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S3 Ep250: March News and Studio Blues
79 Plays3 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about why some people dislike the term "JRPG", failed/failing games, the new Dota hero, Redfall, Diablo IV, and more in this week's episode!
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Transcript
Introduction and Personal Updates
00:00:54
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. Yeah? Yeah, I feel like I'm actually at the end of my sickness this time. Last time I'm like, I think I'm done. And it's like, haha, no, fucker. You sound a lot better this time.
00:01:17
Speaker
Yeah. I wasn't going to call you out on it, but you sounded like bad last time. Like a terrible performance. You know, I'm a six. It seems like I, like I'm just a constantly in a state of, uh, I just woke up. Hey, so yeah. How's it going? Yeah. Yeah.
00:01:36
Speaker
One of those. But no, um, the work was dead quiet. Uh, went for a bit of a walk today. Temp was pretty nice. Oh yeah. I have some fucking Bluetooth headphones now, courtesy of friends Demooch and Mel. Nice. And, uh, that's cool.
00:01:57
Speaker
I only feel dumb when I tap my ears to skip to the next song. I cooked myself a full meal and actually had different food groups in the meal. And then I've been drinking some toasted coconut seltzer.
00:02:12
Speaker
I don't know how they toast the seltzer, but it does taste like coconut. So yeah There might be a there might be a separation of processes there. I will say though. I'm with you with the Bluetooth headphones Or earbuds in particular I use them when I'm like mowing the lawn
00:02:28
Speaker
and a similar sensation. I'm like out here in shorts or whatever with my lawn mowing sneakers. And I'm just like, all right, next track. Taps ear like a maniac. Okay, gotta pause. Taps ear like a maniac.
Tech and Awkward Moments
00:02:45
Speaker
It's kind of like how I perceive the people, like the people who use Bluetooth headphones first, like for calls and things like that.
00:02:54
Speaker
how like they, how they looked. That's how I think I look. And I think that might be true. So it's concerning, but I mean, there's definitely a bit of that. I remember when, what was it yesterday or the day before I went on like another short walk. Cause again, like I'm just getting over being sick and like, let me just get some outside fresh air. Like that's, you know, a recipe for health or something. And then I was on the way back. I'm like, Oh, I'll call my mom. See how she's doing. And as I was coming back, I still on the phone with my mom.
00:03:24
Speaker
But it seems like I'm talking to myself to anybody who's there. And then my neighbor held the door to let me in. I was like, oh, thank you. Isn't the weather nice? I'm like, it is. I'm also on a call. Sorry. So it was a brief, awkward exchange because now I'm doing something else just because I have headphones in. Yeah. And if you have that little exchange, the person on the other side, in this case, your mom's going to be like, oh, are you talking to someone? Yes, exactly. Now you have to explain the whole thing.
00:03:51
Speaker
So I call my mom on video call. I'm like, this is my neighbor. This is what's happening. I just taped the phone to my chest like here POV. I'm running. I'm jogging through. That reminds me of a it's a fairly some of the pictures I think from the article are fairly.
00:04:07
Speaker
well-known on the internet but it was like MIT I think integrated computing club or something like that and basically what it was is like hacker man style 80s like I just strapped a Walkman to my chest like a group of people and it was glorious like obviously it would have been better if we carried down that route instead of going to Bluetooth headsets but yeah you know you lose you lose some along the way
00:04:39
Speaker
The guy literally had like a power glove on and stuff. Oh, okay. Yeah,
JRPG Terminology Discussion
00:04:44
Speaker
so a bunch of just wearable tech. Yes wearable tech when wearable was like in quotes and italicized You know attach some velcro to it and actually duct taped the velcro to the device Yes, it was wearable if you put it in a backpack and you reinforce the backpack The extent I had was
00:05:08
Speaker
I think it was a cassette player but the only quote-unquote attachment they had for it was like a clip and it's like this has to go into your pants or a sturdy belt loop or pocket because it weighs three pounds you're like okay yeah now these guys had like uh the the prototype uh dual deck or whatever it's called for Yu-Gi-Oh like a keyboard on the arm so they can like hit keys with the other with their left hand or whatever just
00:05:37
Speaker
Brilliant, basically. I hate there's one part of me. That's like so much of anime and like Japanese media I'm like, I don't resonate with that that seems like Something I would feel uncomfortable showing to like a friend or my mom But then I see like a dual disc from Yu-Gi-Oh I'm like low kids kind of badass like I would I would love to like have that for a game of like magic just once Mm-hmm
00:06:00
Speaker
Yeah. Unfortunately, you spend your entire life on like a QWERTY keyboard or something and you're not going to just be able to be like, okay, let me just quickly like pound out a snippet of code. Like just with my left hand real quick. Like, no, that doesn't make any sense. But it's, it's a cool idea at least. It's an idea at least. It's, it's an idea. Yeah. Um, but speaking of Japan, you brought it up with anime.
00:06:30
Speaker
And then Dave was like, where is this going? You know what else they make in Japan? JRPGs, which leads to you falling into one of my trap cards, which is from an interview that I'm going to mess up is Naoki Yoshida, a Final Fantasy creator.
00:06:52
Speaker
he had with I think it was skill up at the time and the interviewee or interviewer used the term JRPG it's just like oh talking about how like formative JRPGs are to the industry and all of that stuff and Final Fantasy 2 JRPGs and then like you can tell basically that it bothered Yoshida in the moment because he's like okay well
00:07:21
Speaker
Like, let's talk about this. Kind of paraphrased a little bit, but apparently, and I didn't know this, you go back like 10 years, a bit longer, and the idea that there was a completely separate name for the RPGs that people were making in Japan was really non-inclusive and maybe belittling, right? And I didn't think about that. I had never thought about that.
00:07:48
Speaker
I can actually see that a little bit. Like, if you go to visit China, you wouldn't be like, oh, where can I get good Chinese food? And you're like, you mean food asshole? Like, yeah, I can see that. Yeah. But I mean, in the American culture, like we definitely.
00:08:06
Speaker
I at least mentally categorize them differently between like, this is an RPG versus this is a JRPG. Yes. And now in my mind, JRPG part of it is a little derogatory as far as there are certain things in it that I see as like consistent tropes from like, I'm not a big fan of these in my games. But that's just like a style choice for like the game development, nothing else.
00:08:32
Speaker
So yeah, I think one thing I wasn't thinking about for JRPGs in particular is like, there's all these other kinds, right? There's ARPG, there's CRPG for like classic RPG. And that's the way I think about it, right? It just describes the nature of the game. It's not me being like, hey, Australians made this game, so it's an ARPG, right? I mean, why initially are JRPG? I thought it was something else entirely. Yeah.
00:09:02
Speaker
Dealing a lot of economy Right thing about space lasers. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah in that context it Definitely seems offensive. But again, it's just like You hear a certain term like Jerry rig. Yes, and you're like, ah, that's just the term for it and then you look at the background every like oh, it's a derogatory term for like German people and you're like
00:09:27
Speaker
Oh, I would have never pieced that together. That was not my intention. It's just the nature of the language as it's taught to you. Yeah. And it seems kind of funny because like you could almost, it can be hard to explain your intent there too. You're like, no, no, I love JRPGs. Right. It's just like, no, no, it's, it's, I love Japanese people. You're just different. No, that's not, that's not what we're trying to say. It's a classification of the type of game.
00:09:54
Speaker
It's longer might involve more grinding Probably has bigger story and things going on like that never bite-sized I don't think there's such thing as a bite-sized JRPG because that no would not fit in the genre That would just be a different type of game. So because if you could skip those cutscenes, maybe But you can't you can't ever do it. Yes
00:10:20
Speaker
By that note, if it's the long cutscenes that make it, is MGS4 a JRPG? That's the question. MGS4 has nine hours of cutscene footage, so yes.
00:10:35
Speaker
I still remember like I watched the entirety of that on like a Saturday Uh-huh and like when I stopped watching it like this the Sun was gone I was like, I guess I'll have a meal and then go to I didn't know what to do It's just always you so much of my time. Yeah
Game Industry Struggles
00:10:52
Speaker
Yeah, I have never even played or seen it but I've seen like clips of it and I just remember a very long drawn-out sequence of I think it was snake fighting off a lot as liquid snake or something like on top of Some machinery or something and they're all like throwing punches slash hugging. I don't know. It was dramatic And pretty cool so
00:11:20
Speaker
I just thought that was interesting. Some other stuff in the news for Square Enix. As you know, For Spoken, big game, very popular, everyone loved it. And then if you like, invert all of those.
00:11:36
Speaker
That's what reality was. That was kind of the problem, except it was very expensive. It was actually very expensive. Kind of kicking them all down, I guess, but the studio got closed. Not too surprising. I don't say good as far as like, fuck the people who worked on it.
00:11:55
Speaker
It very much fell under the, Hey, it's a triple A game. It's open world. And you see a bunch of these things, whether like how the dialogue is written and how like the game play is done, where it's like these people seem out of touch with what gamers, soft G gamers.
00:12:13
Speaker
consumers like how they're actually going to experience it and enjoy it and it just seems so Way out of left field like hey, what would four old white guys in a business meeting come up with and you're right this Yeah, I haven't played it so I couldn't like point-by-point critique it but that's kind of the problem, right? I didn't play it
00:12:34
Speaker
And the people who did play it, a lot of them didn't enjoy it. And so, yeah, they had a finance meeting or some point. It was probably the quarterly earnings report or what have you, but they said that reception was challenging, which is a very diplomatic way to put it. And as though you can overcome reception, right? It's like, all right, well, people freaking hate our game, but you know what? That's just another mountain to climb.
00:13:03
Speaker
And then sales were lackluster, which was not surprising.
00:13:09
Speaker
It's, I mean, that combined with a lot of studios are already kind of like laying people off. I know Microsoft, Google, some other people are headed in that direction. You don't wanna release a bad game or a game that's gonna be like railed against critically right before, right when the company's already looking at like, hey, how do we do cost cutting, right? That's a little rough.
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's I think we're at a point I'm gonna say, you know, like a sweeping sense not a specific sense Where you can't necessarily just print out a game and have it be widely accepted Unless it's something that's in that niche space where it doesn't fucking matter what you make This is always gonna go to like not necessarily railing on but like a call of duty. Mm-hmm
00:13:59
Speaker
Can you shoot in the game? Does it have multiplayer? Cool. You've hit your bases, you don't need to do fucking anything else for people to like it. Pokemon, I'm gonna say, also in that category, to a degree. They definitely have been making changes in their game design. Any of the sports games, like Madden or NBA 2K.
00:14:18
Speaker
people just pretty much want the same thing but just like a slightly upgraded version of it whether it's we're updating the players or the pokemon or we got some new guns for pokemon yes naturally pikachu use gat pikachu use thunder lord oh no yeah take nezarek out in one phase
00:14:45
Speaker
But yeah, if you have something that's kind of just a generic thing, this kind of falls with anthem as well.
00:14:52
Speaker
Like if it's not a passionate thing, they're just like, okay, how does that differ? If you're a consumer and you're like, I see seven games that all kind of look the same. Yeah. Which one am I going to check out if I'm just new to the space? Oh, the one that everybody's fucking talking about for open world. Oh, maybe I'll check an elder ring or maybe I will do horizon zero dawn and like fight robot dinosaurs. Right.
00:15:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think something a lot of these games, some of these games are missing. I shouldn't say a lot, but some of them are missing is like they put a lot of money and a lot of effort and a lot of production value. Like there's nothing against the artists or the developers or anything like that towards the game. But like it doesn't have, it doesn't meet this criteria. I think we talked about a while ago, which is just like, is your game fun?
00:15:41
Speaker
right like if you're doing a game jam the idea is just like throw a bunch of crap at the wall and then see what's interesting see what's fun embrace that throw out everything else and you can't do that if you're dropping like a hundred million dollars on a game right you're not like gonna spend like a million dollars on art assets and then be like
00:16:02
Speaker
We actually don't need that enemy. We don't need this type of enemy. We don't need this level or something like that. You're in too deep. So that's one thing I think the indie space is going to continue to excel in and AAA can only hit that if they're willing to.
00:16:20
Speaker
Experiment early and then make changes once people actually play the game So yeah indie is like my my cooking style Where like I like to if I'm going over to somebody's place Like hey, can I cook and I don't know what the fuck you have until I open your cabinets and your fridge I'm like
00:16:40
Speaker
Are you using these heads for anything? No? Okay. Jesse. But it's just nice to be like, okay, what is my limited scope of assets, in this case, or resources? And how can I make something work with that? Which is where indie really thrive, because you're like, hey, we don't have a huge budget to do all of this.
00:17:00
Speaker
So let's figure out the core parts first and then find either like a more inexpensive way to do art assets or we'll do our own. Right. If you're doing like a Toby Fox type thing. Yeah.
00:17:16
Speaker
they they have that versatility and Unfortunately this studio I know that they also put some time into the engine itself And so this is kind of like a double failing in a way because the engine that went to first spoken Also had all of these issues at launch like that's where a lot of those mixed reception came from and this was all pushed by senior leadership as far as I can tell or have heard so
00:17:42
Speaker
You know, unfortunate for the people who hopefully just get reorganized within the company, but if they did lose their jobs, that's unfortunate too. But there's
Dota 2 and Muerta Analysis
00:17:54
Speaker
a lot, there's a lot, a lot you can do to join some of these other studios.
00:18:03
Speaker
My next piece of news is news is one of the studios maybe you don't want to join because it's also negative. We'll get these out of the way. Then we'll talk about like a new dota hero or something. I didn't even know this game existed and I freaking love the developer platinum games made a game called Babylon's fall which came out for PlayStation and Windows.
00:18:23
Speaker
And I was like, it sounds like it's kind of like a Korean action game. And I think it might be. It's hard to tell. They shut it down at the end of February with a patch on Steam. You know how you can see the game release notes there when people optionally include it there. And it was just like bullet point end of service.
00:18:46
Speaker
that was it that was the entire thing very sad it's just all of all of your players are just like hey a new update something we can read about the game that we love and they click it and it's just like no um it had been announced in advance so it wasn't a surprise and the other thing i wanted to mention is there were no players that saw that message because when it launched on steam it had 1200 players is what i read which is
00:19:16
Speaker
Basically a guy and his mom That's a small like all participants of a community college play this game once yeah
00:19:27
Speaker
Yeah, and two months from then, and this is a live service game, by the way, so oof, but two months from then, there was one player concurrently playing in May, so. I don't know. I just enjoy it. I figure I hop on afterward. Right. For two months. The only person in the world still trying to make it work.
00:19:46
Speaker
But to be fair, if I pick back up, they'd be talking so much shit. I kept this game alive. Uh-huh. Yeah, these Platinum games just flies them out and gives them an award or something. That'd be freaking great. But yeah, I never heard anything about that until just now. So I'm not sure if it was a miss on the marketing standpoint.
00:20:08
Speaker
It didn't review well either for the people that did review. It was also panned. I guess it just wasn't all that inspired, which is really unfortunate because this game development for this started right after Nier Automata. So I was really hoping they could like- And we love Nier Automata, by the way. Yes, exactly. The Wave Platinum does combat animations. Great.
00:20:34
Speaker
But yeah, they took a right turn with this one into nowhere. So, um, that one is gone. End of Babylon's fall. But I mentioned a Dota hero and I feel like that's your news, not mine. So I'm going to shut up, let you talk about a Dota hero.
00:20:50
Speaker
so recently uh with i believe that the last major i haven't watched pro games in so long i tangentially hear about it from idota discord but the new hero is muerta she is spanish if you couldn't tell from my pronunciation uh but she is a it'd be very fun if she wasn't right her name is just like marta and you're like muerta
00:21:15
Speaker
Martha. But it's the female Spanish for death. And she is a ghost-like arranged lady. She has two pistols. So she has a ranged auto-attack.
00:21:30
Speaker
she has a skill shot which a lot of characters are newer characters are having now where essentially you kind of have to like click and aim something so you kind of have to click off of a an enemy or a tree and then you can line up a shot which deals some bonus damage and then also fears
00:21:48
Speaker
so really skilled players will like shoot it behind you and then like push like in laning phase they will push you into them right and then like other people show up and you're like oh i'm gonna even even worse spot now because you walked towards the enemy for two seconds
00:22:04
Speaker
Normally, Lich has to make you do that. Those sinister gays. There's an ability in the game called sinister gays. The common joke is, what do you have against the gays? G-A-Z-E. To look upon something.
00:22:25
Speaker
She has a passive to up at max level. There's 50% chance to deal her auto attack to another nearby target. I don't really see that coming up too much unless she's using her ult. Real quick, her W is she puts out like an AOE at the last for 10 seconds. It slows you in the middle and then it has four ghosts going around the outside, around the outside. If you touch one of the ghosts, it will damage you and silence you.
00:22:54
Speaker
So you don't think it's that annoying until you try and pass through it and then you're trying to like not get hit by CC while also trying to avoid being shot. And it's just it becomes very annoying very quick. So I think she's actually kind of strong in that regard. And her ult makes her into a ghost and it changes all of her damage into magical damage and she deals additional damage.
00:23:19
Speaker
So essentially you can't auto attack her for like six or seven seconds, and she can just wail on you or towers. And towers don't have magic defense, so it gets crazy quick. But since she's dealing magic damage, you can just get a BKB. If any Dota people are listening, they're laughing at me because I never buy BKB because I think it's a dumb item. Right.
00:23:42
Speaker
That is one way that's really just countering her right now. Like, she can have some strong aspects, but if you become magic immune at any point, that makes her damage pretty much entirely. That is interesting. I mean, she sounds like a very novel character concept. As soon as I hear about like,
00:24:02
Speaker
Bouncing skill shots and things like that. I kind of like is this a league character, right? It sounds it sounds more like an action character, but the other abilities I saw them Are very much not they they a hundred percent fit into the dota space Quick question. What do you think her win rate is? This is gonna we're gonna do a one question quiz. Oh
00:24:23
Speaker
This is so hard to say Because usually for like new heroes is everybody picks them a lot of people are bad But I feel like her kits and decent enough that people figure her out in about a week Mm-hmm. I'm gonna give her the positive aspect. I'm gonna say 60% which is optimistic. That's very optimistic. I think 60% is actually really really high so she's at 46.6 right now on dota buff which puts her between tiny and shadow demon and
00:24:50
Speaker
on the list. The highest win rate in Dota is 55.9% at Spectre. So if she was 60, she would be like freaking launched into the sun, I think. That's usually when they would just nerf things flat out. Yeah, we've removed. The characters has now three abilities instead of four. Right. We thought that no longer uses a gun. She's now a melee hero. Everything else is the same. The same, yeah.
00:25:16
Speaker
of
Counter-Strike 2 Announcement
00:25:32
Speaker
that's not a leak that's the law right so you know maybe don't read too much into it that's a fair legal avenue to go down yeah uh-huh but for Counter-Strike 2
00:25:41
Speaker
the
00:25:47
Speaker
And not that long ago, um, I think a day or two prior to this recording, it was officially announced. Um, valve has a bunch of videos up for it. Um, and the way it was announced is also very funny to me. There was a counter strike Twitter account and it posted a tweet and that tweet said, and I quote, I'll just make sure I have the transcript ready here. Shuffling papers, sound shuffling papers, counter strike two.
00:26:17
Speaker
that was it that was their announcement i mean it's really all you have to do i feel to send a message because if you said like half-life three people lose your goddamn minds oh my gosh depending which account i came from i think right elon musk half-life games like no i've now canned the whole idea uh...
00:26:42
Speaker
But another interesting aspect of this that I thought was particularly worth note is the way that they're releasing the game. So it's very similar to what Overwatch did, but different in a couple key ways. My eyebrows hit my fucking scalp. Yes. So it's being treated as an update to the existing game, which is what Overwatch did. So this is Counter-Strike Global Offensive becomes Counter-Strike 2.
00:27:13
Speaker
And it's also free, which is what Overwatch did for the base gameplay, not all of the two content. The difference Valve has is there's no indication that anything that they add to the game at all as part of this update to Counter Strike 2 is going to cost money.
00:27:33
Speaker
and everything you have carries over. So here's why it's good. They can update it and make it better, add some maps, boost some graphics, yada, any change they make, right? They're supporting a game that's been popular and around for so fucking long and inside such a diehard community and specifically gets all of its money from cosmetics.
00:27:58
Speaker
I don't know how many times you've maybe been on like Twitch or YouTube and you're like, oh, we're going to have like a little bit of thing where I unbox items to see what I got and counter-strike. Now, I'm very outside of the space. I don't give two shits what color your AK is. Well, hold on now. These are shiny cardboard and now I'm suddenly interested.
00:28:21
Speaker
So yeah, it's very much like you, if you're into it, you're into it. But a lot of those things can go for a decent penny. So people will buy into it trying to get certain things or just if you play a game long enough, you typically will want to invest in some style points. I've definitely got some Dota cosmetics over time.
00:28:41
Speaker
I've put some money into Destiny 2, not like a whole lot in either, but like it does happen over time. And even with Magic the Gathering Arena, I've definitely bought some packs, even though I can get some for free over time. Right. So like if they just do all of these updates.
00:28:58
Speaker
It's going to bring a lot of interest in general. The diehard people are still going to go on. The whales are still going to be playing. Um, so I don't really think they need to charge for any specific content in the game and essentially disrupt the boat to make their community upset. I feel like the money will just continue to flow.
00:29:18
Speaker
I agree. I think it's going to be, it's an interesting case study, right? Because Counter Strike has a lot more goodwill than Overwatch does, particularly when you factor in the Overwatch 2 payment scheme, the fact they delayed the PvE component, other stuff like that. Whereas Valve is just like, no, we're just going to hot drop this massive update. We're bringing the game pretty much into the modern age.
00:29:42
Speaker
were updating the graphics. They are changing some of the mechanics. There was a really cool physics-based smoke grenade where you throw it and it'll fill a space. So they threw it into a kind of
00:30:00
Speaker
Tire shape and it just like filled the whole the whole circle of the tire shape if you shoot through it it'll like The bullets will actually poke holes in the smoke like air physics. Yeah If someone like throws a grenade like a high explosive grenade, it'll like vaporize the smoke so you can see through it in like a
00:30:21
Speaker
there's just all these cool interactions it's just like the community just loved it right it removed none of the complexity of the game it just added more and it's just something both sides can play around right so really cool that actually is legitimately cool yeah because smoke grenades as they exist today are very much like
00:30:43
Speaker
i can't see through this and that's like the extent of it um and that's fine well i guess it's worked for years but like the the idea of being able to in the same way why i kind of enjoy noita a little bit it's just that hey we took this attention to detail on the physics of it for this interaction
00:31:01
Speaker
So you can actually like shoot a bullet or let's say a shotgun blast. Obviously a decent discharge of a number of bullets all at once in a concentrated area for like a cone of vision is really cool. I mean, obviously you wouldn't be shooting blind for the most part, but like.
00:31:19
Speaker
I mean, people do in smoke though, right? It's just like, oh, I think someone's there. And that was, that's what it's going to change, right? If you're the first one to fire through smoke blind, if you miss them, they might see that where you were firing from. So there's, there's more, more play, um, which is good. More interactions are usually, they add to complexity as long as those interactions make sense and can make it more strategic. Also, I want to do a very brief shout out to a counter-strike related thing that happened recently.
00:31:49
Speaker
Okay. If you remember a friend of the show, Eric was actually doing some casting for a Counter Strike tournament. Yeah. Which is pretty cool to see.
00:32:02
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah, he I know that he he did some land casting in the past also special guest of the show Eric did some some casting in the past as like a fill he kind of likes stand in or was an interview is what it was an interview after a counter-strike event and I was just like
00:32:22
Speaker
You've got all of the natural charisma just like grab the mic just like just grab the mic from the guy just push him back You'll be fine. And anytime I have an event I want like a drunk Eric to just come up and just either grab him like now that I'd have a mic at a party or just like announce something because it's just Very much his thing like he can just start talking and get people on board. Mm-hmm
00:32:45
Speaker
Like you said, a lot of charisma on that man. Oh yeah. And speaking of Eric, actually, now that you brought him up,
Lance Reddick's Legacy in Destiny 2
00:32:51
Speaker
um, I have a retraction to make from our previous episode. Um, because I said in that episode that no one cares about Resident Evil one. And then he reached out and was like, I care about Resident Evil one. So correction. We don't make these a lot, but correction on the podcast. One person cares about Resident Evil one.
00:33:13
Speaker
So, you're welcome, Dan. I have another friend who likes Resident Evil 1. Yes. This doesn't happen a lot, but sometimes we make corrections for our corrections. Other things that aren't going on in news, clickbait title. We talk about vampire survivors a lot, and obviously,
00:33:41
Speaker
Well, recently not as much, but for a while when it came out a lot. It came up a lot more than the average indie game does. Like, it's like probably second to like Undertale, just in a number of mentions. That is possibly like an indie game. I'm discounting, I'm saying specifically indie game because Dark Souls cannot be included in this ranking at all or it takes like the top 15 spots. Is Dark Souls not an indie game? That's our next episode. Arguments for and against Dark Souls being an indie game.
00:34:12
Speaker
Um, but, uh, it's not currently planning. They're not currently planning on having a sequel of empire survivors to with the rationale being stated by the developer. I based this paraphrasing again, I have no novel ideas to add to two. And if I had an idea, I would just add it to one. So I'm not going to charge people for like another product. Why would I do that? I'm not going to just remake the game.
00:34:38
Speaker
Yeah. Blizzard, take a fucking note. Uh-huh. Yeah. Um, and I will say like, again, to their credit, when I started playing Vampire Survivors, it was engaging enough. It had a variety of character classes and weapons and like, Oh, what cool combos can I do? And they kept adding stuff and we're like, okay. And then they added like some light game stuff. I was like, okay, I'm trying to do the, uh,
00:35:06
Speaker
like the Vince McMahon meme, where he just keeps rolling back in his chair even further. But they kept adding such crazy shit. And just the amount of love that went into that, it really shows. And I was pleasantly surprised each time I got to play like a new patch of changes.
00:35:27
Speaker
I kind of get the impression, like I don't know if this is actually the developer's mind, probably not. If you're listening, reach out, we'll have an interview. But like when Vampire Survivors came out initially in Early Access, there wasn't a crazy amount of content, but it was good base gameplay. And you're like, I mean, this is reasonable for like, what was it, six bucks, eight bucks, something like that? Five-ish. Yeah, it was very, very little.
00:35:51
Speaker
And they're like, okay, yeah, I mean, for this amount of content, sure. And then like, they just went crazy. They added so much crap to it. And I wonder if the developer like looks at the finished product and like the month's worth of work and all of this stuff is like, maybe it should be a $7 game, right? But to their credit, they didn't do that. So it's excellent. Still a hefty recommendation from us.
00:36:20
Speaker
Do you want to talk about the Destiny 2 news? Sure. It wasn't enough that it took Hade 6 away from us.
00:36:30
Speaker
But now Amanda holiday, what the fuck? Oh my gosh. But no, actually the, uh, the voice actor for the Zavala Lance Riddick Riddick, uh, Pat is Riddick. Riddick. Yeah. He passed away in like the past week or so at the time of recording. Um, which sucks cause he was really cool in everything that he was in. Uh, he was also in.
00:36:55
Speaker
You got him blanking. John Wick, that's what I wanted to say. And a bunch of other stuff, too. But he's just always really cool. He also played Destiny 2. Yeah. As a warlock. Ah, never mind. I take back my legacy.
00:37:11
Speaker
But it seemed like he actually really did seem to give a shit about that and the community So when he passed like a lot of people would go to Where he is in game on the tower his NPC And people would just like kneel to like pay respect, which is really cool and it's the one I really game
00:37:32
Speaker
the one i really liked was there was there was there was two that i saw one was people who were using an emote to stand there with shields and the other ones had swords and like kind of just like honor guard basically and the other one was the um the kind of like green energy powering up emote thing and they were all just like kneeling around them it was it was freaking great it was it's honestly like too joking to see
00:37:56
Speaker
But yeah, I mean so he's he's the the last of the original fireteam voice actors For destiny So, you know Unfortunate for sure obviously Not related to that destiny fact at all his actual passing takes precedent over all of this
00:38:19
Speaker
But
Game Releases and Delays
00:38:20
Speaker
he was, I heard that he was actually doing the legendary campaign for Lightfall, like the same day that he actually passed. And yeah, I guess he was running through it solo like a boss.
00:38:36
Speaker
And I mean not I'm not correlating any event in the campaign But it's just it's he was he was he clearly still had fun with the game he's done clips voice recordings for people throughout the years where someone just makes like a Badar sounding copy pasta and he's just like absolutely I'll read this for you. Why wouldn't I?
00:39:04
Speaker
And this is outside of... Dear God, what's the video recording thing for celebrities? Like Fiverr? Or are you talking about something else? Not Fiverr. I don't know what you mean for celebrities. I'm not familiar with that one. But this was just like Instagram or something. It was just someone sent him a request. Maybe it was Twitter. Someone sent him a request. Hey, could you say this? And he's like, yeah, absolutely.
00:39:33
Speaker
Cameo ah, okay, that's what I'm gonna say And then his his wife did release a message and There was a lot of heartfelt and heartfelt stuff there, but it was it was pretty brief and she thanked the destiny community actually which was crazy because he's known for movies like Hollywood movies like the wire and I think the fringe and John wick like he mentioned and like I
00:40:04
Speaker
It's just crazy, right? Well, I think the difference there is like video game communities, like they go in deep. I don't know if you've just seen our destiny discord, which I refuse. I have muted for a reason. People don't shut the fuck up in there. They're always talking about like things in game or like plot or like build crap. This person died. Yeah. It's always something. But yeah, like people are very dedicated to stuff in that game and like they follow it.
00:40:33
Speaker
Um, and anybody who's like a voice actor, like they don't owe shit to the community at all. Like they had a job and then they did that job and they're effectively done. Right. But like the people who still give a shit and like show up for like fan appearances, like conventions and just interact the community in that way really means a lot to those people in the community. And like, they want to pay it back to some degree. Um, yeah.
00:41:00
Speaker
So yeah, it was a good relationship that was had there. I think so, yeah. Yeah, and I mean, it doesn't matter at all in the scheme of real life and real people and all those relationships. I am curious what Destiny's planning on doing because Evola is still a fairly big character in the story. And my gosh, they cannot replace.
00:41:24
Speaker
lands like it just would not be received especially after how obviously outpouring was at his passing like it wouldn't be the right thing to do so we'll see we'll see you there but it would be funny if they replaced him with uh why am I blanking on names today? LeVar Burton oh yeah but that's solely from a an Eric Andre joke uh-huh
00:41:54
Speaker
where they both went on at different times, right? I forget if LaVar was on. He did. He did. I saw it, actually. He did. Yeah, yeah. So Lance went on and was like, I want to be LaVar Burton. And said a bunch of stuff like, I can't say as a white man.
00:42:13
Speaker
Um, it was just an excellent scene. He had like a Star Trek, um, communicator on his chest, his bear chest, by the way. And he was ripped. Um, I think he was 60 plus when he, when he passed. Um, and he was, he's still very athletic. Um, and later Levar Kim, Kim then came in and was like, I want to be Lance Reddick. And it was so good. Just complete the loop. Um, but yeah.
00:42:43
Speaker
I have no easy transition off that topic. So instead I want to talk about Starfield. We know two things of information now from the last time we informed you guys, cause we know you only get news from us and we only get our news from other news sources on the internet. Uh, Starfield has a release date that's in September and according to the Australian ratings board, the game does not have sex. How does that make you feel?
00:43:10
Speaker
lonelier than normal start feeling gonna be my out yeah apparently not you gotta stay you gotta stay with mass effect for that
00:43:21
Speaker
As I've said before, like I like sex in games where it's like a booby based game. Like that's what I'm going there for. Cool. By all means have it, but I don't like sex or romance, like shoehorned into something where it's not needed because it just feels very shallow. Gotcha. That's fair.
00:43:45
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think I necessarily trust Bethesda right now to make character relationships that are deep enough that it would be anything but this is just fanservicey moment, whatever. Like Bioware, they actually could cut, they pulled it off, I think, with their games that had sex like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, things like that. You could feel like your character is developing a bond with another character over a period of time. That makes more sense to me.
00:44:11
Speaker
yeah with with Bethesda it's like I just gave this guy a rocket launcher of course we're up for a fun time right like it's not the same rocket launcher is not a not a projectile missile Jacob it's actually a term it's a slang term for a sexual maneuver
00:44:29
Speaker
I'll have to check that on an urban dictionary later. But I'm still looking forward to this. I think earlier in this year, I made the prediction it would be pushed back. We'll see if I'm correct or not. September is, it's one of those border months where it's like, maybe we could push it back to Q1, right? So we'll see. But it's more likely to come out now that there's actually a release date. In other news,
00:45:00
Speaker
There was a leak of Stalker 2. The developers for that game are GSC Game World, which is, I'm going to be honest, a bad name for game developer. But they were apparently hit by Russian hackers and they asked the public to ignore the leaks. They're like, hey, we're not going to do anything about this. We're not going to pay anybody money.
00:45:24
Speaker
So just don't look at it. I use the same tactics with my nudes a couple of years back. But I mean, in the same way that when this happened with GTA six, as far as leaks coming out, if something's in development, obviously, like there are going to be a huge changes between a development stage game versus a final product game. So if you do see it, do not judge it based on something that is in progress.
00:45:54
Speaker
right don't look at my dry pasta that's in a box and be like your burrilla is going to be shit i know it right uh i don't know what burrilla is burrilla is a brand of pasta which i probably should have started with and said your pasta is going to be shit that's made more generic that would have that would have dumped it down to my level so i could understand it
00:46:16
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know.
00:46:28
Speaker
speaking of now I'm back I'm all I'm working my way through my list I know that my list of topics and a list of topics are like of different sizes so I'm just like it's just stealing stuff from Dave and then sometimes passing it back Redfall another game I'm excited for the vampire multi-person kind of hero shooter looked vaguely
00:46:48
Speaker
Left 4 Dead esque, but more vertical and made by Arkane, which is one of the developers I circle jerk about, um, is, or was, uh, criticism. What was that? Okay. Okay. Yeah. Wait, is that a question? Well, you're, I thought you were fishing around for the developer name.
00:47:12
Speaker
oh no no yeah i said arcane but then i kind of like lost my train of thought because i was like i was had too much lead up and i was just like i don't know where i'm going anyways uh so they had some criticism because the game was going to be always online including if you want to just play it solo right you're just like load up do whatever and we don't like this um more games have done it i feel like assassin's creed
00:47:34
Speaker
was one of the ones that pushed it a lot more with Ubisoft nonsense, but like, the developers came out, or I guess maybe it was the creative developer, creative lead, I'm not sure, but someone who was leading up a production there was like, hey, I'm not gonna promise anything, but we want to remove that requirement. We get that that's a big deal. It sucks for people who don't have constant internet access, things like that. So we're gonna try to remove it. And I just wanted to say, good on them.
00:48:03
Speaker
for for that and hopefully they accomplish that at which point that will be a successful preliminary and fulfilled good autumn check mark because I don't want games to needlessly have to be online yeah that's fine for me but it sucks for others feels weird like if I'm doing Eldering stuff like I know there is like a it will default like connect to something for
00:48:30
Speaker
Like you can have invaders and other stuff. So like there is that online component to it in the background, but I don't ever think it should be mandatory for a game like that. If single player is an option. Right. Yeah.
00:48:45
Speaker
And you don't know how long the multiplayer servers are going to last, right? Like one thing that sucks with these games that are always online is the servers go down one day and the single player game dies. Right. Unless it was literally cracked at some point. In which case like, okay, well now you have to go into this legal gray zone in order to play the game that you bought. No, just make it so online requires multiplayer. Cause no one's expecting you to get rid of that requirement and single player does not.
00:49:10
Speaker
What if it was the inverse? Hey, if I'm your single player, you gotta be connected. If I'm your multiplayer, you gotta land that shit up. If I invite your friends over, get the internets out. Buy a controller. Yeah. No, it's silly. I've got two pieces of news left, and one of them is a little bit more dramatic, so I wanna save that if you have anything else you wanna cover, Dave.
00:49:39
Speaker
Dramatic's the wrong word, but I gotta build hype. So I did want to make a mention for a game that did come out in March. At some point in March, you're not going to look at a specific date, but Wo Long Fallen Dynasty made by Team Ninja, same people who did Neo. And if you remember back in the day, Ninja Guided, which was a game. Yeah, I've never been very difficult.
00:50:04
Speaker
I've never been a fan of how their games control. I was not big into Neo very much. It was a huge jump for what I was used to with Dark Souls. It is much more difficult, at least for me and everybody who I watch play it ever.
00:50:21
Speaker
Some of the concepts that are in there are kind of interesting. I've seen some mixed reviews on it so far, but if it seems like it might be something that's up your alley, by all means, check it out. Some trailers and whatnot, or watch a reviewer or critic that you respect their opinion.
00:50:39
Speaker
But it is gonna be another souls like But it does differ from neo But I can't give you the specifics on what exactly that is because I spent such little time in neo Yeah, yeah, I'm not I'm there with you
00:50:56
Speaker
Dark Souls hits the level of difficulty that I'm comfortable with and games that want you to be more like action oriented instead of just like learn a move set. Like very few things in Dark Souls are like this is a reflex check.
00:51:11
Speaker
Instead it's like the opponent started to do this thing or the opponent always does this thing and once you've learned that You actually are a massive advantage for the boss fight, right? That's the unknown It's the lack of knowledge that makes Dark Souls dangerous, but there are other games out there that are just like Hey, there was there was a just a glint a flash on the screen real quick and you missed that so you're freaking dead and that's on you, right and
00:51:36
Speaker
i'm a little bit less about that i will say i did watch part of a review and one of the mechanics that did stick in my brain is basically you don't have a stamina bar so you can just do your attacks and abilities freely but as long as you are in like a positive
00:51:54
Speaker
stance, where basically things are going well. It doesn't cost you anything. But if you start taking like hits, if you're not parrying things, if you essentially get put into disadvantage, you have to actively play more defensively until you can get your stance back up. So essentially rewards good active gameplay.
00:52:19
Speaker
but if you're getting slapped around a lot you can't just immediately go back on the offensive for free right that's interesting that seems kind of like a expansion of like i know guilty gear has the positive bonus and like negative penalty maybe it's just the positive bonus
00:52:36
Speaker
But the idea is if you're hitting the opponent if you're pushing them back if you're the one walling them Like you're just gonna build energy faster. You're gonna build your meters faster Because the game wants you to be aggressive because it's boring when people are not aggressive in a fighting game
00:52:51
Speaker
and also really sucks if you're kicking somebody's ass and then oh they got their comeback mechanic looking at you Mortal Kombat XL and 11 where it's like oh I've now hit this one thing let me just hit my I want to get a jail free card but it's like playing against Terry Bogart in Smash it's you're giving them a comeback mechanic when they don't really deserve it like it's fine if it's there to a degree
00:53:22
Speaker
Yeah, it feels better to reward somebody for playing the game. Well, I think Right. Yeah, that sounds fair I immediately think of Sekiro when you describe that right and like the amount of time it took me to beat a boss Versus the efficient time to beat a boss where someone's like they buff their blade as they're walking in and they're like, all right I'm gonna parry it three times and then just gonna kill the guy This is a one hour long encounter. What are you talking and then they just do it and you're like, all right I don't know how to play the game um
00:53:51
Speaker
Very tempo based game and it didn't have those mechanics. This is what I kind of did with the stature but But it was effectively a stamina bar Yeah, yeah But man Sekiro great game not the one you're talking about that's real for real I hope I hope the best for for team ninja though They've been around for a long time old oldie buddy goodie
00:54:21
Speaker
To my throwaway piece of news, System Shock is a game we talked about a couple times. They were going to have a release I believe this month that got pushed back to May. Not a great sign. It was pretty close to like an immediate launch. I don't know when these talks happened, but they were also bought by Atari.
00:54:38
Speaker
And those two things happening in the same month are weird to me, right? You're not like, okay, these people failed to deliver, buy them for $10 million. Um, but that's what happened. So that's very weird.
00:54:56
Speaker
Maybe they're like, hey, they're doing retro. We're Atari. Fuck it. I think that was it. Yeah. That was actually listed at the, the, the briefing, the PR message was just like, they're making the remaking retro games. We are retro games. Welcome aboard.
00:55:13
Speaker
Yeah, good on Nightdive for getting bought out. Hopefully that provides them ample resources to finish this product and move on to more cool things. And hopefully that doesn't suck. Hopefully that doesn't suck ass because the demo we played, I don't remember how long ago, was... It had a ways to go. It absolutely did.
00:55:41
Speaker
So yeah, well I'm waiting on reviews for that one. I played System Shock 2. I don't know if I played System Shock 1, I can't recall, but it is the progenitor of Immersive Sims and Bioshock and all of those other cool games and it would be awesome if there was a great
00:55:59
Speaker
iteration of that game to play that didn't require you to rebind like controls for looking around to your mouse when you install it. So yeah, hope a lot of hope and we'll see what else for this one. Yeah. Have you anything else you have? Have you been looking to play an action platformer again?
00:56:27
Speaker
No. Okay, nevermind. Wait, unless it's Hollow Knight.
00:56:32
Speaker
No. Oh, okay. All right. You can tell me on the game anyways. I was going to say have a nice death had its 1.0 release, I think yesterday or two days ago, a time of recording. I don't know too, too much about it outside of watching some new trailers. I know friend and guest of the show Ian has played it at an earlier stage and friend of the show and guest of the show Mike actually linked this to me and brought it onto my radar yesterday or the day before that.
00:57:02
Speaker
But it is a rogue-like action platformer. I guess a go-to might be... I'm just roughing it on names today. I'm thinking like Dead Cells. Dead Cells, yeah. Definitely a different style than Dead Cells. But Dead Cells is also gonna have its Castlevania patch coming out soon. Which is literally Castlevania, right? Like, the rights and everything. They're like, yeah, call it the Castlevania patch, yeah.
00:57:33
Speaker
Crazy that a game has added so much content since I last played it so I should probably go back at a point and take a peek It's basically fall guys at this point Yeah, if you're looking for Another rogue like action platformer. I'd say check that out. They got some trailers on Steam the theming of it's very nice I will at least say hmm
00:57:59
Speaker
Yeah, no, for sure. I don't know
Rogue-like Genre Excitement
00:58:04
Speaker
if I own Dead Souls or if I just watch someone play it, but you have a vague memory. It's been years since I engaged with the product, so I'm not sure. And my Steam library, it's impossible to look through. I don't know what's there and what's not.
00:58:21
Speaker
I need like a, I need a filter bar. I need a bar up there at the top where I can type in the name of a game and it'll go directly. This literally exists. It's the joke, but, um, no, it's really cool. And there are a lot of Roguelikes out there, but I think the world can always use more good Roguelikes. So
Resident Evil 4 and Diablo 4 Reviews
00:58:41
Speaker
yeah.
00:58:42
Speaker
There's a time and a place where I'm like, this is my jam. I burned so much time in Hades because holy fuck. It's just a guy that's the top of the pyramid. It's the best one. Yeah, it really is. So freaking good. You can't compare other games to Hades. I will probably play another roguelike before Hades 2 comes out, but man, it's good.
00:59:08
Speaker
Oh my gosh, that's good. Jake, did you? I'm hearing some coughing on your end. Have you been smoking the Re4? Re4. That's definitely a transition to another topic. Oh, Resident Evil 4. Gotcha. Took me a second. No. But it looks really good. And I think this one got amazing reviews. Yeah, I think it officially comes out tomorrow.
00:59:38
Speaker
Yeah. So it'll be March 24th is its release date. Um, but obviously like streamers or people who have like early copies to kind of promote the game, uh, have that I've already seen some like, uh, footage on YouTube of like playthroughs. And I'm definitely going to watch that because it isn't entertaining as fuck game to watch. I'm sure it's also a really fun game to play. Uh, but I am definitely a no resident evil expert by any means. Mm-hmm.
01:00:06
Speaker
And they also have a cute little multi-episode anime in Cheryl. Did you see that? It got linked on Discord. Oh, I hadn't seen it. But they have these little promotional videos that look like a children's anime.
01:00:21
Speaker
Okay, which is ironic because Resident Evil is not for kids at all. Yeah, but the way they do it is just really cute So I'm gonna say after this after we record you should probably check those out Yeah, for sure. Anybody else could just look for it on YouTube, but it looks Really good, and I think this one will be the best received remake probably Yeah, or at least the most scrutinized because re4 was I think the biggest one for people where they really leaned into the ham
01:00:53
Speaker
Yeah, there was the only thing I really know about this. I saw some gameplay and some reviews and the reviews are very, very good. Like there's basically, so what I heard was that it is the definitive version of Resident Evil, like Resident Evil 4. So like there is, there's no reason to go back to the other one. It's very much,
01:01:21
Speaker
We get this after the Dead Space remake, right? Similar type of situation where it's like, first one was freaking great, and Resident Evil 4 is a lot of people's favorite in the series. But this is apparently so good, they're just like, it doesn't matter, like uninsult, like smash your old copy, it doesn't matter if it's a collector's edition.
01:01:39
Speaker
Just freaking play this. And it got a lot of 10s. IGN gave it a 10. GameSpot gave it a 10. Has a mighty, mighty on open cricket. Cricket, open critic. And 97% of critics recommend it. So like, yeah, it has a lot of perfect scores. So. Seems good. Yeah. I'm expecting to hear some good things about it in the near future from people. Yeah.
01:02:08
Speaker
Alright, so we split our recording in two, so I don't know what our time is really at this point. I think it's a little over an hour, probably, at this point. Who's to say? Entro outro, but I have a last topic. Hit me, what you got? That last topic is Diablo 4. Alright, I'll see you next week.
01:02:28
Speaker
So to catch people up who aren't paying attention to Diablo 4 at all, they had an open beta weekend, or I don't know if it's open, but a beta weekend where I think the two ways you could get into it is either you bought, you pre-ordered Diablo 4, which is one way to get in, or you bought a Double Down from KFC.
01:02:50
Speaker
and i've heard this to to this day i don't know if this is a joke apparently not though um
01:03:00
Speaker
Those are both bad life decisions, I think, but maybe the double down's cheaper at the very least, right? I don't know. But we had a lot of impressions. The game was, the area that was unlocked was available to be played around in, people played around in dungeon, in multiplayer, they could get up to level 25. And this combined with some of my other research around Diablo 4, I'm starting to actually get excited for it, which is scary to me.
01:03:30
Speaker
but like they've made some really cool things I'm gonna tell you I'm getting head shakes from Dave you guys can't see the head shakes but you're a blizzard boy at heart that's why I'm shaking my head I knew you're gonna come around Diablo 4 you're like I don't know I'm like why he's gonna play it 100% well so here here are the things here are the things that I've liked about it so far it's like
01:03:50
Speaker
It's not Diablo immortal. They haven't shown, hey, this is going to be how we're going to absolutely screw up the monetization schema and scheme. And it's going to be something where you have to sacrifice part of your soul to play the game. Right. And they've improved a lot of things like they did some animation comparisons between like Diablo three and four.
01:04:12
Speaker
and they showed the hitboxes and one of the things this sounds really stupid and specific but like they had a barbarian doing like a whirlwind spin and the hitbox actually moved with the spin across like the entire duration of it rather than just flashing deal damage don't deal damage like in a circle
01:04:30
Speaker
And so as he was swinging, he was like knocking guys away while the weapon passed through them. And it just looks so cool. And this is what people are saying is like it's lower than Diablo 3. It's more the pace of Diablo 2.
01:04:46
Speaker
And that's the thing that kept coming back. So like, there was a whole thread on Reddit and people were posting their experiences and comments on it. And they were like, okay, it's back to its old form. It feels like a sequel to Diablo 2, other things like that. And like, this is exactly what I want to hear, right? Like completely divorce it from three. Three was a completely separate thing. It was fun in its own right, but it was not that core Diablo experience, right?
01:05:17
Speaker
And yeah, if you can open that up to that many people and have almost all of them agree like this is what Diablo is, I don't know, it's impossible not to get a little bit excited about that, I think.
01:05:30
Speaker
maybe i'm just a curmudgeon person at this point i say maybe like giving me the odd like maybe i'm not i definitely am well i was i was monologuing there dave kicked an orphan out of his house so it had broken in to find bread so my security bad apparently very bad um
01:05:51
Speaker
Maybe I can give it like another Passover. Haha. Got my juicer out of there. At some points, which that's actually coming up, by the way. Hey, everybody. Jewish Jewish holidays. Yeah, I haven't watched it really since their initial trailer where they had like, here's the announcement trailer. Here's the horseback. Here's an ice sorceress and some other things. And then maybe a glimpse of, hey, we're allowing some people to play it for a little bit.
01:06:22
Speaker
Right. I'm still not from that small bit of information, not on a board. And I really don't want to give blizzard money at this point, but maybe, maybe in a month or so, my opinions might change. Yeah.
01:06:37
Speaker
I mean, you have plenty of time to decide. It's not out until June. And I'm not trying to convince anyone who has a reason to not buy Blizzard games to buy Blizzard games, right? Like, Dave's correct from a certain perspective. I am a fanboy for particular IPs. Other ones I don't care about. I care not for Warcraft at all. I freaking love Starcraft. And like, I really hope that there's another Starcraft game.
01:07:05
Speaker
Diablo I put a little bit lower than Starcraft personally because I didn't spend a ton of time with the early series, but like I mean it's higher than Overwatch for me now and Overwatch was big for a long time. If they had a Starcraft version of Hearthstone, I would never see you again, Shacoob.
01:07:26
Speaker
I don't know what that game would be, but maybe not. If they managed to make it actual gameplay and put the traditional Blizzard characters into Hearthstone, I wouldn't see you again. Yeah. The last times I did play Hearthstone, it was not I didn't spend any money on it. I didn't even fight people, play against people or whatever. I just did like the single player content, which is pretty good in that game. But there's other games that, you know, probably do it better.
01:07:54
Speaker
But yeah, I'm going to personally, I'm going to keep an eye on Diablo 4. I'm not, you know, asking anybody to go out there and preorder it. Goodness, no. And I'm not going to preorder it myself, at least until I'm very confident that it's exactly what I want. But there's no reason to preorder games at all anymore, right? I could buy it when it launches after reviews come out and after I know that the servers are accessible and go from there, if that's where it ends up.
01:08:22
Speaker
The last temporary note that I had for Diablo 4, and then I'm done with all my talking points, is that similar to, I think it was Lost Ark, some of the late generation graphics cards were having a tough time with Diablo 4, in particular 3880s.
01:08:45
Speaker
people were reporting that their systems were restarting and That they would hear a fan spinning up and some people reported that their graphics cards died
01:08:55
Speaker
That's not supposed to be possible. Like you can't really honestly blame that on Diablo. But that is a driver's issue that needs to be fixed. So I'm glad there's another three months. Thank you people who tanked the front line with your graphics cards that cost thousand plus dollars. Your sacrifice will be remembered. But not really.
01:09:24
Speaker
I just, I want so many things to be optimized for lower gen. Cause like I upgraded within like the past two years after such a long window of time. And I feel a lot of people are in that situation as well where they're like, I like playing games. I don't need to be like have the best graphics. Cause a lot of games that you play are not going to be that demanding.
01:09:48
Speaker
I mean, it's worth noting, like, so those were high-end cards that are struggling, but I think that's the driver's issue. I look up the minimum requirements for Diablo 4, and they're very conservative. It's like an Intel Core i5, 2500, Windows 10, 8 gigs of RAM, a GTX 60, uh, 6600, no, 660.
01:10:11
Speaker
which is very, very old. They are recommending an SSD, but I mean, you should put games on an SSD if they're going to have loading at this point. I definitely, definitely do that. You should be, you should be. Yeah, that graphics card came out in 2012. So if they can say the minimum requirements are a graphics card that's, you know, over 10 years old,
01:10:41
Speaker
They've hit the baseline for me. But I'm not a fanboy. I feel like we're probably at the hour mark. Do you have any closing thoughts, remarks?
01:10:53
Speaker
Are you dying in your chair? I mean, I can give you the specific date of when I'm celebrating Passover with some family. But yeah, I'm good. I'm spent. Sounds good. Well, thank you guys for listening to an extra long edition of Soapstone and for sticking with us through the technical difficulties that hopefully, you know, you never even know about other than this outro. So maybe didn't need to mention those. That's fine.
01:11:23
Speaker
If you have ideas for future episodes, you can feel free to send those in to soapstonepodcast.gmail.com or you could join the discussion on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Get out of here!