's Five Nights at Freddy's. That's where I was going with it, yeah. um If you can make it to daylight, then you're good. But if you have like a barricaded door, and you don't see the monster, right? Because you don't have vision on it. um But you can hear things like rustling around the house.
00:16:27
Speaker
And it's very much like hiding in the closet from the monster simulator, basically. But ah it could get to the point where like a monster shoulder checks the door leading into your room and like bumps the barricade back of it. Like, you know, just kind of inches it back and then maybe loses interest and goes to check somewhere else in the house. And you're like, should I go push the door closed? Or like, you know, it's it's all it's if that sounds creepy, it very much is.
00:16:56
Speaker
um I'm not even talking about the game you're talking about now. I'm just talking about Darkwood, but that's the if it has that sort of vibe then It might be too much for me to be completely honest, but I love it. I can't imagine it's gonna go that in depth But I think there definitely will be some elements yeah, but also because it it seems like it was shown as like a single-player thing and Um, I think there will be a narrative aspect as well, kind of unfolding because they definitely had some like quick flashes to like him holding a lamb, walking down like a path that was lined with like heads on pikes. Yeah. Yeah. It was that looked at him. You mentioned when we were watching it, like there were some kind of like solo, the forest vibes. Yeah. Just cause. Yeah.
00:17:49
Speaker
The perspective of like him chopping down the tree and it went into those like sections and like, it's the forest. who Yeah. And there's the other thing that was giving forest vibes for me. And it sounds like I'm critiquing the game that I'm saying I was kind of more, most interested in from the trailers that we watched, but that's because I should be able to be critical of a game if it's good, but like.
00:18:11
Speaker
The thing I'm kind of concerned about is there were so many disparate elements shown in the trailer. I do not know how they interact, right? Like, I don't know what the money does that you get from farming. I think you described the ideal situation, right? Which is like, you need this money in order to defend yourself from whatever's encroaching upon the farmhouse.
00:18:36
Speaker
But that's also supposition, right? We don't actually know. Maybe it's like you you get the money for like cosmetics or something. you know I don't know. I give my chicken a hat. hu Right. Or like maybe it's literally the the horror mechanic is entirely detached from the money. And the money is just because you owe Tom Nook bells, right? like I don't know, right? Completely two separate games where at one thing, it's just farming. And then they're like, oh, shit, we also need a horror game.
00:19:03
Speaker
They hired two different development teams who work together to have a collaborative effort of farming horror See and you joke but I've played games where it's felt like that was the case right where they just it's just so disjointed if we're yeah, it didn't make sense for them to be good together or you could just completely ignore one part of the game because of Yeah, like whenever I go to Dunkin Donuts, I don't get anything from Baskin Robbins. Yeah, I just want coffee and a hash brown. And I'm like, why is there cake here? Right. And then I leave, you know. Right. Exactly. But that would be actually just to poke one thing at the forest. That was my main gripe with the forest itself was the all of the survival of crafting stuff was entirely optional compared to following the main story. But the thing is, like, you don't know that.
00:19:53
Speaker
yeah Initially, ah you can figure that out. um But it's it would have been nice to have things go together a little bit where you wouldn't just go into a cave. You wouldn't have new enemies spawn, and it was just replenishing resources, essentially. Yeah, they should have had you was kind of revisiting the forest episode. like You need to bring stuff down with you. Exactly, exactly. Because then you have a reason to generate stuff and protect your base up top.
00:20:24
Speaker
They actually, I feel like they made the wrong decision with, if you if so if you're playing single player in the forest, which we didn't do a lot, um or at all, but I know that there's this one mechanic where if you die, in quotes, then the cannibals, the monsters will like drag you down and you'll spawn in one of the caves. um And that's very creepy.
00:20:54
Speaker
That's really cool. That's a cool setup. I think you literally are like strung upside down. You have to like cut yourself down and escape or whatever. Awesome setup. I like that. That's fine. But because of that, they're like, okay, you need to be able to get supplies in the cave because you don't know what state, what the player had when they went down there.
00:21:14
Speaker
And so they give you supplies down there and they use that for everything as ah as it pertains to the caves. They're like, if you're in a cave, you need to be be able to have at hand what you need to progress. And they could have flipped that pyramid kind of upside down. So all the stuff you were doing up on the surface fed your expeditions into the caves. And that would have been so much more satisfying from like a gameplay standpoint, I think.
00:21:40
Speaker
Yeah, they they definitely could have tweaked it for it to be better. Like not necessarily drag unit caves, which is a nice way to encourage that exploration. Yeah, if you've never seen a cave force people into it. You know, there are caves in this game. What the fuck? I keep seeing this prompt to go down a rope. I don't know what that means. Uh huh. But I do want to move away from We harvest shadows. I am curious to see more about it as I'm sure you are. um I'm going to send you a link because I don't know how pacing works in a podcast. And this is just for a screenshot of Darkwood. If people want to see this, they can look it up on the the Steam page as well and just look at like the screenshots. But like this gave
00:22:25
Speaker
It's got it's got horror stuff going on. It's creepy. um yeah The yard art style looks nice and yeah well catered to. It's kind of like the the lower poly um stuff that the monochrome around the field of view is stuff that you have seen and explored in the game. It's like fog of war, but you won't see enemies in the monochrome, only if they're in your actual field of view, which is cool.
00:22:53
Speaker
They didn't show that game at Gamescom for some reason, though. so you know Crazy. um So that was We Harvest Shadows. i would I do want to keep an eye on that. I want to see where they go. And i I want more information, not necessarily about the story. Leave that stuff open. But I want to know how the mechanics actually work. Is this just a farming sim that they slapped Left 4 Dead on top of? I don't know.
00:23:19
Speaker
but I want them to have like a really cheery person kind of going over. Like when you play, we harvest shadows. The tutorial is just like a little girl comes by and she's like, and I can buy the crops from you and stuff like that. I want a Nintendo ah person voiceover, Nintendo of America voiceover for it. Exactly. um Were there any other standouts?
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, I will say there's definitely a theme for this games com where a lot of things are a lot more dark or spooky. Yeah, which I'm always a fan of that to a degree. I'm not a horror fan by any means. I do like dipping my toe in some of the spooky though. Right. um Like those desert lizards.
00:24:07
Speaker
Did you watch that video? I did see that. I did see that, yeah. For anybody who doesn't know, there's like a horned lizard or something that lives in the desert. And since water is so scarce there, it it can essentially like stand in water and its body will suck it up and kind of retain it. Yes. As like a storage. That's kind of cool. It's similar to the mechanic of like if you have a sheet of toilet paper or something, you just like dip it a little bit in water. The water will climb up. It's the same. And then I drink from the toilet paper. Yeah, yeah.
00:24:37
Speaker
I mean the lizard would lizard would but it's also David Attenborough, which is always points but ah But the one that really caught my interest as far as trailer wise is be gone beast. Mm-hmm The trailer is initially very very Pixar as far as like the design like there's like some kids in some like anthropomorphic kids and We're like going into this. It looks like an abandoned hotel. Oh, yeah. And they just have flashlights and then monsters come out and then their flashlights turn into weapons. um It seems like it's a co-op, I guess, hack and slash. Yeah, that's what it looks like. But also seems like there are some enemies that you aren't necessarily supposed to fight. Mm hmm. Gameplay wise, I don't really care that much. or The trailer is just very engaging. Yeah.
00:25:30
Speaker
I think the thing, they they start to lose me gameplay-wise. I love the theming. I love these characters. I love how like emotive and expressive they are. um I think that's excellent. But like there there comes a point in the trailer where they have their lockers, and there's like some spray paint on each of them with just the type of weapon they have. So they have a sword, a hammer, a wand, and a bow, um and then some like locked lockers like ah for characters they don't have or whatever, or aren't in the game. Who knows? so um
00:26:02
Speaker
And like I just love this design like this is so so good but it pretty much is like a Top-down third or isometric third-person action game I see my job, but person Because they were showing four players. This is something where I imagine they're gonna have AI and up to a point if you can't have a full party. It seems like a perfect kind of couch co-op game. Right. You guys want to come over like we'll have a beer and we'll we'll try some runs of Be Gone Beast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of it's going to come down to like what is what is the gameplay look like though? Because it's
00:26:46
Speaker
Here's my gripe and it's relatively pretentious or whatever. Right. But there are a lot of gauntlet like games, um including I literally had friends over probably years ago now, two years, a year and a half. um And our couch co-op game was Minecraft Legends. That was me, which is yeah Dave was there. Dave was there even.
00:27:09
Speaker
um And my memory doesn't go back at 1.5 years. the the The only reason I remember was because there was a game played and couldn't remember who the membership was. But I'm glad you were there. You can you can you can attest to the story. I felt like it was a great gauntlet-type game. It had meta-progression. It was easy to get into because of Minecraft stuff. like There was a bunch of different interactions and things.
00:27:35
Speaker
It wasn't something that I was going to know life. And I don't think I played it at all since. No, like they're not crazily in depth games as far as plot design, anything. Right. Yes. But it is a nice fun thing to just pick up and play with people. And sometimes you need that for people who are a less versed with gaming. Like I'm not going to.
00:27:59
Speaker
have a newbie person come over and we'll jump into like a hardcore lobby of doted too. I just be like, Hey, let's just hop on this thing. Just give a controller and they can figure it out. Right. I guess the point I'm trying to make and admittedly you could extrapolate from this to be like, well, why do you play this game? Or why do you play this game? Why do you play this game? But it feels like I don't need this game, right? If I, if I wanted to play a couch co-op gauntlet like game,
00:28:27
Speaker
I already own it, and I don't play it that much. So it doesn't make any sense for me personally to buy another one. But maybe you hate Minecraft. right Maybe your kids won't shut up about it or something. um Or maybe these characters are really cute. or Maybe the gameplay is not as homogenesis, whatever it is, homogenous. That's way easier to say whenever I was trying. I like that you're like, homogenesis. This is when gays started. All right, James. Well, there's the normal. So there's the Bible, and then you got the homo Bible.
00:29:05
Speaker
Yeah, homogenesis, homo-exodus, homo-lamidicus.
00:29:11
Speaker
um But yeah, I can't judge it because I don't know what the rest of the gameplay would be. But I will say when I thought this was a sneaky, spooky, monster hunting type game, like another phasmophobia-esque thing with cartoon characters, I was more interested in that than Bunch of people fighting in action. I will say we don't know too much. We just saw as a part of the animated portion that they were using their weapons to attack some smaller enemies. I hate the game, Dave. Can't change my mind. Yeah, I think for a lot of these, it'd be like it'd be nice to see more gameplay. Yes. um But there was a game that was it showed all of the gameplay pretty much that was Kill Knight. Yeah.
00:30:00
Speaker
which to somebody randomly be like, oh, it's a vampire survivors like. Mm hmm. Kind of. Yeah. See it. Yeah. But it seems like there's more traps and other types of things. And it's a twin stick shooter of all things. Yeah. Which you don't hear about that much anymore. That's true. But if you remember Flash games and top down view, boy, howdy. They still definitely exist.
00:30:26
Speaker
I mentioned the twin six shooter that this one's got to compete with Hades, obviously, but um this looks more action oriented. I would say like a lot more blood. They're going for yeah something closer to like the Diablo Doom aesthetic. Yeah, and like you're killing a horde of demons at a time, not like, oh, that's just one four or five enemies and I have to deal with.
00:30:52
Speaker
Yeah, it seems very much like they want to encourage you to. Kill everything, maybe use traps to your advantage. ah Power up as you go. um I want to mention just you honestly, so the trailer says five eldritch layers, and this is these are the the description of these levels, I assume is what they are.
00:31:15
Speaker
um Probably gives you a good vibe for what this game is going for solitude entanglement viscera echelon and reflection These are all edge lord words Like this is um This is for people who were writing Knight Artorias fanfic back in Dark Souls one. Um, so me basically is what I'm trying to say, but like a mixture of, uh, guns and, uh, I thought I saw some melee weapons in there. I can't imagine it's just guns. Um, but yeah, kind of, there's a little bit of bullet hell going on. Um,
00:32:02
Speaker
It's it's interesting. I don't. We see a lot of gameplay, I think my takeaway is mostly it looks pretty arcadey right now. that That seems like what it's really going for here, especially since they they're showing the leaderboards. Yeah, yeah. um Which I mean, completely valid, right? Like there's there's nothing wrong with making that that kind of game.
00:32:27
Speaker
Yeah. You don't need to focus on the story as much. Just if you have a smooth action game that feels good, you have a nice game loop as far as killing, upgrading, progressing.
00:32:40
Speaker
um Yeah. It looks again, just like a fun, I want to pick up and maybe do a run or two type of game. Yeah. And like based off the consoles it's coming out for, like i think I think that makes sense. like I think it's on Switch, yeah, on everything, including Switch. So it's probably a good game to pick up and and play for that.
00:33:02
Speaker
um
00:33:05
Speaker
I don't own Hades 2 yet. I do want to say Hades 2 is less of a twin stick. That's fair. It's more of one analog stick and four buttons.
00:33:19
Speaker
That is true. I mean, if you're playing with a controller, don't you still need to one to aim, one to move? I thought maybe.
00:33:31
Speaker
Because otherwise, I've just forgotten how I played Hades, too, I think. Oh, I think you're actually right. Yeah, i'm i'm I'm kind of the wrong person to to jump in on this because I did literally play Hades with mouse and keyboard. Like it was more convenient for me.
00:33:47
Speaker
From a precision standpoint, we've got to get the headshots, gotta to get the headshots. Um, but I will say, um, I think Hades two is going to be the better of the games, but super giant has so much polish yeah on it and it's not going for more of a, a smaller focus of that arcadey experience.
00:34:12
Speaker
And I want to say nuts. There we go. Dude, said Haiti, Haiti's too many times consecutively with no pay off. And so had to throw it in there. Um, people would literally unsubscribe but if we didn't throw, throw in that joke at least. Um, but yeah, I mean,
00:34:40
Speaker
I'm also, I gotta dial back my my my criticism a little bit here. We don't know that much about these games yet, right? So um there are so many ways that they can excel that are ah not stated yet. um And so much that we don't know about them. So hopefully they stay interesting. That's the important thing to do if you're if you're a game. Stay interesting, stay relevant. Yes.
00:35:07
Speaker
If you're a game, if you're a person, anything like that, make sure your lyrics aren't going to be dated in 10 years. If that person is no longer popular or in office. Uh huh. Um, there was another one that you, that you sent me here. Um, that was, you know, well into the genre of horror. I don't know if you handpicked these demos and you're just like, I like horror games or if just, I mean, there definitely were other ones. Um, some of them were not.
00:35:34
Speaker
interesting to me. So I didn't talk about them. Um, but yeah, Ayla was the one I was thinking of. Okay. I think yeah I don't pronounce it right. Well, it's a dot.i dot.l dot.a. yeah So I would pronounce it as Ayla, but I'm not sure what those are supposed to stand for. right Um, but it has a lot of,
00:35:57
Speaker
first person shots of spooky things. Yeah. Has kind of an ominous voiceover of you don't really know what horror is. Mm hmm. And like you'd see the character kind of like exploring these areas, maybe running into like an enemy. Yeah, this one's the first person shooter.
00:36:17
Speaker
or first person something yeah kind of game. But it looks like it's going to be very up close type of horror. Yeah. Because at the end of the trailer, the the quote unquote character who I guess you're playing as takes off his VR headset and kind of throws it down. um But a lot of those shots are like very up in your face.
00:36:40
Speaker
Yeah, i want to I want to mention some of like the evocative imagery here. So first off, like graphically, the first the first thing that I really noted is like this feels like Silent Hill to me. I know it never came out, but the PT teaser, yeah graphically, super impressive. Also, still, like apparently, PlayStations that had the PT teaser downloaded like were selling for a bunch of money, which is great. um Very funny.
00:37:06
Speaker
um but Graphically, that sort of reminds me of like a lot of the solitude um like spaces that have a lot of like particles in the air, dirty rooms, dirty walls, low lighting. That's all things I have associated with Silent Hill for some reason.
00:37:26
Speaker
um But after like doing a fly through with the camera, but seeing some of these locales, it cuts to like who I assume the protagonist is. It's first person and you're literally nailed to a cross and you're like, all right, well let's rip. Rip our hands off. and Yeah. Rip the hands off. Thankfully the nail comes with, cause for some reason it would be even grosser if it didn't. Um,
00:37:52
Speaker
But it shows like a couple different, um, I want to call them trials or something. It looks like it would be taken out of saw. That's the vibe I'm getting. Yeah. Also like the variety of locale, it seems like essentially different levels that you need to fight out of yeah where one is, um,
00:38:17
Speaker
maybe like an insane asylum or some type of abandoned facility. Uh, there was like outside in the fields, there's kind of like a, a castle yeah situation. So I think they're definitely going to try and hit some different themes and But yeah, I don't know. It really does jump around a lot. So it does. It's it's it's almost too much, right? Because it's hard to establish any sort of cohesive whole. That last scene where like the character does the we're going to be our headset is interesting from like a world building perspective. If you had a team of developers and designers and they're like, we don't really want to lock ourselves down to
00:38:58
Speaker
We're escaping from a mental institution or, you know, we're whatever other setup you could do for a traditional horror movie. I want to pose something. Yeah. And this is definitely taken from a Black Mirror episode. Yeah. But um I think it's going to be like, oh, there's this spooky stuff happening in the game. OK, I'm going to take a break and go back to my day to day life. and at a points for And at a point, they're going to blend together and he's not going to know which is which.
00:39:26
Speaker
Mm-hmm. There's something to that effect. That's fair. Yeah, where he thinks he's just enjoying his life, but he's still in the game. Right. And all these spooky things are happening to him. They they they hit him with the the sword art. sort or online me and He's trapped in the game. ah um i I think you're correct. I would I would bet in the same direction. um But Don't I don't hate when games do this I actually think it's perfectly fine to do so because at the end of the day as as a soft G gamer um I would rather have more variety and like the levels that I'm playing and Compared to just like this is boring. I've seen this a million times before I get that it's cohesive right like um Take a what's the amnesia for example, right? plenty of flavor
00:40:20
Speaker
plenty of setting stuff when you first go into it. But eventually you're just like, I am just going down tunnels further and further underground. Well, I mean, it still does change it a little bit like like a little you're kind of like in a library and you're kind of like in a more like simply stone. and Then you go further underground. It's like fully caves and others that like. Yeah, they still need to do things so it doesn't feel the same throughout. Mm hmm.
00:40:45
Speaker
um I think any game should do that. Like Hades is a good example of like you move through the different areas like biomes, basically. Yeah. yeah But like one, it like denotes actual progression. Oh, I've completed this area or this section.
00:41:05
Speaker
But like the the game I want to call out for this, I had my gripes with it, we had an episode on it, but they tackled this in a way I really appreciate was actually Remnant and Remnant 2. I said the game and technically that's two games, specifically Remnant 2. There you go. Now I'm not a liar. um Because like they had the world hopping mechanic, you're a planeswalker or whatever.
00:41:28
Speaker
Who cares, right? Whatever justification you need, your plane's hopping. um And so each of these worlds could have a very interesting artistic direction, maybe different enemies. They could do different things with the plots. They had to have different accents, whatever. Right. um But you could like mix up variety that you couldn't otherwise justify. And like our game takes place in the 1750s England.
00:41:56
Speaker
Exactly that you are in urchin. I will never be anywhere else. Right. I almost want games to just I like when something in media, let's say like ah a TV show or a game just throws you into the world and it's like, hey, this is our world. Right. And you're like, what is it? And it's like you'll find out. Yeah. Like they just make their own thing. They might use elements of something you're familiar with, like um What's the ghost in Tokyo? Ghostwire Tokyo. Yeah. We got most of the way there, just in the question, honestly. I got you. But obviously uses some Japanese aesthetic there. Yeah. But it also introduces other elements and kind of makes their own thing.
00:42:41
Speaker
um But yeah, just create your own world and you don't need to have all these justifications of why are these zombies French? Just make it your own thing and own it, right? Yeah. And I think it makes it a lot more believable if you just roll with it instead of having to necessarily have a justification for each choice you're making design. Yes. It's important. I agree with you. And I only want to expand on that and say it's important to have that. It's important to have a unique world that's not just Boring I mean you can you can tell stories in the real world and have them be interesting too But you can also tell boring stories in the real world or fictional worlds But it is important that even when you are staying true to the world that you're trying to create the fictional world um you have some ties back to The humans experience on the other side of the controller or keyboard or whatever the crap Yeah, um because that makes it way easier to like pick up what's going on and
00:43:37
Speaker
in the form of tropes, heroes, tragic starts, anything like that. It just, because I think for anyone who's like tried to read a really dense sci-fi book, you know what it's like to have jargon overflow. And it's just like, all right, I want you to read my book, but the first five chapters are just going to be me explaining what these words mean. And you're like,
00:44:05
Speaker
No. um Sometimes people make that mistake with that mistake with video games, too, where it's just like it's too bizarre and you're not sure what the threat is. But yeah, it doesn't need to be oversaturated in that. Yeah. I'm sure there are examples where that does work, just having that pure oversaturation. It's just super over the top constantly. Yeah. um Yeah, generally there should be something that a player can relate to. That's why tropes exist.
00:44:37
Speaker
um Like this segment, I'd say the whole reason tropes exist is like you can it's like theater, right? Ah, this is the role of the night. This is the role of the main. This is the role of the King's role of Jester, right? Yeah. the The actors change, but you still have a good idea of the character roles and what's happening. right But you can also then subvert those and you can expand upon it. But like you need that initial understanding of if you show this type of thing, people are like, oh, that's the comic relief. Exactly. Or this is like the the really tough and serious guy or something.
00:45:15
Speaker
Like using your example, you could make an interesting play where all of the characters have their roles, but for someone for some reason, everyone's showing deference to the jester. And in your world, the jester like has the authority of a king, right? But has all of the characteristics of a jester and the garb and the makeup and all that stuff. um And that's actually interesting, right? Because what you're doing then is your're you're introducing a difference, a curiosity.
00:45:44
Speaker
and into your world building. And the person who's consuming the story is going to be like, I want to. This doesn't make sense to me. This doesn't match what I would believe the case would be. Why is that right in horror? Horror is the genre for that. It's um the feeling that something is wrong with the otherwise mundane things that are before you. Right. Yeah. Love that.
00:46:13
Speaker
Jake and I actually work on a horror game. Yeah, Yeah, no, I don't love don't love that. I'll work on the story for a horror game. I don't want to go through the rest of the ah trials and tribulations you need to ship a game these days. Well, speaking of two horror games, because we definitely lost the initial thread. um There's a trailer, another trailer for Little Nightmares three.
Game Comparisons and Analysis
00:46:41
Speaker
True. Yeah. Which.
00:46:43
Speaker
If you follow the Little Nightmares series, it's probably going to be more of the same. Looks like it. But I always have enjoyed, I would say watching those more so than playing those. um But they just do such a good job of small, tight, intricate design. Yeah. That makes it kind of feel alive. And then when you are in these tense situations with enemies, you're like, oh, shit. Yes, exactly.
00:47:12
Speaker
the ah the the escalation. there's kind of the um um I can't remember exactly what the term for it is, but like the level of intensity in a game and it in a game that's well designed it doesn't keep you at a high intensity for a long period of time.
00:47:31
Speaker
And then you want to like dip back down, slow things down, go into some cerebral gameplay and then kick up the intensity again, basically keep you from getting bored, but don't overstimulate you. Yeah. And they also do a really good job of in their games, kind of having.
00:47:47
Speaker
world building within an area that kind of builds up to the actual spooky. So and the theta in the second one, Little Nightmares II, you go into a school and you see lots of like puppet school children that are crazy and acting bad and like they will attack you on sight. And there's also like a teacher who is like in charge of all the students and making sure no one is out of line and you need to avoid her. Right. So they set up these things ahead of time so you know to be like worried about them and then they kind of show their true nature later on. But there's enough to get you into the theming.
00:48:33
Speaker
Right. Or in like Little Nightmares 1, before you have to do anything with the chefs, ah you essentially have to walk under them or buy them or see part of their shadow, or them doing something kind of gross or menacing before you actually encounter them. Yeah. like It's ah the gameplay. And I haven't seen all of ah Little Nightmares. I haven't tracked it as much, other than knowing that the games are coming out. It reminds me a lot of like Limbo and games with that vibe.
00:49:03
Speaker
um There was a curiosity though, and without like hard switching over to talk about it, they mentioned re-animal right afterwards. Or, well, yeah I guess they didn't say they right afterwards. The order of the trailers as you presented them to me had re-animal right afterwards. And I was like, it does seem like it's it's also, you know, published. um I guess this one's actually THQ Nordic. Hmm, okay, different publisher.
00:49:34
Speaker
But what happened, I was looking this up, and the people who made Little Nightmares 1 and 2 didn't make Little Nightmares 3. The creators of 1 and 2 was Tarsier Studios, I probably butchered that, but they're making Re-Animal, and then Supermassive came in to make Little Nightmares 3.
00:49:59
Speaker
because Bandai Namco wants to continue that franchise. It probably makes some money, to be fair. OK, so I'm going to take back my previous statement as far as Little Nightmares 3 is going to be the same old thing. I mean, they are introducing co-op. That is a a big change. Right. But.
00:50:17
Speaker
Re-Animal is really the trailer that looks way fucking better. It does. It really does. Because it still seems like the same type of game as far as how they're doing design and you're very much a small character in like a big, terrifying world. um But they actually have some spooky elements, whereas Little Nightmares 3, you're like, maybe that's a little unsettling. And this one's like full on animal horror.
00:50:45
Speaker
um It's just immediately the trailer makes you feel uncomfortable. It's very uncomfortable. And I think it should. um It doesn't seem like it's going to be as maybe linear. Yeah. But honestly, if you watch this and you had no idea, you'd be like, oh, it's a little nightmares, right? Yeah, similar style. um So they they clearly they have a they have a flavor, right? Like they have a theme or a style for their games. Yeah. i Re-animal is the one I'm much more interested in versus Little Nightmares 3. Yeah. Yeah. Same, same for sure for me. Um, I was looking at what else Supermassive did cause I was like, that seems, the name sounds familiar and I know it's because Supergiant exists, but like, um, they've actually also made a lot of games. Um, the ones, I mean, they, they made little big planet DLC.
00:51:46
Speaker
It says a little big planet DLC on there there on their their wiki page, which is like weird. I don't know if the DLC means, I guess just DLC for it, but notably the casting of Frank Stone, which I had heard the name of before and I didn't realize it was a pawn until I read it on paper.
00:52:10
Speaker
Yup. Oh no, like because if casting a Frank Stone, you cast a stone. ah But the guy's name is Frank Stone. yeah so that's ah Is that a Dead by Daylight spinoff? It is actually, yeah. yeah yeah It's from the world of Dead by Daylight.
00:52:29
Speaker
um It's very funny. um It's also, it's it's upon on multiple levels too, because as I'm looking at the thing, I don't know that much about the game itself, um but it's ah it's around like a movie creation or something like that. So the casting of frame Frank Stone as an actor, but the name is casting in the stone. It's like, it's, yeah, it's too many, honestly. I can't take it seriously. It is a double entendre. Yeah.
00:53:02
Speaker
And this one's not about sex. Usually they're about sex. Unless it's a triple entendre, and I just missed it. but i I've never done a triple entendre. I'll need to find at least two consenting partners. oh ah I don't know why I'm looking. Oh, it's fine. It's fine. We'll be fine. So I was going to see if I can find examples, but and go on.
00:53:30
Speaker
Borderlands 4 is another one that they mentioned at Gamescom. I think it was just a teaser where they pick up a mask at classic Borderlands iconography. You'd be like, oh, it's Borderlands. I was never crazy big into the Borderlands series. I played some of the games kind of late. Yeah. um What were your thoughts on this? I mean, so Gearbox, Randy Pitchford, the whole deal, like They wanted and kind of needed Borderlands to succeed so much that they pretty much like forced the franchise. I haven't played all the games. I don't believe I played the pre-sequel. I didn't play Tiny Tino's Wonderland.
00:54:14
Speaker
but like That being said, I'm strongly of the opinion that Borderlands literally peaked at Borderlands 2. And it's like, it's never been as good. They had really cool classes. They had really cool skill trees. The DLC made sense. They had like the macromancer and all this other stuff. They had the, uh, the psycho.
00:54:34
Speaker
um Also stars in the ah and the movie as an aside. um but like And ah they had Handsome Jack as a villain. who like They literally have not been able to escape the gravitational pull of how good of a villain Handsome Jack was yeah since then. Like the Telltale game, the narrative one.
00:55:01
Speaker
literally had Handsome Jack. I think like Borderlands 3 or the pre-sequel, like, has you have a ha Handsome Jack doppelganger, right? Like they just made the best villain they could and they've never lived up to it since.
00:55:15
Speaker
um
00:55:18
Speaker
And then they also just don't change the games that much, right? Like, no, it's a pretty standard looter shooter. You have the Borderlands theming as far as where you pepper in your style of comedy.
00:55:30
Speaker
um And then you add character class or two and I feel like you can be on your way. Yeah, that's how I felt ah playing three at least Like I had a good enough time playing with front of the show and special guests Justin slash dice um Yeah, it feels like you could replace some other parts and it would still kind of be like yeah, it's borderline right I Like I mean this as an insult, I guess. But like Borderlands could be Call of Duty. Yeah, I agree with that. It's like. They they they really haven't. I don't think of I think every Borderlands game that's come out that I've played, I've played less than the previous. It's it's it's not ideal. I will say that that was almost true for like FromSoft games as well, but it really isn't. And I was tallying up the amount of time that I put in the FromSoft games and even with
00:56:23
Speaker
Even though I haven't beaten armored court, there are so many hours borderlands cannot compete. Um, and yeah, I just, I don't know. I mean, there were unplayed games in the series right now. What are they going to introduce them for? That makes me care. Yeah. I think if you're like a diehard fan of the franchise, you're definitely stoked to get some more or a new borderlands content.
00:56:49
Speaker
yeah Um, if you're kind of like us, as far as like fence sitters regarding your like fence peekers, even, you can probably just let it go by and be like, and it's fine. I will say right now I have two friends who are online and they're playing through borderlands two together. And borderlands might be indicative of your previous statement. It's so good.
00:57:12
Speaker
Like I legit, if i what if i if I somehow woke up in an alternate real reality and I was like, I really wanna play Borderlands, two would be the one I'd go back to. They had such cool character designs. Like the DLC characters and stuff like that, they were so cool. yeah i don't know if I don't know if you're familiar with the Psycho.
00:57:33
Speaker
but like their core gameplay is literally beating themselves up and taking damage from the enemies to feed the rest of their skills and damage and all of this stuff. They're rewarded for literally like being where explosions happen. I think everybody else has like a ah bleed out like mechanic where you're kind of like on the ground and then you can be revived or maybe you get a kill for like the second chance and stuff.
00:58:03
Speaker
And the psycho, like, if I remember correctly, they pull out dynamite and they'll just run it somebody and that's their like recover mechanic. Their second chance as it's like, they literally suicide bomb an enemy. And if they get a kill, then they come back. Um, just, it's excellent stuff, but.
00:58:23
Speaker
Yeah, well, I don't know. I will say this much about Borderlands 4. Statistically, it can't be worse than the movie. yeah Nothing can. home phone I still remember the headline of when like the movie first came out and there was the first wave of reviews and it had a legitimate zero on Rotten Tomatoes. Like no one Gave it a positive rating. And it changed eventually. ah Yeah, like four percent or something. But it's that's an example where like you can have an existing IP and then you just kind of do a really poor job handling it. ahha Whereas like Dune. Dunes kick an ass. Oh, yeah. People love doing right.
00:59:11
Speaker
um I want to say part of that is just staying closer to the source material instead of just trying to what I felt like from watching those trailers, just like, Hey, uh, what A-list celebrities do we have on hand? You are not a part of other projects that we can throw in during the pandemic too, basically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's very much in line with like the bad game spinoffs. Um,
00:59:43
Speaker
But I also kind of like they were also they did it is sort of like a retelling, I think, of the original Borderlands story. And don't get me wrong, Borderlands one had a fairly interesting story. It had parts that were interesting. But the that it was the only one that really had this massive twist that I recall.
01:00:06
Speaker
Which, I mean, it's been 20 years or whatever since that game came out. i didn't If I played Borderlands 1, it's so long ago. Basically, the twist for Borderlands 1, if you don't want to hear it, it's the end of the episode. Catch us next week. But think um the twist for Borderlands 1 is everything's leading up to the vault, the alien vault. And um there's supposed to be full of treasure. And everyone wants to access it. And it's kind of this, like it is the trope of like a bunch of disparate bands of people all trying to get the treasure, right? A lot of examples of that in media. And you get there at the end and you're finally the ones to unlock it. And it's like, oh, well, this this vault is basically just a prison for Cthulhu. Like you just.
01:00:54
Speaker
You just like, you just like Cthulhu. Why did you do that? And then there was the boss fight. I don't think it was a good boss fight, but it was a very interesting twist turn on it. Right. I don't know if anything as interesting necessarily has happened in borderlands since, but like two is where they really opened up the story and they had like the other corporations. What's the role of Hyperion and.
01:01:24
Speaker
all this other stuff. And so it was cool. It was a cool world building and stuff, but they can't do that forever. And they've shown that they can do that forever. So yeah I don't know what to meta. Yeah, two or three, three or three. Yeah, because I was the streamer villains. Yeah. Yeah. Which like it's cute as a side character thing. um It feels weird to like lean into it the entire time, though. Yeah. Yeah, it kind of could reduce the ah The reason you could have an episode on just why Handsome Jack is a good villain, but the reason he's a good villain is because he like, he's very charismatic. He's clearly like a psychopath, but in a very likable way. And then they just occasionally would introduce audio diaries and things of his interactions with other people where it's not his public facing sort of persona. And you're just like,
01:02:21
Speaker
Oh, he is, he's just the worst person. He just like forced a guy to eat his own eyes or something like that. Like, I think there was, there was a dialogue that was around that level of brutality. And you're like, I don't think I, I don't think I like them anymore. And I'm a little upset that I did like the butt, the, the, the, the diamond horse, butt stallion or whatever it was. That was a good bit, but like, it does seem like he's evil.
01:02:51
Speaker
And his horse died, right? like he did It did die when it got turned into diamonds, yes. But yeah, it's it's tough. And um I think this IP is just in a place where they're stuck between like what Borderlands has been and what it would actually need to do to innovate. And they're afraid to make appreciable changes.
01:03:19
Speaker
um But I also don't think that the same group of people that would buy Call of Duty every year would like necessarily buy Borderlands every year. So who's the same? I know. I still think ah the core demo who likes Borderlands games will play it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think it's it's just kind of like Pokemon in that regards where it's like I play the other ones. I've enjoyed my time with it. This is the next installment. Let me hop on.
01:03:46
Speaker
Yeah. And then it's, I don't want to say that they come out anywhere near the same frequency that, uh, call of duty does. That's the one thing I'll say. They made a lot of games besides and NBA two K. Yeah. They don't change it and they don't change it a ton, but it's not that great. Um, we'll see. We'll see how it is.
01:04:12
Speaker
that's ah That's mostly Gamescom. There was other stuff. Maybe we'll talk about it later. Maybe not. Who's to say? There are definitely some other ones. um If any of these caught your interest or you're like, well, what about something else? Yeah. um Go on YouTube. Check out some trailers. there's a There's quite a few of them. And we only covered the ones that we found interesting. ah So there could be other ones out there that might be more up your alley. That's true. But if you have games that are up your alley and you want to tell us about them,
01:04:42
Speaker
send those games, those games in, no, tell us what you want to hear us dissect coming from the games. Come. Cause like we are, I think it's not too much to say that we're the most analytical voices in the industry. Um, bar none really. So.
01:05:00
Speaker
If you want us to talk about a game that we don't know about, send that game and let us know. We'll do two seconds of research and we'll extrapolate for an hour. Soapstone podcast at gmail dot.com or join the discussion on Facebook, Facebook dot.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always.
01:05:20
Speaker
We'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.