Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Deadleak
33 Plays1 year ago
Join Dave and Jake as they announce their thoughts on Valve's unannounced (but fully leaked) Deadlock game, talk about energy drinks, momento mori instant-kills in Dead by Daylight, and the importance of audio layering in this week's episode!
Intro:
- The Weather Channel - Storm Alert 2006
Outro:
- StarCraft - Terran Theme 1
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Weather Chat
00:00:57
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host is always Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going good. It's chill vibes. Yeah. A little bit overcast. It's a sleepy Saturday here.
Lack of Sleep and Weekend Activities
00:01:14
Speaker
Yeah. How about yourself? um Also, also a nice sleepy Saturday. I actually, so I got four and a half hours of sleep initially last night. Cause I was like, I should get sleep. I know I have to wake up. um ah My wife was.
00:01:30
Speaker
selling some art stuff like at a bazaar and ah kind of local here. We've done that a couple times recently. I was like, I'm committed to obviously getting her there, helping set up all that stuff, but I know I'm going to come back and sleep. So I kind of like, I'm willing to take a little bit of sleep tax.
00:01:45
Speaker
um but like four and a half hours it was not the goal to
Energy Drinks vs Coffee and Childhood Candy
00:01:51
Speaker
hit that. I just, uh, time kind of got away with me playing warframe and stuff, but, um, I did have the opportunity to sleep in the sleepy Saturday, um, like through, throughout, uh, a break there in the middle of the day. So I do feel a little bit more alert now, but overall, yeah, I'm there with the the chill, sleepy vibes, the coffee shop atmosphere.
00:02:14
Speaker
Yeah, I, I honestly did think about getting coffee today. Um, but I had already had a certain amount of starburst C four. And I was like, let's not and give her a heart trouble, but like, I love a nice little overcast thing. You get like a nice hot beverage from a, it used to be Wawa back in the day. And then you go back out your cars, drizzling.
00:02:38
Speaker
the uh i can't remember the name of the energy drink it's the one with the atomic warhead um they have like a bunch of atomic warhead flavor to ghost ghost I had to look it up real quick because they actually have like multiple atomic warhead variants, but I had one of those today. I got a ah green apple and green apple atomic warhead is pretty sour it as one might expect. Yeah, I'm glad that they're preserving these candy flavors from my childhood.
00:03:11
Speaker
ah And now I'm like, how do they do? Oh, it's just like a flavor serum that they figured out with like this thing.
TV Shows and Food Consumption Humor
00:03:17
Speaker
Yeah. They just put it all together and they bring it out every once in a while. But the fact of that, uh, also C four does have at least pink starburst. I think they also have cherry. I think so. Yeah. But if you like, that's an option as well.
00:03:31
Speaker
And the cool thing about it is like so many of these are also sugar free or like very sugar light. like The one I had was a full can. It's the American 200 milligrams. You can go to a previous previous episode where we talked about it or whatever. um But 10 calories. right And I think like the drink that kicked that off was the rehab, I want to say. It felt like rehab was one of the first ones I had that was a low calorie variant.
00:03:59
Speaker
um But now there's just, there's so many of them. Well, even after the rehab, the the T ones. True. Yeah. Cause those are both a 10, 10 or less AKA no calorie. Right. Pretty much nothing. It's like slightly more calories than coffee.
Nostalgia and Educational Shows
00:04:20
Speaker
Coffee gives you calorie. Oh, sure. There's like, there's barely anything. It's like two or something. Can't remember. One cannot subsist off coffee.
00:04:28
Speaker
But it would yeah, you know, that's just a good dick. This is a side thing. um Have you ever watched Venture Bros? I've seen a clips of Venture Bros, which is my answer for pretty much anything. OK. Well, brief thing. Hank is one of the adventure twins. um And in this episode, he's at some point just got like addicted to eating coffee beans. He's like, wow, these tastes so good to give me energy. Kind of like fry from Futurama a little bit. Right. um But basically he doesn't realize that like it's giving him the shits. Yeah. So, so bad. um So he essentially does ah more and more and more. And then he does like all this crazy shit essentially is emulating Batman. Right. And then after he does like this cool thing, he just
00:05:20
Speaker
poops his brains out entirely because human bodies cannot process that. Yeah. yeah I like those. ah This is almost a sub genre of episodes within shows. There is a magic school bus episode where Arnold It was a mystery kind of episode where Arnold's skin turned orange and they couldn't figure out why. Like maybe something's wrong with him, whatever. So naturally the entire bus flies into his body. They got shrunk down and entered him, yes. Then it flew into Arnold.
00:05:56
Speaker
And they were like checking out his cells and stuff like that. And what they found out was um the thing that he was eating was some sort of, I'm trying to think of what food is naturally orange. Carrots? Carrots, that's what it was, it was carrots. Carrots wrapped in seaweed. And he was just snacking on these things constantly. And so it was just like, yeah, if you eat a bunch of carrots, it'll impact your skin pigmentation, or it could.
00:06:23
Speaker
But it has to be a lot a lot a lot a lot like it would but a lot a lot um And so that was, that was funny. I like those episodes, but also magic school bus was awesome. I still credit magic school bus for like literally helping me skip grades in science because like I could take a test for, I was homeschooled. I could take a test to like see where I would place. And for all of these other things, it's like, yeah, you know, I was a younger kid. I was like fifth grade, whatever.
00:06:55
Speaker
And then science, it's like, yeah, all the way to sixth grade or seventh grade or whatever it was. I'm telling you, people who grew up on PPS are just a smarter and also kinder
Podcast Description Errors and Business Image
00:07:05
Speaker
people. I'll say it. Yeah. I mean, you can't watch Bob Ross and not have it improve you a little bit. That's my take. But I'm very biased there.
00:07:13
Speaker
um Yeah. So anyways, if you ever want to be orange, just eat a bunch of carrots, I guess. I don't think that's good advice. There's probably other health downsides. Do I have a Donald Trump joke lined up? Not exactly. Could I figure one out? Yes. Yeah. Cheetos dust. um
00:07:35
Speaker
I will say becoming orange, eating carrots is not a doctor, again, probably better for you than eating a bunch of Cheetos to become orange.
00:07:47
Speaker
um Imagine like what happens to two separate people and then they both meet. You also eat a lot of carrots? Carrots. Carrots, no. Yeah. But bunch of stuff to talk about today.
00:08:03
Speaker
which I should also say, always say, regardless of whether we have a lot to talk about, just to see if we fizzle out and prove me wrong. um hook Hook them early. And then yes, exactly. Right. There was a there was there was something actually got called out in.
00:08:19
Speaker
a Discord that we're both in ah pretty recently is in the description for a previous episode. I think you mentioned this one time. It was just an aside, but we talked about boofing caffeine. Oh, yeah. And so I put that in the description and I got like screenshot and put in the Discord.
00:08:38
Speaker
And I was like got him right like that was not ah we don't admit to anything it was just mentioned offhand I Hold on I thought the the post that was highlighted was because of the the wording of the post Like the typo. Yeah, okay. I didn't even see the typo at first my interpretation was it was about the caffeine but I um porkca hellos dose you both yeah I did go in and fix the typo afterwards. I can't edit this person's screenshot without deleting their message. But um I mean, for me, it's always funnier to like leave your mistakes. There's like a funny thing to go back and laugh about. oh That's fair, but we have a business here. Like people sell our friends on this. Yeah. So can't make the mistakes like that.
Valve's 'Deadlock' and Leaks
00:09:30
Speaker
Speaking of mistakes though, there's a lot of news and stuff we can cover some of it, like is a little bit older, some of it a little bit newer, but this one's the hot thing I want to discuss because valve for the most part doesn't make games. I think that's fair to say. Like they tried with artifact, but like that doesn't count. No, I think their most recent entry has been Half-Life Alex. Yeah.
00:09:55
Speaker
And outside of that, uh, it's been a long time. I think they had like a portal mini game thing that was not like third person. It was like a puzzle VR game or something like that. I can't remember exactly, but it wasn't in the the vein of the original portal. It was just kind of like a demo for VR or something. Well, I think it was a demo for the, the steam deck, but it was like, that's what it was, you know, portal QA. Yeah. And that core is voiced by Nate Bargazzi.
00:10:22
Speaker
That was a lot more specific than I was ever going to be able to get, so I'm glad you knew. The rest of the episode, I'm just dead silent. like yeah got know but Speaking of dead, um Valve's next game, the worst kept secret in the industry maybe,
00:10:41
Speaker
um which is kind of like as just a little bit of background, if there's an unreleased game, they kind of get leaked on Steam a lot of the times because there are people who are just pouring over the feeds that are used to provide like game packages and updates and stuff like that. And that's literally how people saw deadlock. Like um there was a, ah the other the other way people find out is the IP registration where they copyright it.
00:11:12
Speaker
And they're like, we own Deadlock. And people are like, what is Deadlock? What are you talking about, right? that's You're like, we own GTA 8. You're like, OK, yeah, I figured that one was coming. But sometimes you see something unique. This one showed up in feeds. And I know there was some chat about it, but we knew that it was under wraps and it has not been announced.
00:11:34
Speaker
um But prior to this piece of news, which I'm doing too much preamble, to be honest. yeah We didn't know a lot. We didn't know a lot. I think we knew that it was vaguely like shooter-esque, MOBA-esque.
00:11:49
Speaker
um And then the actual news item. Thank you for staying with me. was The Verge came out um on August 12th with an article that detailed almost everything currently present in the game. And the justification for it was they were provided a key, not by a Valve, but by another person who got into the closed alpha, beta, whatever it is.
Game Leaks as Marketing Strategies?
00:12:13
Speaker
um And then there's a pop-up that says early development build. It's still in early development with a lot of temporary art and experimental gameplay. Do not share anything about the game with anyone.
00:12:23
Speaker
an OK button, which is the only button there, and then a checkbox. Don't show this again. And the journalist pressed escape. And because they didn't sign an NDA and because escape made this pop up go away, they're like free game. I'm going to take screenshots of everything. I'm going to make like a gift of game, gifts of gameplay. I'm going to just spoil all of it in this article. And that's what they did. So my first question to you, Dave, is, is this person an angle or a devil?
00:12:53
Speaker
Um, I would say devil. Cause I don't think it was in the the spirit of good gameplay, especially when when someone's like, Hey, like we don't have a way to like super lock all downloads information. We obviously want to let some people have a chance to try it and like provide some feedback. But again, for marketing's sake, you don't want to put a partial version out there. Like that's what happened with GTA. People were like, what the fuck is this? It's not done yet.
00:13:20
Speaker
So they didn't want to have things judged when it wasn't their complete product. Um, and even though I technically did a chat with you about the beta and I got a chance to play some, um, not going out here providing all of these details to the internet publicly saying, Hey, I kind of pissed on your, Hey, please don't do this. Yeah.
00:13:46
Speaker
I'm going to agree with you first and then disagree with you just for the purpose of content. The reason I kind of agree with you is it's so clearly in violation of the spirit of the pop-up. If somebody says like, hey, I'm going to tell you the secret, please don't tell anybody. You're not legally bound by that, right? Right. That's not going to hold up in a court of law. Oh, they shared my secret. But you don't do that because it's polite. That's the whole point.
00:14:16
Speaker
When someone puts a restraining order on me, my natural first question is, is the distance by line of sight or does it need to follow corners, right? you know like It's very clearly they're going against the spirit of it. And in that way, I agree. And also the fact that like they took screen captures of the descriptions and like the splash for all 20 heroes.
00:14:42
Speaker
um that the game has. And I am going to talk about what's covered in this article um to some extent, but I'll be honest, none of it's super spoilery at this point. Yeah. But what is the the other point you said you're going to disagree with for the sake of content? I think I think where I disagree is like valve doesn't make any sense because this is what they this is the mechanism they currently have for getting people into deadlock. um If you're in, you can invite up to five people
00:15:14
Speaker
Like via email in order to also join, but they can be anyone involved. Uh, they still have the option to like, um, not send the invites, I guess, or let certain numbers of people in at a time. But like, this is not admittedly the person who's the word who wrote this is an actual insider in the industry and they should know better. And they probably did know better.
00:15:40
Speaker
But like you could just send an invite to someone who would not care if there was an NDA and everything would immediately get spilled. Right. Um, and there really isn't anything to prevent that. Right. True. So like this is kind of the 10 foil hat conspiracy. Valve wanted people talking about this game before it's announced, quote unquote, as the way of announcing it.
00:16:10
Speaker
It's a 10 for high conspiracy, but I don't know what other realistic unless they're stupid. Like, is he stupid? Right. Like, I don't know. He's stupid. Like how they could also do to happen. But no, I don't think. Like, if I truly want to protect something or keep it private, it is behind all closed doors, behind seven proxies. yeah I don't tell it to anybody or its location if I'm hiding a certain object.
00:16:38
Speaker
um And it seems like a pretty obvious, like, Oh, well here are some gaps or some possibilities for gaps. Right. yeah Um, yeah I don't think it's too tinfoil to say it is a possible marketing strategy. If you want to build a hype for something to say like, Hey, you aren't supposed to know this information. I'm not supposed to know what information provided it for you. Yeah, exactly.
Valve's Game Announcement Strategies
00:17:02
Speaker
yeah You feel like you want to be in on the inside. You want to be on the in the know and part of the cool kids club.
00:17:09
Speaker
Well, I found out early about a game called Deadlock. Whisper, whisper, you know, in the back channels and stuff like that. Yeah. But I will say it definitely goes in a ah slightly different direction when somebody takes that and just like, I will be the one who will speak to the people. Yeah.
00:17:30
Speaker
Yeah, there's, it's the first person to red Rover to the other side, right? You're like, they might not, they're going to get a lot of press. And I think that's, that's the other thing, right? Is the verge realized because there has to be someone above, presumably above the person who published this. He's actually approving it. Yeah, exactly. An editor or something like that. There, there was a chain of approval that would have been necessary to get this out the gate. And like, as a publication, they're like, spill it. Right.
00:18:00
Speaker
um And I think there are things in life where like you need to be like just spill it like whistle blowing or something like that, right like Unless the drawback is Absolutely severe and known but if there's something really bad going on I'm in favor of whistle blowing like personally, right? I'd rather that information get out there um Especially if you know the organization or whatever, can't take care of it. But for a video game, no one's life was on the line for this. The Verge just got a lot of clicks and they got a lot of comments and probably ad revenue or whatever. But I mean, to me, I would just read that as just blind capitalism, yeah right? Like they know it's going to get them exposure or be like, oh, we're the first ones to cover this story, et cetera, et cetera. We have people on site.
00:18:55
Speaker
not formally signing and NDAs or anything like that. yeah And that would even be another thing they could have done is like, hey, whoever you email this to, um before they get their actual key, they have to sign this NDA and that'll be sent to them. I've i've worked on programming stuff using DocuSign as ah like a third party API.
00:19:16
Speaker
yeah um It's possible to do. Yeah. It's possible to do. um But again, I think they are smart enough to realize that they could have locked it down more. Yeah. But whether it was for the publicity or just too much of a hassle, if it gets out, it gets out.
Deadlock's Gameplay and Mechanics
00:19:33
Speaker
um They chose not to. Yeah. my my My personal take is that they were kind of like they knew it would get out, but they were hoping to make whatever break that it had, whenever it actually did emerge, when a lot of information got out. Also, actually, you know what? I'm going to change my take in real time. My actual take is Valve doesn't know how to actually announce a game. And so they were just like, let's just slow roll it out. When someone leaks it, that's when it'll count. It'll just show up. What happened about when they they had that fucking trailer for Artifact at TI? Look what happened.
00:20:11
Speaker
Well, that's what I'm saying. Last time they announced the game. I don't think the announcement was bad. I just think that people who are so used to the formula of Dota wanted to really play a Dota don related card game. Yeah. Like people snatched up on Underlords because it's like a nice little, I don't want to say mindless, but it's pretty simple. Yeah. um Artifact I know i had a lot more rules and strategy around it.
00:20:41
Speaker
It was kind of like, it was a little bit too much of a, I don't wanna say it's too much of like a thinking person's game, cause that's dominant sort of, the barrier to entry was too high for artifact. And then they made a couple of decisions. um I think you could only ever buy cards with money or trade them. And that was the only way that they ever entered the economy. They didn't do like daily quests and stuff like that that you could use to to um get packs if I remember correctly.
00:21:09
Speaker
I feel like all card game should just do that. Pretty much. Well, there were there are there are reasons for it. It's because you could trade cards in artifact and you can't trade cards in like Magic Arena or Hearthstone or anything like that. um So there were there were decisions made that would have put it in a more interesting place, but it just didn't find the audience and. Jumping from Dota to like, oh, this is a three lane card game with all this stuff going on it's like yeah maybe probably not i don't hate that they had an idea and tried it just wasn't for a lot of people yeah but deadlock maybe is for a lot of people so like the some of the the very high level for what we know of this game now like i mentioned 20 heroes
00:22:02
Speaker
Um, it looks MOBA ask, I would say, um, it had things like towers. Um, it seems like people get, I mean, it's strength over the course of a match. It's still 100% of MOBA. 100%. Uh, it's just laid out closer to, I always forget the name of this
Success and Comparison of Third-Person MOBAs
00:22:23
Speaker
game. They got canceled through Paragon. Paragon. Uh, it is a third person over the shoulder shooter. Um, but you have.
00:22:32
Speaker
abilities you can get as you level up from killing enemies. Yeah. And as you kill enemies or heroes, you get a quote unquote currency that when you go back to base, you can buy to upgrade stuff for your weapon or your powers or maybe you want to be more tanky, stuff like that. Right. But all of that is 100 percent MOBA. It is a MOBA. Yeah. Third person shooter MOBA and like It's been announced at least. I don't know if there was something backing it up. The ice frog was working on this, so that wouldn't be too surprising. Obviously, MOBA's kind of the wheelhouse um for for the person who created Dota. One of the people who created Dota, one of the original developers for Dota. Solo programmer. Solo programmer made all the art. He actually recorded all the voices too. That's the crazy thing.
00:23:26
Speaker
um He animated the original pledge hook. Uh-huh, exactly. But like I, the, the verge article has a full bot match. Like you just see the gameplay for took 24 minutes, which is probably around the average time for a mobile game. It's a versus bot. So I don't know if that tells you anything, right? Like maybe the average one versus players is two hours in this game, but I doubt it. Um,
00:23:59
Speaker
but it's got like the ah the the top view map I would kind of associate with um shooters more than than anything. It's not like isometric necessarily like in Dota, um obviously. But this is the top down map for a over the shoulder third person shooter type game. The thing that's interesting to me, and this is I guess a question for your own sensibilities,
00:24:26
Speaker
Do you think the market has an appetite for a third person MOBA right now? Cause this has been tried before. Um, I think with the rise of all of the other, Hey, we're going to do overwatch stuff. Um, as far as a Marvel has one. Yeah. Rivals. I'm forgetting the name of the other one that was basically the guardians of the galaxy at home. If you remember that trailer.
00:24:55
Speaker
Yeah. I can't remember it, but oh, oh yeah. You're thinking, Oh man. It Concord Concord Concord. Thank you. I never would have gotten there personally. like That one's like an arena shooter to be fair. It's a hero arena shooter. Not necessarily like a mobile. Yeah.
00:25:10
Speaker
But I mean, I think the fact that it's hero based just brings a lot of draw in and of itself because you can really grab people who want to have those different play styles. Yeah. And there's four lanes, but it is so easy to go between lanes. I have never explored, but like there are like little neutral camps. There's some things you can destroy for currency. um It's.
00:25:37
Speaker
It just feels littered with, uh, I want to say possibility.
Deadlock's Art Style and Game Perception
00:25:40
Speaker
Right. And because it is a new valve thing and valve has like a good track record, I think if the appetite is not there, I think after some tastes, uh, there will be some salivation. Gotcha. Okay. That's fair.
00:25:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's a, it looks very TF2-esque art style, overwatch-esque art style. I'm going to i mean give points to TF2. It's more TF2 than overwatch. overwatch and or They're both a cartoony. It's more washed out. It's a little kind of noir-y, but not that dark. It's not dishonored. yeah No, it's not that. But like, there aren't really characters who pop as much, but they're all very unique in their own design. Right.
00:26:27
Speaker
Yeah. And I immediately go to like thoughts of how this will be different because it's six V six. I didn't mention that, but six V six, four lanes means that you're not putting two people in each lane. Right. But you could do, um,
00:26:44
Speaker
My brain's automatic. My brain. do one one Yeah, my and brain immediately went to three lanes and I was like, wait a minute, that is two in each lane. How did that happen? Were you calculate math? They could do like two, two, two and one have like the offline like approach. um Or like have a room like roaming people and do more solo lanes and stuff like that, more continual ganks and things.
Character Roles and Strategies in Deadlock
00:27:08
Speaker
um And it has it has the the full creeps or minions or whatever you want to call them.
00:27:14
Speaker
and towers and elites and buildables. And it's got like all of the elements of ah this type of game of a MOBA for sure. But see, when you say like on that on its own, if you had no other context, you'd be like, ah, yes, perfect. I don't even need to think about it. That was just going to do well. um But then you remember that like the game play is a little bit like.
00:27:40
Speaker
I'm forgetting all the names of games today. Dodgeball game. Knockout city. Yeah. Because again, it's that third person thing. You have two jumps in a dash. yeah um So even on characters who are going to be maybe meant to soak up more damage, they're still going to have a lot of base mobility. Right. No strict heavy type character where you're just very slowly moving through the map, shooting big gun.
00:28:08
Speaker
No, because you could just be planked from literally anywhere. Yeah, yeah. um If this game is successful, and I think there's a good chance chance it will be just because like they didn't do a direct, we're gonna just branch, we're gonna we're goingnna split away from everything that we know, right? Artifact was kind of that. Half-Life Alyx wasn't, right? It was obviously Half-Life.
00:28:35
Speaker
But like this does feel like a fusion between Overwatch and TF2 and Dota. And you could make an argument. I would, I would, I would be receptive to the argument that a lot more TF2 and Dota than Overwatch, which is fair. I think yeah Overwatch just carries the, uh, they have like the hero shooter moniker right now, even though there've been other entries. So the comparisons are going to happen.
00:29:06
Speaker
Um, but like 20 characters, 20 heroes out the jump, like the game is not announced yet, right? Obviously there's a lot of people playing it. I think it was like 40,000 people or something playing this unannounced surprisingly big. Um, but like, cause that's the way it is with every person that you bring in can bring in another five people. It's like the, uh, it's what they don't tell you about MLMs is it's like, Oh yeah. How many times could you sell a product?
00:29:36
Speaker
and then get sales from the people that you sell to and do that to like 12 other people. i don't It's like six times. It wasn't cascading. yeah I don't believe you say it's not cascading. Yeah. So like the friend who gave me an invite, they got a and beta invite initially. And then I was one of their bonus invites. And then that was it. I didn't get anything to give to other people. Gotcha. Okay. So that's where, that's where they're, um, they're gating it there. Yeah.
00:30:06
Speaker
raining in. So if they did for a thousand people, it's then 6,000 people. Okay. That makes sense. That that explains why not everyone in the world has access to this game. Yeah. Cause it's the same.
00:30:20
Speaker
the the parable of like the person who asked for rice on every grain of a chessboard and you just double it. double Yeah. The same principle would apply here where it's just like, yeah, each person inviting five people takes very little time to cover the entire world. So um that does make make more sense. But the point I was trying to make is it seems very complete. Like it seems like you could launch a game with 20 characters and be like, this is a decent starting roster for uh, a MOBA it's low, you know, compared to your accounts for mobile. Um, but I mean, there are other games that definitely start out with like less characters when guilty gear strive came out. What was that? Like 12. Yeah. I felt so low and they had like, obviously they're adding a DLC characters all the time, but I felt like it started out at a very low number traditionally. Yeah.
00:31:17
Speaker
Cause fighters are known one for having like the biggest rosters historically. Yeah. I would say that my, my opinion is MOBAs are probably kind of like, have them beat at a point. Smash is special. Smash ultimate is special because it has like everything. Everyone's here. Everyone's here, but, um, Mobas tend to have like a lot, especially the ones that have been around for a while.
00:31:42
Speaker
That being said, I'm a little incorrect. So apparently Overwatch had 21 heroes at launch. I didn't realize that. It seemed like the count was a lot lower than that, but I guess because they were split across roles and stuff. Yeah, they needed at least three or four for each role. Yeah. But anyways, around 20 seems. It seems like this game should be announced, I guess is what I'm building towards, is it seems like it unless there's some other stuff that they really want to finish.
00:32:11
Speaker
and Polish up like They should at least announce it Yeah, I think it would be fine for them to I mean, I'm definitely not the expert in this realm Yeah, but I think if you have a good state to show something in It's usually pretty okay to be like hey, this is gonna be a thing. It's gonna even get better than this, right? Like it's not being canceled, right? Like you're not gonna bring all these people in and then be like, yep Not going to ship that game anymore. Wasn't announced. Can't get mad at it. I think, I think they're waiting to see if they can get an e-sport off of this first. Maybe that's it. Maybe they're, they're looking for that, like, uh, that special launch, but I don't know. I wish them well. Cause I mean, I enjoy, I really enjoyed Paragon and this is obviously a very different style to it. But like, if you hadn't played MOBAs up to this point,
00:33:08
Speaker
and you wanted to start with a relatively beginner friendly MOBA that actually saw development. That disqualifies hots, goodbye hots, sorry. This way, please.
00:33:20
Speaker
um
00:33:23
Speaker
It's kind of nice to have a modern take that wouldn't necessarily be overwhelming. No, I haven't played it, so maybe it is overwhelming to pick up, but it doesn't look like it would be.
00:33:34
Speaker
Um, I will say from my experience, I have been, I have been wound. I have been a little overwhelmed. yeah Um, cause I find even against bots, I don't
Character Design and Play Styles
00:33:46
Speaker
do that. Well, maybe we need to like go through its tutorial as far as, Hey, this character really scales off of ability stuff way more. They should be focusing on guns. Um, or here's some good times to go check out jungle camps. When we're at these levels, or you have this much damage. Right.
00:34:03
Speaker
I mean, part of that is just like the natural MOBA learning curve, but I i guess the comparison I'm trying to make is like, DOTA is obviously the worst for it. I think, I think doubt DOTA is the worst for it where it's like, if you don't know when it's so much more micro and stuff that you're not used to, like basically unit control. That's not done in a lot of games and a lot of people, it's like people play Starcraft and like that's it, right? Yeah.
00:34:28
Speaker
Um, but something like this, um, people know how to do WASD and mouse, right? Then I want to hit some buttons on the keyboard to just, Oh, these are my abilities. Basically because something like overwatch has already been out. Yeah. Just to like a slightly different perspective going from first to third. So what you're saying is from an industry perspective, overwatch was actually.
00:34:51
Speaker
a tactical error because it led to more of a player base that would be receptive to a game like Deadlock, thereby moving them over into the Valve ecosystem.
00:35:04
Speaker
Yes. Gotcha. That makes sense. Yeah, that tracks. I think the real question is, Uh, deadlock deadlock rule 34. Uh, okay. Where are we at? yeah Do, do, do the characters have that potential? That's the, I truly, I think everything, uh, because that's just the nature of it. That is the, the actual rule. Yeah. There, there aren't qualifiers on that rule. It's just, if it exists, exactly. Um, but I will say.
00:35:39
Speaker
As I've said before with these types of games, I like to see what the characters are. That's why I still keep up with League of Legends occasionally. Yeah. Because it's cool to see in that ecosystem, how do you set your character apart or where they're going to be some overlaps and things. Like there are definitely some things in this game where we're like, oh, this is like this hero in Dota 2 because it reminds us something about it. Yeah. um Yeah, it's always just fun to see unique designs. And I'm curious if you were to play what type of character you would see yourself playing. Yeah. If you have the the article up. I have the article up. I could I could pick somebody who's interesting fast because I mean, they they say just
Dead by Daylight vs Deadlock
00:36:21
Speaker
for the the audience. So it's there. There's more than just me clicking through visual representation. You've got like assassins. You have like front line or tanks. You have supports.
00:36:32
Speaker
um I really like the idea of this type of character. And I'm with you, by the way. I like tracking when new characters come out to see, like, is something cool being done in the game design space? By the way, Jake has never played Dead by Daylight. But I launched it to input a code for blood points. But yes, I track all the the killers that come out. um Dracula is the latest one, actually. I wasn't impressed by his kit, honestly.
00:37:03
Speaker
It is pretty vanilla, um but it's following off of Vecna, who is just like the most overloaded killer in the game. So what do you mean? I guess the cool thing with Dracula is he does have the multiple forms. Wolf, bat, human. Yeah. Well, vampire. It depends. Yeah, it depends on the classification. But yeah, humanoid. yeah Yeah. His teeth just get filed down. He's like, what's up, guys?
00:37:26
Speaker
aha And if you pick somebody up and he's taking him to a hook, he just like grabs them by the throat. Like, here you go. Also, his Maury is like. It's so sassy. um what What's a Maury? A Maury is a really good angle. Sorry. Yeah, it's ah it's an instant kill that usually requires specific gameplay conditions. Like someone is on their last hook, because normally you have to put someone on a meat hook.
00:37:55
Speaker
um Wow, I think it's three times, three times to kill him, but it could be four, but I think it's three. um Or you have like a special perk for your killer or something like that, that would otherwise allow you to to kill somebody. um There's only one killer in the game who really, really is egregious in how he can do it. And he has like an add-on, it's Michael Myers, has an add-on that allows him to just instantly kill someone at the start of the game. What?
00:38:23
Speaker
That's the correct response because that's bad gameplay broken into shit. Like it it absolutely is. And like the add on has a bunch of drawbacks to like lower his power level through the rest of the game. But it's incredibly toxic because could you imagine queuing up as a survivor and then you're just like working on a generator or like, well, time to start running away from him and he catches you and just instantly kills you like that's not gameplay.
00:38:50
Speaker
That's just being kicked back to the lobby search. Right. like So, wait, does it work? Like you just get a free kill if you catch somebody ah for Michael Myers, for his particular one. Yeah. um It's called tombstone is the the name of the the perk there. But for other killers, there's usually more specific conditions. um They either have to like hook a certain number of people.
00:39:15
Speaker
or hook a person enough times that the next hook would kill them instantly. So it's a little bit faster than carrying them to the hook or some other sort of like fair gameplay scenario. um But in general, you put them on the ground, like you hit them till they're on the ground. um And then when they're in that downstate, rather than picking them up, you finish them off. And for Dracula, he he takes his claws, which are just like retractable, sort of like, um who's the... over Well, yeah, Wolverine has them out of it the back of his hand, but it's like X-23. X-23? Yeah, name of the girl, Laura, I think. um She has them through her fingernails, I believe, and she can just like slash. That's his exact exactly the same thing. Slashes someone's throat. They're kind of holding their throat like that. Summons ah a glass like Chardonnay cup thing, or a glass.
00:40:10
Speaker
um gathers their blood underneath like their throat and like swirls it around, drinks it, and then they just die. They've like passed out from blood loss. um And then he just throws the glass away and it shatters to the side and this this final flourish. That's cute. It's hilarious. um
Character Abilities Comparison
00:40:31
Speaker
Some of the mores are are are kind of severe, I would say, or violent in that game. And they they literally are like, if they come up
00:40:41
Speaker
on YouTube, they'll get censored, like they'll, they'll make sure to blur them and stuff. Just a side episode for how YouTube sensors content these days. But, um, so is it more graphic than mortal combat? Uh, I don't think so. No, no, there's no like ripping spines out of people and jazz like that, which is moral combat's forte. Um, but.
00:41:06
Speaker
Mortal Kombat would be an example of something that would need to be censored if you didn't want to have your audience limited on YouTube now. Like if you, if you clicked on a YouTube video and you get that like disclaimer at the start, that's like, Hey, this contains strong violence or depictions of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like for a lot of people, I think if you're not logged in, you don't even see that. Like it won't even be available on the platform. Um, you don't get the option to opt into it because they're trying to keep that stuff away from kids, I guess, or whatever. But.
00:41:36
Speaker
Hmm. Had no idea. Yeah. That's the YouTube. That's the YouTube problem. Well, eventually maybe someday we'll have a topic about censorship on YouTube, but. Well, I'm just trying on some men's clothes and this is educational. Exactly. Exactly. Men's sheer t-shirts and underwear. Um, and for the rest, you can check out my page for fans.
00:42:02
Speaker
probably Predominantly fan. Some would say. So going back to my question, then. Yes. What type of character? I'm looking at this character, Lady Geist. She has the tagline sacrifices, health, then drains it back. Um, and I remember for league. Vlad. Vlad. Yeah. And I'm pretty sure I only played him like one time because I very,
00:42:30
Speaker
briefly played League, and I think it was only against bots. And I think I only played people who were on free rotation and then literally fiddlesticks. But I always like the idea of characters that use their own life bar kind of as a resource, because it can lead to some interesting gameplay design that can get broken if you mess it up, obviously. But um And so the vampire type, I don't know, I'm an edgelord. I like, I like stuff like that. Listen, listen, we've both played a Moira. All right. I get it. Well, she doesn't hurt herself at least. That's true. She's more just a vampire. Suck. Yeah. she She gets the suck so she can build piss. That's the key gameplay for Moira. There's two things I do. Suck. thy piss
00:43:20
Speaker
That's the character. That's what they should put on the the intro. Well, well, well, isn't Mr. Suck in.
00:43:27
Speaker
ah i I've buried the thread, but I was going to say, uh huh. It's like ah it's a fun risk reward thing. yeah An early example that I'm reminded of is going to be in like Tekken whenever they added Yoshimitsu and he had the seppuku move where He runs over and he just, if you're not near anybody, you just stab yourself and you lose a huge chunk of health. Right. yeah Um, but, uh, the advantage is I think if you landed in like a sweet spot, it can like instant kill them or it has just a lot of damage. So like it can win you the game. but It can lose you the game. Yeah. But with some other things like, um, Phoenix and Dota two also uses health for like.
00:44:14
Speaker
By the way, ah super strong abilities, ah especially in current meta. When I played all of Phoenix's abilities, except literally supernova, took health. um That's not true. um No, I think that is true. Yeah. Pretty sure when I played all of them took health.
00:44:35
Speaker
No, that's not true. The beam laser, the beam laser. Vote now on your phones. The beam laser dealt damage to enemies, healed allies. That's Ranger Health, actually. Ranger Health, yeah. I think they did, because the one I was uncertain about was like the swoop. That one might have just been on a cooldown, but maybe it took health. I don't know, it's been on since I played it. I think it does now, if it didn't. Yeah. But a cool character, because you're like, okay, well, in Phoenix's case,
00:45:03
Speaker
He didn't only cast with health, uh, also needed mana, but it was just like an extra cost. You're like, Oh yeah, I'm using health and mana for this. They might've changed that. I'd have to double check. I haven't played Phoenix in so long. Yeah. But it was fine. Cause like you said, the the commiserate, um, return was, it kind of played back into this one. The theming was great as you're just like, okay, well yeah, the Phoenix is dying until.
00:45:34
Speaker
reemerging in the supernova, uh, ultimate. Um, but also they just gave Phoenix a lot of cool abilities and you would just put healing items and stuff like that on him anyway. So you could play around it.
Paragon vs Deadlock's Mechanics
00:45:46
Speaker
Yeah. And it was already teased at the end of X three. So yeah, my favorite item for Phoenix, probably for staff. I would say, I would say Phoenix forces is what I go for a lot of time. Yeah.
00:45:59
Speaker
I'm a Phoenix main and I like to buy Zonia's hourglass.
00:46:05
Speaker
wow Um, there's no lady guys. You said had some self damage into bonus enemy damage, enemy damage. I mean, I only get the description and I get the, um, what's, what's the old deal. That's usually pretty indicative of the character design. I'm clicking back through them because I looked for a different one for a second.
00:46:27
Speaker
Um, so I can't see what all of the abilities do, but there's a icon with a bunch of blood droplets. Um, it says when the running low, she can drain the life out of her rivals. So her three abilities, one of them looks like a bomb, literally like an icon of like a bomb dropping. Another one's like a partially depleted heart. The third one is a dagger or like a kunai.
00:46:51
Speaker
And the third one or the fourth one, which I guess is the old is the looks like blood draining towards her. So that's probably what it is. OK, I think I remember.
00:47:03
Speaker
Cause I did practice some of the here's just a little bit. yeah I think one of them is like an active drain with somebody who's close to you. Kind of like, if you think the death prophet suck yeah or a lawyer. Um, and then I think the alt was like a health transfer, like a captain. gunu Okay. Interesting. So like you can play really aggressive. Someone's like, Oh, I'm going to defend my teammate. And you're like,
00:47:26
Speaker
Thanks for the health, fucker. And then you keep going. Gotcha. This is when you say a Captain Ginyu, is this also kind of terrible? blade Yes, exactly the same. It's just a health swap. Gotcha. Gotcha. Which, by the way, one of the doucheiest picks to play in Dragon Ball Z are those fighting games.
00:47:46
Speaker
Cause like you could do, you could do that ability at like a certain health point. Like you had to be at least within like, let's say an eighth of your health left. Uh-huh. And then people were just kind of like trying to bait out you to do like miss a grab and then they just hit you with it. Yeah. So stupid. I mean, it was pretty, it's also kind of toxic when terror blade had it. Like I, I'm sure that this is not the meta now, but.
00:48:10
Speaker
As an old man, when terror blade was released in dota two, one of the builds was literally just like E blade day gone. And the whole thing would be like, I just fight creeps yeah and get my health super low and then just peek into lane, swap health with someone and instantly annihilate them. Just like a one shot them. Um, I mean, it helps that you blade also had some, um, agility.
00:48:39
Speaker
I'm just terribly wanted, but ah it's stupid. It's really stupid. Right. That's crazy. Cause I've actually never seen a shadow blade on terror blade. Yeah. I mean, I don't even know. So the the poor man's version of the build actually, I think four goes shadow blade. You literally just trust and like award or the ability to round a corner and vaporize someone. I sure hope I'm doing this at nighttime behind some trees. Exactly. Exactly. Correct.
00:49:06
Speaker
Um, it also, you I mean, you could use your, um, your illusion to do a little bit of a scout to see where the, the enemy is. Um, but yeah, terribly see an illusion walk into lane with two health. I think I know what's happening. Yeah. Immediately dies to a neutral grief, but yeah.
00:49:27
Speaker
I mean, shadow blades, not necessarily. It's it it' an absolute cheese built, right? It's, it's, if you don't win the game by getting the kills, eventually it's just going to like stop working against enemies or they'll get like, um, a heel, right? And then suddenly you can't instantly kill them anymore. But also an E blade plus a Dagon is a lot of money. So if it doesn't work, you lose the game. So yeah.
00:49:59
Speaker
but very toxic. this is This is a nerdy aside, but it's very toxic. It's going back to the mori. It's very dumb to just walk up and instantly kill someone and kick them out of the game. At least in Dota you can respawn. That's what I'm saying.
Nostalgia in Game Graphics and Evolution
00:50:13
Speaker
And Sinner Lord should not be in Smash. We've we've said it for years.
00:50:18
Speaker
um I want to give points to another, another hero here. Um, paradox also great yard, the broad, sorry, brothers, per but like, um, this character is, uh, presumably kind of like they look.
00:50:41
Speaker
Not like a human, but feminine. I don't know how to describe that necessarily. Wearing like an investigator's coat. They have like a blue flower lapel. um They look really cool. They have like a ah helmet in the place of their head that looks like a lava lamp cross um Rorschach's mask, essentially from Watchmen. um And their their their tagline is manipulate space and time.
00:51:12
Speaker
uh which is supposed to help with like one-on-ones um and enemy displacement it looks like her ultimate is literally venge swap from dota um yeah i think that's the one where we're like oh that's definitely from from venge yeah um and i like this motif because going back to paragon the game that i want to play no i'm just kidding ah it's fine it's fine that it's gone um They had a gunslinger who had the ability, that it his ultimate was pick another person and then just, you both plane shift into like a dueling arena. And it lasts for a certain amount of time, but it's a decent amount of time. And whoever wins the duel returns to reality and the other person's gone dead, right?
00:52:05
Speaker
And you could say like, okay, this is very similar to say like Legion Commander in Dota where there's just the compelled duel. But the difference is, I think you can correct me if I'm wrong. At some point, Aghanim's Scepter kept other people from interfering with the duel and it just made it like a true 1v1. There was a version like that. I don't know if that's still a thing. Yeah.
00:52:29
Speaker
But if do you remember in Paragon, there was actually somebody who their old was like bringing somebody to the Shadow Realm. Like they both were not in the map anymore. Yeah, that's what I'm describing. Yeah. OK, sorry, sorry. Oh, no, you're good. I mean, we're on the same page because that is the guy. That's the gunslinger guy. Yeah. And is and he his his kit was good at just killing a person as long as there was no outside interference. So you're just like, maybe there carries a little weak or something like that.
00:52:56
Speaker
Target their carry. Take them to the Shadow Realm. Duel them. The victor comes back. Or, more realistically, I want to kill a support. Target their support. Take them to the Shadow Realm. There is no support anymore. um It's like one of those Final Fantasy animations where like you do it to a creep. The creep goes into like a black void, and she's like this giant hand of God coming down from the heavens.
00:53:24
Speaker
It's very much the, ah i know and I know we saw this kind of recently, but like Sephiroth's Final Smash and Ultimate literally is just like a laser that destroys multiple planets on the way. And there's like math equations and stuff happening over here in the corner, but destroys multiple planets on the way to the last planet where like the fight's happening and then destroys the entire planet.
00:53:50
Speaker
And then the person just like takes 30%. Yeah, their controls are reversed or something like that. But they just went completely overboard on the animation. I love Final Fantasy for that. Knights of the Round. Yeah. AFK.
00:54:06
Speaker
which is I feel it. It's almost like a great thing to like, uh, maybe you could have a separate topic on just game cinematics. Yeah. Um, MGS for show up. The game is a cinematic here, a hundred percent, but how much it effort it must've been for that one compared to everything else. Now, to be fair, they did have actual good, uh, other in-game cinematics, but for whatever they were using to.
00:54:39
Speaker
show for the subs and that animation. So they just went so above and beyond. Yeah. Like almost too much. Yeah. Final Fantasy kind of has this. um I want to call it like a chip on their shoulder, basically, because they were known as the good graphics studio early.
The Impact of Music in Games
00:54:57
Speaker
Like even before we really knew what good i say before we knew what good graphics were. But I mean, like for their time.
00:55:03
Speaker
the cut scenes in Final Fantasy 7, you're like, oh my gosh, this is awesome. Oh yeah, I was insane. And then it's like, because they're all like pre-rendered, but they just had really good artists. It had nothing to do with like the gameplay per se, but they were really good at making these, these pre-rendered cut scenes.
00:55:20
Speaker
And it's very funny you jump back to gameplay and clouds hand has like three sides to it.
00:55:27
Speaker
Looks like you can just like stab it into a wall. So I know I talk about this all the time, but like ah one of my favorite things is. on the first mission it's you bear it in like somebody who's wearing a visor but you have to like sync up when you all hit the button at the same time and just being canonically uh i was really shit at it But it was just funny how like their arms just kind of bonk off like a giant toy hammer, essentially. Uh-huh. Because they were so fucking bulky. That's all they had, yeah. Yeah, half of that, half of the PlayStation's ram was just dedicated to Cloud's hair at any given time. Yeah, it was it was dumb. But they do like to be kind of go above and beyond.
00:56:15
Speaker
the amount of effort they put into ah music for Final Fantasy 14. I haven't played World of Warcraft in like 12 years, but I would bet you they're not doing that. um And they keep coming out with these new wild bosses, mechanics, cinematics on top of that too. Again, I haven't played Final Fantasy 14 in a bit, but I know so many people who really vouch for it. Like, a I mean, I'm one of those people and I'm not active in the game right now. I haven't played the most recent expansion Dawn Trail. um But like, yeah, there's there's so many fights where the it's the boss fights. It's like there is good ambient music, too. But like specifically the boss fights. And ah what's funny is a lot of them actually are from the base game, like um
00:57:08
Speaker
ah realm reborn content but it does continue beyond that um but from the base game they have like the Geruda fight um or it's like it starts out quiet and all of this but like the character you're fighting is this wind elemental essentially And then like the lyrics come in and it's just like now fall. And then the drop happens and it goes into the fight and it's just like, it's perfect. did They do the thing. I will forever be susceptible to like the, the pin drop moment in music where they line it up with the gameplay. Um, freaking love it. Grease bumps. I'm trying to think of another example of something like that. I would need some time to prepare, but
00:57:54
Speaker
There was, um, the one, uh, this is a, this is kind of a niche thing. And I don't think a lot of people are going to get, even get the reference. Cause I'm a hipster and Andy and all that, but like I played ever space, uh, two, I think. And it's a spaceship game as you'd expect, but the thing, and I'm not even going to talk about the game, but the thing they did that was cool was whenever you were in an area, it would have like a nice ambient theme.
00:58:20
Speaker
Um, but then once you start like approaching enemies, it would kind of like switch over into like, there would be a slightly higher beat kind of layered on top of the ambient theme. And then once it broke out into all out combat and the enemies are converging on you, it would go to the highest intensity. But a lot of games have some sort of audio like this where it'll go between combat music and then back to ambient music and then combat music back to ambient music. Roboclast is my go-to example for that.
00:58:50
Speaker
Yeah. And I think RoboQuest actually does this um a little bit of this as well. But ah Everspace 2 had layering for these. So like all three of them, these layers could be playing at the same time. And it's just like the high intensity stuff on top sounds super cool. And you lose nothing when it like drops down because it's all just continuous. You're not changing the track that's playing at all.
00:59:13
Speaker
um Love it. So good. So good. I will say the the few times I have fucked around in FL Studio. um It is nice like you find like, oh, it's kind of like a a cool repeating beat. Maybe I could do it up some notes down some notes. And then you add like another track layer or something. It feels cool to have that going. inre Oh, I already appreciated it where it was. And now. Oh, shit. OK, that's cool. Yeah.
00:59:44
Speaker
This is the new thing. This is, this is how we're, uh, we're keeping the momentum going or increasing the momentum. Um, yeah, we're going to take out the electric guitar briefly and the, and the screaming singer. Uh, they'll, they'll be back after you get out of the safe room. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
01:00:05
Speaker
is possible. Like there's, um, I've thought about this from the hotline Miami perspective. Cause there are some tracks by.
01:00:13
Speaker
I don't want to put moon on blast, but tracks by moon that are like more repetitive because they don't ever switch up like the main melody. Other things are added and removed and stuff, but like the main melody kind of continues through the whole track without introducing other melodies per se. Okay. Um, and I do find that can, that can wear on you a very perfect, like a very extreme example of this is the trance genre. Trance music is no, yup. not introducing variation in like the main melody. Um, but if you can get away from that for a little bit, throw on a little bit more variation, it's great. Anyways, haven't studied music at all. I just appreciate it. I feel like there'd be a good tie-in if I remembered anything about, um, one winged angel. Um, but if you look at the sheet music for that, it's ever on.
01:01:13
Speaker
roll
01:01:18
Speaker
but But if you guys would like to be our one-week at angle You can send in your applications. I don't know what that means um What are your what are your impressions of deadlock? Send us your your leaks for whatever gameplays? Whatever gameplay you're not supposed to talk about We'll just tell everyone on the internet. It's fine. Don't worry about it. Soapstone podcast gml.com Or you can join the discussion on Facebook, where we discuss leaks until they shut us down, facebook dot.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you the next one. Or will we?