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S3 Ep271: Gaming in August 2023
81 Plays2 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about how inexpensive it is to get into the Baldur's Gate series, Baldur's Gate 3 reception, Armored Core 6's imminent release, Starfield, Destiny 2, and all kinds of news in this week's episode!
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Transcript
Introduction & Gaming News Overview
00:00:04
Speaker
Hello and good evening. On tonight's broadcast the boys bring the latest gaming news for the month of August twenty twenty three. Baldur's gate three star field and much more on this episode of the soapstone podcast.
Pokemon Banter & Nostalgia
00:00:56
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 jiggly. Oh. I was trying to think what the opposite of hard was.
00:01:11
Speaker
Yeah, I mean jiggly is definitely It's it's not as suspicious as if you said soft Well, I think like jello right yeah jello is definitely different from steel as far as his composition and like response to your touch and pokemon type Yes
00:01:33
Speaker
I actually don't know that much about Pokemon. There may not be a jello type. There is not. Jigglypuff used to be a normal type, but I think they're now a fairy type because they introduce more types and then they retroactively be like, uh, is Jigglypuff not fighting or maybe they are. I honestly, I played Pokemon red, uh, when I borrowed my cousin's game boy forever ago. And that that's the extent of my Pokemon knowledge.
00:02:00
Speaker
You know, the reason I thought Jigglypuff was fighting was just because of Smash. I just realized that. It's like, but they have all these fighting, like, I don't think Jigglypuff does really. Well, at least from the card game, fighting, I think was Brown. Hmm.
00:02:19
Speaker
So if you had like a Machamp, Machamp, Machamp, Jesus Christ. This shows how little I remember about Pokemon. They had brown energies, waterhead blue, fire red, leaf green. Now I'm just naming games. But like Jigglypuff, Wigglytuff, Clefairy, Chansey, I think all had colorless, which was normal. Gotcha.
00:02:45
Speaker
If you had enough of those, you could use them alongside a few colored mana for a magic card. You just have to consume your colorless Jigglypuff. And I was, I was, I was incorrect. You were correct. It's currently dual type normal fairy Pokemon. I take it back. I'm a Pokemon master. I am the best that ever was. Yeah. I've walked the road to Viridian city. Cause that's my cause. That's an interesting cause. I mean,
00:03:17
Speaker
I don't really know the ridding city causeway Yeah, it's just a bunch of kids walking on the road Yeah, I mean people have already discussed I'm sure we've discussed at some point the absurdity of the whole premise of pokemon like Children don't exist. So you mean the fact that children fighting or the fact that children exist at all in the universe. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy That's crazy
00:03:41
Speaker
It's just like all right my eternal 12 year old or however old ash was it's like go out into the wild and fight monsters forever Like that. Yeah, that's kind of a warrior's calling I don't know. I don't want to take a dig at single moms, but like she kind of fucked up on that one Because immediately after he left he was attacked by a swarm of giant birds Yeah, yeah
00:04:10
Speaker
Well, Ash... Ash was not always an only child, we'll just put it that way. His real journey is to find out what had happened to his long lost sibling he didn't know existed.
00:04:26
Speaker
This is like the Undertale lab. All of his siblings are actually the Pokemon he meets along the way. This is the dark origin of Pokemon. Also, he has like 400 siblings or however many thousands at this point. Some of them are gods. It's hard to keep track.
00:04:47
Speaker
But yeah, we can't talk about Pokemon too long because there's too much there over too many years. My brain just goes to like YouTube skits and stuff like that. And it's just it's too much. It's pretty big. Yeah.
Baldur's Gate 3 Discussion
00:05:02
Speaker
But speaking of video games. Do you want to talk about those? OK. All right.
00:05:13
Speaker
So I see you having your notes that Baldur's Gate 2 came out. I didn't put that in my notes, didn't I? I just realized that. I was like, maybe he's memeing, but no, he put the other numbers correctly.
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, interesting. No, that's actually that's actually old news. But if you guys do want to pick up Baldur's Gate wanting to on Green Man Gaming, they're like less than two bucks for the first one, the enhanced edition, and then only a couple of bucks for the other. Those are I didn't even realize this because it's that old, but apparently made by Bioware.
00:05:52
Speaker
Oh wow. Yeah. That is old. There was a, um, uh, an article I read that was talking about, uh, like one of the creators, uh, Baldur's Gate three from Larian was like basically thanking all of the people from Bioware that were involved in the first game. And I was like, there is some sad irony that like a bunch of people got fired from Bioware like this week. Uh, but yeah, that's, that's the way the cookie catches fire.
00:06:23
Speaker
Yeah ballers gate three though, um, pretty fucking good. Yeah. That's a review into the nitty gritty of it. Cause I imagine we'll have an episode on it because it took us three years for me to trick Jake into having an episode on divinity original sin two. And then we did. Um, and that for me was like a huge.
00:06:48
Speaker
Holy fuck. I love this RPG in this style of game right like that specifically how it was done it was very fun to explore find things learn about character backstory learn about the world and Try and like mess mess with the game and find little cheeses and whatnot
00:07:06
Speaker
And it was just great and I think I played through the game like three times And I'm getting very much similar vibes from Baldur's Gate 3 a lot of people are getting on the train having a good time I'm putting up a spoiler wall Constantly when I go on YouTube for yes
00:07:23
Speaker
I don't even go into Discord anymore because they're like, hey, here's this thing. I'm like, that's a spoiler for me. I did. I did. I did mute the Baldi's Gate 3 chat. Thank you. Well, I mean, for me, you have to meet it individually, but because I thought about leaving, but I was like, I'm going to check it later and I don't want to vanish off the sidebar, but.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah, I will appreciate the things later, but a lot of it is just ahead of where I'm at currently. Yeah. So I was going to ask what your thoughts were because you recently got on the train. Yes, I mean, I mean, my thoughts, I think, are pretty similar to everybody else's. The game's pretty amazing. I've encountered a couple of bugs. But even like the really debilitating bugs, which are just straight up, you got to like restart the client.
00:08:10
Speaker
uh periodically happens i think maybe once or twice um none of it really matters because it's just like one of the best games ever made so like that's that's basically the summary i have several items in the notes related to balder's gate three not none of these are spoilers we're not going to talk about spoilers at all um but like it's so dominant in the discourse online right now around the gaming space as one might expect um
00:08:39
Speaker
it earns it one is my take but two i'm actually curious because you mentioned divinity two and divinity two was i mean it wasn't an unpopular game it was it did pretty well uh it was nowhere near the success of balder's gate three the managing director for balder's gate three i think is on record for saying um they were concerned that when the game launched
00:09:04
Speaker
The peak players would have actually have already been hit in the early access. That was so wrong. Pretty much everybody, everybody knows about this game, and I think everyone is also playing it. Even if you don't have a PC or a game console, like you're actually somehow playing Baldur's Gate. How do you feel about that? I feel great because I get to be the guys like, I told you their games were good.
00:09:31
Speaker
Uh-huh, but no, it's really nice because like I said for how much I like Divinity Original Sin 2 I was very excited to see that they were gonna be doing Baldur's Gate 3 and from what they were showing in some earlier stuff like a year or two ago and like Dad looks like the game that I like, please, please let it be like that
00:09:48
Speaker
And it has been and that's been really awesome, but it is also awesome to have because with divinity like Maybe three other people who I knew played the game. Yeah people who I'd played the game with specifically People you bought the game for and trapped in your basement. Yes like a very small group to be able to connect with about it and
00:10:10
Speaker
But now I look on Steam and it's like all these people who I play Dota with are playing this. All these people who I play other games with are playing this. So it's really cool to see it blow up and to share like what I assumed I was going to love with so many other people and to be able to share memes like, oh did you try this thing? Or like what did you do in this situation?
00:10:30
Speaker
It's really nice to have an ongoing game experience with people at like at the zeitgeist and the hype And have it be received really well To what you said, there's still definitely some bugs. It's not a perfect game by any means but my enjoyment for it heavily overshadows any issues I've come across
00:10:54
Speaker
i've also played through like the same bit of content like three times now i played with one group we had to put it on pause because uh somebody had a second kid congratulations max um and anybody else who had a kid in that time if they won you know do whatever you're doing great
00:11:11
Speaker
I then started a solo one because that slowed down a little bit and then Jake's like, would you play with me? I was like, yes. So we started a new campaign and we're catching up to where I'm at and some other stuff. But it's just I love it so much. And it's really cool to be able to play with other people and talk about it with other people.
00:11:30
Speaker
Oh yeah. I'm sure we'll talk about it more when, I mean, things in the game as well, but I just want to acknowledge it's kind of crazy, the market penetration that Baldur's Gate 3 has. Like back, I think the last time I really talked about something like this, it's like people were playing Dota and MOBA's that didn't traditionally like those, like games that were this detailed, this kind of like hardcore stuff like that.
00:11:56
Speaker
Technically, Baldur's Gate 3 is a classic RPG, which was a dying genre, everybody thought. Dragon Age Origins was nowhere near where this was, and that's in the same genre. So, I don't know. It's pretty crazy that it has such massive adoption as it does right now, but
00:12:20
Speaker
It was rated very highly even with all the bugs So so this month it hit the it was in the top 10 greatest highest rated games on Metacritic ever for a period of time a couple reviews knocked it down to the top 50 because it's a very competitive range but that's still amazing, right and I actually I'm gonna jump on this I'm gonna jump on this note in particular because this is news related to it
00:12:51
Speaker
And I'm curious on your take here as well.
Gaming Industry Standards: Can They Improve?
00:12:56
Speaker
But there was a post on X previously known as Twitter. I think you just call it Twitter. I'm going to call it X because I want everyone to stop using the platform.
00:13:09
Speaker
We'll be like, oh yeah, X owned by Elon Musk. You guys love that guy, right? Like, you're good. Giving him ad revenue and stuff. Anyways, I'm just kidding. I realize people that need to use it need to use it. But someone was talking about how
00:13:27
Speaker
Hey, this game's amazing. Don't let this shift the bar too much as far as expectations. I read the full post from the initial standpoint, and it's like,
00:13:45
Speaker
I don't instinctively disagree with it as much as I want to because the post mentioned some things like this was an established team, they had tons of resources, they had a big IP, they had already kind of proven that they could do this in this space. If you expect all of the RPGs that come out to be like this, you're going to be disappointed. What do you think about that? What's your gut reaction and then your scholarly reaction?
00:14:13
Speaker
I mean, yes and yes. I think we talked a little bit the other week because I think we're talking about the IGN video that came out as far as that. And basically I'm going to agree with what their take was, which is why not? Because they kind of went through some of the math as far as Larian's team is, let's say, I'm just going to guess 500 ish.
00:14:41
Speaker
But they also spent a lot of time polishing and making a thing. It's not like they're releasing a game every six months type thing. And there also are bigger companies who have also spent a lot of time on products and they don't come out that great. Like I enjoyed my time in Diablo 4, as we've talked about. Blizzard has like 2000 people.
00:15:05
Speaker
And I don't think Diablo 4 is that amazing. Like, I'm not going to be talking about it in like 10 years from now, right? It's just, it's an ARPG. It's pretty decent.
00:15:17
Speaker
There are other things, I forget all the companies they mentioned, but there are other bigger teams who have also had time, but it's like, but why haven't they done it, right? And they're more so targeting, they either want to release quicker, they want to choose a different monetization scheme, and Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't even have a way for you to spend money on the game. It's like, you buy the game, that's it. Cool, that's- You buy the digital deluxe edition, if you felt like it.
00:15:43
Speaker
And people do I saw some of those reviews were literally just I want to give you more money. This game is too good. Oh, that's sweet.
00:15:51
Speaker
But yeah, I don't like when people say like, hey, don't let's change the bar. Why the fuck not? If somebody works really hard on a thing and they're exceeding in that space, we should champion them for doing a great job and not shit on them. If somebody makes a best selling album, we're going to be like, all right, guys, do you really expect this level of music? Yes. Things evolve and change all the fucking time.
00:16:14
Speaker
I work in programming stuff and if somebody makes like an awesome program or sets like a new precedent in the space Yeah, people are gonna fucking adopt that and be like that's what we got to do going forward Yes, it's not easy, but like things change over time and we shouldn't just be like hey guys don't expect that It's a fucking shit take by whoever posted that tweet
00:16:39
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think I'm a little less vitriolic. I wasn't going to say vitriolic. Well, I guess you did say it was a literal S take, which is definitely vitriol. But like, that's why people listen to our podcast. So keep doing that. I kind of get the feeling or the.
00:16:58
Speaker
It kind of comes from a place of insecurity, right? Because some of the people who responded to this, kind of any affirmative to some degree, were like, there was someone who worked on Diablo 4, like a designer or somebody, and then Josh Sawyer, who worked on Fallout New Vegas, and he's currently with Obsidian.
00:17:20
Speaker
Um, and like, I kind of get where they're coming from because like, let's be realistic for a second. Games are not going to get as good, like become as good as Baldur's gate three. If I'm wrong about that. Awesome. Right. So freaking sweet. But yes, I understand that all, not all games will be Baldur's gate three. Mm-hmm.
00:17:44
Speaker
But I don't want to hear it from a AAA studio, at least, that they're not going to try and make something to that level of effort and polish. Right. So to tangent very briefly, one of the things that got announced at Gamescom is they're making another Assassin's Creed.
00:18:04
Speaker
Woo fucking who yeah, is it going to be different from the other Assassin's Creed? Is it going to make any notable change or are they just going to reskin and do the same dumb bullshit? They've always done Right, right
00:18:20
Speaker
Like I understand like if you have an indie game or something that's going for a very specific, here's the gameplay experience we want the player to have. And it's not an RPG. That's fine. Like there can be other RPGs that are different and simpler, but like they still have to be good within their space. It can't just be, Hey, here's a product. Also we want $60 for it. You know? Right. Yeah. I mean, like to finish my point, I think the.
00:18:51
Speaker
I understand where the insecurity comes from because there are very few people in the industry who are gonna make a game as good as this one. But I also think you could have this come out when Red Dead Redemption 2 came out. That was also one of the highest rated games of all time.
00:19:10
Speaker
Believe it or not. It's I mean I actually stopped playing it pretty much like at the midpoint, but that's because Rockstar games are very long and my attention span is very short but like Excellent freaking game. It's like it's a masterpiece basically and a lot of ways it is same as like Baldur's Gate 3 and
00:19:32
Speaker
It's not, if you're a developer and you're looking down the barrel of one of these games and you're like, this is my competition. I mean, that's not really a healthy way to look at it, I guess. Like you should try to make the best game that you can. And if your response to that is to go on X and be like, I can't. I mean, like that's very defeatist of you, but also like people aren't asking that.
00:19:58
Speaker
Elder Scrolls 6 Be as good as Baldur's Gate 3 you're saying like make Elder Scrolls 6 Really good like do your best with that game This is basically just kids sports
00:20:14
Speaker
not everybody is an all-star do your best and if you do that that's good enough you'll land where you land hopefully you're successful right like yes so but like good effort shows some of the games that we have talked about here with great great esteem and praise
00:20:36
Speaker
Vampire Survivors. Do I need to tell you how relatively simple that game is, but how much fun it is because of how polished and fun they made it? Undertale. Also very relatively simple, but it's a passion project and that passion shows through, and it's a very enjoyable and heartwarming experience. Omori.
00:20:59
Speaker
Not a not exactly an uplifting game, but holy shit it I was very invested in it hit me in the fields and I also had a really great time I laughed I cried like it did such a good job for being what it was right being the best version of itself instead of
00:21:17
Speaker
Like, you know, there are some games where it's like, hey, we're going to try and do a shallow imitation of something. I will very lightly put remnant two in there where they're kind of modeling off of something else. Granted, they are their own thing. I'm not trying to make a direct comparison. You put all souls likes in that pot to some degree, right? Borrowed DNA. But like some of them just suck. Like they're not good.
00:21:46
Speaker
And again, like maybe that's the best that they could have done, but they shouldn't be like, okay, that's, that's it. I'm done. Like salt and sanctuary, not a game for me. Did somebody put a lot of effort and love into it? A hundred percent. Uh, do I think they should stop where it's at? No, I think they should keep going and keep making better versions of it. Right. Like exactly. There's room for improvement. You shouldn't just be like, nah, fuck that.
00:22:18
Speaker
I do think kind of at its core, this argument about like, whether it's raising the bar or shifting standards or something like that is, it's kind of a pointless internet argument, but it's fun to engage in because like, what are people actually worried about? Well, they're concerned their games aren't going to sell as well, or they'll get worse community interactions because they now have to compare themselves against Baldur's Gate.
00:22:44
Speaker
which I think is freaking fair. If you were making an RPG that was going to come out this year, I'm calling out basically just the developers of Starfield.
Impact of Baldur's Gate 3 on Starfield
00:22:56
Speaker
Just lock your doors, basically, because Baldur's Gate came out weeks before your publisher decided to launch your game. I hope that's good, too. I actually have time off for it.
00:23:10
Speaker
The reason I don't think you have to worry is oftentimes people's game energy memory is kind of short. I can super enjoy this game. I can go back. I'll probably play it multiple times with myself, with other people over the course of years. I think that's basically the type of game it is.
00:23:32
Speaker
But it's not the only game I'm going to play. There will reach a point where I'll be burnt out on this and I want to play a shooter or a sim game or Factorio for the millionth time. And like if you're doing something else in the gaming space, that variety is what puts your game on my list. Yeah, so you're not going to be Baldur's Gate 4. No one's going to be Baldur's Gate 4 unless Larry and makes it basically at this point.
00:24:02
Speaker
Also, typically the people who are going to be the most vocal about like this is a Baldrige three is us are game reviewers, hardcore gamers. Yeah. People who are very invested in the space. But like if a game comes out, like let's say Starfield comes out and it's not a great game and let's say I did play it, even though it's not my wheelhouse, I would say, oh, I like this part about it or I didn't like this part about it.
00:24:31
Speaker
Yeah. I'm not saying, but Baldur's Gate three did this. I'm just like, Hey, why am I having these bugs here? Why am, why do they have this mechanic in a game that I don't enjoy? Um, it's going to be more compared to, Hey, what did you come out with previously? Why do we have these same types of issues or problems? Yeah.
00:24:51
Speaker
Like, so when Armored Core 6 comes out, JK, it's already out at the time of recording, I'm gonna be looking at it for the content of the game itself. I've not played previous games in the Armored Core series. I obviously have some experience with FromSoft stuff. So I'm gonna be looking for them to not run into the same types of problems they've had in earlier titles. That's about it. But also, is it fun in its own right? I'm not gonna be comparing it to Baldur's Gate. I'm not gonna be comparing it to Elden Ring.
00:25:19
Speaker
Again outside of if there are developmental issues or certain types of bugs that crop up like if I'm playing Skyrim 6 or Elder Scrolls 6, which is just Skyrim parentheses 2 because they love Skyrim so fucking much I'm gonna be looking for them to fix the things that I ran into issues with in Skyrim. Yeah
00:25:44
Speaker
And I mean, to the point of what do you compare onward core against? Obviously the only answer is Metal Gear Rising Revengeance. We're all gonna be comparing it to that. And I will be, you know, elated that it's not that game and I'll be fine. But yeah.
00:26:01
Speaker
It's definitely an interesting topic, but I think we've dug deep there. If you want to discuss this one more in the future internet, I would break out specific aspects that you think privilege this game versus the games you make and see if you're being honest about it.
00:26:21
Speaker
If you're like, well, don't expect dialogue to be that good, why not? Don't expect the story to be that good. Like, poach the writers. Yeah, right, it's like, you gotta qualify what some of this stuff is. Now, if it's like, we can't afford the D&D license, you got me there. I don't know how I can help you with that one.
00:26:44
Speaker
I don't know to what extent D&D license actually sold Baldur's Gate 3. I think there was a lot of hype for it regardless. I'm sure it helped a lot, but...
00:26:55
Speaker
Because it almost seemed like there was an escalation of marketing that was completely unrelated to this game over the last couple of years. Like the resurgence of Stranger Things, there was the movie, there was all of this stuff. Magic the gathering sets. Yeah, getting stuff. People in the D&D and it's all for Larian.
00:27:14
Speaker
Brennan Lee Mulligan and Matt Mercer secretly are Larian employees. I saw a clip of Matt Mercer stacking boxes in Baldur's Gate, so. Collusion. Collusion. Finally. But that's probably enough on that topic. Is this something else you want to talk about? The final point I will say is just, at least for this, hopefully for Armor Corps VI and Sarfiel as well, it is nice to be in a season where we're like, hey, a game came out and I'm really enjoying it.
Current Gaming Season Highlights
00:27:45
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like recently we've been talking about things you're like, so what was that big steaming pile of shit? And we're like, hey, why was red fall garbage? Why was the bubble though? And it's like I don't want to do that. I want to be excited to share
00:28:00
Speaker
hey this thing's coming out oh my god so cool instead of like so you guys saw the news today right yeah and it's also not mixed news right like it's nice to have something you can just be enthusiastic about and be like as far as i know there's no children buried in larian's basement despite whatever choices they let you make in their games jake's perception's too low i guess so perception check failed
00:28:28
Speaker
kind of contrasted with Diablo where it's like, I'm really enjoying this. I like this. I know that they're going to try to milk this for all it's worth. Like I'm staring at the shop and. Don't worry. There's a new season. Yeah, there's a new season and I'm probably not going to do that one either, but yeah. I was going to let you use it as a transition point if you wanted. Oh, new season. Um, there's a new season, um, falls coming up on us pretty soon. Uh, so make sure you.
00:28:57
Speaker
spend some time outside, enjoy the cooler weather. Give them a hand, folks. You will need to tank July and, you know, however many other months, what do we have? We're in August, September. You got to tank September, tank July. October is also summer now. November is kind of still summer. Give it a couple of years. December also on the cusp of summer. But eventually fall will come. Yeah, December is traditionally a warm month for sure.
00:29:27
Speaker
People will retcon it to try to convince themselves Coral reefs doing fine Other stuff that came out you mentioned it. I mean armored core dropped tonight as of this recording Do you have any interest in that game?
00:29:44
Speaker
I have purchased it already. I've been following so much content for it and I was already interested already and then everyone else's content on it also made me more interested. It looks fun. I want to do some mech stuff. See, I'm hoping it'll be good. It'll be fun. And then maybe I might even try out the PvP with a friend, but nobody online because I'm scared.
00:30:13
Speaker
I do, I do appreciate that it has, so I haven't picked it up yet. I'm likely to grab it on PC out of, out of convenience for myself, but I, um, and also I don't really want to re-up PSN. Um, but, uh, I like that this is a single player focused game. There was something very refreshing when FromSoft, which is the developer of the game, uh, came out with Sekiro and I was like,
00:30:40
Speaker
Dang, I don't have to worry about any of this online stuff. I can still talk about the game. We can still chat, but I'm not gonna freaking get invaded. I did get invaded, they're just NPCs in that game. And I'm not gonna have like all of this baggage of online attached to it, good and bad. Sometimes there's good baggage, right? In Armored Core, I'm putting it in the same bucket. Is it the same for you where it's like, this is pretty much gonna be a single player game?
00:31:09
Speaker
Maybe with a little bit of flair. I mean, I wasn't looking for it as like it's a specific boon that it's single player. It's more that I have no qualms in a single player.
00:31:23
Speaker
Like my initial intention was to get it for the PlayStation 4. I just kind of go play out in the living room just so I can leave the computer chair I have here, which I feel that I'm always at 24 seven between work and then off of work and meals. Like I just spend so much time here. It's nice to have an excuse to get out. But I got on PC stage. So grandma. Yes.
00:31:50
Speaker
I have to get a Wallace and Gromit device to kind of tilt my chair to get me out of it, which they also have for old people as well. Yeah, I think it's just I am just looking forward to the game as a whole and single player is just fine for me. Yeah.
00:32:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's where I'm at. I did read an article that talked a little bit about it, not spoilers, but it actually addressed some of the questions I had, as far as like, we saw all these videos of cool bosses that were like, destroying terrain and massive alleys and all this crap, and I'm just thinking in the back of my head,
00:32:26
Speaker
This can be really hard to dodge as a tank. And apparently, this is the one thing I'll mention, mechanics related, not spoiler. One of the ways you can switch out the parts on your mech, on your core, is if you do die in the mission, you can be like, okay, we'll try again with the other parts or something like that. I'm like, that's a really good idea, because otherwise,
00:32:53
Speaker
You have to make it so every boss is beatable by the guy who's in a tank versus the anime swordsman. So now they can make some bosses require anime swordsman. It'll be okay. Yeah.
00:33:10
Speaker
I'm hoping, I didn't look into it too much, but I'm hoping there's going to be a loadout system as well. Yeah. So if I come across a tough boss and it's specifically like, Hey, you need more mobility, I can be like, okay, we'll get off of like heavy tank with four cannons into my mobile option or something else. Light tank with four smaller cannons, baby tank. Uh-huh.
00:33:38
Speaker
Now, man, but I'm sure we'll be talking about that game more in the future, maybe as soon as next episode.
Starfield's Confidence vs. Industry Challenges
00:33:44
Speaker
I don't know what we're talking about. Then we like to stay agile here. Let's just have like three episodes of like, Hey, there's these hot new games. We've been binging like crazy. And then we'll just have like a year of talk.
00:33:57
Speaker
We just, we don't have a dedicated episode for like Baldur's Gate or Armacore or something. We just have a cutoff period. There's just an alarm. We're not allowed to talk about it after three months. A klaxon sounds in the background and it's like, all right, time to talk about mechs, I guess. That's the type of content you guys want.
00:34:16
Speaker
I wanted to mention this one on Starfield because this is actually news that I picked out before trawling the web for news as we do for these episodes. This is something I heard about previous. I think it's a good sign, but we'll see. But the Starfield review codes went out three to four weeks before the game actually launches.
00:34:39
Speaker
It has this thing where it's like if you did the deluxe edition or whatever, you get to start a couple days more than a couple days, like five days early this time. Not a fan of that. Minus points, minus two points. But I do like that this game had review copies that got sent out so far in advance because that is a lot of confidence.
00:35:00
Speaker
If you'll remember for certain games like Cyberpunk, this was not the case. So it's kind of a red flag. They're not sending out any review codes at all. And for anybody who's not as up on it, review codes is just a code for somebody to play the game, specifically who's going to be reviewing content so they can release stuff for like
00:35:23
Speaker
IGN, Gamefax, Kotaku, anywhere else like that, so they can have a review. Instead of, like, day of, people are like, is the game ready? They're looking for feedback. As a consumer, you're like, is it good? Is it not good? Is it worth my money? Is it not worth my money and time?
00:35:42
Speaker
My preferred approach for this, and this is pretty much like old industry standard, is you send out the review copies or the review codes with plenty of time in advance for people to play it. And then you set the embargo, which is the date where people are allowed to talk about it.
00:35:58
Speaker
You set that as like the day before the game comes out. Maybe two, but the day before is fine. And then for the people who are like very excited about it, they get to check out those early impressions and most of the time build hype unless your game is like actual trash. I honestly think reviews coming out before the game comes out. Get people excited to play, get you into news banners, stuff like that. It's good marketing.
00:36:21
Speaker
But yeah, we have had some instances like Cyberpunk where it was like, Hey, the embargo is when the game releases and reviewers will start playing the game like a day before then or something. So. Which is by the way, not a lot of time at all to be able to experience it, digest it, and then provide actual decent feedback on it. Yes. It is very, very rushed, which I feel the gaming.
00:36:50
Speaker
scene already has a little bit too much of with crunch so the less of that the better i will mention there's a couple people i know that there's people out there who are breaking embargo right now they apparently sent out a lot of codes and some people are just posting a bunch of gameplay and stuff like that online but i'm staying clean i'm saving myself for marriage uh you want to take the next thing what's the next thing you want to talk about
Latest Game Updates & Releases
00:37:13
Speaker
I was going to ask you how you're enjoying Destiny 2. I heard there was a new season, new flavor. Oh, this was the segue. Oof. Okay. Looking back there. Yeah. Yeah. Hindsight Visions 2020 over here.
00:37:28
Speaker
Yeah, like Destiny started a new season as a recording this week and it's pretty cool. I'm not going to spoil anything beyond like an opening cutscene and the stuff you can basically see on YouTube, but it's the season of The Witch and Eris Morn is
00:37:53
Speaker
beginning the path of becoming a hive god and that's really cool so um yeah we're gonna see how that ends up plot wise but for people who don't care about destiny lore that doesn't mean a lot uh it's still some of the same things it's got like a couple seasonal activities you can do that basically
00:38:12
Speaker
feed into sort of like monster grinder like do a couple activities in this area type stuff so nothing nothing outside the box there they have like a tarot sort of system for the upgrades but
00:38:27
Speaker
You could copy-paste a similar upgrade system from a similar season. It would be very similar. Destiny seasons don't tend to mix it up that much. If they get good flavor and they get good areas and the activities aren't bad, having a good time. That's as good as you get.
00:38:47
Speaker
I have some notes here about the final shape because they started, they had a showcase and they talked about that a bit, but I'm not actually going to go into it. It's fine. If you want, you can look that up. Um, there's, there's a lot there. Um, and I don't know how much of it's going to actually be in the game when we get to the final shape. And I want to reserve the option to talk about that later. Um, later in the year, as we approach that last expansion and the 10 years that this story arc has been going on.
00:39:19
Speaker
I forget how old destiny is Rather how long it's been around and active Yeah, just for me. I'm like I played it a couple years I guess and then I look back I was like, oh it was longer than that time a long time. Yeah, I
00:39:40
Speaker
It's still doing okay, still has good gunplay. For whatever else you could say about it, it still feels good to shoot Rudy too. Almost to your striga? Yeah, it's good gun. The rest is kind of mid. Kind of mid. There are some other good guns.
00:39:55
Speaker
Um, but, uh, but yeah, that's, that's the destiny space. Uh, let's see, I can pick another one, uh, at random here. Um, a dead by daylight. They had another crossover as they're pretty much doing constantly. The previous one was Nick cage, which was great. Um, but now they have alien from the series alien.
00:40:17
Speaker
Um, and, uh, they added Ellen Ripley as a, uh, uh, I think it's all in Ripley. It's not Eleanor Rigby. It's, it's Ellen Ripley. I've never actually seen alien as, um, a survivor.
00:40:32
Speaker
So that's really cool. It's got some cool mechanics. It's got a little, the alien can kind of like tunnel under the map and like try to chase people down all fours and survivors can like grab flamethrowers and try to set them down on the ground to like burn the alien out of its dangerous all fours form where it has like a skewering tail and make it a much more basic killer, but very cool. And the community seems to love it.
00:41:09
Speaker
I can go to the next one. We played a lot of Remnant 2. You guys might have listened to a recent episode on Remnant 2.
00:41:20
Speaker
Remnant one started kind of as a sleeper and I think it had some slower sales because of that. Remnant two apparently didn't have that problem. So it took Remnant one like several months, I believe, to hit a million copies sold and Remnant two hit it in four days. It was just straight up right out the gate. People are playing Remnant two. So I think one of the sentiments we had is like, we hope this game is successful. That was, you're welcome, I guess.
00:41:49
Speaker
We've manifested it. Yeah. This one feels like it feels like it's earned. And it's really nice when any company can kind of build off their previous success and keep it going in a good direction. Yes, they're not making tweets about.
00:42:09
Speaker
other other souls like games um yeah i realized now that some of these things i'm listing out they're just news articles like we can't discuss them maybe that's like criteria i should put on some of these it's like what's your feeling about a game that we both liked being successful dave i think that is appropriate it should be successful because i liked it
00:42:32
Speaker
Maybe, maybe you can engage in this one. How are you looking forward to Path of Exile 2? We didn't talk about it, but it was delayed because they were initially planning on coming out this year, right? It was going to be a same year competitor for Diablo 4 and got pushed grinding your games. What's your sentiment there?
00:42:55
Speaker
I would like them to make something polished. I know I will burn a lot of time when it comes out because I'm sure it will be a free game. Even if it's not, I'd probably give it some money. It's such a clean RPG, ARPG. I will need to make sure my graphical settings are in.
00:43:13
Speaker
Tip-top condition because holy fuck the amount of extra particles so it's more so than destiny 2 and that's saying a lot Now what destiny is is like a sick eight-year-old game or whatever at this point destiny to it. Yes
00:43:29
Speaker
But I mean, it's like there's so much going on as far as animations. And if you have like a very high and graphic card, like very choice. But yeah, I'm expecting it to still do better. I'm expecting it to play better than Diablo 4.
00:43:45
Speaker
Think people who are in the path of exile camp will still strictly be in path of exile And there's no risk of like losing them to if you had to pick Diablo 4 or path of exile that was gonna be like oh I've historically played path of exile, but I'm feeling Diablo. They're still gonna play path of exile for sure. I Would almost disagree. I think that I think that there was a
00:44:09
Speaker
Well, at least for the purpose of buying the game and playing it for a time. Path of Exile, they made the right call here, but I think like a lot of people gave Diablo a good shake. It had crazy high numbers, but those numbers are falling, right? There's a big difference between the people who like your game for a couple of weeks of play time and the people who like your game to the exclusion of Baldur's Gate 3.
00:44:33
Speaker
I'm just saying the people who are on the subreddit for Path of Exile, they're going to be playing Path of Exile. They're a very intense community.
00:44:45
Speaker
And they actually have like, but like there's like active trading stuff going on. Po we trade. Um, it's just insane. The bills they come up with and stuff like that. It's a very dedicated community. Uh, so again, I would like to see good things for it. Uh, it became fond of path of exile once upon a time and would love to go back to it once it's, once it is ready. Mm-hmm.
00:45:12
Speaker
That's fair. Um, there was, I had a note here, the managing director kind of was asked like, what's your comparison to Diablo four? And kind of, you know, I think it's a fair take. They said that Diablo four is on an MMO path. Whereas path of exile to they're aiming more for an Elden ring direction, which I think is literally just pandering to you. I don't know. Um, and then they said it's going to be more action focused, uh, with a hardcore bent again, just pandering. Um,
00:45:43
Speaker
And I think, I think that's a good call, right? Like differentiate their product at this point, because, well, I mean, we knew it was going to be different, but if you're a lay person looking at action RPGs, what's the difference between Diablo and Path of Exile? They look the same if you were just glance at them on box. I think delaying a year is also really smart.
00:46:08
Speaker
Uh, because they're basically betting within between now and when the game releases. And I looked it up. Uh, it's currently slated for June of next year. Uh, that was announced to exile con 2023, which, you know, I should have expected. Um.
00:46:29
Speaker
I think that's a really, a lot of time for people to get tired of Diablo four. And I don't really trust Blizzard to change that. Sorry if you're on the develop Diablo four dev team. I know you guys listen a lot, but, um, I mean, people just get tired of games. And otherwise I think they were slated to come out like the month after Diablo or some other insanity. So this makes a lot more sense to me. Yeah. So.
00:47:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's, uh, we've seen it happen before. It doesn't always work out for the second one. Actually someone asked, sorry, I was gonna say, someone asked Phil Spencer, literally this question. They were like, how do you feel about starfield coming out? Like right after Baldur's gate and he just like paused for a second. He just like froze. And he's like, I think they're different games. I'm like, you're, you're right. But you're also kind of, people generally play one game at a time.
00:47:21
Speaker
Don't release your game during the honeymoon phase of another game. Life advice.
00:47:35
Speaker
Unless you're me. He said some simulbooting Baldur's Gate in that armor core. Uh-huh. It's I'm sorry controller and keyboard two different inputs.
00:47:50
Speaker
Did you catch any of the games come? So I didn't see any of the trailers. So if anything really stood out or popped off there, lay it on me because I'm not familiar. I know what was shown game name wise, but I don't know if anything really seemed super cool.
00:48:08
Speaker
I'm just going to go through some high level ones that caught my interest. Not all of them are worth delving into, but Mortal Kombat showed another trailer. It is very violent, very violent. But a lot of their designs are just going to be going back to a new iteration of stuff. I'm just kind of starting fresh.
00:48:33
Speaker
Because this is Mortal Kombat 1, right? Yes, we're calling it Mortal Kombat 1 Which I think is fine classics. I think it's fine to call your game You know series name one after a lot of time passes But do you think they're gonna name the next game Mortal Kombat 2?
00:48:51
Speaker
Because then you're starting to cause problems like Google searches have become difficult. Uh-huh. Because the Mortal Kombat one, it's different than just Mortal Kombat. It needs to have a different title on it. Yeah. Like Mortal Kombat, Next Generation 3, something like that. A distinction would be nice. Yeah. Um, but front of the show, Mike, I think is probably the most excited person I know about that because he's played a lot of Mortal Kombat.
00:49:22
Speaker
Um, Oh yeah. And special guest, of course. I'm curious to see how it plays. I'm not a big fighter person, so I don't really be picking this up or Tekken 8, but Tekken 8 trailer, they finally showed fucking Yoshimitsu in something. So I know he's in it. Okay. I saw your note shows Yoshi and I was like, was this part of like, uh, was this a deal because like they had Kirby and the Kazuya reveal for smash somehow Yoshi ended up in Tekken.
00:49:51
Speaker
Mimo is like, listen, uh, here's the deal. Um, but that Yoshimitsu has always been like a very fun character. I mainly know him from Soul Calibur, uh, two, three, four, and five and six. Um, but he's originally from Tekken, uh, inches, a very fun character. So I'm just curious to see how he plays. But again, not really game for me.
00:50:19
Speaker
I would say for Yoshimichu in particular, people are like, I don't really know that. You might know him from his signature move, killing himself with a sword. Yep. I'm not even making that up. That's not some bad joke. I mean, he has a running attack where he then impales himself. And if he hits you with it, it deals massive damage, but he takes like a good chunk of his health to do it. Yeah.
00:50:47
Speaker
But you can also just miss and die. Which is way funnier. Let's be honest. Yes. I've definitely used that in Soul Calibur a few times. It's the best way to consider a match. You'll amount. Little Nightmares 3 had a trailer, which I'm curious to see more about.
00:51:12
Speaker
But at the same time, like I could miss it and be fine, but it's something I'm willing to watch gameplay of, or hopefully watch somebody streaming discord once it's out. It's very well done thematically. I'd say it's more of a teaser than a trailer because it's not like really a story trailer, but they were showing some settings. They again had a two player co-op type thing. Hmm. Interesting.
00:51:39
Speaker
It feels like, it feels like this game series is coming out like relatively rapidly, right? Like little nightmares between one and two is a lot more of a gap. Okay. Yeah. I mean, maybe they're just finding their stride. Maybe. Um, but again, thematically very choice. Um, it's nice to see just kind of side scrolling games, but they're actually really immersive. Uh, so curious to see what happens with that. Mm-hmm.
00:52:09
Speaker
Payday 3 had a trailer and Ice Cube was the celebrity in it. Okay. If you remember Ice Cube from Law and Order. That's where I remember him. Yeah, actually. I think he's also a rapper. I feel like he's a rapper.
00:52:27
Speaker
I probably could have been more confident with that, with the name Ice Cube. Almost definitely a rapper. If you have ice in your name, you're a rapper. If you have vanilla in your name, you're white. That's all I'm saying.
00:52:43
Speaker
There's also an Alan Wake 2 trailer, which looks good. It was less snippets of gameplay of some early premise and a lot more environmental stuff. And there's a lot of live action stuff of the actual person who's playing Alan Wake.
00:53:05
Speaker
Right and I think it immerses really well because like in game you will see him on the TV and then we'll cut to like footage of him actually just a live-action and it's just a Swap between the two and the way they did the trailer just looks very good But again Alan wake one was very much a this is a very interesting premise and universe and
00:53:30
Speaker
Mm-hmm, but like going back it looks dated as fuck. Yes, absolutely but I'm very excited to see where this goes I mean I'm also more excited because they interrupted this game with control remedy also made control Mm-hmm and like knowing that both Alan wake one and then control are under their belt It's like a great gradient a slope to Alan awake to
00:53:56
Speaker
I actually have pretty high hopes for this. This and Payday 3, which is just like blasted past, I really hope succeed. I'm kind of scared of Payday 3, though. I feel like it's too soon. It needs to land because Payday 2 has been Payday 2 for such a long time. Yes. Well, we kind of already hashed a lot of stuff out about that. I would like to see them succeed, obviously. Yes.
Speculations & Community Reactions
00:54:22
Speaker
I also wouldn't mind if they ever did a control too. Because control was such a game that was not on my radar until friend of the show and special guest to Mooch was like, Hey, you should check out this game. And I'm like, all right, this game kind of kicks ass. It really does.
00:54:39
Speaker
It's really good. I actually, if I could, if I could do a little, uh, world line skip over to an adjacent reality, I would, I would take control too over, uh, Alan Wake too. I really like Alan Wake, but it's been a long time. And, uh, I don't know, I'm sure it'll be great, but I mean, control is just so freaking cool. It really is.
00:55:04
Speaker
Also, there is more Black Myth Wukong footage. I think you mentioned this one once before. I can't recall if it was on the podcast or not. Probably. I think it's always been on people's radar a little bit because you see like these YouTube snippets in Chinese and you see a monkey kicking somebody's ass like, cool. Yeah.
00:55:25
Speaker
it seems to play like a boss rush souls like certain things you're maybe a little more arcadey but I think it's going through the saga of wukong the the monkey king who did fucking everything
00:55:40
Speaker
Yes, it's the only Chinese story that escapes China. If you were to ask people for it, what does the Chinese tell? It would only be Sun Wukong. It's the only one. He's in every single MOBA. Yes. And several shows at this point. He's probably in the Avengers. I don't know.
00:56:02
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think they had a release date I've talked about yet, but the game looks clean very clean So I'd love to get my ass kicked to that at some point in the future. Heck yeah
00:56:18
Speaker
that is fair I mean that's a pretty good that's a pretty good lineup and we're at the beginning of Gamescom so we're gonna just have emergency podcast episodes coming out like Monday Tuesday that's not true we're gonna be playing Baldur's Gate but
00:56:33
Speaker
There will probably be some more notes. There'll be some more news we can circle back with in subsequent episodes because I know that we keep you guys in the basement and we don't let you access the internet. So thank you for only coming for here for your gaming news. We do appreciate it. We can actually tell if you've been to other places.
00:56:52
Speaker
Yes. Some places on the internet use cookies. We just drop some of that counterfeit detection ink in people's pockets and follow them around. It's fine. I analyzed the dirt on your shoes. You go to unsubscribe from the podcast and the button just vanishes. We're in the system, basically what we're saying.
00:57:22
Speaker
I'm gonna rapid-fire a couple things I have here on my notes because some of them were interesting Overwatch 2 which I don't talk as much about because I don't really play it anymore Released on Steam and it has the most negative reviews of any game on Steam Which is just
00:57:41
Speaker
really impressive. Good job. So I guess the question for people who are not in the space, why is it so negatively reviewed on Steam? I think there's a combination. So part of this is news and the other one's my take. The news part is that when these numbers were taken, there were
00:58:06
Speaker
122,000 reviews and 76,000 of them were in simplified Chinese. And of those, 97% of those were negative. That's because the game is not accessible in Japan. Blizzard had a falling out with, I believe, NetEase was the company they were using. I can't recall exactly.
00:58:29
Speaker
But, as you may or may not be aware, you have to work with a distributor in Japan, or not in Japan, in China, to- Okay, so it's- I say Japan around. Yes. You said China, Japan, China. China, Japan, China. Keeping people on the chose. It's all China. Okay.
00:58:47
Speaker
Apologies for that. But you have to work with a distributor to get your games in that country. They had it falling out. It's really funny because this is after the whole Blitzchung, Hearthstone thing some years back where they had an opportunity to take a stand. No, it just fell out because who knows why. So you can't play Overwatch 2 in China right now. You can play in Japan if you want.
00:59:14
Speaker
So naturally, everybody who had the opportunity when this game came to Steam, which is a platform which is available on China, but they can't play the game, was to just give it a negative review. Because if you wanted to play a game and they didn't put forth the effort or whatever to make their game available in your country, yeah, you're going to give it a negative review.
00:59:35
Speaker
But then there was a lot of other negative reviews. I think some of that is probably inertia. There's already just a ton of negative reviews. But also it's just not a very happy time in the Overwatch timeline. It might have been better to release this on Steam when they had something good happen.
00:59:55
Speaker
um And invasion which is their pde event was not that so They have the dubious distinction of being the least rated game on steam Yeah, I feel like blizzard's in a Not a terrible spot at the moment because diablo 4 I would say was definitely a market success um
01:00:19
Speaker
I'm again, my finger's not on the pulse, but my, my current take is they, they need to build some goodwill with their community.
01:00:30
Speaker
They really, really do. And if they don't get it, they can look forward to continuing to be the lowest rated game on Steam ever. We talked a lot, we talked some about Path of Exile, so more rapid news. Titan Quest 2 was announced, I think this week, or very recently, and it's been 17 years since the first game came out.
01:00:55
Speaker
Um, they're really just going for the call of duty release cadence at this point, just shoveling out game after game. Um, I think if you let 17 years pass, if the next generation of teenagers can work on your game, basically, then, uh, it's probably long enough, but I also hope they do well there. Um, let me action RPG space.
01:01:23
Speaker
Yeah, there's something nice about it similar to the feel of like I'm currently playing through halls of torment.
01:01:30
Speaker
Yeah, passively, which is like vampire survivors, but it's kind of like old Diablo one type graphics. There's something comforting about kind of doing something. It's a little bit retro. Um, and again, I'm an ARPG whore. So I played through Titan quest. I played through Grim Dawn. Grim Dawn. Yeah. Forget the names of all these, but.
01:01:56
Speaker
Yeah. Um, Titan quest one looks very old, but it was still entertaining. Um, so I'm sure I will get a kick it up. Titan quest two at some point. Uh-huh. The game is so old. I legitimately forgot that we didn't play two, right? Like we played an expansion or something, but like, yeah, that was Titan quest two. What are you talking about? Oh, okay. Now it's been 17 years. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. Um, yeah.
01:02:21
Speaker
Yeah, maybe I'm old. I mean, we didn't play this 17 years ago, but they also released an expansion like a couple of years back for the game. They literally released an expansion, I think, when the game was out for 15 years, which is an odd development cycle, to say the least.
01:02:46
Speaker
But if you guys know about games with weirder development cycles, or other things that maybe happened this month and we didn't cover them, like I think we hit 100% of everything. I say looking at uncovered notes in our chat. But if there's something important that happened that you want us to cover, let the masses be known, or you have hot tips in the industry, or if you were recently laid off from BioWare, we're always excited to have interviews.
01:03:15
Speaker
You can send in those requests, it is a daunting process to make it through Soapstone Podcast at gmail.com, or you could join the discussion on Facebook at facebook.com slash Soapstone Podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.
01:03:47
Speaker
you