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S3 Ep236: RSS - The Game Awards 2022
75 Plays3 years ago
Join Dave, Jake, and special guest Ian as they talk about Hades 2, Judas, hacking minigames, actors in games and even more TGA content in this week's episode !
Intro:
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Intro:
- God of War: Ragnarok Main Theme
- Elden Ring - Mohg, Lord of Blood (Synthwave Arrangement)
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Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
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Transcript
00:00:09
Speaker
all day
00:01:01
Speaker
How's it going, everyone?
Introduction to Soapstone Podcast
00:01:03
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? Fucking swell. Really? Or fucking swole. Oh. Because I have my Herculean God here, representation. Ian. How's it going tonight, Ian?
00:01:22
Speaker
It's going fantastic. Thank you for having me. I was very curious. Like when you said Herculean God, I was like, yeah, but which Herculean God do you think Ian is? And then my brain was just like, yeah, dumb. You know, you're not the only one that's done because as soon as you led that train, I thought I'm like, which Herculean God would I be? Oh, wait. Yeah, I am dumb. Well, I'm glad I'm not alone there.
Which Greek God Would You Be?
00:01:51
Speaker
Well, if you could choose to be one of the Olympic Pantheon, who do you most identify with or who would you like to be most identified with? I mean, do I get to pick the portraits from Hades? That's basically how I base all that information for myself. I don't know. I would love to be big himbo Dionysus. Yeah, Dionysus is immediately there. I feel like
00:02:19
Speaker
I was going to say Neptune. That's the wrong. That's the the Roman wrong pantheon. Wow. Get out of here. Besides Mars. Can I do Mars? The chart listing planets. You're bound to get a few. I really like Poseidon though. Gameplay wise and well, I didn't pick him as much gameplay wise. I was about to say, but he has some good builds, definitely. But his attitude is is up there for sure.
00:02:49
Speaker
This is Hades. Quickly buying time in my head. Who's the speedy guy? Hermes? Hermes, yeah. I like Spock just zipping around out there. You're talking about the boss fight, right? Hades, yeah, it's Hades. Very speedy. That's what I meant to say. Darkness.
00:03:14
Speaker
I mean, Hades is the only one canonically in that game that has a dog. So that's automatically a victory. That's three heads. You can pet a once easy sell.
Cerberus in Gaming
00:03:23
Speaker
Yeah, there was a, there was a, I was, I can't remember what content it was, but someone was speculating. Oh no, I do remember now it was the, um, it was a podcast with, uh, a video podcast with, um, Brandon Sanderson and another author.
00:03:41
Speaker
And they were talking about Hades and they speculated. The other guy wasn't like a big fan of Hades based off his first impressions. And when he heard that Cerberus was in the game, he's like, ah, you're going to have to fight it and stuff. And Brandon Sanderson is just kind of sitting back here, like smirking. He's like, absolutely not. Don't have to fight the dog. Game's too good.
00:04:00
Speaker
And then you get to actually pet the dog. Mm hmm. Yeah. Oh, dude, that game is pet that dog and give them treats. It's true. It's a side quest every time to give them treats. But people, people would do that because you're getting treats for a dog. That's a justifiable side quest. Maybe you can unlock like another animation where you think rolls on his back. Oh, too precious.
00:04:23
Speaker
We'll save that one for the Tuesday. Hades won pretty good. I don't know if they're going to be able to top it, you know.
00:04:31
Speaker
Yeah. With the second Hades. Oh, my gosh. Do you have the inside scoop? Are we announcing this? This Justin. Justin, are you there? This Justin. I'm using my dad's humor now. All right. I got to meet Dave. Needn't take over for Dave. Just don't tell me you've muted me. Let me think I'm participating like a younger brother on an unplugged controller. Oh, my gosh. We just unplugged his microphone as a joke.
Hades 2 Announcement and Speculation
00:05:00
Speaker
Uh-huh. But Hades 2 was announced at the Game Awards, and it had a little trailer, and I am there for it. Yeah, looks good. Yeah, if... I think out of all the things that were announced at the Game Awards, it was both the most unexpected and maybe the most anticipated thing for me, at least. Yeah, mm-hmm.
00:05:25
Speaker
I mean, there's a lot of reasons not to expect Hades to be announced. Primarily, Supergiant has never made a sequel for one of their previous games. It's always been reinvent the wheel every time, right?
00:05:42
Speaker
A lot of times it's the top down kind of like isometric type situation, but Bastion and Hades are not the same game, right? Oh, no. I actually saw some folks online who are very negative on Supergiant right now saying they have sold out because they've decided to make a sequel to a game like every other triple A developer out there, ignoring the fact that their batting record right now is perfect.
00:06:06
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Also, Hades won huge commercial success. They don't have to put it on Epic and have it be a timed thing for Epic's money. So they're doing okay. And I'm sure that they will branch out of Hades and do more stuff, but people fucking love Hades. So why would you not continue that relationship?
00:06:30
Speaker
Also, just like the content that was in Hades, it was very clear that like Supergiant was very invested in the world. I mean, you could kind of make this argument for most of their games. Pyre 2 had like a bunch of character relationships and things like that. But like they finished development on Hades and the game has a concrete, you know, credits role ending.
00:06:53
Speaker
And even then, I was kind of I kind of got the impression I was like, this could have gone on. Right. Whereas like the previous ones were pretty much self-contained stories without going into spoilers. Like, well, there could have been a bastion to. But for Pyre, like, no, Hades, absolutely. You could do a time skip. And it's not like it's like they're undoing everything in the first game. There is clearly a time skip. This is like the next generation for Hades to.
00:07:20
Speaker
Yeah, I'm actually willing to bet that the development cycle for Hades 2 was somewhere along the lines of, okay guys, stop writing story and having ideas for Hades the world. It's time to end Early Access. I think we're going to have to release at some point. And they're like, oh,
00:07:43
Speaker
Well, you could you could finish up and, you know, master this and get it sold. But we're going to keep writing stuff and just throw this in a pile. And when it gets big enough. We've got some ideas. I like that head cannon. Like they sent everybody home for the holidays after they shipped it and it was gold. They're like, all right, this is the finished product. They sent everybody home. It's like maybe if you have time, just like spitball ideas for a new game and stuff. And then everyone came back to the table and they're like, hey, hey, but to
00:08:14
Speaker
Uh huh. Like they obviously did not include everybody, uh, from the whole Pantheon possible. So like there is a lot that they can draw from for characters. They got some awesome stuff. Um, but they're really good at just making characters unique and interesting, whether it's, Hey, we're taking a form of something that's already canon in another universe or doing our own thing. Like the two seconds that Dora was on screen and she was just like a shade.
00:08:44
Speaker
They're already like, oh, Dora's like the best character. It can be my favorite. I'm like, what is popping up? It's like the community is already really on board. I'm sure it will be a good character. But like, that's where their strength is. So let me ask. Oh, go ahead, Jake. I was going to say, let me ask you guys, because I actually didn't I didn't do the deep dive on the trailer.
00:09:05
Speaker
do you know is it established are we in theorizing territory is the person like the play is the protagonist the daughter of zagreus and it's a new generation is it his sister sister sister okay yeah from what i was reading it's it's zagreus's sister and i don't know the name the name oh here it is it's milanoi milano um
00:09:29
Speaker
I am butchering a pronunciation here, and I apologize in the future when everyone obviously comes out to check this podcast when Hades 2 releases. But going back through their backlogs, I'm going to sound real stupid then. Yeah, I tried to search for the word you said, and I'm actually not getting any results for that word. Just don't. But it is. Melanoma. Or at the very least, it's Hades' daughter.
00:09:56
Speaker
And apparently it is an actual mythological name, you know, one of those lesser known deities that's in classical Greek mythology, but no one really talks about or knows about. So they're just scraping and being like, yeah, this character is not well known enough that we could write things and no one's going to disagree with us.
00:10:15
Speaker
Uh-huh. Smart. Look, it's smart. But she also has, so Zagreus's classic look is like the wreath, like the burning feet, and then the heterochromia. So melanoma or whatever her name is, is the same except her eye heterochromia are on the opposite eyes. Yeah.
00:10:38
Speaker
You know, it's funny you mentioned that because I hadn't I noticed the heterochromia. I hadn't noticed it was opposite, but I was getting an uncanny valley feeling when I was staring at her. I'm like, man, something's wrong, but I don't know what. You have just answered that mystery. It's actually a wigg. Oh, my God. It's just in the mirror. That's that's going to be the thing you step into the mirror at the beginning of the game. Now you're a female character. Your eyes are inverted and you're good to go.
00:11:06
Speaker
The darkness is only 80% payout? That's weird. But honestly, with a sequel like this, when again, the characters and the writing is so strong, I'm sure that they will have some tie-ins to Hades 1. Obviously, there'll be some related characters there. But any tie-in that they do, because I'm such a fanboy for them at this point, I'm going to be overjoyed with.
00:11:30
Speaker
Because it's just it's strengthening that universe instead of like oh, here's a separate unrelated pocket Here's a non-canon spin-off of fan art or
Death Stranding 2 and Kojima's Storytelling
00:11:38
Speaker
sorry or fan fiction for like Star Wars Yeah, I know when I was watching the the game awards with you people And we were watching the trailer like debating like it looks like Hades is a DLC is it what and then they played like Those four chords the Hades chords bum bum bum bum
00:12:00
Speaker
I was like, oh, oh, this is good. This is what I like. Keep doing this. Uh-huh. I actually thought it was a Left 4 Dead announcement. By Supergiant Games. Left 4 Dead 3 Supergiant Games. Let's go. I think it's Left 4 Dead 2. Maybe Left 4 Dead 1 also has the same notes for like end of level.
00:12:29
Speaker
Anyway, sorry. They have an FAQ on their site, Supergiant does, and there is a fair amount of information on the game there.
00:12:39
Speaker
They started development in 2021, which is a good sign. That means it's probably making a lot of progress. Also, they're going to continue their early access model for this one as well. Yes. So they'll have initial builds that'll go out to people. And you can play and also provide feedback because they're very engaged with their community for shaping the game.
00:13:07
Speaker
But I definitely played early access last time, but I did not contribute as much feedback as I feel like I should have. I don't know. So we talked about early access a lot, but people keep doing it. It stays relevant. I played Hades on Epic a little bit, but not as much as either of you. Both of you guys like track the development a lot more.
00:13:30
Speaker
I think Ian did the most, actually. I think I'm getting a good eyebrows, but I think it might be Dave because I feel like I checked into it. It may be like three different times during its development cycle. Like as soon as it came out. A fairly finished point and then on full release, but.
00:13:53
Speaker
I guess the point I was building towards is like, I'm not. I don't know if I'll pick the game up prior to its actual release. This is kind of like lessons learned for Baldur's Gate. Dave's giving me the head shake. I don't regret, admittedly, I'll say I don't regret buying the game once on Epic and once on Steam. Money. Supergiant. Don't care. Like my existence is to continue their existence.
00:14:17
Speaker
And family, I guess, but like that's the main thing, a super giant. But from a gameplay perspective, like the game is not at all what it was when they launched it in early access one. And so it was more academic almost than anything else, right? I wasn't getting the plot lines. I wasn't getting the storylines. I wasn't even getting the polished gameplay. See, I can argue a little bit there. You can go for it. Let's go.
00:14:43
Speaker
I'm kind of with you. With Baldur's Gate 3, I played a little bit of it. I've tried a few times,
Early Access: Baldur's Gate vs. Hades
00:14:51
Speaker
but I couldn't get the hang of it. I ran into bugs. There was experiences that drug it down for me that I decided to
00:14:59
Speaker
to prolong or postpone until it gets its 1.0 release. But with Hades, even when it first came out, Hades was the most polished early access game I'd ever touched. Even it's day one was better than and I hate to say this because I do love the game seven days to die after four or five years of development time. Right.
00:15:24
Speaker
100% true. But I think it comes down to what your investment in it is. So for me, not to say that you're not, but I'm the type of person, at least with Supergiant, where if they give me anything, I want to latch onto it. Supergiant, Toby Fox, what's another one? Team Cherry. If Team Cherry had like a, hey, there's like a little demo level for a Hollow Knight Silk song, would you guys check it out and give some feedback? Everyone would jump on that fucking train.
00:15:53
Speaker
So it just depends, but I understand the, you want to have an experience that is polished instead of going back. Like, did you fix these bugs yet? So like play cyberpunk in like three years, but I get where you're coming from. Yeah.
00:16:08
Speaker
I mean, like, it was a very different experience. I remember, I distinctly remember the Numidian Hydra being like, ding near impossible on Beta 1 of Hades, right? Like, it was meant to kill you because there was no contact after it. It wasn't literally impossible. You could beat it. But like, I remember going back to it once it launched on Steam because again, I didn't play since like Beta 1 or Early Access 1, whatever it was.
00:16:35
Speaker
to launch on Steam and I got to the Hydra and like kicked its butt and I was like, wait a minute, am I, am I good? No, I was not good. It was just they rebalanced the difficulty a lot.
00:16:50
Speaker
So I don't know, it's kind of like it's seeing something before it's finished. And for a book, that's a terrible idea, I think, right? Because you could literally get plot spoilers and things like that that might be changed around. For a game, I could see the justification if it's an iterative process, like what Supergiant does. Because whenever they release something for Hades, it was playable. It wasn't like, who's a partially implemented system?
00:17:17
Speaker
Um, it was more like a snapshot, but they added layers to it. Yeah, which undermines my previous argument. It's a fair point to make. There's, there's merit to waiting for the finished product rather than like, I think it's the difference between cooking something and picking at it the entire time you're cooking it versus cooking it and then setting it down and being like, okay, it's done now. Now I should eat. Yeah.
00:17:44
Speaker
And the cooking analogy, it's like, you're like making a dish and you're like, Oh yeah, cilantro. And you just like pop something into your mouth. Yeah. Cilantro. Maybe it's not the same thing as when it's baked into actual food, right? Listen, I had cilantro chili and it was, or not cilantro chili, cilantro salsa. And it was delicious. I've been saying for years, cilantro is a must in salsa. It gives it a pop. It blends with all the peppers so fucking well.
00:18:14
Speaker
But for this also analogy, some early access titles are like, take a bite out of the onion and a bite out of the tomato and then a bite out of cilantro. There you go. Swish it around your mouth quickly. Does that taste good? Let us know. A little more cilantro.
00:18:33
Speaker
Uh, but yeah, off of food analogies and and Hades, uh, were there any other games, announcements, videos, anything at the game awards that you guys were surprised by or took away from?
Death Stranding Sequel Surprise
00:18:46
Speaker
Yes. I was going to, I was going to say no for the joke. Uh, I mean, do you guys want me to have the freebie? I mean, someone else can jump in with it. I've, I've said plenty of words. Death stranding too. Although it wasn't announced. We knew it was coming, right?
00:19:04
Speaker
Did we? I think so. Oh, I didn't know, but I didn't play the first. It said reveal trailer, so that it was news to me at least. I think this was the first trailer for it. OK, I'm going to sanity check myself. I know that it also said the world premiere not to undercut you. My assumption is it is. Yeah, that's true. Oh, you know what? I think you're right. I'll do the rare retraction and say that that was the official announcement.
00:19:32
Speaker
Yeah, I thought Death Stranding won for... I played a good majority of it, not all of it. I think Jake actually completed it. But I thought it was an interesting standalone experience. But I guess they're trying to do more in that universe. Yeah. So I don't know how I feel about it at this point in time. What do you think about it as somebody who's actually completed the game? Does it make sense to continue on?
00:19:56
Speaker
I mean, nothing, nothing Kojima does make sense. I was going to say nothing Kojima does make sense, literally. And honestly, that was one of my gripes was like how absolutely arbitrary Kojima like. It's good, right? It's interesting. I should say it's interesting. I don't know if it's I don't know if it's always good. Sometimes it's just so on the point. Did we do a Death Stranding episode? We must have. We did.
00:20:25
Speaker
We had to. I'm pretty sure we did. I would be fine if there wasn't a second Death Stranding game. Because the storytelling is very absurd. What's really weird is people see Death Stranding and it's like I have no idea what's going on and that gets all the focus. The fact that the world is like incomprehensible.
00:20:45
Speaker
I didn't really care about the world building for like the entire game. It was literally the package delivery system that drew me in for most of the game. The logistics around it. I am that Euro truck simulator, apparently aficionado. So that being said.
00:21:07
Speaker
I'm not super interested in the characters. I'm not very invested in the world. And I don't think that there needed to be a sequel, but I'm ready to be proven wrong. So we'll see where they go with it. Yeah, I know nothing about Death Stranding. As someone who didn't grow up very much with Metal Gear Solid Anything, Hideo Kojima to me is a name with nothing behind it.
00:21:33
Speaker
So at this point I'm probably going to have to play Death Stranding the same way someone who likes movies has to go see like Citizen Kane at least once. Everyone tells me it's good and it has historical relevance and the actor or not the actor the the director is famous. So I gotta I gotta watch it or at least I have to understand it even if I don't like it.
Ken Levine's Judas: Bioshock Successor?
00:21:57
Speaker
You've got to be a part of it for the cultural experience, you're saying? Yeah. It's like a rock star. Yes. Very true. It is almost impossible. Rockstar Games. Another thing they announced at the game trailers. Yeah. Big merger. Rockstar Games and Rockstar Energy Drink. It is a little. It missed opportunity on their part. They went with Monster for Death Stranding.
00:22:22
Speaker
And boy didn't say. The number of times I saw a monster can in that game was a lot. At a place that was very intentional. So, Ian, if Death Stranding did not catch your eye because you're not as familiar with the Kojimaverse, what caught your eye at the game awards?
00:22:40
Speaker
I think I'll take the free space that Jake was mentioning earlier then. Judas, the new game from Ken Levine's studio. The new Bioshock basically. I said earlier that Hades 2 might be the most surprising, but I might have to retract that because
00:23:06
Speaker
Boy, did I forget Ken Levine was alive and doing things, but if he delivers on his like 10 year Bioshock vision, then I'm here for it. Yeah. I feel like there's been, I think Prey was the last RPG like that last immersive sim.
00:23:26
Speaker
But it's definitely the big one. Yeah. The last polished one, I'll say. So I'd love to see more in that space, especially because I really enjoyed Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite and the DLCs. Yeah.
00:23:43
Speaker
I mean, for a little bit of backstory on this, Irrational doesn't exist anymore, the studio that was creating BioShock. But because, again, EA just strangled the studio to death, which is its hobby, buys companies and then just strangles them.
00:24:02
Speaker
So it can't it can't actually, even though it does look very Bioshock, you know, it's it has the it has a little bit of System Shock DNA in there, but System Shock so old they should go back and go on to the technology side again. That's my take. But it can't officially be the Bioshock story, right? You're probably not going to see a bunch of lighthouses. I mean, because they don't have the IP.
00:24:27
Speaker
Probably my favorite Reddit comment regarding the game awards and this particular game was, it's the spiritual successor to the spiritual successor of System Shock. But honestly, you mentioned Prey, and Prey is in the exact same space. These are all like modifier body transhumanist stuff. It's all the same day at this point. Yeah.
00:24:57
Speaker
I mean, I have to imagine it's going to do better than the System Shock reboot. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's not hard. That hasn't launched yet. I did play it. This is going back like a year or two at this point, but I did try the the beta. They had the playable playable teaser sort of thing for it. And a lot of work to go. It felt like Chex Quest to me. Yeah. So I hope they improve things in that time.
00:25:26
Speaker
What are your hopes? Oops, I go ahead in. I was going to say System Shock is one of those things that I've never played. I know tangentially thanks to how much I like Bioshock. And I'd love to go back to, but I am just terrified that age and it's not going to age well. And I'm not going to have those nostalgia goggles to fall back on, to look at it fairly. Mm hmm.
00:25:53
Speaker
It still holds up kind of decently, but it, you can definitely see the age. Yeah. Like there's some other games, like, Jesus, what are they doing? A remake of people who made Callisto protocol.
00:26:08
Speaker
Oh God help. Dead Space. You can go back to the original Dead Space and play that and it still feels pretty good. I'm sure that when they do the re-release of the graphical overhaul, it's going to be beautiful again. But that holds up, I think, a little bit better than something like Bioshock 1 does at this point.
00:26:30
Speaker
That's fair to say. Actually, it's funny you mentioned that. I was talking to someone very recently about Bioshock, and they tried getting in with a remaster, and it was still hard for them to get into it. And I was like, I absolutely see it in Bioshock 1. Yeah. Like, improving the graphics isn't the problem. It's not the deficiency with that game now. It's like that game came out in 2008, and it lacks a lot of features that modern RPGs and shooters have.
00:26:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's very much, I played through Bioshock 1 last year, the remaster, and immediately on finishing it, because I liked the game, I started the Bioshock 2 remaster, because that's like the black sheep and still one of my favorites. And even the difference between Bioshock 1's combat and Bioshock 2's combat, and just some of the decisions like the polishing that was done,
00:27:26
Speaker
is astounding. Like, hey, what if I wanted to zap someone and shoot them at the same time? What if I don't want to spend 15 to 20 seconds on a hacking mini game every time I hack something for the rest of this 40 hour game?
00:27:44
Speaker
Yeah, the remote hack in Bioshock 2. And I think it's just like an overlay where you have to... It's a timing game. You have to click at the right hack moment, as opposed to the pipes and a literal pause in the game world when you activate hacking. It's funny how people are still screwing up hacking minigames across the years. There could be a museum specifically dedicated to bad hacking minigames and lockpicking. You put both of those together in video games.
00:28:12
Speaker
Where does, uh, where does the Bethesda hacking fall on the scale with the Skyrim hack or not? Yeah, Skyrim hacking. Yeah. For lockpicking. Yeah. No, not, not the lockpicking, um, fallout, the fallout hacking with the brackets. I don't, I'm not a huge fan of that one. I'll be honest with you as a 17, 18 year old with unlimited free time and the attention span to do it. I had no problem with it.
00:28:42
Speaker
I have gone back time and time again to those games and been like, all right, I'm a hacking master. Let's go through it. God, this is awful. I hate this. Uh huh. It's to what Jake said, it does feel very clunky to take you out of the pace of the game. Some of them are like fun and novel, but like after three times, you're like this fucking hurdle again. And that's not a good place to be, I think.
00:29:06
Speaker
What do you think would be like, what's your best example of that sort of, I'm going to call it the infiltration game, hacking, slotty lock picking?
Deus Ex Hacking Mechanics
00:29:16
Speaker
Well, I like the hold E. Hold E to loot. In a tense situation. I mean, I think the cyberpunk, the ice pick section in cyberpunk 2077 is pretty non-offensive.
00:29:34
Speaker
Um, because they made it. So if you want to spend the time planning out all of your moves to get all of your unlocks and your dedicated netrunner, you can. And you, you absolutely could, or you can just be like, yep, that's an F and a D. Bam, bam done. I got two out of the four things I could unlock. I'm good. Right. Just call it a day. Do we let logic win or do we run off pure intuition and wing it step by step? Mm hmm.
00:30:01
Speaker
I also didn't hate, it was probably a little bit too in depth, but I didn't hate the Deus Ex hacking where you had to like, there was the network grid and the firewalls and nodes and stuff.
00:30:12
Speaker
You know, I wasn't thinking about that, but I actually loved that one. Mm hmm. I'm trying to blank for how that played out. We had to like reinforce. You could capture nodes, reinforce them and then try to like make your way to the end. But there was also bonus objectives where it's like if you got this, you get more experience for data. And every time you took an action, some actions more likely than others, you could be you could alert the automated defense, which would try to backtrace your IP and kick you out. OK.
00:30:43
Speaker
Yeah, I like the idea of that. Yeah. I almost wish it was kind of like a separate game with like a little bit more detail, but that's because I kind of just. The world's a little devoid of good hacking games, but right. So I mean, on that topic, another game has had yet another trailer also in the immersive sim space atomic heart. Yes. How do you guys feel that that will go for parentheses, the hacking of it also for being compared to something like Judas?
00:31:15
Speaker
I think Judas is going to be a shooter. We saw Ken Levine hands up on screen. That's it. Yeah, that's true. It would be funny if it was like a word selection. It's just the Fallout computer hacking game. That's all Judas is.
00:31:37
Speaker
I was going to call it like combined wordle and Judas, but I came up with Judal and I don't like that. Yeah, Dave. It's a pasta dish we've made. Occasionally we have, you know, the family over. It's traditional. But no, Atomic Heart has been on my radar since E3 of last year, maybe. Yeah. Not even last E3, like the E3 before that when it got its initial trailer. I love that kind of, you know,
00:32:06
Speaker
dystopian Soviet nuclear punk, I'm going to call it or, you know, yeah, fallout punk. But there's a word for it. We can workshop it for sure. But it's it's the stalker universe. It's that.
00:32:26
Speaker
I can't even think of a good way to describe it, but I- European Hellscape. European Hellscape, yeah. Hellgate London, yeah. But I saw the initial trailer and I'm like, all right, finally, someone's making a Bioshock game. That was my initial reaction to it. And now look at me, I'm a kid in a candy store because I've got two of them. I've got this one and I've got whatever Ken Levine releases.
00:32:51
Speaker
Yeah, I have no idea what good. Yeah, I don't know what it will actually entail, but I like the idea of more things that are automaton based and it looks less janky than some of the other. I'm going to use the parentheses of souls like automaton games that have had with here's the French one and here's the Pinocchio one, one of which is out, one of which I still think is to be released. But this looks very clean and polished, at least from the trailers they're showing so far.
00:33:20
Speaker
It's it's weird. We're coming at this from two different angles and I don't know who's right and who's wrong or if either of us is wrong. You said souls like and I think Bioshock and those are not the same type of game. No, no, no. I wanted to say like the souls like is referring to or separate games. OK. So there is the one where you are like a French automaton and you're saving the queen of France. Another one where you're Pinocchio. But those are still like automaton based for their theming. Gotcha.
00:33:50
Speaker
So that's where I was drawing the correlation there. But yeah, those are definitely would not play like a Bioshock, whereas I think this would. So what are you, what's your, your betting and what are your odds on the end of, uh, atomic heart being that you are a robot? Fucking spoilers, dude. That's right now. I don't even know what you play in the game. They could say it from the moment the game starts day one, welcome to your activation date robot, but
00:34:18
Speaker
If they're the entire time that game, I'm playing through it. If I'm a person from the beginning, I'm going to be thinking to myself, I bet I'm a robot. The twist is going to be I'm a robot. Working your way back in the facility you were created from the whole time. The end of the game, they're going to be like, you did it, human. You were finally able to put down the robot menace. And we were like, during the credits, are you sure I'm not a robot and credit scene robot? No, nothing.
00:34:46
Speaker
Yeah, I don't really know what's going on with this game. It's one of the games I've seen the most gameplay of for the littlest context we could possibly have. All we know is there's shooting and probably some sort of powers or at least different guns and you're fighting robots while Russian-ish orchestral music plays. It's hard to say. The only other thing I know about the game, aside from that, is that the soundtrack is being done by Mick Gordon.
00:35:16
Speaker
And I will represent that man forever. Mm hmm. Yeah, well, we'll see what happens with it. I was curious, actually, because it is a Russian developer.
Atomic Heart: Game, Music, and Politics
00:35:31
Speaker
Munfish are the developers for it, but they're headquartered in Cyprus. So since they weren't in Russia, I wonder if that like kind of saved them a little bit, given for those who are out of the loop.
00:35:45
Speaker
complications in geopolitical space around Russia right now a potential world war or at least the second cold war and it's on the cart if you will like um yeah it's it's been baking for a while i i kind of have some hopes for it just because of the amount of time that it's spent
00:36:11
Speaker
being baked. There's two potential outcomes. One, it's secretly kind of stolen development hell and it's going to release in a buggy mess. There's a decent chance of that. Or it's one of those games where we're getting updates across the years, but they're not trying to rush it through the door. They're not trying to cyberpunk it and say, hit this release date specifically.
00:36:33
Speaker
So you're talking like an inverse bell curve where as long as something takes a sufficient time to come out, like too long to come out, it comes out in either one of two states. Yes. Either. Oh, the reason that took so long is because it's awful or it took so long because it was carefully polished by the most pristine artisanal QA department. Exactly.
00:36:59
Speaker
Um, hopefully it's the latter, I guess we'll know in February because that's when it comes out. Yeah. Speaking of games though, with excellent music and, uh, that came out in very, very good shape and also, uh, had their developers mentioned at the, uh, the game awards, uh, earth blade from the developers of Celeste announced
00:37:26
Speaker
And as someone who played a lot of Celeste and listened to a lot of the music and who stopped playing Celeste after I got stuck trying to reach the moon, I'm very excited for that, especially if it looks like they're adding combat and some more gameplay mechanics.
00:37:46
Speaker
Yeah, I'm super stoked. I will say the trailer was kind of black. It felt like more of a teaser than anything. Yes. But like the style was very much like, oh, pixel art like Celeste, the way they do the dialogue boxes for the characters. Right. And then some of the music, I'm like, oh, I definitely feel the vibes, but they definitely did like a quick pan of like going through the levels a little bit. You see some jumping, some combat, but nothing too in depth.
00:38:13
Speaker
So I feel like they're still holding some of their cards to their chest. Like they're going to have another trailer where it's like, oh, it's still kind of slow paced. And then they're going to have a musical drop. Then like shit's going to hit the fan. Here's your triple jumps and your multi-strike combo. It builds up your meter.
00:38:30
Speaker
I imagine it will be more action-paced, because Celeste, especially in the later game, Ian can speak to, gets fucking bananas. You say, Ian, I beat the game. Well, not. I didn't do B-sides. Jake, you and I beat the game at the same level. We technically completed it. Wait, did you guys do like the DLCs that came afterwards, like the Heart of the Mountain? No. Oh, okay. I feel better about myself.
00:38:57
Speaker
because I beat the base game. I played the game very, very far after release. So I didn't even recognize that what I was playing was extra content. I just kept going. And I still remember, I think I was up until one in the morning on a work day, work night.
00:39:17
Speaker
And just struggling at this level and I'm like, this is it. This is the final level. This is the moment. This is my moment. And I had people in the discord because I was streaming it and discord watching me and cheering me on. And then slight spoilers for Celeste. Mute, whatever.
00:39:40
Speaker
A literal giant wall crashes down in front of me and it's like, well, better go finish all those B sides before you get past me. And I just put down the controller and I have not turned to less nonsense. Yeah, it was. That's pretty crushing. It was the emotional equivalent of that scene where Bane breaks Batman's back. It's like, yep, I'll never recover from this.
00:40:04
Speaker
Yeah, I wanted to mention something, just backup evidence for what Dave was saying. They didn't really show combat here. The release date backs that up. Like they're not aiming for a release date next year. It's 2024 is what they're aiming for. So, you know, another two good years of development. That's a lot of time to put the touches on this. I think they were really showing the art style and a little bit of music more than anything else.
00:40:28
Speaker
Yeah. And like they've said, they do something with their dialogue boxes that is just, I can't even tell you why it looks as good as it does, but their dialogue boxes are perfect.
00:40:40
Speaker
Well, I think it's a good blend of the fake speech that they do. And I forget the actual term for it, but they'll do for things like animal crossing. We'll just have like the, here's my sound font for the noises I make. Yeah. And I think they did that in pyre too. Um, but also I'm interested in pyre, but they'll animate the portraits a little bit. So it feels like they're actually talking to you. And then it was really subverted. Well, when you're speaking with, uh,
00:41:10
Speaker
the opposite you and they literally come out of the frame. I got chills at that. It's such a good scene. Yeah. But yeah, I do trust them as a development team. I want to see more of what they do and what they're actually going to release. But again, like that game was so tight for mechanics and the music slapped. I can't imagine they're not going to involve Lena Raine to some degree or if they're doing the entire soundtrack, but I'm very on board to see where they go with it.
00:41:42
Speaker
Is there anything that you'd like to see for this?
Earthblade by Celeste Developers
00:41:45
Speaker
Something you thought was lacking from Celeste? It would obviously be a different game mechanically, but... I wouldn't say lacking or even if I want to see it, but I saw, again, reading Reddit posts about the game awards, someone's like, is this a Metroidvania? Like, do you think it'll be like a platformery Metroidvania with slight combat and tight, you know, Celeste-style platforming?
00:42:08
Speaker
And I don't know if that's what it's going to be. They gave, like you said, very little indication on what the gameplay loop is going to look like. But I would love to see the kind of Metroidvania that they would make.
00:42:25
Speaker
I'm excited for whatever they do basically but if they do decide to go a metroidvania around or you 2d brawler I don't know or just you know even if the the combat is very understated it's just another really tight platformer that still works for me
00:42:44
Speaker
Jake and I are silently nodding in agreement with you. Well, I was looking up what Lena Rains worked on, because she works on obviously Celeste. She also did writing for Celeste, actually. She has writing assistance credit. But as long as Minecraft, at least.
00:43:01
Speaker
Yes, Minecraft is the other one since C is it for 18? I think those numbers in some order. Yep. Stepped away. And a Guild Wars expansion. Actually, Guild Wars 2, Heart of Thorns expansion. Also, Delta Root. Had to pop it off. Chapter 2. Oh, really? Mm-hmm.
00:43:24
Speaker
So you guys were talking about some other thing. I wasn't paying attention, so I'm not going to be able to contribute to that. Yeah, I think it'll be good. Hot take. Especially with two years of development not being forced out the door. I think it'll be good.
00:43:43
Speaker
I see in two years after the world wars have subsided and you know, humanity comes crawling back and the game does release. We're going to look at you and be like, Jake, why is this bad? You told us it was going to be good. We trusted you betrayed us. We don't know of our financial decisions based off of a two year old podcast. Yeah. Yeah. We're not authorities in anything. All right.
FromSoft's Armored Core Announcement
00:44:10
Speaker
Well, you guys talked about your games and those were fine, I guess.
00:44:14
Speaker
For me, this was actually this is a callback because Ian was like, he's going to take the free space. This was not the free space I was thinking of. Freaking armored core announced by FromSoft.
00:44:27
Speaker
like so I I'll be honest I'm one of those people who like there's a new thing announced and people are kind of excited for it and I just pretend that I was there the whole time right I kind of like I was like the kid in the game of words that just like runs down the aisle and I was I'm just standing there on stage and be like yep I'm an armored core fan and always have been never played one of their games um
00:44:49
Speaker
But I'm I'm actually really excited for this because MechWarrior is a game I played when I was very young. We got like a $5 freaking copy. It was like ten or it was it was five to ten dollars at like a bargain bin of MechWarrior 4, I think. And I was like, this is awesome and loved it. And it basically instilled this. That was my that was my mecha moment. You know, you guys can empathize. Everyone has their mecha moment.
00:45:19
Speaker
An armored core is, it has so much more potential, particularly if Rumstoff makes it, than anything compared to what is owned for MechWarrior right now. Everything MechWarrior's released has been mediocre, mixed reviews, all this crap. This is my hope for the future. What does your guys think? Okay, Dave and I literally pointed at each other at the same time. We reenacted the Spider-Man meme.
00:45:48
Speaker
but I've never played a mech warrior game or an armored core game or any large mecha piloting game. Closest would be, what was the next, that game that we tried? Demon XX or whatever it was. Demon X Machina. Yeah. Yeah, that was it.
00:46:06
Speaker
Um, which isn't even really a giant mecha game because the mechas are slightly above person sized. Um, it's more like Gundam ish. Yeah. But, well, that's the thing. I grew up on Gundam. That's my Mecca origin stories. I grew up on Gundam wings specifically and G Gundam. If we're going to be ridiculous about it. You can still pronounce that as Gundam. It's just G Gundam. Yeah.
00:46:33
Speaker
And later on, when I got into anime, Gurren Lagann. So I love giant robots fighting other giant robots. And to hear FromSoft is making a giant robots fight other giant robots game, sign me up. They have, just like Supergiant, I guess. FromSoft hasn't really missed the last three or four games. I mean, Elden Ring,
00:47:02
Speaker
Sekiro, Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, Dark Souls 1, nothing else I could think of. Thank you for that.
00:47:16
Speaker
Yeah, I'm in a similar boat where like I haven't played any mech game, really. Tangentially, I also grew up with Gundam a little bit. Shout out to Megas XLR as well, because like just giant fighting robots has always been, I guess, like it's something you pick up as like a teenage boy and you're like, this is just kind of cool. And then you get to see it emulated in actual mediums that you can play and you're like, oh, fucking sweet. Let me check that out.
00:47:43
Speaker
B, I don't know anything about the previous five armored cores, but I trust FromSoft, again, as a developer, curious to see where it goes. I saw that Vaati had already posted a video on it. And so I'm like, I'm going to watch that now. But the armored core lore. I paused right at the...
00:48:03
Speaker
I did pause right at the part where it said like in the trailer, feed the fire. And Vadi was about to speculate or confirm or deny whether or not it was going to be a Souls like type game. Right. So, I mean, I would be curious to check it out because I haven't played a mech game in a very long time, if at all. But also, if it was Souls like to any degree. Oh, my God. Yeah.
00:48:29
Speaker
That just seems to be so fun. I'm surprised you guys didn't catch this. But at the canonical end of Dark Souls 3, there's a girl painting a painting and she's like, and I'm going to make a world with a bunch of sick mechs in it. And that's actually the connective piece. Oh, my God, I should have just seen it.
00:48:48
Speaker
Uh-huh. I would love if they like, oh, everything else. Oh, it's a painted world. I don't know if we told you. They zoom out to Peach's castle and you just see like a one night looking like, oh, here's Bloodborne. There's the other one. The paint world of Armored Core. Uh-huh. There you go. This pops up on the screen when it launches. So like, I got, oh, I have, I have thoughts. So you go ahead.
00:49:11
Speaker
I was going to say the FromSoft loves to put the moon veil spell blade or the moon veil great sword in all of their games. Give me a giant blue green energy sword for armored core and call it the moon blade or whatever you want to call it from. So it will be even. That's the price of admission right there. That's what you need to get my money. We have very specific fails. So I'm going to correct to moonlight great sword. Just just going to say it now. It's for your own good.
00:49:40
Speaker
Listen, accuracy is very important. I'm glad to be corrected.
Customization in Mech Games
00:49:48
Speaker
Yeah, I have I have high hopes for this. I armored core has been a series that's it's basically dead. Like everyone thought it was dead. The last publisher here was Sega in 2007.
00:50:06
Speaker
which was a long time ago. Check's calendar. That's a bit. Apparently, there was an armor court five, actually, in 2012. I didn't realize that. OK, well, never mind. I thought this game was dead, but I just didn't pay any attention to it.
00:50:22
Speaker
But it's still been a long time and I don't know. My take on it is there's different tiers of mech games. There's ones that are more simulation based. That's mech warrior. That's like before mission, how many heat sinks do you want to put on your mech? Where's your ammo go? What do you have on your mech arms because your mech arms are guns?
00:50:42
Speaker
and there's something closer to Gundam which is what you guys have seen in anime which is like the mech has hands and they hold weapons and that's what Armored Core is like so it's much more like that like
00:50:56
Speaker
a little bit less dragon ball flying around in the character clashing every once in a while with like two frames of animation and a little bit more like urban warfare on the ground, but with speed. And basically the question is, do the mechs have swords? That's your line of differentiation between mech games and our armored core has swords. So you don't have to. But if the other guy has a sword and he can close on you and you don't have a sword, you're probably in a bad spot.
00:51:25
Speaker
I mean, I'm sure they have a way of balancing it. Like your sword can deflect certain projectiles. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to have more speed, ways to close, things like that. But there is a level of customization there, like contrasted to, um, other mech games where it's just like, you're just a class of mech, right? You're like, here's your specific, the person who flies around, your person who does support. Right. You could do that in armored core, but it's going to be more.
00:51:53
Speaker
specific customization give me either the lightly armored fast melee mech or give me the incredibly heavy armored slow as can be artillery mech and nothing in between please thank you
00:52:09
Speaker
don't even give his siege mech move speed and Ian will be happy. I'm gonna find a stupid little tiny picture to send you guys because we love to do things like this just to make it like incomprehensible for the listening audience. Like this is a mech from armored coral put it in discord.
00:52:31
Speaker
That's that's what the armored cormax look like. I clicked on the picture being like surely this will enlarge the image. You know, you don't get more than three pixels. You know, the real trick, Dave, is to click the open original button because that'll blow it up to its full size, which is the exact same size. Yeah. Uh huh. Glad that we're all consistent across the board. It's small as fuck. This is actually a LEGO game. We forgot to mention. Yes. Very branded.
00:53:03
Speaker
No, it has it has some really cool designs for sure. So I'm excited for it. I don't think we have a release date announced, but I'll check real quick. Usually for reveal trailers, they tend to not unless it's like Nintendo. They're like, hey, it's done in a week. Yeah. Or it's done. We're doing some last minute testing. You could play it at the end of the show.
00:53:28
Speaker
Mm-hmm Yeah, sometime next year so vaguely and if anytime you see sometime next year not guaranteed to be that year. Yeah Lightning around though since we're coming up on an hour What games were you surprised weren't at The game awards, you know things coming out things we know about that just no one brought up
00:53:53
Speaker
Dave has the free space answer. This one's the actual free space. Uh, I want to go with silk song. Uh-huh. Where the fuck's my silk song?
00:54:04
Speaker
Like they've had actual gameplay trailers now, which has gotten the, like the community, like fucking hyped again. And there's a lot of theory crafting goddamn Mossbag released a video again. So you know that there actually is traction. Um, but there wasn't anything here at the game awards, which is, I guess a little bit surprising. So I guess I'm hoping that the next major gaming events will have something.
00:54:30
Speaker
Like usually they are a bit of like a drought of information. Um, but I just want more to go off of. And then at some point, definitely a confirmation date because they said these games will be done at some point in 2023 for sure. And people will ride if that's not the case for Silicon. If it's not shown at E3, like legitimately, it's time to start asking questions. Yeah. I have, I have utmost faith in team cherry after, after Hollow Knight, but.
00:54:59
Speaker
I'm hoping it's going to be one of those things where they, they announce it and they're like, Oh, silk song is finished. It's here. And it releases in a month. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Cause that would be great. Um, another thing that was, that's in production in development and just wasn't mentioned, uh, no starfield. I know Jake, you're focusing on that one.
Starfield's Absence at Game Awards
00:55:27
Speaker
Yep. This one's really surprising for me because, uh, it actually also has the release date, 2020, already established like prior to the game awards and to not have any trailers or gameplay, even some rendered nonsense is really surprising. Um, um, in fact, Bethesda in general was really absent, um, from the game award. So it's not.
00:55:56
Speaker
It's unfortunate, but this is the double-edged sword. If you announce your game early, I'm going to expect updates or else I'm going to expect trouble, right? Yeah. We either expect updates or we begin to dread. Yeah, I'm surprised. I mean, Nintendo didn't. I mean, Nintendo always, you know, does their own thing. It's Nintendo's thing to do their own thing, but.
00:56:21
Speaker
No updates on Metroid Prime 4, no updates on the new Zelda game. The only thing Nintendo brought to the show was their movie. Which is gonna be the movie. Yeah, it'll be meme fodder if nothing else. But doesn't Bethesda also kind of have their own show? Or where do they typically show their content?
00:56:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, they they still have they're actually part of a couple of different shows, right, because they are publishing for aid. So QuakeCon is also big for them and they're owned by Microsoft. So whatever Microsoft jumps on is big for them because, well, depending on what happens, this is in the news, the news portion of the podcast, depending on what happens, Microsoft will own almost all game development in the United States, like 66 percent of it.
00:57:18
Speaker
But we'll see. I still would have expected them to have a trailer or something, even if it was just a teaser. The eventual corporate conglomerate battle is going to happen between Microsoft and Tencent. Go neck and neck on who could eat more game studios for lunch. Right. And then monetize the hell out of them.
00:57:40
Speaker
But we'll see because there was antitrust action being taken against Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard. Who knows?
00:57:52
Speaker
Was there anything from the Game Awards where you were like, I really don't give a shit. Why did you even bring this up at all? I mean, most of it. I'm glad you asked because I could. That was a soft or I almost said soft serve. So that was an easy one. You just pitched to me there. Spoon feeding and ice cream. Call of Duty's first raid, baby. Oh, yeah. That's what all the Call of Duty players have been begging for. Cooperative raids.
00:58:23
Speaker
I don't I don't know what this even is. I don't know. Because because I'll be honest, when I heard that, like the optimist in me, I don't own the latest called duty, so I'm not on this train, but like. Do you guys remember spec ops from Modern Warfare 2, I think, and also Cod for vaguely? It was just like a hard game.
00:58:48
Speaker
That's fair. It was basically like a two player co-op game. And it was either like you're doing an infiltration mission with silencers and heartbeat sensors, or you're trying to like assassinate a target or do something, the best one, the standout one, the one that is still good to this day for at least 50% of the players playing the game.
00:59:08
Speaker
is there's one operative on the ground who's being escorted through an environment full of enemies by an AC-130. And the other operative is in the AC-130. And it was so fun to be the guy with the big gun. But I kind of, I thought about that. And I was like, okay, if they could kind of get some of that vibe, I could see why people would like this.
00:59:35
Speaker
But then I thought about mechanics and I was like, I don't know. This isn't a space-based magic destiny shooter. You don't have all these other things you can throw into it. It smells like just team FPS. Right. You know what? As the person who brought it up all about face here and be devil's advocate, but like I could see them introducing mechanics, like interact with a console to open a door for someone else. Like.
01:00:00
Speaker
kind of subdividing. I don't know even if it's a 10-person team, a six-man team, a four-man team. I don't know what they're going to break it up down into. Up down. Break it up into. But I could see them having to like subdivide your team into sub teams to do, you know, multiple objectives in tandem. I could see them doing something like that, but a grandiose raid mechanics, like you said, with magic or
01:00:29
Speaker
even, you know, big setting changes that I can't really see. It's not Metroid, right? It's not shoot the weak point.
Crime Boss: Celebrity Impact
01:00:37
Speaker
Exactly. You're going to be going up against people that are humans. And if you shoot them, they die. So make sure to hit the terrorist in his weak point for massive damage during the bone phase, which is part of the body phases from the moment they were born to die. Yeah, that's true.
01:01:00
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to go with your answer. I don't have anything to add to that one. I was going to say or suggest Crime Boss, Rokkei City, because I had never heard anything about it. And then they brought somebody who was famous from not famous from Kill Bill, but who I know from Kill Bill, Michael Madsen. And then when they showed the trailer, I still don't know what the fuck it was. But boy, how did they name drop a bunch of celebrities? Like I remember them from 20 years ago.
01:01:28
Speaker
They're like Donald Glover, Ice Cube, not Ice Cube, Vanilla Ice, Chuck Norris. I was like, how deep back are they going? I'm changing my ability to Dave's. Yeah, to agree with Dave here, I watched the game awards with Dave and I forgot this game existed immediately after the trailer was shown. Like the one robot from Futurama, I looked at it, I acknowledged it, I committed to memory and then forgot it immediately.
01:01:58
Speaker
until we mentioned vanilla ice. Then everything came rushing back. Yeah, it just seems so. Like I could have sworn like, oh, this is like something with like Rock City. Maybe it's a Rockstar game. Maybe it's a GTA type thing. And then they're like, no, this is its own thing. Like, all right. Uh huh.
01:02:19
Speaker
It falls under JRPG stuff where I'm like, why are you telling me this? Right. No, it's basically like two miles above the shark is how high it jumped. There's been this trend to have famous people in games, voice acting games, providing mocap, stuff like that. That's not on its face bad.
01:02:44
Speaker
But inevitably it was going to go too far. Some games already kind of took it too far. And this one is just like if there was any doubt, remove all doubt, because it seems like the reason they want you to play this game is because of the star factor. And why should gamers care? They shouldn't. They really shouldn't. Right. Like Chuck Norris is not going to be the deciding factor on whether your game is playable or not.
01:03:12
Speaker
Yeah. And demographic wise, I feel you'd have to at least be our age to know some of those names. If you're talking about people who are just now gaming late teens or early 20s, they shouldn't have context for who those people are at all. So why would they give a fuck? And usually that's like your target gaming demo is 18 to 24. Yeah. So it just feels weird. I don't know.
01:03:39
Speaker
Although speaking of Jake mentioning real celebrities, appearances, and voice acting characters, Idris Elba is going to be in Cyberpunk. Yeah, right. Phantom Liberty. I love him and I like Cyberpunk. So that's a selling point for me to go back to Cyberpunk when the DLC comes out.
01:04:06
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, he it's a counterpoint. He's not the reason I'm going to pick up Phantom Liberty. Like I would play Phantom Liberty regardless. I'm not actually. I also like it, but I don't think he's a signal. He's not putting his hand on the scale and saying, like, this is the reason to go back to cyberpunk, right? Like if Idris Elba was in the next Call of Duty DLC, would you pick it up? Would you buy Call of Duty and the DLC to play it?
01:04:32
Speaker
No, I hope the answer is no. If the answer is yes, you can just stay quiet. Ian has seven copies of Sonic the movie, too. Now that you've brought it up, though, you know, actors in video games basically playing themselves. Uh huh. Who do we what are some prime examples? Obviously, Cyberpunk has Keanu Reeves is Johnny Silverhand Keanu Silverhand. Yeah.
01:05:01
Speaker
Count of Silverhand, yeah. What was his name? Giancarlo Esposito was in the latest Far Cry. Yeah. He was also in Payday, basically, as himself. He's one of the mission providers, the dentist. The other one I could think of is Kit Harrington from Game of Thrones.
01:05:28
Speaker
Uh, was in one of the latest call of duties, I believe last year's or the year before. I believe it. I'm not going to look into it with a try and prove you wrong. That sounds, it sounds believable. Yeah. They're both staring at me with this blank face and now I'm beginning to doubt myself as I get gas lit. I didn't track it. So I go with your estimation.
01:05:49
Speaker
I can't think of any game that's showing my memory where one of the main points or something that stuck out to me as I played it was, I'm glad so and so is in it. I definitely like to look back and be like, oh, I know this person from something else. That's cool that I can connect those dots. This is somebody who I like their voice acting work, but it's never a have to get it because of that.
01:06:12
Speaker
Do you mean to tell me, Dave, that you didn't buy Death Stranding entirely based off Norman Reedus from his most well-known intellectual property, the Boondock Saints? I did not, but it is a good fucking movie.
01:06:30
Speaker
But Mads Mikkelsen was in it. I was like, oh, I like his work. I mean, I really only saw him in one of the newer James Bond movies, but I think he's good at what he does. It was cool to see him in that role and play a character. But it's like, oh, that's cool after the fact. It's not a, oh, shit, that's going to be so cool.
01:06:52
Speaker
And I'll say it, Mads Mikkelsen doesn't contribute to the gameplay of Death Stranding. He's almost all of his performances are cut scenes. Yes. Like there is some gameplay content where it's not a cut scene and it could have been literally anyone or no one else, right? Like, so that's the point I'm getting to, right? From a less joking perspective, we touched on it. Do you think a day will come
01:07:22
Speaker
when AAA movie stars' appearance and performances will be leveraged in video games to the same extent it's leveraged in movies and film.
Celebrities in Video Games
01:07:32
Speaker
You mean how it kind of already is? Yeah, we're getting there. They're doing it one star per game kind of at the moment. Except the game we were just talking about. I know what you were saying with Cyberpunk. Keanu Reeves was somebody who was on the platform and hyping up the game and also in the game. Right.
01:07:52
Speaker
Do you think we're going to have an eventuality where all important NPCs in a game are played by Hollywood actors? I don't think so. That's very expensive. It seems like a stretch at this point. I'm not saying I couldn't see it happening at all. But I don't like what you said. It would have to be for AAA versus indie, a lot of which does come down to budget.
01:08:19
Speaker
Yeah, I guess it would depend on if they are getting more sales or traction from that. So if this, I already forgot the name of the shit game I was talking about. Something else. It really does well because grandmothers buy it because, oh, I remember Chuck Norris. And they get it from the grandkids. And that's a consistent trend. Maybe they do try and lead towards that, like, oh, we need to leverage star power more. But yeah. I think the different silent protagonists have done well in video games and been pretty good.
01:08:49
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think gamers care as much. I think that's going to put a bit of a limiter on this. If you're spending millions of extra dollars to get star power for like an ensemble cast like this crime boss or whatever it's called, like there's no way that that's translating into meaningful like sales. Like this is my opinion. If I'm wrong, then we're all wrong. But that's my ultimatum. If I'm wrong, everyone's wrong.
01:09:17
Speaker
Um, but, uh, there's, it just doesn't make any sense to me. Contrast this with a couple of people you can put on the cover of the game. Yeah, sure. Whatever. I can see that. Um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's going to take, I don't think we're going to see, uh, Chuck Norris in as many games as we see Nolan North, for instance, right? Same drop.
01:09:43
Speaker
Yeah. Because Nolan North is actually in every single game. It's in the Constitution.
01:09:48
Speaker
Yeah. And it's cool to see those people who have good careers in video games to be in other stuff. Oh, I really like the performance and their voice acting in this. I like Troy Baker's voice acting. I feel like outside of that, I get the vibe. He's kind of a douche. Maybe he is. But when he was in Death Stranding, he was like, oh, cool. That's Troy Baker.
01:10:14
Speaker
Because again, it's talking like, oh, I like to connect the dots, see that they're doing well and they're still being hired for stuff. Or I don't know if it's really a spoiler at this point, but in God of War Ragnarok, Pro-ZD voice is a character, right? And like, oh, that's a cool little Easter egg or bonus. But again, not the fucking selling point. Great. Now I got to watch or not got to play through God of War Ragnarok.
01:10:37
Speaker
Uh-huh. Just to find the ProZD. I mean, he voices the protagonist. It's not it's not hard. It's right. I was going to say, ProZD looks different when he's delivering that speech for three. Yeah, we we've gone we've gone a little bit over time, but we need to at least talk about the actual game of the year.
01:10:59
Speaker
I know what you're gonna say, obviously. I thought you were gonna lean into the Bill Clinton route. Bill Clinton game of the year. I mean, do you guys want to talk about the game of the year for five?
Elden Ring Wins Game of the Year
01:11:12
Speaker
I mean, Elden Ring? Okay, spoilers, but I was amazed. I was amazed that Elden Ring won. Not that I didn't think it deserved it, but with how many awards God of War was taken all night, I thought God of War was a shoo-in.
01:11:27
Speaker
Yeah, it really felt like because God of War was just sweeping every category. I was like, well, it's got to be God of War for Game of the Year because if all of the ingredients are like, these are the best ingredients, better ingredients, better games, God of War, Ragnarok, and then it just wasn't. So that was surprising. Yeah, Dave and I actually talked about this a little bit. We pre-gamed a little on why potentially this was the case because I actually started playing God of War, Ragnarok.
01:11:57
Speaker
Dave's copy because I have most of Dave's library actually at my house at this point and I can kind of speculate I'm not all the way through the game. I'm not gonna talk spoilers anything like that, but it is very similar in the gameplay to God of War 2018 Like and it's great it's super good but
01:12:25
Speaker
Dave has a point, I'll just segue it over to him as to why Elden Ring maybe took it in the end.
01:12:32
Speaker
Oh, um, if we were building up what you're saying earlier, um, God of War has a good thing and they weren't looking to change or break that too much. Like, yeah, maybe they branch out in some other areas a little bit, but again, to what Jake was saying, it's, you could play either of them and be like, oh yeah, it plays the same. Whereas Elden Ring is definitely a, a jump. Cause you can jump in that game and ride a horse and it has these wildly different
01:13:01
Speaker
areas, but they're all interconnected because it's a connected open world. They did a lot of changes from their base game design of it being fairly linear, going through here, your sneaky beaky traps for stuff, check your corners. It definitely turned the souls format or genre on its head a little bit, and it's trying new things in the same way that Sonic Frontiers is trying new things.
01:13:27
Speaker
But I think Elden Ring was really well received and Sonic Frontiers is a Sonic game. So it's sort of the difference between God of War sharpening itself and polishing and making a better version of what it's doing versus Elden Ring taking an absolute risk. We have a formula. We're going to adjust it.
01:13:51
Speaker
radically and see what happens. Yeah, you could honestly put I would say God of War Ragnarok would fall under like DLC type versus I mean, maybe you want to throw in your two cents here, Ian, for like Horizon for like the first one versus Forbidden West. But I feel like you could have said, hey, here's like not technically a sequel, but more DLC off the first game. Maybe there is a time skip. Maybe there isn't. We've maybe improved some mechanics, but it's largely the same experience as far as gameplay.
01:14:21
Speaker
Yeah, I love Horizon. I wanted Horizon to win awards on Thursday, but largely speaking, it's Horizon 1 better and with more. There are some adjustments that were very nicely done, adding the Breath of the Wild style sailcloth to it to make floating a thing was real cool and better gadgets, but it is Horizon. It's very much a sequel.
01:14:50
Speaker
While Elden Ring was like we said just such a radical departure a left turn for the series that just worked out really well for them. Yeah.
01:15:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I agree with everything you guys are saying, which is, you know, crazy hot take. I think this is you need to be critical if you're in the game space of games just doing more of the same. You can enjoy it. You can play it. You can buy it. You can support it. But if someone releases content that is kind of just additive of the same
01:15:25
Speaker
it's like if you had a plate full of mashed potatoes and you're like I do love mashed potatoes and then like there's all this other stuff on the table and you finish your mashed potatoes and they like add more mashed potatoes to your plate now that there's space you're like I do still like mashed potatoes I'm just not in the mood for right now exactly there's other directions you could take it like a lot of people's favorite
01:15:46
Speaker
Their favorite game of all time was Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. And that's because it's the first 3D one. It's not because the bosses were better. It's not because the puzzles were better or anything like that. It's because it was such a massive leap over what was already precedented. And I wasn't so far in God of War. I haven't gotten that. It's not a bad thing. Still a great game.
01:16:15
Speaker
but I understand why Elden Ring was a massive leap to reuse Dave's joke. And to tell all the viewers, or again, the listeners, our Discord call when we were watching the game awards pretty much exploded with Elden Ring winning. And like 80% of that explosion came from Dave. It was a tremendous experience. We had to mark the channel NSFW actually.
01:16:42
Speaker
for a small time, it was a cleanup. Yeah. Yeah. No, I I'm I'm surprised as I think you guys are, too, but it's well earned. Right. So it's also nice to see a game get out, get game of the year when it was really early in the year. And then it's really held its ground across the entire year by comparison. Right. That's that's a
01:17:09
Speaker
That's a big accomplishment because people are coming off of the high of God of War just launched. That is true. It definitely came in late in the year and it was also a heavy hitter. So I think that helped too. Cause if you said like, what came out at the beginning of 2022, I'd be like, I don't know what you mean. Right. I can't remember last week, let alone January.
01:17:34
Speaker
When they had the category for like, what was the best fighting game? I'm like, oh, this is going to guilty gear. And someone's like, that was not this year. I'm like, okay. And I have no idea. I don't fucking know. But any closing thoughts? How did you guys feel about the game awards overall? Was it, was it a fun experience? It was a positive experience. There was announcements made that I liked performances that were okay.
01:18:02
Speaker
Uh, that weird kid at the end who was odd and definitely made it weird. Uh-huh. And I agreed with most of the victories. Yeah. That's good.
01:18:15
Speaker
I did largely agree with that. And if I didn't agree with the victory, it's probably in a category that I'm not even tangentially related to. Uh-huh, right. No. Yeah, I feel the same. Well, I will call it here. Thank you, Ian, once again, for coming on as a guest for the podcast. Always a pleasure to have you. Always appreciate the invitation. Thank you guys again.
01:18:38
Speaker
Jake, thank you for coming on as well. I appreciate it, yeah. I do create the calls for this, so you know, it does help. The fact that you don't leave immediately after means a lot to me. That would be funny though, just get up and peace out. One of these days we'll have an RSS that's like that.
01:18:57
Speaker
Um, but not this one. If you guys had opinions about who you think should have been mentioned and the game awards or ideas for future episodes, you can always feel free to send those in soapstone podcast at gmail.com. Or you can join the discussion on Facebook while the platform exists at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good one.