You know, a gummy beer. It's the Internet. You're busy. Let's
do this for July twenty five, twenty twenty two. For the next hour
or so, let me help you sort through the world of gaming on Game
Mess Mornings Live with me Jeff Grub Today, San Diego Combic Con announcements continue
in my basement, but first please join me and welcoming today's co host to
Game Mess Mornings. It's Mike Williams from a fanbyite. Everybody, Mike,
how's it going good? How's everything going? I mean, I'm not doing
the fact that it's morning, Yes, Game Miss Mornings. Could it be
Gaming Mess afternoon? I thought about it. Listen. I did it as
late in the morning as I possibly to get away with eleven am. I'm
like that that works for me. That's still technically morning. It's always morning
somewhere, Mike. I suppose we could just do it anytime a day and
just be like it's morning right now in Hawaii. All right, We're good.
Welcome to two pm here on Game US Mornings Live Eastern Time. Yeah.
I don't know. I haven't talked to you in a while. I
gotta say, I gotta tell the chat. Mike's one of my favorite people
in the industry. I always love when I see them. Mike is fantastic.
How you been, I've been good. Just worked at US Gammer for
all about eight years, then move from there to PC mag once uh the
pandemic hit and we were owned by an events company, so you know,
events made things a little difficult. But now I'm over at fan By writing
at general entertainment stuff for them, but also primarily over at the Length Show,
which is our Final Fantasy fourteen vertical. Right, yeah, yeah,
you guys have like you guys have the market cornered on Final Fantasy fourteen fans
working for a website writing about that game, right Like, that's that's that's
the entire business model over there fan By. It's my understanding. We are
currently getting there. We just needed we need to steal a few more people,
were right, exactly. Mike mcnadi's in chat playing Final Fantasy fourteen right
now, So there you go. All right, before we get into the
mess, let's explain ourselves here. Each weekday, I Jeff grab will help
piece your gaming life back together. That includes breaking news, the ketchup,
where we discuss the biggest topics consuming the lives of gamers everywhere, and maybe
even bring in some of our own original reporting. We'll be doing that today,
everybody. For all these topics, I'll get the input of a bona
fide expert who will make me look smart. If you are watching live on
twitch welcome. You can always listen to the show later on podcast feeds by
searching for Game Mess Mornings, or find the RSS on giant bomb dot com.
You can also catch the show later with chapters and timestamps on YouTube.
If you are watching on there, please be sure to hit that like button.
I don't know, it helps, It helps, and you know,
it's a nice thing to do. I like what when people are nice?
Okay, we have a lot to get into. Let's start the Morning Mess
with a black panther. Game is in development, Mike, what's going on
with your shirt you're wearing? What's going on here? Why would you come
to a Superman? Why would you come to the best show we're talking about
Marvel Games? Wear that shirt? I thought we were talking about just like
comic games in general. No, WHOA, what's happening here? Who?
Well? This is that's a family show? Ah? There it is?
There it is okay, actually, well, let me see it. Okay
in your friendly neighborhoods. There we go perfect. Well. A spider Man
a very successful video game from Sony. Uh, there are more Marvel games
in the works, you might be surprised to find out. Let's let's go
through the details here. This comes from us here at Giant Bomb. The
project is called Project Rainier, and that refers to I believe that refers to
the mountain in Washington. Will get to why that's relevant here in a second.
It is a single player game. It is in very early development,
and the game starts with Black Panther being dead and the player is going to
take on is going to take on the challenges of becoming the new Black Panther,
and that seems to be be set up for the game. It is
very like being produced by the new Seattle studio that was founded by Monolith Productions
Vice president and studiohead Kevin Stevens. So, yes, this is an EA
published game, but I think this is one of the reasons I wanted to
talk about this. When the What kind of Forever trailer came out, I
was like, I remember hearing about this. Let me look a little bit
closer I got some more information. I was kind of like, okay,
this is very early. What is the angle to sort of that makes sense
talking about this, And it's very much This is the continued transition at EA
from being like, hey, everything needs to be a live service, to
be like, oh wait, Jedi Phone Order did very well. What if
we could replicate that in other places? And that is exactly what they're going
for with this Black Panther game. And you know, this is a studio,
a new studio, but with a lineage that goes back to those what
is the Middle Earth games that people were very fond of exactly, and so
they are gonna They're gonna go for that. And it does seem like right
now, again very early, this is they're looking at making this a big,
open world Black Panther game. How does that sound to you, mister
Mike Williams. Sounds very good. The weird touch point I have as I'm
like, oh, the player gets to to step in, So I'm like,
as the players that, I assume that's going to be a character they've
created, like it when black? Right, Yeah, like you know,
maybe not sure, Maybe one of the comic versions like Casper Cole or something
like that. But like like in my head, as soon as you said
the player gets to him like, oh, well, the character creator,
I'm like looking, yeah, I could see the hang up. Let me
at a little bit of color, a little bit of context. They're just
sort of maybe feel out why it's phrased that way. This sounds like this.
So many of these details come from the pitch, and so I think
when you're pitching something, you'd be like, what is like, what is
the player's motivation? Where does the player fit into this story? And not
necessarily like, oh, the players going to bring all of their customizations and
stuff, because I mean, not to put too fine a point on it,
we don't want a white person black panthers, So like you can't go
and just create a white guy and be like, all right, that's black
panther. Now here's the legally blonde character who's going to be a black panther.
No, So I think the understanding here is like, yeah, they
are going to you know, if we use Jedi phone order as a signpost,
like it's gonna be probably very similar that in terms of structure of the
story and the characters and a strong narrative and then just maybe a more open
world game instead of this metro Vania game that they gave us with the Jedi
Phone order. Again, how does that sound like overall like you'd kind of
just sound like you're vibing with the overall stuff here, right? Oh yeah,
I love the idea, and I really enjoyed the stuff that Madela was
doing with the Shadow games. I enjoyed both of them immensely, even though
a Shadow War fell off. Once you got to the end game and the
monetization and that whatever mode I forget what it was called, started kicking.
And I mean I was almost hype for their Wonder Woman game if that who
knows if that's going to happen, you know with the Warner Brothers Discovery stuff.
But yeah, no open world black Panther gram would be great. It
was. I'm one of the few people that kept playing Avengurs. I probably
played Avejurs too much. Even though I've reviewed it and said it wasn't great,
I kept playing it. It was my most played PlayStation game by like
I think a hundred twenty hours in it. I was just like, oh,
I failed myself. But they had a Black Panther to that and it
was cool, but also like the game was mostly dying at that point,
so it I was just like, well, this is cool, but this
is the end of that. So that's kind of a shame. And I
think like this like brings us to like the like direction that EA's headed,
the direction of Disney is headed now. Disney and EA worked together on Star
Wars. You know, I have some guesses to why this is why this
works, and a lot of it does come back to Jedi Phone Order did
work, and and it also is a different division at Disney, and you
know, EA is probably like saying, hey, look, I yes Star
Wars didn't work out, but we do have like a new studio, we
have some maybe some other stuff. Maybe maybe we could make a deal like
this work again, especially if we built it in this same model that we
used for the previous one successful game, that like the unqualified successful game that
we did before. But like from Disney's perspective, do you think like this
is them reacting a little bit to what happened with Avengers and being like,
let's try a new partner and try this again and try something different. I
think it's a continuation because the Avengers was already the result of Disney being like,
well, let's uh, let's actually give out our ips to different developers
and to see what works, because like you know, like back in the
nineties you used to have the Star Wars era of games. They were making
a ton of games, And the truth of it is like a lot of
brands are worried about, Hey, you know, if a bad game happens,
that's going to tank the brand. Realistically, all that happens is like
five years later, we've forgotten what the bad game was, or re remember
it like fondly, Like I remember Jedi Car Battles Yea, which was a
Star Wars episode one game. It was terrible. I remember it fondly.
So like if you come out with a game, like if EA comes out
with this Black Panther game and it's not good, that's on EA. That's
not going to change, you know, Insomniac Spider Man or Miles Morales or
their upcoming Wolfine game from doing well. So, I mean you mentioned a
bunch of Sony games there, are you surprised that, I'll just ask,
are you surprised Sony isn't doing this game and kind of keeping its Marvel Gaming
universe going, I would be, except they're only letting Insomniac do stuff like
if they've moved to another developer, and Insomnia can only make a certain number
of games. So maybe if they were like they would turn to Gorilla in
and we're like, you're making Marvel games now, man, Right, I
could see that, but I feel like Gorilla isn't on its own thing,
right yere studios exactly. Yeah, yeah, let's just about like that though.
It's like, okay, so this has opened up another publisher coming in
doing a major Marvel character. I'll just say I don't want to Like they're
like, I'm not spoiling everything here, not that I consider news to be
spoilers, but there's other games from Disney, from Marvel in development. I'll
just say, like, when you know, when I say that and we
see the possibility of other the studios coming in and doing games, not just
Sony and maybe not just Ea, who do you like? What other games
do you want to see next? Like we got Black Panther, we know
Wolverine is coming. What's the game that you want to see from Marvel next?
So I wrote, like, way back in the day, this was
when Star Wars. This was in the middle of the sequel Twitter trilogy and
they hadn't let all the stuff out, and I was like, play around,
let it out. I kind of want to see some interesting mixes,
like if you're if you're letting the IP go out the door, why not
give it like open it up to some interesting developers, like what does a
Swarry Moon Night look like? Or something like that, you know, like
a what is who does Shadow War flying Flying Hog? I'm not sure,
yeah, the developer Shadow War, Like what if they did a Punisher game
or something like that. And probably my biggest one is X Men Destiny was
a horrible missed opportunity in that the pitch is fantastic, like you make your
own mutant and you're pulled between the X Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.
That's the game, right, Yes, that was the Silicon Knights game,
you know, in the middle of them doing all of the they're legal
nonsense being Dennis Dyak. Yeah sure, so yeah, just somebody do that
X Men RPG please, I'm waiting for it. And activist Marvel ultimateal ads
come on, yeah, come on now, you just keep them coming.
I'll say that none of those is what I've heard so far, So maybe
maybe they'll listen to this, and like Mike Williams is right, we gotta
get all those games in Cooking again cooking. If anyone has any questions about
a Black Panther, Marvel and stuff like that, I'll take some questions,
you know, some grubs next questions here in the catchup and a little bit,
but let's keep the show moment for now. Roller Champions support is going
to wrap up after season three. This is another original that I'm bringing to
you. I talked a little bit about this on a podcast I was on
on the weekend Xbox Era. The game launched in May, and Ubisoft is
already sort of looking at like the numbers and saying, okay, we've had
multiple seasons of support already and once this. I believe they're in season three
right now, and they're saying, once this wraps up, the plan is
as of right now, to let that be the last season. I don't
know if that means they shut down the game, but I do think that
means active development on new content probably will begin to wrap up right around that
time. Mike, did you play any Roller Champions briefly? Like real quick,
and I feel sort of bad. It's just you don't have enough enough
time. Like a lot of there're a lot of these large live service games
like you pick one like you're a Destiny two player or whatever, and that
is the game you play, and then occasionally you play some single player games
otherwise. And Roller Champions just like it was fine game, it just fell
a fill of that and it's currently part of Ubisoft's larger problem of their situation
in the industry and lack of major titles. Yeah, there's a lot of
gray goup come in from from Ubisoft right where it's just very easy to ignore
it live. It feels like everything else that Roller Champions does have, Like
it does not feel like a Tom Clanton game obviously, but it's also like
it does feel a lot like it comes from the same place that like a
hyper Escape came from, where like we're just like throwing ideas at the wall
for a live service game that's going to stick, and this one just feels
like it's not going to stick as well. Yeah, it's just and and
there's a lot of them. Uh, what's the rumble versus the other the
wrestling game, there's the one with the the ball. There's just a ton
of these these style of games, like it's semi sports competitor, like,
uh, and that's cool, that's fine, try it out. It's just
again, a lot of people are are already tied to whatever their game is.
Not gonna city, says the chat that's right, not gonna sity,
And you have to be above and beyond, either in a game sense or
in an IP sense to to pull people in immediately, you know, and
just like the circle back real quick. That's I think one of the reasons
that EA, after having the experience of Star Wars, was still willing to
go with Marvel because IP and founding new IPS is really challenging. It takes
a long time, it takes a lot of investment, and they probably look
at math there and like, we could invest in trying to start a new
IP that we don't know if it's going to be successful or not, or
we could use that money to license something and go from there. Uh.
Ubisoft is in this weird position where it's like they have some ips that are
recognizable that they have invested in, invested in over time, but they are
sort of they're also throwing everything at the wall. With those individually, like
there was there is right now, there is a tom Clancy is the Division
Heartland, which is another Battle Royale. They were doing a Ghost Recon one
that got canceled, and then you know they have X Defiant, which isn't
gonna be a Tom Clancy game anymore, but it's still going to be like
a call of Duty. Like they have so many things that they are already
doing with those. At a certain point when they have like teams that need
to try new stuff, they are like, Okay, I guess we could
try Roller Champions, or should we be doing the thing we're doing with Avatar
or a Star Wars game, which they are also doing. So Ubisoft's trying
a lot of different things. Not everything's gonna end up working. Also,
someone in chat asked, what was the context for a rain Year. I'm
pretty sure it's that the fact that the studio is in Seattle, Mount Rainiers
is in Washington, and the studios right there. So I'm sorry I kind
of like said that and didn't really close the circle on that for everybody.
Square Enix's Tactics Ogre remake leaks again and it's coming in November. This is
according to Michael mcwarder at Polygon Square Enix is still unannounced remake of classics strategy
RPG Tactics ogre let Us Cling Together, is coming to PlayStation four and PlayStation
five on November eleventh, according to leaked details from Sony's PlayStation store. Those
details posted by PS deals include new screenshots of Tactic Ogre reborn and a long
list of improvements to the original game. Those improvements include new high resolution or
high definition graphics, revamped edemy ai, fully voiced cut scenes in both English
and Japanese, and music that has been re recorded with live performances. Mike,
I'm pretty excited. I like the Tactics Soger games that I've played before.
I remember being pretty excited to play the one for sixty four when I
was because of like I was like so jealous of Final Fantasy because I was
a Nintendo fanboy. I'm like, maybe Tactics Whoever will be my Final Fantasy.
And I played it quite a bit. I never beat it, but
I enjoyed it. And then since then I've gotten way more into Tactics Tactics
games, and I'm like ready to go back, and here they are ready
to deliver this Where are you at with Tactics sogers? Does this all sound
about right for the current Square Enix. Oh, I'm a I'm a I'm
a tactics ho. I'm all like deep deep into tactics and sometimes I'm on
to point out three moves ahead. It's a podcast about strategy games. It
is the podcast about strategy games. I believe the Yeah, so I'm I'm
really excited. You know, it's a day one. By looking at the
leak screenshots, I'm not a fan of what they did with the sprites.
They basically did some sort of upscaling, plus a filter makes them look a
little smeary. I would have rather they you know, gone in and redrawn
them for like, I know, it's for resolution purposes, so this game
can run on a PS five or a PC at higher resolutions. So I'm
not a fan of the sprites. The rest of it looks fine, like
the character art is great. The fonts that they've chosen i'll look awesome.
And Tactics Ogre is a great game if you if you've gotten through Final Fantasy
Tactics, Tactics Ogre is like sort of the next step up for you.
Get in there, and get it going. It's a fantastic game, like
I said day one by and it's the Year of Tactics continues because we're also
getting Front Mission first. I believe it's called Deo Field Chronicle. We got
we got what was it called Triangle Strategy earlier this year, Digitbon survives,
so we are Tactics at and then Midnight Suns, which is fake like it's
from the Xcom studio. Yeah right, they said it's not. It doesn't
have x cam like a gameplay, but it has. I mean, it's
definitely from that same lineage. There's a lot of like there's like cards and
stuff. I'm really excited to try that one as well. Yeah, but
you're right, Yeah, the Tactics fans are definitely feasting this year, you
know. And I need to get into into the Breach Advanced Edition, which
just came out, So I'm like, that looks like the thing if as
soon as I get into that, that's all I'll be playing for like the
next few weeks. So I'm like afraid to jump in, but I definitely,
I mean, I love that game so much. Advanced Edition give me
another reason to try it out. I definitely will. So Yeah, when
do you think we hear about this? If a November release date is is
what they're going to actually stick to, we probably hear about this in the
next couple of years. Yeah, yeah, that's in US. What is
that September yep, so yeah, so yeah, that's ademics and were especially
with the tactics over in the Ogre Battle franchise, which you have people remind
me those are two different things. But their sister series, the very they're
very popular in Japan, or at least they were more popular in Japan than
they were worldwide, although I expect them to try to watch this in a
worldwide way where they're like, hey, you know, these are things that
have grown in popularity globally over time, so it's not like they're going to
just One of the parts of the leaked announcement was the fact that apparently the
entire thing has been voiced over right new voiceover in Japanese and in English,
so exactly. Yes, they are definitely at least aiming to pull in an
English speaking audience. Yeah, and this is something that we has leaked previously
this game. It was a trademark filing and it was on the infamous invitations.
Yes, it was also on the place. Yeah, it came up
on the PlayStation store. So this is like the Fourth League, Yes,
exactly. Yes, so I'm pretty sure this one might be real, all
right? Moving along, Lebron James joins Multiverses alongside Rick and Morty, and
this comes from Rachel Kayser at games Beat. Developer Player First Games announced that
San Diego Comic Con that three new fighters are coming to the multi Versus roster.
The newest editions are none other than Rick and Morty from the show the
same name, and Lebron James. Yes, that Lebron James, she says,
she guesses she should qualify. James appears in the game burying his space
Jam persona, not just as his usual self. I'm a little I mean,
I get it because that's a w B property, but I kind of
just wanted photo realistic, just a human man with Lebron James in this game,
fighting Bugs, Bunny and Stephen, Universe and Batman. The question is
would he have been so like are the other characters smaller? Would he have
been full sized? Like? What is the scale writing up here? Yes?
Because like in the movie, like I guess bugs would Bill so is
like Bugs is almost the same eye a Superman in the game. So it's
it's complex, it's it's about cannon. I want to stick to cannon,
right, you know, and Smash Brothers does a good job of like some
of the characters scale up and scale down pretty well. Right, So it's
like that can work in fighting games. It's not a Golden Eye odd job
scenario, which I feel like we bring up odd job on the show once
a show, but here we are again. It's not like an od job
scenario. It's like, oh, the hit box is going to be so
much smaller, and that's unfair. You would just scale other things like you
do in a fighting game. So h yeah, you just make him like
what is he like like six ten? Like I don't know, but but
like yeah, like that would make him tower over Superman and again full just
human skin in the game, not this cartoon space jam character. Yeah,
he'd move like a Sentinel and the Marvel Capcom games exactly know, just this
big slow fighter just coming and just yeah, it'd be great, it'd be
it'd be fun. But I mean, I'm looking forward to the film was
time. Yeah, fine, let's see. Uh Morty Morty joins during the
game's first season on August ninth. Players First hasn't specified when Rick will join,
but it should be during season one. The Player First will launch the
open beta in which James is included, on July twenty six. That's tomorrow,
and that's on PlayStation five, PS four, Xbox and PC. It's
you could play that game right now if you want to try to buy your
way into like the Founders packs like free to play games also do, but
always do. But this is a free to play game. It'll be available
tomorrow, but you probably will have to pay money for Lebron. James just
don't like that character. Yeah, and also Lebron being added that, at
least for me, that opens the door. Because Space jam Right Legacy had
a bunch of characters in the background, including Pennywise, the folks from Clockwork
Orange. You know, there's a lot of characters in there that I think
could come over from the multi versus. In the space Jim had Bill Murray
in it, just half human Bill Murray in there and go to town.
Although I haven't really looked, apparently it's problematic now, so shit, god
damn it. All right, Funco claims it has a Triple A action platformer
in the works. This comes from Chris Carter at Destructoid. Chris His strap
here was like I'll believe it when I see it, but he says.
Funco actually revealed the news at San Diego Comic Con this past weekend, noting
that the partnership involves a development deal with ten ten games and some of the
industry's best creators. And that's quote. The UK studio has no real pedigree
right now as an organization. It was formed in mid twenty twenty one,
and the Triple A Funco platformer due in twenty twenty three will be their first
test. Right now, they're focused on developing on and then this isn't quote
against in quotes again, developing Triple A content for current and next gen consoles
PC, and the project itself is untitled. Strangely, the game is aiming
for a T for teen rating, which will be wild to see play out
in real time. Hopefully this sends up faring better than the now closed Gears
Pop game, which I think everyone forgot existed. Uh Okay, Mike Williams,
do you own any Funco pops? A safe place you could tell us
the truth? Not a single one, fair enough. I do not like
the the aesthetic of the Funko Pop. Yes, okay, can I be
Can I be real? Can I be honest? This is why I really
wanted. I was in Target yesterday and I didn't buy any but I saw
like the eight bit Funko Pops, which is just a slightly block your version
of Funko Pops. And it was for Stranger Things, which I'm not gonna
buy Stranger Things March. But whatever, I'm like, that looks kind of
nice, I guess, but it still looks very Funko poppy. So I
don't go. I don't buy a lot of plastic stuff to put my house
in general, so I wasn't I wasn't going to actually fall prey to this
that I have a bunch of them. I still buy ambos, even though
I don't use them like they're they're they're pretty good representations of the characters.
Have a Marvel Legends and common writer figure arts and stuff that are actually the
picture I'm musing of the background the top of the bookshelf is all like Marvel
legends and figure arts and stuff. I just don't like the esthetics of Funko
Pop. But like game wise, this could be like the Lego games.
Like sure, the trick with the Lego games is do you like the IP
they're using for this specific game. If so, you'll probably like the game.
If not, whatever, Well, it also has like the potential like
Fortnite, And Austin Walker said this, so I'll credit to him, but
he's like Fortnite is like Funko Pop. It's like plastic. You could put
anything into there and it fits. Well. Funko Pop already is that as
well? You could put any sort of brand into this game and sort of
I don't know, be like a Disney Infinity, but maybe Lego Dimensions,
Lego Dimensions, Yeah, exactly, So there's potential. I don't know.
I hope that in the trans translation to a game they take the opportunity to
maybe make the characters look a little bit more like their original characters and a
little bit less like the Funco Pops, but that might be against the purpose
of the game, So I don't know. Yeah, and those things obviously
sus So who am I to judge? And who's enough of the game,
Like, it's unlikely it could turn out to be like a like an astrobot
like an actually create good platform. Yeah, absolutely almost say if they started
a pull and chat, I want to see what it is. Oh no,
I completely just broke everything. All right, let's uh okay own any
funco pops is the poll and chat right now? Everybody check that out.
I thought that might be it. Beyonetta creator says Nintendo never asked to make
the series less risque. As cips from Brian and Nintendo Everything, Beyonetta creator
had Decki Camilla has reaffirmed that Nintendo has never requested to make the series less
riskay. The naive Angel mode was revealed for Bayonetta three earlier this month.
When it's enabled, the characters won't reveal as much skin. However, its
inclusion doesn't have anything to do with a specific request from Nintendo. Based on
Camilla's comments, I see a lot of people bring up Nintendo when discussing the
nudity in Bayonetta, but during our time with Bayonetta one, Port Bonetta two,
and ben at Bionetta three, the only suggestion we received was regarding the
link costume in Boneta one and two and how it should have been a little
bit more revealing. No bias influenced that aspect of the game, and I
think players can enjoy the game without worrying that it may have been worried about
like what it may have been. I'm not too surprised about this modern day
Nintendo pretty horny, Mike Williams, what do you think? Not only are
they they pretty horny. I mean you look at the prominence of say Zero
Suit, Sammus and Smash, or even Bayonet's inclusion Smash, but look at
the e Shop, like the e Shop is yes times deem levels of horny.
Yes, exactly, like just like almost like Hintai straight up Hintai games
almost right. So I don't think they particularly care, and especially like you're
you're at Bayonetta three, they're like, hey, man, it's it's fine,
we know, we know what you're doing. Yeah. Another one is
the what the other monolith Monolo Soft does with Zeno Blade. Like Zeno Blade
two had a lot of flavors of horny for people, and Nintendo let that
one. They're like, yeah, I mean, go ahead, like we
know what you're gonna do. Like Nintendo is not gonna get like caught up.
Uh, it's their own properties. I think they're mostly fine this In
this case, I think it's Platinum just a little bit being like, I
mean, can we maybe reach out just a little bit further and maybe broaden
the audience a bit and maybe the sales to keep us on Nintendo's good side.
I think that's exactly what it is, is that Platinum is looking to
make this as big of as success as possible, and they're the ones that
are like, we want to do what we can to make it broadly appealing.
I think that like even like I remember when Sackara I was talking about
putting what was it Terry into Smash Brothers and then he like immediately brought up
and like, I know people thought we would bring my from King of Fighters
or whatever, but she's too naughty and like suggesting like she chose too much
skin. I don't think that was ever Nintendo going that character is too sexy,
you see too much of her cleavage. I think that was legit,
just Sacarai making that choice, making that call. So I think Nintendo,
like you said, mostly it's sort of hands off with this stuff now.
It's like, hey, what consenting adults do with their Nintendo switches? No,
none of our business. And it's like, okay, all right,
fair enough Nintendo. That's very different than what you were like in the nineties,
but fair enough. And I think a lot of that's just like people
remember what they were like in the nineties in early two thousands and are still
like holding that as like, oh, that's still Nintendo today, and now
they've changed a lot. Yeah, And especially with the current CEO, he
is more of a businessman, like less of a creative and more of just
a straight businessman, which is why you're seeing a lot of I think like
they just bought the animation studio, the Illumination Mario movie is coming, Like
those are the kinds of things that IUAA are. Maybe a previous CEO probably
wouldn't have done more. They were concerned about the sanctity of the games,
whereas this new CEO is more of a businessman. It's like, how can
we expand this? Yeah, And they're like distracting Miamodo, like Miamoto might
be embarrassed by all this, but they're like, Miamodo, go look,
go create a theme park. I meanmotos like he I'm gonna go make a
theme park. And then while he's distracted, they're like, all right,
more boos, more more flash and say okay, yeah you know that.
They're like, Miamoto comes back and it's like, what's happening in Zeno Blade
three? Yea, what's going on here? The sword? The sword has
cleavage? How is that even possible? They're like, Miamoto san, no,
no, no, no, don't worry about that. We're going to
have Sony animation. Do a Zelda movie. Go over there, go deal
with that. Like, what are you talking about? Runs away again.
He I'm sorry, that's my Miamoto. He he voiced all right. Halo
Infinite multiplayer is reportedly causing players to use one gigabyte of data per match.
This is by Jordan Midler at VGC three four three is currently investigating is an
issue which is reportedly causing Halo Infinite to download huge amounts of data during every
multiplayer match, in some cases, almost as much as one gigabyte. First
highlighted by Nick Meister, after every match, the game client would reportedly use
between three hundred and five megabytes and nine hundred megabytes of data. This caused
alarm as playing the game for a few hours could unknowingly smash through a player's
data cap In a single night. In response to this, Halo Support Twitter
said the team is investigating reports of Halo Infinite downloading extra data after multiplayer matches,
and approvement for this issue will be included in August's August's drop Pod update.
That is okay, here's the real deal. Halo Infidite needs every single
thing that we talk about that game to be positive. It needs to be
going in one direction, and everything we hear about this game continues just to
push it in the bad direction, where it's just like this thing feels more
and more like a tragedy every day. Where are you at with Halo Infinite,
Mike? It does? I dipped out because buy issue was more on
the cosmetics. Battle passes are fine. It just it felt like it took
a long time to unlock all the stuff on the Halo Battle pass. I
didn't have the time to sink into it, and even when I did,
I like, I'm locked the ten Rye one. Uh. Their specific cosmetic
system is just like I want to be able to mix and match parts and
all the colors and everything, and their cosmetic system is like just like the
tin Orye armor is just the tin Ye armor, and then you can also
get bits to put on it. I'm like, that's that's not what I
wanted. Like it's just a bad cosmetic system. The game is good,
it's just I just couldn't put the heart in time. I mean, this
is this is where I'm at, Like I every time I play the game,
I have a good time, And but that was my stance for a
really long time. It's like, yeah, I see why everyone's got problems
with this game, but when I play it, I have fun at a
certain point. Though everyone else like like finding all these continuing issues and a
lack of content that does affect people negatively. I'm like, well, all
you have to do is wait a little bit. People have waited a pretty
long time. This game is going to be a year old here pretty soon
it's and you know, by then, I do expect there to be more
stuff, but I am not expecting that we are going to get to a
point where Okay, they've put out everything that they said they were going to
put out, and now surprise, there's like this huge deluge of extra content
on top of that. I'm not expecting anything like that. I think they're
gonna kind of do I mean, at least I think it's a safe thing
to assume is they're going to do the bare minimum of what they said they
were going to do, and that is continues to be pretty depressing. And
that goes for the cosmetics, and it goes for fixing bit major issues,
and it goes for adding in these modes. Now, I'm not going to
say that, and maybe this is still more positive than most people, but
I'm not going to say that this game is dead. I think once Forge
Modes comes out, it has a good chance of being revived. Has Forged
is looking very promising, It looks very cool from what his leaked so far,
and I think that that means the community have a good chance of rescuing
it. But it's like, is the Forge community going to have a wider
Halo community to even speak to or will most of those people have already moved
on. We'll see. I think in general, one, especially with some
of these larger live service games, there's more room to to come back from
the brink of terribleness, like Destiny to definitely went through its struggle period and
then they've you know, righted the ship. And at least in this case
one, Microsoft has a lot of resources into this one, so I think
they'll keep going and when they do, actually, if they do, right
the ship, it being on game Pass means everyone will just come right back
since it's free, So like I wouldn't particularly worry about it. They're there.
It's it's not a situation like we were talking about with Ubisoft and Roller
Champions. Microsoft cannot walk away from Halo Infinite. Very true, and I
still think like in a couple of years, who where you might look back
at this or we might completely forgot that we ever felt this way if things
turn around. It's just this is definitely the grimmest part of the arc.
And if the arc is going to arc up, that would be great,
but right now it just feels like things are really really dark for that game.
Yeah. Uh. Stray is now the best user rated Steam game of
twenty twenty two so far. This is by Chris Scullion at VGC. Stray
has become the highest user rated game on Steam this year according to a weighted
list Steam two fifty, which is actually a pretty good website that like attracts
the sentiment that people have on Steam. Uh. Steam two the assigned Steam
games a score determined by whether players give them a positive or negative review combined
with how many players review the game. Stray's score is currently eight point six
one based on forty two thou six hundred and sixty five votes, of which
ninety eight percent are positive, making it making it top of the list of
all games released in twenty twenty two to date, as spotted by skill Up,
who's a great YouTuber by the way, high skill This pushes down God
of War to second with its score of eight point five six based on fifty
three thousand, one hundred and one votes, of which ninety seven percent are
positive. So that's, uh, maybe way more positive sentiment for this game
than I was expecting. I definitely enjoyed what I've played in the game.
I don't I didn't fall in love with it or anything, but it seems
like it is doing like what is the untitled goose game style success? Right?
Is that what's happening here? Yeah? Seemingly. I do think part
of it is there maybe pulling people over to the PlayStation plus plus whatever the
plus extra. Yeah. Yeah, and people just like cat games. It's
it's war. There's a whole lot of like, uh, like it's getting
attention just because it's is this a cat Game's true? But there's a people
that like had to have bought it right on Steam, Like so you know,
they bought it and they played it, and now their money's on the
line, and they seem to be like, I mean, I guess this
is it as simple as I played as a cat and that was great,
positive thumbs up score on Steam? Is that what's happening you think? I
think there's probably some of that. Yeah, yeah, like the gables pretty
good. Yeah, it's not like I don't think it's amazing, but same.
Yeah. But it's like, but if you had to give it a
thumbs up or thumbs down, I mean I would like even if someone I'd
give a thumbs up too, right, Okay, So I think that's probably
kind of how this works. So uh and it's like it's I think it's
definitely true. It's like if people who like cats or if they go to
this game, that's probably most of the people buying the game. There's a
lot of those people. They're probably gonna feel pretty similarly or even more positive
about it. And that's how it is. You pull people in, and
sometimes the hype pulls others in who may not even play like like Elder and
Ring sold an absurd number of copies. Reasonably sure, not a lot of
those people will get very far. Maybe we could. You could look up
like the achievements or whatever and stuff, and they're surprisingly good for pretty good,
right, surprisingly good. But I bet once you get like past that
percent, I bet a lot of those people you're right, like a little
bit it was too hard for them. You're definitely right about that, all
right. Revealed documents show how robocks Roadblocks planned to bend to Chinese censorship.
This just posted on Motherboard Vice right before I went live, so I have
a few of the pulled a few things from the story, but you could
check this out on motherboard. This comes from Joseph Cox. Last year,
Roadblocks launched a version of its game in China called Lujo Bula. Sorry everybody,
I failed you. Like other Western gaming companies that have entered the lucrative
but heavily regulated Chinese market, it had to partner with a Chinese company,
ten Cent, who would operate the game in the country, and Roadblocks had
to host a user data on local servers as required by law. But newly
released internal documents revealed that Roadblocks assumed and prepared for the possibility that any Chinese
partner it worked with could try to hack Roadblocks. On top of that,
Roadblocks expected ten Cent to copy the game and create its own version of it.
Expect that this is a quote. Expect that hacking has already started.
One slide in the presentation from twenty seventeen called China MVP Ideas for August trip
Confidential. Read the slide dates from before Roadblocks ultimately announced the partnership with ten
Cent, expected to ramp up after a deal assigned, possibly even by the
partner, and again they're referring to hacking attempts. The document also shows that
the steps that wrote Roadblocks had to take in order for its game to comply
with Chinese censorship laws. Any maps created in the game had to respect the
integrity of the country and not represent misrepresent the Chinese territory, including by recognizing
Beijing's claim of self ruled Taiwan as part of its territory. According to our
presentation given by two row Blocks by ten Cent, Users and developers also must
not tamper with historical facts and must not appears must not appear any images or
names of national leaders. There's more to the story. But this is kind
of to me, Mike, the least surprising thing in the world that companies
trying to I mean, you go to work with ten Cent. This is
the way the whole system is set up. Like you can't just launch your
game there, you won't get approved. You have to go through a third
party like ten Cent for it to get approved. And the reason they do
that is so that you will obey all these laws, right yeah, I
mean so that a you'll obey all these laws and be that the money funds
into runs into Chinese companies. Exactly. They take a huge cut of these
things. Like we talk about the split between Steam and developers being like seventy
thirty seventy four the developer, you go to China, it's flipped. It's
the other way. You get about thirty percent of that money and the rest
goes to ten Cent and then all the stores and all these other various other
things. So yeah, absolutely, yeah, And there's a lot of government
regulations and a lot of stuff flows through that, and so they they knew
it was going to happen. But reaching the Chinese marketplace in terms of size
is you know, more important to them, which is why you know,
they were like, oh, we probably expect to have a Chinese clone of
the game eventually, which you know, does happen on a regular basis if
you don't have access internally, Like as soon as Roadblocks launches, if it's
a success, like everyone's going to be like, okay, well let's do
that as well. There's already that Guys Mobile clone. Right when Susan went
free to play, Everyone's like, oh, yeah, why don't we just
do that? And there was Stumble Guys on Mobile and there was a huge
success, So yeah, that that just happens, right, and then they're
getting particularly strong, and in fact, I do think as a benefit what's
happening is you're seeing this wave of Chinese indie games and a lot of those
people are people that worked at these companies Tincent Nettie is whatever, and are
now taking those skills separately to do their own games and doing some really impressive
stuff. So part of that is just, hey, this is what it's
like working with Chinese companies. Apple has to deal with it, you know,
Nintendo has to deal with it launching in the in the country, and
especially if you're a developer Hollywood definitely has to deal with it, although China
has recently shut a lot of movies out of Hollywood in preference for their own
movies, sort of tanking their own local box office. But yeah, it's
this is all expected. And even in that presentation, Roadblocks said, yeah,
I mean we're it's gonna happen. And that's before you even get to
Roadblocks itself being a other shit show. Yeah, absolutely on its own and
stuff. So it's like it's just the Yeah, a company that's already sort
of exploiting young workers who are making a lot of its content, wanting to
be like, oh, let's maximize our return by completely complying with China.
Yeah, I'm not too surprised. Uh, let's see. Let's get let's
get to the catch up where the warning I gave you last week about Zina
Blake Chronicles three probably leaking online and all of the leaks being out there and
all the story spoilers being out there, well that came to fruition that game
was available on eBay last week, Like they had a whole lot of them.
A bunch of people bought them, including I saw mister Maddie plays Who's
a friend into mine. He bought one and he's playing it already. A
lot of content creators are actually bought copies of that stuff, but it's also
been uploaded online and people are playing it on things like steam Deck, and
you aren't gonna see a lot of story spoilers, Mike Wins. Are you
worried about Zeno Blake Chronicles three being spoiled for you? Uh? No,
But that's just because in spoilers, I'm not a particular like I'm not a
particular spoiler like whatever show me like in fact for me, like the immediate,
like I heard of, there's Blake Chronicles spoilers out there. Let's go,
let's let's get out there. And I mean I pre ordered the uh
Lord Lord Saved Me. I pre ordered the special edition, which was trying
to pre order that on the e shop was a nightmare. So yeah,
I mean there's spoilers out there, especially uh spoilers related to the world building
in general and the French Amilso watch out if that is a thing that worries
you, because they definitely haven't running on emulators. Oh yes, they definitely.
I've straight up seeing the tweet of the guy having it on a steam
Deck. So yep, it's out there and it's it seems to run just
fine. So people are gonna have no issue with getting through that whole thing
and probably uploading a lot of footage from that game. Let's see, let's
let's do this real quick. Someone is called Danny O'Dwyer and the team at
no Clip did a documentary about the Bloodborn PSX d make which just looks incredible.
You could say, take a look a footage now if you're watching the
video version. Someone is completely de making blood Born and in PSX style graphics.
He put up a documentary today about this whole thing. It is a
lengthy forty three minutes deep diving into like what this concept entails. And I
haven't watched all yet, but I'm looking forward to it. But you can
see like the early systems they talk about, like what nineties game design would
mean when you're going back for taking Bloodborne back to that. So I'm I'm
very much looking forward to watching this and you should all as well. Shout
out to Danny. All right now, I said I would answer some questions,
but when I reset my thing, I lost a lot of questions.
So you have like thirty seconds right now to send in some more questions if
you have anything about Black Panther or anything else. Let's I got two right
here from Dominito. Are other Are other major publishers looking at marvel Ips to
license for video games? Is Microsoft looking at the success of Spider Man and
scouting potential marvel Ips to get for their own first party surper Hero games.
I will say that I've not heard anything about Microsoft getting any of these ips,
and the other things I've heard are not Let's just just stop the speculation.
The other ones at EA as well, let's just stop the speculations.
So yeah, so maybe there are other publishers like I and this stuff,
but right now it seems like Sony has their deal, Square Nix's deal has
ended, and now it does seem like a lot of that focus maybe shifted
to EA. But that doesn't mean it's like going to be exclusive Tea or
anything like that. I think Disney obviously has created a situation where they are
working with a lot of publishers and they're going to keep that going. So
I would would imagine that, like, yeah, other companies are looking at
the possibility of making those partnerships. But I don't know if it's like something
that's going to definitely come to fruition. I mean, Mike, like we've
seen like Ubisoft immediately jump on Star Wars, Like when that became available.
What would stop any studio from wanting Marvel other than maybe the price tag.
It's definitely in the price tag. Like I'm wondering, like Embracer picked up
all of the score next Western studios, you can probably still you know,
maybe like continue the Guardians of the Galaxy series. But I don't know if
Embracer wants to spend whatever the licensing fee for that is or whatever the cut
is when they can just do stuff that they already own, and I think
that's pretty much where Microsoft is, Like, it's less that I like that
they can't are Marvel is snubbing Microsoft? There are Xbox and more that Microsoft
is like right now, after all these acquisitions, let's just focus on what
we have and get our stable like in line, like, let's get Fable
back on the board. Let's fix Halo Infinite, let's fixture Call of Duty
once that deal goes through that fix Wow, let's get Warcraft back on board.
You know, but like a lot of that stuff is the stuff that
Microsoft is focused on getting its own house in order, and I think Ubisoft
probably would have been in the same boat. But you know, Star Wars
came up and they were just like, I mean, we can't, we
can't not get Star Wars right, So I think that's it. And like
Take two's another one of those where it's like, I mean, sure we're
doing that with Midnight Suns, but I don't think they're gonna go further in
that because they like, let's focus on our own stuff that we can make
money without giving it to somebody else. We need to be figuring out the
future of GTA and all this year. I think, yes, I think
you nailed all that. I think that's all exactly right. Otto points out
that Stray already has four times the reviews of Goose Game on Steam. Goose
Game, I think was I think was exclusive to Epic Game Store for a
year though, I think, but maybe that's not right. But still either
way, like straight has a lot of reviews, a lot of hype going
for it, so it's very successful. Let's see you from our rules,
maybe, okay, he said. He asked Mike's top three games of the
year so far, I don't know if you have that list, like right
off the top of your head, Mike, maybe you do, But if
you don't, like, what are some favorites from this year so far?
Uh? Triangle Strategy, Stranger of Paradise. Damn something I'm missing What else
came about this year? I need to play a string of Strategy. I'm
like, it's been a very weird year. Ah. Yeah, like not
just the releases that it came out. I've done a lot of going back
and playing old games. Yeah, I mean it's been a good year for
that. It really has been. Yeah, and especially now we're we're in
the whole. I think it was Plunkett of what talk it was talking It's
like, yeah, there's just nothing like to cover, Like we're just gonna
cover whatever. Yeah. And that's not to say no games are coming out.
Games obviously are, and think people care about many of these things.
Strangers came out, But compared to what it was like earlier this year,
where like the obvious thing to cover was elden Ring and everyone was reading every
last drop of details they could get on elden Ring, then it's completely flipped
and people are tuning out a little bit I think, and that's not to
be too that's not too surprising after the pandemic, and people like and I
sort of elder ring, sort of capping off the pandemic. I think for
a lot of people, at least mentally, I know that it's it's flaring
up again. I know that, but that's not the way people are treating
it. And so I think a lot of people are like, all right,
and now it's time to give video games a break in my brain,
and I'll tune back in when something big happens. And that's probably for a
lot of people going to be God of war or whatever else. So right
now, it's kind of like who's reading video game news? The people who've
always happened and they'll read anything, and they aren't really given us single signals
of like, focus on this and we'll care about that. Not that that
apps ever like driven much of my stuff, but still I've definitely paid attention
to it. All right, let's you know what Octo asks Mike Amote.
When we'll get on that, we'll see what we can do. Okay,
let's go to the poll here. Let me bring this up. On Friday,
I asked, are you excited? About the future of Ubisoft Games,
and eighty two point nine percent said no, seventeen point one percent said yes,
Uh, that's even I think it's even lower than I was expecting.
I guess when you ask it like that, maybe maybe that's a bit you're
not going to get the people. Like if I asked if you are excited
about the next Assassin's Creed game, well, I don't know. Maybe it
would be a little bit more positive, but I don't think it would be
much more positive. We talked about this on this show, Mike, you'd
be stoft, sort of lost in the woods a little bit. Are you
excited about anything they have coming up? I think the issue that they have
is like Assassin's Creed Valhalla was definitely the end of that style of play,
Like, okay, I think people are getting tired of this style, which
means your next game has to be a reinvention, which Infinity sounds like it's
going to be. Far Cry Sex was definitely like okay, this again,
this style of far Cry is long in the tooth. Your next game has
to be something else, like you have to find out what the new far
Cry is ghost freecon like after Wildlands, which was actually a pretty great game.
Breakpoint was like and again, like all of these major franchises, they
either need to reinvent or they've lost their way or they don't have anything like
Prince Persian and splinter Cell, and then the new stuff didn't work out,
so they're just like not flailing. I'm sure they're working on stuff, but
there's no feeling of what's next. So it's like, like, are you
excited for the next Assassin's Creed. It's not going to like Drift is going
to be you know, light Valhalla, but that's more of like a rogue
style, like a like a smaller game that they blew up exactly the next
Assassins right, and the next Assassin's Creed is going to be something completely different
and I don't know what that is yea, And the next far Cry has
to be something completely different and I don't know what that is. So like
in terms of excitement, I'm it's like just wait and see. They'll they'll
pull it out, but right now they don't have a lot and all of
the experiments, like they they were willing to experiment when the money was high.
Now we are are are friending downwards, we are heading into recession level
economics, so like everyone's pulling back, Like, let's everyone's being a little
bit more risk converse even more than they were before, right yep. So
like that's why that that is also part of why would be soft is cutting
off these experiments very quickly and being like, let's go back to to the
stuff that works. Because again a lot of companies are seeing that recession coming
in and being like, like you know, Apple and Google have been like,
we're going to do hiring freezes, We're not spending a lot of money,
and Ubisoft is hitting those, but also they have their own talent drying
problems because of the sexual allegations and other issues that they have there. Yep.
So it's gonna be a while. Let's tomorrow's pull for Game mess Mornings.
We'll check on this one tomorrow after Avengers. Do you still have interest
in Marvel Superhero games if they go more single player? I'm I'm guessing many
people are gonna say yes to this one. I think that there's still faith
in this concept. I think even Avengers like the single players stuff that you
did, like early in that game. Most people really enjoyed that, right,
So I think this is probably gonna be pretty exciting to most people,
right, Yeah, I mean Avengers even the endgame like it needed a full
like loot overhaul. You could have pulled something out of that. Yeah,
it's just Square Nix was not going to be the company that was going to
do that, Nope. Like because you know that's the Japanese and Western sides
that were completely separate. Like the Western side was just sort of taking marching
orders from Japan, and Japan didn't really seem to have faith in that,
bore out in them ultimately just selling them completely. So like I think maybe
if that had Avengers had ended up at another publisher, maybe they would have
gone back and fix that that. Like I said, it's a solid game,
you just really needed to overhaul loot and progression and stuff like that once
you got to the endgame. Alright, Mike Williams, Where could people find
you on the Internet? Where can people catch up with all your stuff?
You can find me on Twitter at automatic zen Ze, and you can find
me every day at fanbay dot com, notably the link Show, where I
write about Final Patsy fourteen, but also occasionally movies and televisions and comics.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in a giant bomb this week. We're
gonna go I'm gonna go to the meeting right now. We're gonna figure out
what we're doing this week. But I'm pretty sure well one percent will have
the BombCast tomorrow. Tune in for that, so that means no game mess
mornings actually tomorrow. I met Wednesday on that so actually should have changed the
time on this, but whatever, we'll talk about that on Wednesday. So
then giant BombCast tomorrow. We will probably have a few quick looks. We'll
probably have a few other things, probably do an arcade, pit, voicemailt
dumb truck on Thursday upf on Friday, and I know that we're planning a
few other things that we are probably going to try to get off the ground
this week, so keep an eye out for that. We'll let you all
know here real soon, especially after we do this meeting and actually figure it
out. Okay, we are going to get out of here. Thank you
so much to Mike for joining me. Thank you all so much for watching.
I really appreciate it. Until next time, have a good one,
take care of yourself, and goodbye.