You'll be luck it, don't be bad. It's the Internet. You're busy.
Let's do this for August seventeenth to twenty twenty three. 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 we have Starfield and al
Lake two is afraid of its release date. But first please join me and
welcoming today's co host to Game Mess Mornings. It's Jane Choa. Everybody,
Jan, how are you doing. I'm great. I managed to slam egg
breakfast this morning. I'm thinking about how actually messed up it is to give
children the ability to morph into any animal. It's messed up now like Wiser
three did he was he like choosing between giving it to adults or was it
just like the first human he saw? Like your child on' care? You're
getting these powers. It's like one of those It's like how Jordan becoming the
Green Lantern type of delios, you know, like, don't I'm dying take
my power? And it is you know the reference I needed, Jan,
there was. It was Santa Claus falling off the roof in Tim Ellen's The
Santa Claus okay, right right, yeah, we all know that that's actually
the best green Lantern adaptation. Absolutely, yes, yeah, totally. If
I look a little bit fucking you on video, I didn't. I didn't
start my computer after it's stilling drivers, so my ill gotto key light won't
turn on. That's just technology. That's I had to use my other light
that I used from my other setup, which is kind of over there.
This is moody. I like it. It's a little moods. It's a
it's a vibe I got. I got Animals the Invasion book one from my
library, and I purchased the audio book. So, uh like something to
do, something to do while I'm up. Listen, Jan, I'm all
in. Yeah. Do you think can I just read books on twitch out
loud? Well, that is copy right infringement? Okay, never mind,
Okay, does it Bailey do that with Goosebumps. Okay, listen, if
you don't, if you read it live and you don't like keep a VOD
of it, you might be in some okay zone as long I think,
as long as you don't read the whole book like there needs to be a
copy of it, like that's the whole idea like that. So if you
were to send someone a letter they had like all of the words of it
in there, that's copyright infringement. But if you tell, if you read
to someone on the phone, like and they're not no one's recording it.
I believe that that there's room in the law for that to not be copyright
infringement. So twitch it's a little bit fuzzy. Yeah, I somehow Mike
Manati has to blame for all of this though, Oh yeah, of course.
Yeah. Literally, he's the one that told me to play animals,
Like absolutely, this is his fault. I've always had an interest in animals,
though it's always been whenever I hear about it, and I hear about
like, oh, it's just I said it on the Blake Club be a
b Light Club yesterday, which everyone should watch a lot of fun games we
played that people say, oh, it's just really good war fiction. What
the fuck are you talking about? Really? Okay, I guess I should
read this. So here we go. All right, you know what,
let's explain what we do here because it's a mess most week days. I
Jeff Gravel hel piece your gaming life back together. That includes breaking news and
maybe even some of our own original reporting. 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. Hello YouTube. Trying to get my voice out
in front of my mouth. I remember Alex bann Yellow mentioned that once.
I'm like, man, that's he knows what he's doing, right, He's
a professional, He's won a tony. What does that mean? Like,
instead of like keeping the voice in the back of my throat, which I
think I do a lot. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm trying
to put it just right out in front, like right here, like hello.
Every At least it probably sounds better. I know, it sounds more
confident. We will use your diaphragm to push it up. Yes, that
diaphragm is just gonna fuck up these words. Right now, let's go.
We have a lot to get into, so let's start the Morning Mess with
Starfield review codes are out there. We're playing it now, or someone on
staff might be I just put him in the in the slack. But it
is possible to play it now. It's yeah, there you go, Janet
yours and there you said something nice about me, so you get one review.
Embargo is August thirty first at some time. I can't remember. It's
on Twitter. It's everywhere on Twitter, so if you're interested in find out
the exact time, there it is. But we'll have plenty to say about
this. I think we're all gonna, like, do we have a plan
jen for how we're gonna I think we're just gonna probably have a big conversation
about it on the BombCast for sure. I think I'm gonna stream it like
the whole first day it's out, like in the or the end whenever the
streaming embargoes up and all that stuff. But beyond that, we I think
we probably just do periodic check ins, right. Yeah. I think this
is one of those games similar to like Red Dead Redemption two or God of
War twenty eighteen, where it's a big enough game, a big enough release
where it warrants spending more time with it. Not that other games this year
haven't warranted that. I mean Tears of the Kingdom we bring up every other
week. Honestly, yeah, we really do. But you know, we
do bounce off games to cover other games, or our attention is pulled to
other spaces. But you know, this is such an expansive game, I
feel like it'd only be right too. We'll do a big deep dive impressions
discussion on the bomb Cast, and you know, we may split that off
eventually if we all wind up liking it, or a couple of us wind
up liking it enough to have like maybe weekly discussions in or even outside of
the bomb Cast, perhaps totally. I think this is one where we had
planned to like spend some time with this one. So it's like, in
a perfect world, with enough time and enough you know, space in our
lives, we would have done something similar for Balder's Gate three. But like
we can start cloves coming right there, so it's like, Okay, we're
gonna stick to the original plan of give give a lot of attention to this
and at least as far as you know, if that's how it works out,
if we can play it and everyone hates it or something, we'll you
know, we'll change gears. But at the very very least. I'm going
to spend a lot of time with it up front and see how we're feeling,
and we'll take it from there. Starfield is, you know, it's
it's all this stuff is happening right now. So it's like we got a
little bit at the news we got they talked about the game. Uh so
the developers, I think they ask me anything or whatever. They did some
sort of Q and A somewhere and it reveals even more RPG details about its
sci fi world. This is from Ethangotch at Kotaku. Starfield is only a
few weeks away, and but this is still drip feeding new information to players
desperate to finally get their hands on the long awaited Xbox console exclusive. Will
you be able to buy apartments in the cities you travel to? Will you
be will you get to struggle or excuming smuggle illicit items across galactic borders?
Will you go to jail if you do crimes? The answer to those questions
and more is yes and jail like those are those are the kinds of things
I like to hear. Yes two, especially smuggling and go into jail like
those the things I love to do in games. My favorite part of Red
Dead reomption two people are I pointed this on Twitter like, oh, I
love going to jail games Like, well, you must love it, Red
Dead Redemption two. I did like that part. Very good point. Everybody,
Yes, but that's the hell. It's a Q and A on August
sixteenth, with fans on Discord. There we go, picking and choosing which
comments to respond to as it walks a pre released tight rope of hype.
In the lead up to the RPG September first launch, Lead designer Emile Pagliarulo
and lead quest designer Will Shin provided the answers, and although many of them
are what you might expect from the studio behind the Elder Scrolls five, Skyrim
and fall Out four, they also shed light on new possibilities that weren't previously
confirmed. Dwellings can be acquired in all major cities, some by purchasing and
others through quest. Some items will be considered contraband and need to be hidden
on your ship using special modules to pass inspection, so Han solo simulator Let's
Go. Faction quests are not mutually exclusive, it can all be completed independently.
There are up to twenty named characters that can join your crew, follow
you around and carry your stuff, commit crimes, and you can go to
jail, pay a fine, or resist. The rest The mets are in
ruins and not usable, and a fully non lethal play through probably isn't possible
when you hear that kind of stuff, Jam like, does that like move
the meter up or down or left or right for you when it comes to
excitement for Starfield? I think it moves the meter left and right in terms
of not quite upping or lowering my interests, but like, Okay, it's
gauging how I'm going to approach playing this game, and it's already in my
mind is as open of a sandbox as Tears of the Kingdom is, where
it's like, okay, my approach is going to drastically differ from any of
y'all, right, we all it's it's very apparent that all of us have
very wildly differing play styles when it comes to approaching an open world game,
especially based off of how we've handled something like Tears of the Kingdom or our
own feelings towards Red Dead Redemption too right, you meet Dan, don't like
it? Lucy One of her favorite games of all time and completely warranted,
none of us like Horizon. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding,
but it's it's with this much freedom, I feel like unfortunately some players may
suffer from choice paralysis, that they're just going to mainline whatever and miss some
of the fun stuff to the side. I think it's viable, right,
that's a completely fine way to play it. It's fine too, Yeah,
exactly. And for me, that like, when even if I get into
that mood, having stuff to ignore in a big game like this just makes
it all feel even more special. Like I've said that before, and I
still think that's true. You want to have space to take ownership of the
story, and that's only possible if there's so much you can There's like you
just give yourself permission to say, there's no way I could play at all.
So what I play is just the game that I played, and it's
different from anyone else's and that's h And even if I'm mainlining the stuff,
it's like, oh, yeah, this is a living, breathing world and
I'm choosing to do this instead, and that's that's powerful stuff in a game
like this. I think really all these possibilities, all these verbs that they
bring up, like that's crucial to a game like this, But I think
this game is probably going to live and die on a couple of things like
is it actually fun to do the basics? Is it fun to do combat?
Is it fun to explore? Is it fun to fly a spaceship?
And then when you do get into a quest, are like does the possibility
spacey remain open or is it always going to be shoot your laser gun.
If it's always shoot your laser gun, I'm probably going to be okay to
a certain extent, but I would prefer it if they try to give you
the option to talk your way out of a lot of things or give you
a bunch of other options I'm not even thinking of. So, like,
it's like those key things I think we're going to be where star Fields make
makes makes or breaks it's future. But at the same time, this also
feels like a game that is inevitable in a lot of ways, where because
it's going to be a platform, and it's gonna be a platform for the
community put to put mods into, and the game that we're playing, the
Starfield game that we're playing five ten years from now it's like, I don't
know. Of course you're not playing Vanilla. Who no one plays Vanilla anymore,
just like no one plays Vanilla Skyrim anymore. People do, but no
one I know does. So Yeah, at a certain point, it's like,
it's here, let's just get on with it, let's start that process.
So I'm pretty excited about it. Yeah, and I'm interested to see
how the game will be streamlined based off of how players are not engaging with
certain aspects of the game, Like I can't imagine everyone is going to get
really really into the spaceship building, right of how involved it seems, or
like how crucial and not critical it also seems to be. So can you
just wind up downloading precreated ships eventually? Can you do that? Currently?
I don't. I don't believe that's an option, right, Yeah, I
don't. I honestly don't know, but I think I mean what you bring
up, there's a really good point. It's like, if this is a
game that has so many options in here, when is it going to be
the kind of game where it's like, well, we're going to have a
mission on the main quest that makes you that forces you to interact with all
of these features at least once. Are you going to have to build your
own ship at least once? I don't know if that's the right way to
do things. I suppose they could streamline that process as well, but I
think to me, streamlining means if you encounter something like that, you still
have the choice of being like, I never came to this game for this
thing. I don't want to do it. This is supposed to be my
journey. My character would never doesn't care about ships. He just wants to
sit in the seat and have someone else flam around. Is that Can I
still do that? Like, hopefully they've you know, this game has been
in development a long time. This is a Bethesda game. Those are the
kinds of options that I want, you know. Also, you know,
of course, Jim, it's easy right now to fall into the trap of
as people who we do have the codes, we I haven't played it yet,
not really, so it's like we're it's easy to get those anxieties,
those uh expectations off from the reality of actually playing the game, and everything
that we're worried about now or everything that we're imagining now probably isn't going to
matter once you play the game and you realize what it really is. It's
very difficult to get those expectations to meet reality. So it's like, we're
gonna have these conversations and they're fine. I think the ones that really do
matter are you know how how how like robust? Is the mod support going
to be right away? And that takes us to the next story here where
Nexus Mods launches Starfield Hub plus a chance to win some goodies. There's a
there's a contest, don't worry about that part from Andrew Heaton at Destructoid.
Are we sick of hearing about Starfield yet? Unlikely, seeing as it's one
of the most anticipated games of the year and the community is already gearing up
to leash some of its own custom mods for the upcoming pathos that title.
If you head over to Nexus Mods, you'll see that the site is has
now opened up its modding section for the game. Obviously, there's nothing there
yet save for some artwork, but it's pretty obvious given them out of Elder
Scrolls and Fallout mods that are forever coming out, that a lot of people
are going to be tweaking Starfield the peak of second it comes out. Nexus
Mods is like the place to go for mods on the PC. It's like,
really, you know, obviously there's people that put their mods out on
their on their Patreon and on their own personal get hubs or whatever, but
the place that collects most of them is Nexus Mods. The fact that they
are ready and raring to go for this game good news. Not too surprising,
Jean. It does like a question though, or you're the kind of
person that installs mods on the first go around with the game. No,
I do kind of like playing at Vanilla for at least from my initial experience
with the game, just because I want to, you know, I kind
of want to play with how the developer intended and then from there all I'll
break and misshape it from to my own needs. But if there's like a
quality of life thing that that's different, Like, yeah, I don't know,
maybe you can't turn off head bobbing, or your robot won't shut up,
or maybe I need my robot to constantly quip right, Yeah, you
need the bubbsy verbosity slider. Yes, you want to turn it all the
way up. You want to get you want to install the d Dana Gould
gets pack into the game, have your robot talk like that, which someone
should do. Actually, yeah, the quality of life stuff, I'm right
there with you, jen H. The sky Ui that came out for PC
for Skyrim, like really early on to make because the game they made the
game, and they were thinking of console first, like a lot of people.
In fact, most people are probably gonna play this game with the controller,
so we're gonna make it work really well the controller, and it worked
a little less well with with mouse and keyboard. It still worked fine,
but a little less well. So sky Ui was a great way to make
that work fantastic with the mouse and keyboard or something. That's I think it's
still one of the most download did you mods for Skyrim, So if that
becomes available or if there's a similar situation, I will definitely install something like
that. But I think I'm I'm mostly the same as you where uh yeah,
the first through at least I want to, I I inside, I'm
like, I know, I want to play Vanilla the first time. But
if let's say, people's faces are dirty right like in the same way that
they have been in other postested games, and it's like, oh my bro,
I don't like looking at these faces. Actually clean your fucking face.
Well I might install a mod to deal with that or something like that.
So yeah, yeah, well we'll see. We'll see what you know.
That'll be part of our ongoing like talk about the game. It's like,
hey, have you installed any mods? I'll be interested to see. All
right. Moving on from Starfield, Alan Wake two got spooked by October games
on Slot and it has been delayed ten days. This comes from Levi Winslow
at Kataku. Allan Wake two, the highly anticipated adventure horror games sequel from
Remedy Entertainment, has suffered a minor ten day delay and a press release.
Remedy Entertainment explained that Allen Wake two will move from its original October seventeenth release
date to the new October twenty seven one, twenty seventh one to give gamers
who might feel overwhelmed by the release is coming out that month some breathing room.
October is an amazing month for game launches, and we hope this date
shift gives more space for everyone to enjoy their favorite games. Remedy Entertainment wrote
on social media, we can't wait to show you what everyone's favorite novelist is
up to in the dark place next week. Thanks for your patients. If
you've been paying attention to games and planning to launch in October, you'll know
it'll be a hectic month. You've got Assassin's Creed Mirage on October fifth.
That actually that moved up to get out of the way of games like Allan
Wake two, but October fifth now detect the Pikachi returns October six, fords
A Motorsport October tenth, Lords of the following October thirteenth, Marvels Spider Man
two and Super Mario Brothers Wonder, both on October twentieth. And those are
just the big games. There are smaller games sort Our Online Last Recollection October
sixth, River City Rival Showdown on October twelfth, the Coligu Caligula Effect to
October seventeenth, Endless Dungeon October nineteenth, City Skyline two and Metal Gear Solid
Master Collection Volume one, both October twenty fourth, Alone in the Dark October
twenty five, and Headbanger's Rhythm Royal October thirty feet. Fuck God, damn
it, too many blake that this is okay. This is the instance where
I might be compelled to say maybe we would should push game of the year
to January. Yeah, yeah, but it may time it may time out
where we have to do it in December. The way it works, Yeah,
holy smokes, this is did did all of game development? Do they
have like a secret harem? And and they're going like these motherfuckers it's talking
about twenty twenty seventeen is one of the best games or best year in games.
Motherfuckers. You think ninety eight was really good? For three? Is
gonna be the year? All right? All right? Heads in break?
Why how it's uh you're I mean, like, listen, there's the things
that make great excuse me, great gaming years. It's always a little different,
you know, ninety eight, you know you're gonna have the introduction of
some all time important franchises, you know, Half Life and other Star or
like major three D updates like Metal Gear Solid and Ocerine of Time. This
year, though, the way that this year stacks up, it is like
it's just got everything in every tier of game, like some of the biggest
games ever that are also some of the best games ever, and then just
a million great games right below that, and then a million indie games and
then if Hades two comes out in early access jan before the end of the
year. What are we gonna do? Oh, those best stards over there.
I bet I bet that comes out actually next year now because they haven't
said anything about although you know, we could get the games and they announced
it or something, so who knows. Oh my god, oh my god.
Yeah, what do we do is playing Hadies? That's right? Do
you see that? You see that right of that Reddit post about the guy
complaining about the strike because his wife has been just playing nothing but Hadies.
She's a writer. He's like, every day it's just hades and sounds of
sword slashing and I'm going I had enough of it. That's like, oh
man, that rules, deal with it, fucking nerd. There are in
you know, Jesse in the chat is is going off and like he's right,
there's there's small titles like Gredge Broke Legacy two Hi Fi Rushing. But
then there's the in between or maybe like less tear lower than Triple A,
like the Star Wars G game that came out, remember that everyone, Yeah,
right, Like Jedi Survivor is insane that that like may just get swept
to the to the side because of everything else coming out Dead Dead Space remake.
Yeah, yeah, let's say sorry four Okay, there were good or
else Mike's gonna come in, yeah for sure? Yeah, geez and Red
Fall Everyone's favorite. Yes, everyone's favorite Red Fall. Yes, since the
exception that proves the rule absolutely. Like I know that we don't have a
lot of fighting game representation on the staff anymore outside of timor Hey. Street
Riders six is another game that came out that I haven't had enough quality time,
right, Okay, we have. I just need to remind you all
that you forgot the most important release of this year. Yeah, sure,
Crime Boss Rocket City came out on several platforms this year. Well that's We're
doing that for UPF for the rest of the year. So don't worry about
that. It's gonna get its time. Don't you make sure make sure not
to forget it because I literally can't. Of course you've been scarred, of
course, lex Yeah, we understand, Lexie. Why would you do this
to me? Why? Why would you read this? I love Michael Madsen
so much. Chance is gonna boot it back up. I gave I gave
him a Starfield codey He's gonna spind all tonight, just trying to see Keim
Basinger's boobs again. I know I could probably google it, but I experience.
Yeah, there's something about making it happen yourself. Absolutely. Uh.
Allan Wake two moving up, I'm sorry, moving back delayed ten days.
Uh yeah, that's nowtely see. That means it's now coming October twenty seventh,
right, okay, so still coming out in October, but it does
get out of the way of some some other stuff. Uh. It's coming
to PC, PlayStation five, Xbox Series X, and suh grub. Yeah.
I had only ever played maybe one or two hours of the original Alan
Wake at a friend's house, and I just never had the means to to
sure play through it all, and that was something I wanted to get to
re experience. I wanted to finish Allan Wake. I don't have time for
that. Yeah, I know. Here's the thing. It's like, I
know that Lucy is super big on this one. Allan Wake two, It's
like, that's another one where I'm like when when people on the staff are
I, well, this could be my game of the year, I'm like,
shit, I don't want to like get to game of the year and
be like, well I never played it. I don't know, and I
tried Allan Wake. I bounced off of it at the time. I think
Allan Wake to be in a survival horror game makes it more compelling, and
I probably will try to give this one a shot. The only way that
I think it really happens, though, is if we turn it into Halloween
content that week or something, we just like commit to playing through that for
Halloween week. I don't know, that's tough, all right, maybe?
Okay, all right, go ahead, grub, I'm pitching this now.
We're gonna make a separate list outside of the Game of the Year list of
like the best games we didn't play. Oh yeah, that should be a
category for sure. Yeah, yes, I would appreciate that. Would help
me like catch up in January when we actually will get time to play some
of those games. All right, we're gonna get right back into the show
after this. Okay. The Xbox three sixty store is closing next year.
This is from Chris Scullion at VGC. Microsoft has announced that it will be
closing down the Xbox three sixty store next year, and a new post on
the official Xbox wire blog, it was announced that the ability to buy new
games DLC and other entertainment content from the Xbox three sixty store will end on
July twenty nine, twenty twenty four. This specifically refers to the ability to
buy content directly through the Xbox three sixty console and the ability to buy content
from the Xbox three sixty Marketplace site. It does not affect the ability to
buy backwards compatible Xbox three sixty games and DLC on the Xbox One or Xbox
Series X and S stores, which will continue to be available. Jen that
sounds fine to me. Yeah, like a little bit of a bummer.
You like, if you want to get the Xbox three sixty out and you
get because of nostalgia, and they're like, man, well I want to
play that game. Oh I don't have it. Let's just buy it through
this thing. Who Okay, you can't. That's us think. But turns
out the Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S basically just running like Xbox
three sixties for a lot of these games, especially anything that's backward compatible,
and that that'll be good. Now, of course, not every game's backward
compatible, and so that's gonna that's gonna be frustrating. But you've got some
time to make these stores just aren't going to stay open forever, and if
they are, it's going to be in the form that that Microsoft is doing
here, where it provides some solution for backward compatibility. What does this mean
to you? Just I think most people write like, yeah, I haven't
used that store in fifteen years. Not a big surprise, right, I
mean, as long as these games are being properly preserved somehow, I what
is the state grub if you know, or if anyone in chat knows,
what is the state of replacement disc readers or like the lasers inside an Xbox
three sixty or anything that reads a disc, say, if like that goes
put? Because there was a lot of hacking the consoles at that time.
I think the community has found on the drives that work, and I think
they're still in relatively plentiful surprise supply. But I've been checked in a couple
of years, so I don't know for sure. Maybe Chat does, but
yeah, I would imagine that like getting those fixed is going to be fine
for some time, and then eventually that'll that'll be a problem down the line.
But yeah, yeah, like if you have the option to download everything
just in case, and and and you know, good news is Xbox Xbox
three sixty emulation have started really getting there. Xbox three sixty emulation is far
from perfect, but it is much better than it has been and we've seen
a lot of improvement there. So hopefully then, to me, that's always
the answer. Jan Like, we can keep lobbying these companies, and I'm
glad the Video Game History Foundation is out there trying to get these companies to
think about this stuff in a more legal, legally a viable way. But
for me, I'm gonna I don't trust it. I trust that the community
trying to get the stuff emulated and preserve that way is going to be the
actual answer for most of this. And that's not perfect either. The original
hardware is the way to do it. But like you said, you know,
disk, you just those discs will still be out there and hopefully they
can be preserved in some some real ways. Now, I guess there's a
lot of Xbox Live indie games too, so yeah, there's always holes in
this. But yeah, still all right, time for the Jeff back of
our news. NHL twenty four's big changes include complete complete revamp of gameplay.
This comes from submit sakar At Polygon. EA Sports Hockey franchise hasn't been a
critical darling since the early twenty tens, and the series has been stuck in
something of a rut for the past few years. That may be why developer
EA Vancouver is promising that some major changes are coming in NHL twenty four,
which was revealed Winnsday with a trailer. First up is what EA described in
a news release as a complete revamp of the EA Sports NHL gameplay experience,
led by a feature that seeks to simulate the effects of offensive zone pressure build
as the Exhaust Engine. The system will offer twofold rewards to players who can
maintain maintain possession in their opponent's defensive zone. Keep cycling the puck and you'll
eventually trigger a perk that would reduced the defending teams attributes for a limited time
and ramp up the fatigue level for its goalie, whose effective effectiveness will wane
if you can continue to pepper hit them with shots. Jan this is the
kind of stuff that's like really in the weeds for a lot of people,
but that sounds really nice to me as a hockey fan. I hope at
the same time we've heard of these kinds of features before the QB Vision cone
or whatever QB's vision from Madden and stuff, and it's like, actually,
that's just annoying. This isn't fun. It's just like they had truck stick
and they needed something else and they came up with this QB cone. So
maybe this is like something like that. But for me, when I when
I watch hockey, hockey is at its best when a team is working in
perfect harmony of keeping the puck in the offensive zone. Something that's just if
you watch enough hockey, you know that's just how impossible that is. It's
just like, it really does take the most skilled people in the world to
make that happen. And if if the hockey game is trying to mimic that
and simulate that to some degree, I appreciate it, and I hope it
works. Well. We'll see, but yeah, really, all it's gonna
matter is bad. Is Backy happy? Is Baccalar happy. We'll have to
find out. We'll check in on him, see what he thinks. In
a little bit. We all start every morning asking each other that is Backy
happy? Yes, it's and he says in chat. Right now, the
more of this game rewards, real hockey the better. Yeah, I agree,
that's not that it does not seem to have been their their mo for
quite some time. They've been like, oh, let's have a lot of
game modes, and let's put a lot of effort into into those different game
modes, and you know, obviously Hockey Ultimate Team and stuff like that.
And there's some improvements there, improvements in quotes like the Hockey Ultimate Team or
or I think it's a world of shell the the big online mode is going
to have a battle pass, so have fun with that. But they aren't.
They aren't announcing a ton of new modes this year. It does seem
to be gameplay improvements, and I'm like, okay, that's sounds promising.
I missed the days of NHL from EA and NHL two K. That's when
hockey was at its hockey games were at their best. Master Chief is reportedly
coming to Rainbow six Siege. This comes from David carcass Ole, uh to
destructor what I think Xbox is. I didn't write it down, Sorry about
that, David, Xbox main mascot master Chief will be coming to PlayStation through
another third party game, and this time it looks like it'll be Rainbow six
Siege. A tweet from user Clobriel on Twitter showcases the sledge Elite skin that'll
be coming to Rainbow six Siege, which shows off Master Chief in his full
military green spartan armor suit. Glory. Chief's appearance in Fortnite was the last
time the famed character graced PlayStation consoles on any game, though that's more fair
ground considering big PlayStation characters like Krados, Aloy and Nathan Drake are all in
Fortnite on Xbox. Of course, of course, it might end up being
that Microsoft made the deal on the on the situation that the Chief skin would
only be accessible through PC and Xbox players, though since that hasn't been the
case with Fortnite, it's it'll be odd for that to happen here, jan
I'm not playing Siege anymore, I'm not playing Halo anymore. And something about
this is like, I'm glad they're at least trying to keep Master Chief out
there, because what else can they do? Right, Yeah, I don't
know. Put him in Smash Yeah, well, of course, put him
in Smash. Go get sack Arai out of his coffin that he sleeps in
as a vampire because he never ages. Get him, wake him up and
get him working on bringing master Chief to smash. I like Rambow six Siege
though, I should play some more Siege, spend some time. I'd love
to check out Siege. Yeah, we could just again by curious man,
just just god about. I don't feel about no time, there's no time.
We have all these fantastic ideas. Yes that's the thing. Oh boy,
Yeah, if master Chief is uh, I think still character. You
know, many people holding high regard, they really like him, and it's
hard to feel good about him going to play Infinite for a lot of people.
I'm at this point. I'm over it. I'll go play Halio Infinite.
If anyone want to play Halo Infinite, let me know. I'll play
it. Oh you know what, we should do that for a TNT.
We should play some TNT because yeah, that's a that's actually a really good
game for that. It would work really well, big team battles. We
can get a lot of people in there. It's on game pass, so
yeah, we should do that, and I bet everyone playing will have a
really good time because you know, no one, no one's ever said like,
oh, I just played Halo Infinite and had a bad time. What
they say is I played Halo Infinity and the rewards weren't great and there's nothing
to buy in the store and and the you know, the DLCs and all
this stuff sucks. But when you play it, it's fun. But that's
like, Okay, that's not the way games work these days. If you're
a service game, the service part needs to be good, and Halo Infinite
mess that stuff up. Uh. And so master Chief is in this weird
spot where people are like, they see it and they get bummed out.
So if you could do small things here and there to keep im relevant and
keep keep players, We're like, oh, you know what I do,
like master Chief, I go by the skin. I think that's a smart
move while they figure out the future of Halo, which I'm sure it is
going to be a long and lengthy and difficult process over there. And yeah,
I agree. I do not envy that process at all, because it
is the study it's not even a steep health to clib it's just a it's
just a ladder, yep. Absolutely all right, Toxic gamers are bad for
business. New study shows this comes from Darren Bonthus at game spot most games
have a toxic have a more toxic side to the communities than that gather around
them, a vocal minority that, according to a research or to research,
does a lot of harm to the long term success of these titles. In
a new paper published by Take That via Sarkana executive director Matt Piscatella, the
main takeaway from this report is that toxic gaming communities can negatively impact the bottom
line of studios and publishers, and gaming companies should step up their moderation efforts
to weed out these harmful elements. Using data and insights from Nielsen's video game
tracking service, take This found a number of interesting facts. According to the
data glean from two three hundred and twenty eight polled adolescence, sixty percent of
players reported that they had decided to not spend money in a game because of
how other players treated them in that community. Seventy percent of players reported that
they have avoided playing certain games because of a community's reputation, and sixty percent
of players reported that they had at least once quit a session or quit playing
a game permanently because of harassment and hate. And Jane's the story as old
as time, right, Like, it's just we've known this for forever and
that's like pretty stark numbers to see, but it also feels true. You
gotta imagine the sort of norm of a woman going into an online game,
speaking in voice chat and then immediately either getting harassed or even just I mean
this is still harassment, just people showing an add amount of interest in them
because they're a lady. But more often than that, it's also like,
no, we're just gonna fuck with you because you're a woman, and it's
okay, that's just money lost for that game, and if that's what if,
if we need to put it in capitalistic terms to do something about it,
so be it. But here, developers, you're losing money because of
shit heads. Do something about the ship heads. And the shit heads probably
actually aren't spending as much money as you would think, so you want to
get that wider audience, right, Yeah, it turns out the ship heads
are very very very deep and just want to keep playing the game with whatever
they have and just want to make everyone's time with it very very bad.
You know. I don't mean to speak for Bailey, but she was very
high on playing Exoprimal with a crew on UPF because she doesn't get to do
that often because existing as a woman online very rough people would be very shitty.
Yep, right, And this also extends to folks just trying out a
game. I can. I know for a fact that I've had a lot
of friends instead have tried to get into League or Dota two. And the
barrier to entry isn't necessarily learning how to play the game, but dealing with
toxic players harassing you and yelling at you because you're not playing your role right
despite you just downloading the game half an hour ago. That's why I felt
like a game like Pokemon Unite felt better because of the short game times and
because there's no real communication of at least verbal voice communication with your teammates other
than pinging and all that jazz. Yeah, it's of course, of course,
toxic gamers are bad, not just bad for business, bad for everything
else. Yeah, and it's uh, you know, we it feels necessary
to put it in monetary terms, but you're it. It's like just it's
you'll feel better. It's the developer, Like I think that's the lesson that's
like they've learned over a bungee. Is you know they've were trying to have
this sort of equal brim with their audience, and like, we want to
be communicative, and we want to we want to be out there, we
to be doing stuff, and we want to like just kind of keep the
cheaters over there and the people that mixed and the people that are we just
want to ignore the trolls, you know, don't feed the trolls. And
then Bungee's like, Nope, that cost us a lot of money just protecting
our employees. Fucking sue the trolls, just demolish them. And it worked
and they succeeded, and they established a legal precedent that will provide covers for
other developers and studios and entities that want to sue people who ask them because
that now those people are are on the on the hook for paying backed companies
for any money they spend to protect their employees. And it's like that happened
in the last year. So it's really I think we should be in a
new era of going beyond don't feed the trolls and fucking just ban hammer you
fire your fans like if they are if they're line stepping or if they are
clearly stepping over the line. It's like, let's do something about it,
because you can and you have the backing, and it's it's actually in the
end, the math is going to work out that your game is going to
be more healthy, the community is going to be more healthy, and you're
gonna make more money. So just there's no excuse anymore, there's zero excuse.
Let's do something about it. We'll see. That's gonna take time to
figure out what that looks like, but hopefully it comes to pass. All
right. A Teenage Mutantinja Turtles Shredders Revenge DLC lands on switch this month with
yet another new fighter. This is from Jim Norman and Nintendo Life. We
have been eagerly anticipating more news on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shredders Revenge DLC
Dimension shell Shock since we first caught win a bit back in June. Today,
we have learned that the bonus content will be skating onto Switch On on
thirty first of August. That's not too far away, and there's yet another
new fighter joining the roster. Yes, alongside the sword wielding Rabbit. You
says Usagy, Do you know how to say that? With Saggy yes Usa
Usagi yo Jimbo. We now know that former foot Land member Karai will also
be joining the Turtles beat them up in just a few weeks. Usagi Ousagi,
Usagi okay Usagi you yo Jimbo. That sounds right. The Whitney Fast
Ninja has made several appearances in the Modern Teenage Mutan Ninja Turtles, an animated
series, moving from a straight up villain to a friend and an ally of
the Turtles. The Dimension Shell Shocked DLC will be available for eight dollars when
it launches. I have a little bit of the look at the game here.
I'll see if I can get that up. I think they're doing something
kind of fun with the coloring scheme because I think yo Jimbo usagiy jimbo,
see he like a black and white comic that has like some color splashes or
something. I have never read it, so I'm not sure the I think
they're taking one of the more the more modern versions of the character, because
it does look similar, at least from the screenshot I saw of how the
characters portrayed in the one of the current Quiet one of the current cartoons rules
sorry, we're watching the trapher Karay at the same time, and she is
just doing some awesome dive kicks that look great. Oh god, you know,
it's never been a better time to be a Turtles fans. Yeah,
it really seems like it's this is it? Okay, this is what I
was thinking of. Okay, So they're doing the black and white comics style.
I see. I don't remember it was that in the original game.
I don't know. I think that might be new. I don't think so.
Yeah, I don't remember that. That looks fantastic though. Yeah,
because the Turtles are in black and white with just their masks being colored.
You know what seems like a crime. What's that? I watched the TMNT
documentary that came out recently. I think it's called Turtle Power. It's available
on Paramount Plus. One of the creators of TMNT, they're the Ninja Turtles,
Peter Laird Grub. How much do you think he sold it for to
Viacom? When did he sell it? Oh nine. Let's also keep in
mind how much Marvel sold for to Disney, how much Star Wars. Okay,
that was I got sold to Disney. Well then, okay, I
mean for me, it's going to be significantly less than Star Wars. It's
just me completely in a vacuum. Jen, I want to say two hundred
and fifty million dollars, so grub I agree from the estimation that uh TMNT
is not as valuable as those previous franchises, but valuable enough, right,
I put it maybe close to the Transformers maybe right? Sure? Yeah,
sixty mil? What sixty million? That's insane. That's because I don't like,
there's so much merchandise and like over decades and yes, and it's like
it's proven to be a timeless franchise and that it keeps coming back over and
over again, and that is worth way more than sixty million. That's crazy.
Yeah, that it's it's insane. It's insane. Uh okay, yeah,
Marino, because it was one hund percent owner at that point, I
don't even still it's like if I have sixty million, just that's so so
low. If even if it's like a twenty five percent, I don't know
how the royalty split goes if he if Peter Laird still gets additional royalties afterwards,
or if he just sold off all of his ownership to Viacom. Yeah
yeah, right right, Like I still get like a certain like point two
five percent or something on yeah who knows. Yeah, Kurtman two K seven
points out that teenage Mutant inter Turtles made overall this year one billion dollars just
this year. Jeez, yep, all right, well hey, uh I
hey, good time to be a teenage Ninja Turtles fan. Though. Lots
of good stuff happening there. That movie fantastic, the game fantastic, and
uh you know what, I hope they get movie DLC in Tredor's Revenge eventually.
I think they could pull that off. That'd be really fun, all
right. Moving on to the biggest game of the year, Hyena's PC closed
beta starts at the end of August. This is from George yangat game Spot.
Creative Assembly and Sega have revealed a new gameplay trailer for Hyena's, their
hero based multiplayer extraction shooter. The game will also have a PC closed beta
on August thirty. First. The trailer shows its characters facing off against one
another using a variety of different guns and gadgets. Each Hyena has a unique
weapon and ability, and players can form in groups of three to steal items.
It even shows a team opening up a vault and finding a small statue
of Sonic the Hedgehog inside, because of course it does jen this is only
a beta. But boy, it just feels like, who is going to
have time for this game right now? I have no idea. I like,
who wants to suddenly dive into the world of Hyenas, especially a closed
beta around this time of the year. Maybe earlier in the year he'd be
different. Yeah, early on the side might have made more sense. Yeah,
but especially if it's an open beta. But August is going to September.
Yeah, it's it's right, and now Sega knows this. Sega's talked
a little bit about how development on this game and kind of figuring out what
Hyenas is going to be has been difficult, and they've reworked some of the
business model behind it. They said, I think they know that this game
doesn't really fit in naturally into any particular part of the market, like in
a super obvious way, so they're gonna have to get behind it and try
to push It's like that might not work either. I don't know. I
would love to be wrong. I don't want any game to fail, but
I just have zero excitement for hyenas, and I don't think that's my fault.
I don't know what they do. Yeah. I also I feel bad
that I'm not excited, but I can't help my own taste. Yeah right,
I don't. There's probably an appetite for Hyena's game out there, and
maybe we'll find its audience, but I just don't know how long in an
Abata that audience can be sustained. Now, it is an extraction shooter from
a big company, and we're gonna get a bunch of those here pretty soon.
It does feel like one of those is bound to do like the Fortnite
thing. Now. I guess Battlefield had an extraction mode in it. I
think yes it did, and that hasn't seemed. I don't know. No
one talks about that anymore. But I still think like one of these extraction
shooters from a big publisher should take off. So maybe in a year,
well, egg on our face and be like everyone is playing Hyena's. We
didn't know. Of course we didn't know, but man, we were really
wrong. Yeah. I say this all the time. I love to be
wrong when it comes to games, you know, because I unfortunately I feel
like sometimes we can be a little bit cynical when it comes to game releases,
right because we just see so many of them, and like the delusion
of similar style of games or games that are marketed kind of poorly, and
I love to be wrong about them. I love to be surprised, right,
Like Exo Primal, I think we're all a little bit hesitant on but
like a little bit glimmer of like this could be fun comes out, It
is fun now has that stuck with us? Not necessarily, but at least
we had that positive experience that has changed our opinions on it. Yeah,
and it's and you could see how like maybe this game strikes the right tone
with like oh yeah, we have Sonic the Hedgehog stuff that you're steel line
like that's it's like, okay, that's kind of fun, and they're starting
they're hitting the right tone right right out of the gate, and maybe it
does surprise h you know, I would not have known, like Jesse pointed
out, see if they use this kind of an extraction game as well.
It's like I would out have predicted to see if these was going to be
as popular as it turned out to be. And maybe Hyenas has a similar
sort of Arc there we'll see speak of our Arc Raiders, another extraction shooter
from a relatively big studio, although they've never put out a game before,
but they have a pedigree. DC Universe Online is coming to PS five and
Xbox Series X. This is from Wesley in Pool at IGN. DC Universe
Online comes out on PlayStation five and Xbox Series X this how day season.
Developer Dimensional inc Games has announced the long running as and I think twelve years.
I think twelve years. It feels like it. Maybe I've been longer
than that. The long running free to download MMO launches on both consoles in
native form, and the development team is working on gameplay and quality of life
improvements to go alongside the upgrade. Expect some of these improvements to launch over
the next few months before the release on currentine consoles and some next year.
I'm I'm good, but I mean, I know there's a lot of people
who are fans of DC Universe Online that every time it gets updated and put
on new system they go check back in. And yes, I'm talking about
Greg Miller. Yeah, it's not even the whole hating on the DCU or
the DC Cinematic Universe or whatever. I just that now, right, yeah,
past that, it's hey, good for those people, I guess get
out on the PS three what the fuck? Yeah? Yeah? And at
twenty eleven, I mean saying, Sis Dan Ryker, that's not not true
up Final I hey, folks are still playing Final Fantasy eleven bright Oh yeah,
absolutely, of course that came out in oh two. Yeah. Man,
you're right. People are still playing like ever Ever Quest two I think,
and stuff and like Lord of the Rings online. They're playing all of
these. But jan, you know, we we were dismissing the DC Cinematic
Universe. How can you do that? We're in the midst of blue beetle
Mania. Welcome everybody, It's blue beetlemania. This is this is a Mike
macnaughty bit. So if Mike Mike, if you're I think he's probably still
asleep because he was just up late celebrating blue beetle manias so late, and
I mean, who can blame them? The excitement, the fervor out there
is real. Jin you never stopped talking about blue beetle How many times have
you played Homo tempts? You planned to see it? At least? What's
I actually really liked the lead of of Blue Beetle. He's a good kid.
I like Jolo Mere Duena. He's good in Cobra Kai. He's a
good kid. Also, you know, Blue Beetle actually pretty well revered comic,
Like in that scene, people like Blue Beetle a lot, I think,
or at least like the character of course Blue Beetles at me think it's
he's basically a powering Jersey yes, uh, but yeah, I don't uh
man, Blue Beetle's This movie just feels so strange now, uh yeah,
when is it out? Like when is it actually out? I don't know.
It's so hard. The unfortunate thing and not not to like ruin the
joke and be like, oh no, here's good, big, super fucking
woke. Uh. The thing that's unfortunate with like the w g A and
sag Strike is it's especially unfortunate because this is one of the first, uh
superhero movies for DC that has like strong Latino representation, and for them not
to be able to uh properly promote this movie and pay homage to the actual
character and everything kind of kind of sucks. It's pretty unfortunate. And also
just like the poor spot that any person that is attached to DC. Uh
is incredibly unfortunate because, like, especially after the whole Flash debacle with Ezra
Miller and their own problems, anything out coming out of DC afterwards is unfortunate.
But hey, I really like you're alla marit twitna yo that that kid
can do a spin kick? What's he been in? Cobra Kai most notable?
Okay, I watched the first season of that and I liked it.
I'm always want to go back to it. He plays Miguel. Okay,
all right, very very cool? All right, I mean the mania is
real and it's it's overtaking. The mania is here, yes, here it
is. All right, let's uh, let's see if I got to know.
I think, yeah, that wraps it up for the news. You
know what called do is get a central hub for the franchise go forward,
which I guess isn't two surprising, becau they were trying to do that with
the Battlenet and it's like, well they're not doing that anymore. So yeah,
they're not doing that anymore. Why are they doing it again? So
it's I think they're like their idea is we are already kind of doing it
in the games themselves, but we just forced you to buy the new game
for seventy dollars and then you open that up and it's a Call of Duty
hub and you could play like whatever, you play the war Zone or whatever,
or play their extraction mode, which I think people like as well.
Hazard Zone. It was something else that might have been the Battlefield one and
so it's well, they do have all these different things going on at the
same time, so maybe going for it, they should just have this one
hub. So it makes more sense because it is a little bit confusing if
you're someone that comes back to Call of Duty. I was always like,
how do I play Wars? I gotta download the game that I don't buy
the game, but I'm still downloading. I was confusing. So this might
clear things up a little bit. So this will start with Modern Warfare two
and war Zone into three and it's gonna encompass all that stuff. So there
you come, all right, I got a pull from yesterday. I'll get
that up in a second, though, jam what do we have going on
in Giant Bond for the rest of the weekend, including today? For today,
we have an episode of the Voicemail Dump truck popping off. We are
also going to hopefully be recording some things after this that will get posted eventually.
UPF starts early this week. I believe it is ten am ten am
specific standard time for folks wanting to keep an eye out on that. We
may be playing Balder's Gate three or maybe something else pops up, who knows.
Additionally, what else we got going on? Another episode of game Miss
Morning's tomorrow Tomorrow's Drags Day. Of course, an episode of Jeff Jeff's went
up yesterday. We also finally, finally, finally put out the video of
Tam and Lucy going to San Diego Comic Con. It's good times. It's
a very lengthy vlog because I think long videos are the new meta grub.
Yeah, apparently, yes, people like the lung because people like just putting
stuff on in the background on YouTube, I think, and so going to
succeed, that's right. I had a friend that just did a twelve hour
video on old Nickelodeon cartoons on YouTube. Oh he looked dead after he finished
that, So oh yeah, yeah, and that's I think it's doing very
well. Yeah days, yep, all right, the poll from yesterday,
let's see here, have you ever seen Yoship and Dennis Diyak in the same
room at the same time. Ten percent half, that's one out of ten
people have seen that, but one out of ten people I don't trust ninety
percent said no, stunned Pikachu face. So so there's they're still suspicious.
I would say that the one console future baton being passed from Dennis diact to
Yoship, that's all the evidence I need. Clearly the same person it always
has been. And we have a new poll going up now, will you
use mods on your first run of Starfield? Yes, so many of them.
Yes, but quality of life only and no. Those are your options.
You can vote for that. Vote on that. We'll talk about it
here on giant bomb dot com tomorrow. Speaking a Giant Bomb, please tune
back in, like he says later for the voicemail dumb Truck. I'm gonna
be getting my TSA pre checks. I won't be there. Oh shoot,
I made an appointment for today. Also what I don't know, Well,
I'm not during the dumb Truck. Okay, that's right, because yeah,
you've got a different times I'm going on over there, fantastic, All right,
Definitely tune in for that looking forward to I'll be listening. Everyone else
should as well. I tried to get I think he's not. He's definitely
asleep, so hopefully he doesn't hear this before I send in a voicemail to
get Mike to sing with My Baby Tonight by Jeff Jarrett Slash Road Doug.
I don't think he knows the song. Jan, that's not a reason not
to play it. Though, that's not a reason not to play He definitely
still play it. Okay, Hey everybody, Jan, thank you so much
for spending today talking with me about video games. I really appreciate it.
Man, It's the best way to start a Thursday. Thank you all for
watching. You're the best audience in gaming. Had a lot of fun today.
I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go play Start a Field. I'm sorry
about everybody. Until next time, I have a good one. Take care
of yourself and goodbye.