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May Ian Live Forever
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Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Ian as they talk about Hades 2 impressions, early access, Larian vs. the Industry, the Dota patch, and keeping up with League of Legends in this week's episode!
Intro:
- Double Dragon Neon OST - Track 1 - Title Theme
Outro:
- Deus Ex - UNATCO (nervous_testpilot Remix)
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Arrival
00:00:47
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going good. Today's been awesome. Didn't have to do much stuff for work. Got some errands done. Went to the gym. Got groceries. Cooked. And now we have Ian here. Holy shit! It just keeps getting better.
00:01:15
Speaker
I wish anyone in my life gave me half as much enthusiasm as Dave did.
Podcast Delivery Woes: A Mischievous Twist
00:01:32
Speaker
That's fair. I have to acknowledge early that we got some reports that people weren't getting our episodes last couple of weeks. Apparently it's because the vagabond urchin that we
00:01:48
Speaker
hand the physical VHS tapes, I think they are, over to in order to deliver to the podcast suite where they get uploaded. He's been skimming off the top. So that's the reason we're shy a couple episodes. People have been reporting, but if we track him down, we'll post him. I think he might start just doing it by hand. I no longer trust this person, personally. Yeah.
00:02:15
Speaker
You know, I'm not the expert and I hate to say I told you so, but when you first came to tell me that you were employing a street urchin to ferry your material across the world, I had my misgivings, but I figured you guys knew what you were talking about. I was told it was an industry standard. The whole time I thought it was a sea urchin and I wasn't really involved in the process. That sounds magical. Anyways, that's that topic. What have you guys been up to?
00:02:45
Speaker
I'm going to point to Ian first because we haven't had a chance to have him on a little bit.
Hades 2 Early Access: A Deeper Dive
00:02:51
Speaker
Let's see. I suppose we're not going to get far into this podcast without discussing that Hades 2 is hit early access.
00:03:00
Speaker
That is true. What? Zero percent chance. Dave could be in a cave and he would know that Hades 2 launched. I wanted to be known that I had launched Hades 2 for approximately seven minutes before I got the Steam message from Dave saying so how do you like it? That is something I do. If somebody plays a game that I like I'm like
00:03:22
Speaker
Are you doing the thing? How do you feel about the main menu so far? It has not launched. Ten out of ten. I've heard really good things. So I'm the one person here who has neither purchased nor played. Which I could have just said is purchased Hades, too. But I've heard nothing but just the best of praise for it.
00:03:50
Speaker
I think it's really good, personally. Somebody said that basically what they have now in Early Access for Hades 2 is about the amount of content that the full game has in Hades 1. I feel like that might be a little bit of a stretch. I still have some content to go through to grind out certain weapon aspects and stuff, but it is really fleshed out at this point. Like it doesn't feel
00:04:19
Speaker
Oh, we're trying out a new UI for this. Like things look good. Really good. Yeah, it's it's picture perfect early access in the sense that it's like it's already a finished game. It feels like like there's some art assets that they have placeholders for and there is obviously like no ending to the game right now, but
00:04:47
Speaker
I think I've put something like 20 or 30 hours into an early access title that's not finished yet. It wasn't Subnautica either. I didn't get around to Subnautica until it was released. So is that is that true? That doesn't sound true. That's probably true. I should trust your word about your own experiences more than my own. Anyways, but yeah, Hades two seems really good. Yeah, 10 to 10 recommend.
00:05:17
Speaker
thing. Pretty good. Mid-journey just decided to charge me money in real time. Thanks for that. Thanks, AI overlords. They're like, I see that you're recording a podcast. We're just going to slide this in here. So my question to you guys, so this is kind of meta around it, is
00:05:42
Speaker
The thing that's a little bit surprising to me is that it was launched so close to being completely done without being completely done. Like they chose to launch to Early Access when it could have been just a full
Early Access Benefits and Strategy
00:05:54
Speaker
retail release. It almost seems like. So why do you guys think that they went with the Early Access model again? I think that it worked the first time as far as getting a lot of people on board, basically getting
00:06:10
Speaker
all these testers, quote unquote testers in at once and able to provide a lot of feedback. Um, I know at least in the earlier days of the Hades one early access, like some of the bosses were scaled differently. Some of the abilities were like a little bit different and some of the UI felt a little janky and some of like the story hasn't been finished yet. Um, I'm still kind of like the.
00:06:38
Speaker
I could, I could really talk on both sides of the fence. Um, but it really just sunk its hooks in me and I've been loving it. And now I'm teased for like, Oh, I want there to be more. And I'm anticipating that next patch. Right. Yeah. I really think they're, I think Dave's onto it. Like it worked well for them last time with Hades one. So they're going to do it again.
00:07:02
Speaker
And I'm also really happy with their rapid innovation. And by that, what I mean is like the game was in early access for a week and people were complaining like the dash doesn't feel responsive. And hey, we're upset we can only gather one type of resource per run. And they're like, oh, we took that to heart within three days. Here's a new version. The dash is faster and more responsive and
00:07:28
Speaker
You can gather all the resources in a run, but you can prioritize which resource you want specifically to come up more often. And I mean, I played live service games where they're supposed to innovate rapidly and they don't have that sort of responsiveness. Yeah.
00:07:47
Speaker
But you guys both think it's not within the camp of they were financially pressured into it or that otherwise there was any sort of pressure on them. You think it was just because they wanted the game to be that much better? I mean, it might have been.
00:08:04
Speaker
some degree of like a financial thing. But I don't think it's out of like a, Oh, we have to do this. Right. This was a very controlled launch. Yeah. Cause like Hades one did really well and then got ported to so many platforms and it's still touted obviously as a God like Roguelike. Um, so I'd be surprised if it was like a financial impetus for that, but also like getting money from early access stuff can't hurt.
00:08:32
Speaker
right but also like it's still gonna be roughly that price when the games complete like maybe I'll go to 40 bucks but that's really it like they're not gonna be like oh we'll do half now and half later and be a 60 dollar game
00:08:50
Speaker
I think it's probably fair to say that anyone who picks up Hades for early access would have also picked up Hades when it launches. I think the people who buy early access games is a subset of the people who are interested in that game without other qualifiers. Yeah, I'd agree with that.
00:09:07
Speaker
I definitely think that this is one of the cases of like, you know, always be a little bit shy when it comes to early access, because you don't want to get completely ripped off. But if it's a developer, or a publisher that you know is going to put their money where their mouth is, like Supergiant, then yeah, take my money day one, like I trust them.
Success Story: Larian Studios and Baldur's Gate 3
00:09:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of interesting that they can get away with it because there are downsides to launching early with early access, right? Because generally reviewers don't touch early access unless they consider it mostly done anyways. They think it's a reasonable picture of where the game will end up because you only get like one first impression with a game.
00:09:47
Speaker
And it's not fair as people who are paid to review games to present the game as something other than what it will be when it goes gold. But Steam reviewers don't care about stuff like that. People will absolutely tear apart an early access game that has issues. So at the very least, it's kind of ballsy to be like, OK, well, our game's not perfect yet. There's still things we want to change. Judge it. Put it in front of Gordon Ramsay.
00:10:18
Speaker
Yeah. I feel like they had a foot in the door already though, because it's not like they started absolutely from the ground up with like, Hey, entirely new system and design and everything. They're like, Hey, we're, it's going to be Hades, but different. Right.
00:10:38
Speaker
Yeah, it definitely feels to me and I don't say this in a sense to disparage Supergiant. It feels like they started off as like DLC or an expansion and it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger until they were like, you know what, this is already as big as our last game. So they're just they're reusing the engine with tweaks and it was a great engine. So.
00:11:02
Speaker
I think Dave and I mentioned it on a previous episode, but I think this is the first time that they're doing a sequel. Um, keeping things like within the same universe, even really, but also game type. Right. I remember back when we're like, Oh, let's Supergiant's next title going to be. And I was like, you know, it'd be crazy if they went into an FPS. We were so surprised by anime basketball and they're like, Hey, these two, I'm like, actually that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:33
Speaker
I mean, at the end of the day, they have a fiduciary responsibility is the phrase I've learned recently. I don't think they, I don't think they do. I know they have their responsibility for Warner bros, but I don't think super giant itself is publicly traded. What I mean to say is that Hades one made a lot of money. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you've got an idea for Hades two and it looks good and you know, Hades one made a lot of money, like how do you leave that on the table? Right.
00:12:04
Speaker
So Hades somehow becomes the God of War, or not God of War, Call of Duty, a video game. They're like, oh yeah, well this is Hades Zombies. This is the off-season. It really is. The Dark Souls of Supergiant Games. We did Greek Gods. We're now doing Roman Gods. It's different. I will say also, because I know I said they had their foot in the door of like, oh, we'll build it off of the same type of thing.
00:12:31
Speaker
There is some overlap as far as Zeus is a character still where you can get boons from. There are some, but it's a handful. And also any of the weapons you're like, oh, no.
00:12:48
Speaker
Certain things, you could be like, ah, this was definitely inspired by something, or I see some similarities. But everything about the game feels very unique for how it's designed. So much so that it took me a while to get used to using the cast and weaving in your specials and stuff. I'm like, this weapon feels weird. I don't know how I want to do this. And what's the point of this? But then you play around with it, and you're like, oh.
00:13:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think it might be because I give them so much faith. I have a lot of built-in trust in Supergiant at this point. One of the few game developers I can still do that for. But I kind of feel like they have the opposite of the situation that Larian found themselves in after the end of Baldur's Gate 3.
00:13:39
Speaker
where Larian was like, they literally started working on DLC and stuff like that. But they're like, do we want to do this? And then they're like, no, not really. We kind of just want to go make our own thing again. They're like, OK, let's do that. Right. Like, that's the opposite of what happened with Hades. They're like, no, we finished it, but we still have all these ideas. We still want to take it these places.
00:14:03
Speaker
I mean, Larian, Larian's got money now. Like they might've had money before, but with the amount of sales they got from Baldur's Gate 3, I can't wait to see what they do next. I did not play Divinity Sin one or two, but Baldur's Gate put them on my radar. So now that's definitely a backlog game for me. And Dave sniffed around. Dave presses nose against glass.
00:14:32
Speaker
You know how you watch Let's Plays of Outer Wilds, Ian? You can just take that and transfer that to online shared
Challenges in Game Development
00:14:45
Speaker
co-op games for Divinity, too. It would not surprise me to hear that Dave is in Discord just where people are coordinating groups at this point. It was the full D&D experience for Divinity.
00:14:59
Speaker
It's pretty ridiculous. I am really glad they won Game of the Year at the Game Awards. They deserved it. Oh, yeah. It also kind of empowered the meta narrative of that. They really needed to win that year specifically.
00:15:14
Speaker
Because we're in the middle, we've talked about it before, but we're in the middle of essentially the great purge of AAA developers. So many people have had their studios downsized, deleted entirely like that Arkane studio, or otherwise a bunch of people were losing their jobs.
00:15:34
Speaker
And then game of the year just went to Baldur's Gate and they're like, yeah, we pretty much just do our own thing. Don't treat your people like trash. And that was essentially their message. And then, you know, just take every award. Yeah. It turns out it's really easy to win awards. It's a make good games and B don't be bad to your employees. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's always easier to like, let somebody who has passion
00:16:03
Speaker
shine and do their thing and instead of trying to overly control them and force something because like I'm at my my peak when I just get to do something for the fun of it whether that's video games you're like cooking up something silly in the kitchen but if you start like adding these constraints of like well it has to be this you're like I'm sort of losing like I might force myself through it but I don't have that
00:16:31
Speaker
drive or desire anymore because it's now just an obligation. Yeah, it turns out creative freedom goes a long way in creativity. Freedom. Yeah, that's right. It's like, how do you get your best material out of an artist? You're like chain them to a wall where they don't see anything novel. Their life's at risk every day. No, not really.
00:17:02
Speaker
It's honestly the waves I expect to continue beyond the firing are a big deal. You go through your day differently if you're thinking about whether or not your position is secure. If you're already all this super stressed out because
00:17:20
Speaker
There's that whole, I know gamers are super privileged and they like, they think that they're persecuted and all this stuff. Like game developers actually are. Like any, any one of them could pretty much quit what they're doing and just enter an adjacent white collar sector, make tons more money and actually have work-life balance, but they put up with it anyways.
00:17:42
Speaker
Do you mean to say that for like the last, I don't know, 10 to 15 years, being a game developer is difficult because the internet will come after you over the smallest thing. I wasn't even saying that, but that's also true. Yeah, it's rough to get it from both sides. And would you do that if you thought you were on the cutting block, right? Oh, I thought you were propositioning, Dave. And would you do that? Could you commit now on this podcast?
00:18:15
Speaker
I it does need to change. Like you said, Larian definitely had a good example of like, hey, this is viable. Like people like, oh, don't expect remember the whole who put out that fucking tweet where it's like, hey, don't expect all RPGs to be like this. Oh, I remember that. I can't I can't remember exactly.
00:18:38
Speaker
It was either, it was either Bioware or it was Josh Scholier, who's the guy who like worked on Fallout New Vegas and some other stuff. But I can't remember exactly. Yeah. So shit companies. So I mean, I like your Bioware, but what have you done for me lately? Yeah, they're supposed to have Dread Wolf, but we'll see. But yeah, like obviously Larian as a studio, like they built that working model for how they wanted to streamline that stuff. Yeah. Because obviously there's
00:19:08
Speaker
a shit ton of content in Baldur's Gate. There's so many different dialogue trees and options and stuff. And then they're like, Hey, what's the best way for us to record all these things? What's the best way to lay out decision trees? What's the best way? And then they did that. Yeah. And it's not like Baldur's Gate was their only game that they did that in. They did it for divinity as well. And like, I'm sure that they had some growing pains along the way, but they found something that worked for them.
00:19:38
Speaker
And it's not like they're pooping out games every six months. But when they hit, they're bangers. And I mean, that's what's more important. I just want to play like bangers and maybe some smash, you know? Bangers and smash. Bangers and smash. I think it's funny because I've been thinking about the Twitter quote and what you just said, like, and they just keep releasing bangers.
00:20:04
Speaker
It's like, it's not just the fact that the studio wasn't under a ton of pressure that allowed them to be successful, but you could take that line of like, hey, Baldur's Gate 3 is great, don't expect every RPG to be this great.
00:20:19
Speaker
And to kind of like simplify it to be like, hey, Larian's great. Don't expect every game company to be this good. And like, that's a much more direct and precise point, right? Like the game didn't come out of nowhere. But I digress, I don't think. I'm preaching to the choir. It was good. I mean, I'm happy with the way, I'm going to say the independent space, because I hate to say indie. Indie has this,
00:20:49
Speaker
image of a small, you know, the small darling indie. Larian is independent, but they are not small, darling, indie, they are big, independent, they're grown up game dev. And but the indie space is like, almost exclusively where I live anymore. Like,
00:21:09
Speaker
Animal Well, I just started playing that three or four days ago. And I think that was developed by one person and published by Dunkey, which is a statement that I never thought I'd say, but I'm glad it is because it's a really intriguing game. Yeah.
00:21:30
Speaker
Also, it's not like they did it in, you know, like another like rush thing. It was single developer passion project over a period of time. Yeah. We, even the same thing, like with Homori, right? It, it was a long project because again, it's one person, uh, doing it on their own. Um, not to say that all grid indies have to be like one person. Yeah. But yeah, it does need to have some passion and creative freedom, I think. Hmm.
00:22:01
Speaker
I mean, we're getting to the point where this kind of, I'm going to call them like the next generation of indie auteurs are coming out of the woodworks. Like our Daniel Mullins are Toby Foxes are this guy that made animal. Well, whose name escapes me right now. John Smith, John animal. Well, yeah. Like these guys come out of nowhere. Um, I can't remember the name of the guy that made inscription.
00:22:30
Speaker
Oh no. He made Pony Island. The Hex. Yeah. Now he's making Pony Island too. Like, and they make their own games. They do exactly what they want to do. Uh-huh. And they're successful. Yeah. Our next Kojimas. That's dangerous. But yeah, there are some really weird divs in the indie space. So I could see it. I could definitely see it.
00:22:59
Speaker
Hopefully they make it through. And if AAA has to take a little bit of a step back, even more space for those indie games to breathe and excel in. What else have you guys been doing? Play any games? Anything anticipated? I think this is Dave's turn. I need to make a brief aside just because I need to get this off my chest because I have feelings about it.
Dota 2 Tournament Chaos: Ian's Experience
00:23:29
Speaker
I believe it was literally yesterday. So we're still doing that Dota 2 tournament thing. This is our second series. I'm currently captaining a team, which I regret. That's not a job for this guy, but it's happening. And in our series, we lost the first game pretty bad. We won the second game pretty hard. We're like, OK, game three. That's going to be the tiebreaker.
00:23:59
Speaker
And between games two and three, Valve's like, hey, you know that Dota 2 patch we said was gonna be mid-May? We're doing it now.
00:24:08
Speaker
So we did game three on an entirely new patch where they added implicit abilities or passives for all of the heroes. And then they also gave them facets where it's like, hey, do you want to kind of play this style? Where it's like, maybe your one move has this additional ability, or is it the other one? And some characters have more than two to pick from.
00:24:33
Speaker
So we all kind of went in blind so to be fair both teams had this problem And it was a very long game, and then we threw the fuck out of it in my opinion I talked to some other people who like were watching and casting and they said it was actually very very close and kind of a coin flip for how certain things are worked out but Dota 2 patch is huge and crazy and I have not had a chance to process all of it, but
00:25:04
Speaker
That is in my very recent history of what's new. Pussycat. That's fair. I mean, I can expect that anytime there is a major Dota patch, it's basically a different game. They have no, it is not a design goal at all that the same people who logged in yesterday will have the same comprehension as when they log in today, right?
00:25:30
Speaker
League of Legends is like, hey, on your fourth hit, you're going to deal bonus damage. And here's some bright, shiny colors for you. And Dota's like, I'm going to ruin you. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. League of Legends will ruin you too. You just have to enable all chat. Oh, if that's fair.
00:25:48
Speaker
the trick with with riot is it's like oh we found some situation where the jungler just shouldn't play the way that all other junglers play so we literally put up baby gates and if you queue up in the role jungler you can only go straight in to do what you need to do here here are your jungle bumpers uh-huh
00:26:10
Speaker
I have followed League of Legends for the last five years, despite the fact that I don't play it. It's your evil mind. Yeah, it's my... I like to watch this and keep abreast of the updates, but I don't want to ever step foot there again. What is my ex up to? What is my abusive ex, because that's what League of Legends is. But I love watching...
00:26:39
Speaker
a strategy come about either from like tournament play that someone has decided to like co-opt into the meta or someone has gone off the rails and discovered something wacky and unforeseen. And I love how Riot immediately attempts to course correct. They're like, well, we didn't plan this. There was a meta a few years back where the mid laner, they just picked the tankiest support they could.
00:27:07
Speaker
And what he did is he just didn't kill the creeps. He just tried to keep them alive so that the jungler, who was the hard carry, could clear his jungle. And every time he crossed the map, he would clear the mid-wave as well, get absurdly ahead, and then steamroll every lane. And they're like, all right, junglers now get less golden experience from lane creeps. Jesus. And that was within, like,
00:27:37
Speaker
a month they were like yeah no we can't allow this yeah it's definitely like a very much an opposite design philosophy because dota has a lot of weird little things like so for anybody who doesn't play mobas there are lane creeps that will kind of just push in each lane and you can kill the enemy ones to get money and experience
00:28:01
Speaker
Um, and also you can use it to like help push towers. You can stand behind them and they'll eat the tower hits and you can hit structures, et cetera. Stand behind your summoner minions. Exactly. Hmm. Wait. Um, where's it going? Ooh, that was a hard brain farted items. Yeah. Lane creeps. Sorry. Uh, with lane creeps with a lot of those mobas, like they'll just automatically go in a path.
00:28:31
Speaker
And that's just how that works in Dota. They're like, Oh, we figured out that we can actually use our characters models to block the creeps and slow the progression. So you can change the lane equilibrium to be a little bit more on your side of the tower. So it'd be safer for you to play. And they're like, yeah. They're like people who want to be good at that can be good at that.
00:28:53
Speaker
And that's just a thing. And you can stack creep camps. So at every minute, things in the jungle will spawn if there's nothing in that little spawn box. So what you do is a little bit before that minute mark,
00:29:06
Speaker
You hit the creeps that are in there, and you pull them out of the spawn box. They're like, hey, what are you doing? And then the new camp spawns. And now you have a stacked camp. So somebody like the jungler or the hard carrier can come through and more efficiently farm. And Dota has a lot of little things like that. We're like, yeah, yeah, that'll be part of the game now. Right. Yeah.
00:29:33
Speaker
I think to their credit, Riot wants to keep League balanced. Like that's really what they aim for. And Ice Frog and Dota just want to keep the ball rolling fast enough that no one understands where things are better than other things. And just, it just katamari's more and more concepts and stuff together. As long as everyone's equally confused, it's still balanced. Kind of, yeah.
00:29:59
Speaker
there have been plenty of things that were discovered really really late in a patch cycle and it was just like oh that's devastating it's it's not to say that i i do want to give riot their fair shake though they do innovate but they tend to do it like once a year it's like all right it is the start of the new season we've overhauled all these items and
00:30:21
Speaker
Got rid of some, added some new ones, changed how the old ones worked. Here's the new sandbox, figure it out. We'll see you in professional play in a few months. When you say professional play, that actually is convenient for that because there have been so many times where like a major is going to happen, which is like not the biggest tournament, but teams will need to play these tournaments, get invited to bigger events, different prize pools, blah, blah, blah.
00:30:50
Speaker
But it is possible that like a patch can drop separately from the major, maybe shortly beforehand. And now you have to kind of change things around because Valve is not the one organizing those tournaments, it's other. So having that disconnect can kind of make the professional scene a lot more complicated and difficult. Right.
00:31:11
Speaker
and they don't have something like a tournament version where you can just be like, oh, for the duration of this event. It'll be 1.3. That would be, that would be huge. That would be like, that would be really awesome. It's one of the reasons that like a PTR is actually nice for the games that take that route. Dota puts so much weight on the hype of like,
00:31:36
Speaker
It just dropped. We just found out about it. You can play it now, right? That's the way they generally do it. Now it's also weeks after they anticipate launching, but that's valve stuff, right? Valve time. Uh-huh. But you don't know how crazy it's going to be until that day, so you can't prepare for it. When you have to organize something, it's better if you can prepare for it.
00:32:02
Speaker
Speaking of Valve, MOBAs, and new products, Valve is making a new MOBA hero shooter thing. Yeah. Gunfire Reborn. I don't think that's it. I think that's something else. Maybe that was the one that was Dreadwolf. It's like Dreadwolf. I think its name is like Dreadwolf.
00:32:26
Speaker
It's someone, how does like gun or bone something? Yeah. I watched both myself and Dave both reach for the keyboard at the same time to fact check you. Pretty sure it's Dread Wolf Reborn. The only sounds of the podcast are people rapidly googling. Deadlock. I was pretty close. Dread Wolf, Deadlock. You got the same number of syllables.
00:32:56
Speaker
But yeah, people are theorizing this is a sort of hero shooter FPS or third person mode mobile thing, right?
Valve's New Hero Shooter: What to Expect?
00:33:05
Speaker
Yeah, I saw some of the leaks and I can't speak of like gameplay because it was literally just a character model walking around and swinging around on a Bioshock infinite rail. But the art style is that Team Fortress 2
00:33:22
Speaker
We don't know what decade it is exactly. It's somewhere between the 50s and 2000 and kind of steampunk-y noir-y. I kind of love it. Right. I'm interested to see what they do. I like when Valve makes games. Now, I'm going to throw out two titles in a similar space to get your thoughts and feedback.
00:33:47
Speaker
Paragon. Does anybody remember Paragon? Third person moment. It got killed multiple times. It was also unfortunately owned by Epic and they have to compare anything that they own against Fortnite. And that's really hard to do. Sort of skews the results. Yeah, that's that's rough. Another title. Was it Monday Night Combat?
00:34:17
Speaker
I will always support Monday Night Combat. You have to do an audible sound also when you and it's okay because otherwise it's just like 10 seconds. Listen, I wasn't sure if Dave was going to continue his sentence. I just wanted a fist bump over here in silence. I played so much Monday Night Combat in college. That is actually a game that I entirely missed. I might have played like 10 minutes of
00:34:46
Speaker
some client as it was like going out the door. But what did you like about it? What made it good? In a way, Monday Night Combat was the first MOBA I ever played. It was a MOBA before I'd ever heard the term MOBA before. Because, you know, it's you push creeps, you upgrade your hero over the duration of the game. But it was also kind of like Overwatch in that you can swap classes mid game, swap characters.
00:35:17
Speaker
And you received a reduced amount of the currency you had acquired so far throughout the game the match. And there is like customizations match by match like since you were a a pro you were a you know a sports star quote unquote.
00:35:36
Speaker
uh you could get different advertisements and all the advertisements for like these ridiculous brands and they would have things like oh my gold advertisement is the reload speed company my silver advertisement is the health company my bronze advertisement would be the experience company and it's very much this respawn sponsored by hyperion yeah it was and it was very at like i want to say
00:36:05
Speaker
tongue in cheek with like how advertisements are for sporting arenas and I think their best seller for the game itself was the game had an announcer who was the one who you know called out kills and what's going on in the game and also introduced every round and they really had their finger on humor for that because the humor was on point
00:36:30
Speaker
Um, like halfway through the game, the mascot would come down into the match and just shooting it gave you money. So it actively created a zone where everyone's now trying to kill the enemy. So they don't shoot the mascot, but you also want to be shooting the mascot yourself to get money. And I thought it was a really fun game and it had a lot of variety, like the classes each stood on their own.
00:36:57
Speaker
Um, there was a classic, he wasn't the engineer, he was the support. But it was like, if you took the medic and the engineer from TF2 and slammed him together, he could heal people. He could upgrade turrets, get a shotgun. That's about it. That sounds pretty hype. It seems like they're going to be what you said, like from the noir style, probably a little bit less like that. But I do kind of hope that they have some of that.
00:37:26
Speaker
battle personality that they have with TF2? Yeah. I think you could definitely find success, right? Because they're basically, who are they drawing from right now? I don't think team-based shooter people are really playing Battlefield. I know people are, but it's not the big thing, right? If you're still playing Battlefield, awesome. So you got like Overwatch, you have the League of Legends one where you shoot stuff. That's a hero shooter.
00:37:57
Speaker
Valorant, that's what it's called. Um, and you have like literally TF2, right? And valve kid without, even if they shut down the servers, they couldn't stop people playing TF2. That's probably fine.
00:38:17
Speaker
but it's very uncommon. I think I saw, maybe it was one of you guys mentioned that the fact it was like a third person action MOBA is really weird right now.
00:38:31
Speaker
If it wasn't you guys, take a guess at what that person was thinking. If it was one of you, take a guess at what you were thinking back then. I mean, I think Dave brought up the only, one of the only other third person mobas I knew, which was Paragon. And the only other one I know beyond that is Smite, which is third person over the shoulder moba-ish, which I tried exactly one time and I was like, this is not for me.
00:39:00
Speaker
The third person's. I don't know, I'm trying to remember like a third person game. Eldering shit. Well, like a third person shooter armored core. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to keep my mouth shut. I'm done. I'll see you guys. But yeah, something where it's like with armored core, there's usually like there's a lock on or there is like I'm going to nuke this area. Right. Right.
00:39:30
Speaker
Whereas for like a team-based shooter, you need to have precision, you need to have like objectives, and obviously we're moving a lot slower than like a mech that you can customize. Yeah, I don't remember loving Paragon. I remember thinking it was really interesting because I always liked the, oh, here's a unique character design or take on something. I'm sure that's one of the reasons, Ian, you like following the League of Legends stuff. It's like, oh, what are they going to come up with next? How is it going to fit into the meta?
00:40:01
Speaker
How is it going to break the meta possibly? That's stuff I like to track. I really do want to see more because outside of artifact, Valve's done pretty okay with their stuff I'd say.
00:40:19
Speaker
They're not scared to literally cancel the project if they have the slightest fear that it's not going to succeed. The only reason artifacts shipped was because Richard Gary, it was like, no, it's good. It's good. He said with his blindfold on and his earplugs in. Pause time. Anyways, we're back from technical difficulties. We might cut this message out please to say.
00:40:49
Speaker
What were we talking about? Or more importantly, what are we talking about next? I mean, we watched the Elden Ring trailer not more than an hour ago.
Elden Ring DLC: What's Coming?
00:41:01
Speaker
That is true. And I know David seen it before and wanted to, you know, hash some things he forgot about, but I had not seen it at all.
00:41:12
Speaker
I'm just starving for content. I mean, I'm excited that FromSoft knows how to bring the trailers. Yeah, it was very high quality. I think by far higher quality than anything they've ever done as far as trailers are concerned, right? Like FromSoft does not have a Square Enix Final Fantasy 7 sort of association. I'm like, oh, man, their cutscenes are always good at least.
00:41:42
Speaker
There is a couple of cool ones, but they blow all of the budget on like 20 seconds and then they're done. This is three minutes long. That's a long trailer. Yeah. The best part is it's a three minute long trailer where I understood nothing that was going on and I'm still invested. But enough about Death Stranding too. All I know, or at least I think that was surmised from like the previous trailer is Mesmer is supposed to be at least
00:42:11
Speaker
A main antagonist. Also a major antagonist. He's magic. He's been a lot of fire stuff. I think he's supposed to be like a bastard son of America or something. He's supposed to be another kid. I think he's from like someplace outside of where we have played, basically. DLC land. Yeah, pretty much.
00:42:41
Speaker
I don't really know much beyond that. So it'd be the illegitimate child of Merica and Radigan. And how many people are in this body? Listen, he's got to be the big, big man on campus, because if you buy the collector's edition, he's the statue you get.
00:43:06
Speaker
They don't make statues of dumb people. I take that back. That was fast. I take it back immediately because I was only thinking in game terms, but I'm like, no, they make lots of statues of dumb people. Mm hmm. I think for Eldering, they had a. It was a lady. Yeah. Blade of Nicola. Yeah, that's the point. I am a lady. Blade of Nicola. We all heard this line a lot.
00:43:40
Speaker
Yeah, I love watching people talk about millennia and they're like, man, yeah, it's a, it was a real long fight, but I wanted to do a legit, no summons and no, and I'm like, oh, no summons legit. Yeah. The easy way as I sat there for four hours, desperately spamming summons, save me, please.
00:44:02
Speaker
Just respect all of your health away into blue, blue sunny day. Just maximize the cheap spells and crap you can throw out.
00:44:13
Speaker
I can't remember who it was. I think it was, was it critical? Might've been critical. Could've been somebody else. But they had like clips of them playing Elden Ring and they showed up in the fight and then it was Jerma. I remember now it was Jerma. Immediately goes into the giant like moon spell. Just like spams it out and just gets super lucky. Kills the boss and it's done. There we go.
00:44:40
Speaker
I loved Elden Ring for how they treated sorceries. They were always good in Dark Souls, but they actually feel competitively good in Elden Ring. Yeah, it's nice that with the advancement of their game design and technology in general, that magic is not like this huge wind up that's like, and then it does.
00:45:09
Speaker
Like, unless you really max stats and it doesn't feel that effective, whereas you can weave in magic into like any build and it feels nice to have. Yeah, they have like good kinetic magic, like rock throw stuff and all that jazz. I forgot about that one. Or whore frost, which is not magic. It's a technique attack or whatever, but done by slots. I was thinking that I was like, can we say that?
00:45:38
Speaker
You know, but you brought up weapon arts. We didn't even I was even thinking about that when we were talking about how much their game design is evolved. Weapon arts changed the game. Yeah, it's not like weapon has a slash. It's like, oh, this point yard is going to have like a parry and a back dash into like a moon swing. And you're like, cool. Yeah. Oh, and I found another one and I could swap it out if I want. Yeah. Collect them like Pokemon can even run with no skill.
00:46:09
Speaker
you why you gotta come at me slowly turns head down his moon katana I can't even remember what it was called I just remember that I thought it was really good and I'm like man this is a great weapon and then I go on reddit and everyone's complaining about it because that's all they spam and PvP to kill people rivers of blood rivers of blood not that one this is the other one
00:46:33
Speaker
The Moonveil Katana, was it? That sounds right. Yeah. I mean, you were slightly covered by rivers of blood because that was the one I really, really complained about. Well, didn't they hotfix that? I think it's still really good. I mean, it got nerfed. So did Horifrost and some of those other things that were busted. But it's still like you could still spam it out in PvP and catch people that can't roll. Yeah, it's bloodhound step. That was the other one. Oh, yeah.
00:47:03
Speaker
I know they're going to be adding sleep as its own kind of separate magic type. Because they really only had a sleep potion or dart or arrows. It's kind of like, hey, here's a status debuff that is used so rarely. But there should be more magic in that. I'm hoping they add some abilities to the other magic classes in general. So even if you're like, hey, I'm really enjoying the sorcery build,
00:47:32
Speaker
Here's some new things you can add to the repertoire. Yeah. It's more. It's all good. I was going to say, give me some more gravity sorceries. Gravity is good. Yeah. Really cool looking, too.
00:47:48
Speaker
I think pulls up the earth underneath you and you move it with you. So you just you no longer use the horse. Yeah, I mean, Eldering was excellent for that. We've done comparisons in the past, but it was very it's up there with Dark Souls 2 for build diversity, which is pretty impressive. And I know Dark Souls 2 so.
00:48:14
Speaker
But yeah, it'll be exciting. I'm sure everybody will get a little bit, a couple incantations was the things for a reason, maybe some other jazz. But here's my question, turning it back to you guys. How in the world do they justify to us, the consumers, and may I even say gamers? I probably shouldn't have said that. Like selling us $40 DLC.
00:48:41
Speaker
I thought it was 16. I was going to pay for it. I'm automatically happier. It's. I mean, I guess it has that much content in it. I would have paid more than 60 dollars for Elton ring for how much enjoyment I've gotten out of it and time spent. Again, it's a lot easier to justify a purchase price after you spend a lot of time in a game versus up front.
00:49:07
Speaker
because I still regret what I paid for Diablo IV. That was way too much money for my enjoyment of it. But again, how much I spent in the Elden Ring, probably 100 bucks. I would never want to pay that face value for a game, but I'm hoping it does have a decent amount of content. It's not just, here's a little area and three bosses. I mean, it's not. It's going to be a lot. Yeah.
00:49:37
Speaker
They had planned it for like over a year or two. It's been a while. It has been a while. I just said really early for them. Oh, yeah. I checked my play time on Elden Ring to run the numbers. I put one hundred and thirty two hours into Elden Ring for sixty dollar game.
00:49:59
Speaker
Those are good hours too. It's not like it was just drawing them out. Okay. It does draw them out when it comes to the legacy dungeons. Everything else. Even the legacy dungeons were pretty good. Most of them at least. They wore on a little bit for me. Next time I play the game, I'm definitely using a map that just tells me what's in each of them.
Dark Souls DLC: A Trip Down Memory Lane
00:50:19
Speaker
And I can be like, ah, no.
00:50:22
Speaker
Oh, you've gotten to the end of this dungeon and beaten the boss and it was, you know, a from softball. So it might not have been easy. What do I get? Oh, this is the the side dash for for this specific weapon that you're never going to use. And maybe it was the same boss. Oh, yeah. The gargoyles again or something. Yeah. Good game, though. I'm excited for the DLC because I mean,
00:50:51
Speaker
Their previous DLCs have been big, like for Dark Souls 3 Ashes of Ariandel and the Ringed City, we're both pretty big DLCs. And if Shadow of the Urged Tree is anything like those, then we don't have anything to worry about. Yeah, I think it'll probably be a lot more. I mean, just from what we've seen of it and the trailer and stuff, we know it's a lot more.
00:51:23
Speaker
but I don't think I played a Dark Souls DLC that was particularly skimpy. I think they were all pretty good. No time trials. Yeah. Dark Souls 1's DLC, I know added two bosses in a new area, three bosses in a new area. I mean, so what was that one called? I know it was shipped with Prepare to Die edition, but it was something Artorias, right?
00:51:52
Speaker
He was the main character. Yeah. And Oolacile was the city, but I don't know what the DLC was actually called. Because they released Prepare to Dietitian, like, fast afterwards. I think you're actually correct. It's Artorias of the Abyss. Okay. I remember too much of that area, and it's been a long time, so.
00:52:16
Speaker
If you were going to be really critical, parts of it are very similar to like deep root basin. Um, one of the bosses is entirely optional. Calamet, the dragon, the telekinetic dragon, which is very cool. Um, but like a lot of cool fights and then Manus and actually sort of explained some things in the lore. And like, we never get that. So not to mention Artorias himself was pretty much iconic. Like he was.
00:52:45
Speaker
Mean I was gonna say the cover character. He literally was the title character. I guess yeah makes checks out. I Remember the best interaction though. This is the last thing we don't have to talk about this DLC specifically But this also added the interaction So if you rescued sif back in time and Ola sill it changed the cutscene and you had to fight sif and he's all sad and slowly fix up the sword in the present day Perfect
00:53:15
Speaker
Mm hmm. I need to replay the original Dark Souls that got remastered not too long ago. I don't think the remaster was super well received, unfortunately. It might have just been a situation of not doing enough, though. You could I would check the reviews and see. Hmm. Well, I think that automatically got pushed to anybody who had the game. That might. Oh.
00:53:40
Speaker
I know that you, I know they oftentimes do that. I wasn't sure if they did for this because it kind of fell under like the remake-ish territory, but I could be wrong. So here's, here's my question. Back pivoting to Elden Ring and the Shadow of the Urgentree DLC. Elden Ring didn't have Mimics in it, a FromSoft staple.
00:54:05
Speaker
Do you think they're going to put one or two mimics in Shadows of the Urgery just to catch people who have let their guard down? Hey, it's been about six or seven years since you ran into one of these, hasn't it? And then you get cross-kicked in the face. It's time for a mimic boss. That's all I'm saying.
00:54:23
Speaker
Oh, look at this giant treasure trove. Oh, no. I saw someone do some fan art or it was either fan art or leaked concept art. And what it was was a mimic bonfire. It was a bonfire that when you approached it rose up on crab legs out of like the muck. And it was terrifying because, oh, look, a point of grace. Let's run towards it. And it just lifts off and it's like, oh, you thought you had a chance to save.
00:54:54
Speaker
No, you're now in the boss fight. That would be pretty messed up. I like some stuff like that just to keep you on your toes, because if you're a, I'm going to say Souls veteran for lack of a better term at the moment, there are certain things you get very used to or you like, you're very cautious about checking corners on something, right? That's something they teach you.
00:55:20
Speaker
like hey let's maybe just peek around you start to check the chains on chest to be like hey could it be a mimic just certain things you're like is this like a trap area is this like a boss room you start to look for that and you notice a pattern and i like to be i like to have that subversion and be caught off guard and be like son of a bitch they got me again
00:55:44
Speaker
Oh look, there's a bunch of dead enemies on the ground. I bet they're not going to rise up when I interact with something in this room. It goes to cutscene and your character is slowly reaching towards the thing. You're like, uh-huh.
00:55:55
Speaker
Oh look, a cup. They actually did, I wanted to jump in and mention, they did the fake bonfire bit in Dark Souls 2. Specifically for Scholar of the First Sin, Aldia, the titular Scholar of the First Sin, makes one of the bonfires explode after you go to interact with it, after talking to a boss. The merciful thing, and I think it's important they did this,
00:56:24
Speaker
It doesn't hurt you. It just knocks you back. And then he's just right there and won't let you use the bonfire until you talk to him. And I think the reason it's important they don't do damage is because it could subvert the peaceful expectation of a bonfire, right? You see the bonfire and you think I've made it. And to just shove you off of the precipice of your achievement is just like, it's too much.
00:56:53
Speaker
you said the phrase shove you off the precipice and i immediately went back to dave thing that like oh these are things from soft games have taught us oh yeah there's a cliff there i bet when i walk near it something isn't going to come out of a corner somewhere and try to heave me off it uh-huh the programmed enemy that doesn't even have a shove animation outside of this one point in the game
00:57:19
Speaker
And they shove like a middle school bully. And then they're like, they have to, the literal animation frame skips as they have to resume their normal programmed behavior. I do want to use this as an opportunity to preach to you guys specifically. I know I had mentioned it, probably all this to Jake at some point, because he just gets in here full of anything Dark Souls.
Indie Game Recommendations: Hidden Gems
00:57:44
Speaker
There's the Archthrones mod for Dark Souls 3.
00:57:48
Speaker
which I played a good portion of, still highly recommend. I think it's very cool. They just used a lot of souls like assets and they're like, we're going to kind of make our own thing. A lot of it's going to look very similar to stuff you've seen before, but a lot of it's also wildly different. So it was fun and cool. And also another crab's treasure is still a souls like, and it's just very,
00:58:17
Speaker
cute and fun and well done. And it's not like it stays cute. It's a surprisingly solid game for not knowing what it's going to get into. I still would like to have an episode on some point in the future, so I won't go into too much detail. But to both of you guys, I'd recommend you check it out, personally. That's fair. Add it to the list.
00:58:40
Speaker
Game Pass. The list is pretty crazy, especially if you have Game Pass. We can't even mention that other thing. Oh, by the way, Game Pass fucking sent you a two drop out of fucking nowhere. I mean, well, it was the background for Game Pass and they did have it in the header for like two months. I mean, it's going to get critical claim. It's going to get awards and accolades and then they're going to fire everybody and close down the studio.
00:59:07
Speaker
Yeah. I think, I think we because Ninja Theory made. Yes, anyway, I believe. I think they officially said that they started plans on their next game. Now, I don't think that that necessarily affords them safety, per se. Ninja Gaiden, double black. Do you say Ninja Gaiden, double black? Yeah. OK. Oh, I think they had Ninja Gaiden black. Yeah.
00:59:37
Speaker
I was also debating Vantablack. I was going to say, if you wanted Super Black, that was a Destiny thing. You could still get it. You just got to be fast. But yeah, I mean, it's pretty spicy. I did take a week off for the final shape for Destiny. I still think it's probably a triangle. But we'll see. When does that come out again? Not next week, but the following.
01:00:07
Speaker
Oh yeah, shoot. So like first week of June? Yep, June 4th is when it officially drops that Tuesday. And then there's four days and then the raid is gonna drop and that's really fast. So we'll see, but they've done a lot of cool things. We don't need to, I was telling Ian on the side, we had our brief pause there, which we're not gonna go back and edit out. No one's gonna remember it and I forgot to timestamp it.
01:00:37
Speaker
I was talking to Ian about things going on in Destiny, and they've actually done a suspiciously good job recently.
Destiny Updates and Future Hype
01:00:48
Speaker
The communication's good, the changes are good and frequent. They're giving people free stuff. I'm waiting for the other shooter to drop.
01:00:57
Speaker
classic Bungie. Here's all the good stuff. And any day now I feel like if it wasn't for the fact that Sony just bought them, and I'm sure they're on the hook for X number of years.
01:01:13
Speaker
I thought of an analogy. It's like you are the stone in the middle of the slingshot and you're getting pulled back in the direction you want to go. Every single inch here is all justifiable and good, but I feel tension. Why do I feel tension? At any given moment, it could all go the other way.
01:01:39
Speaker
but we'll see. I'm sure I'll have some more to mention there. And I took two weeks for Shadow of the Year Tree, because I knew Dave would never let me live it down if I took more time for Destiny than Shadow of the Year Tree. I still need to plan time for that, or I'll just not tell them that I'm planning during work hours.
01:01:58
Speaker
I really hope you don't advertise your podcast to your employer.
01:02:20
Speaker
Yeah, no problem, it's the daily with the New York Times. No, no, I have a pod of dolphins. Ah, okay, and I cast them to the sea. Yeah. Anyways, always a pleasure to have you, Ani, and thanks for coming back. Oh, thanks for inviting me. It's always a pleasure to be here. Yeah, if you see an orphan on the way out, make sure to just grab them, apprehend them, see if we can get our stuff back, what's rightfully ours.
01:02:49
Speaker
Oh yeah, the good news is they're easy to grab by the ankles and shake upside down until all the podcasts fall out. I've seen that, I've seen that, yeah.
01:02:58
Speaker
But if you guys know any orphans, send them in. So some podcast or join the discussion on Facebook, whatever your favorite orphan related games are. See, I'm I like Batman Arkham Asylum. I think it's pretty good. Facebook dot com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. The game with the rats and the two kids. Have a good night, everybody. Good night.