Hello, and welcome to episode forty one of Game Spot after Dark. I'm
your host Jake Dekker, and joining me this week is Lucy James, Hello,
Kelly Plaguey Hi, and John Luke Psyke. Hello. How's everyone doing.
We were just talking about this while you went to get some water.
We're tired, really tired. I'm tired too. I'm going to do my
best to I don't know, inject energy into myself. Yeah. I think
it's fine. Little talk. Oh, it's fine when talking to people and
like doing stuff. I just find that I'm sleeping a lot more and I'm
just like feeling I'm getting that mid afternoon slump. At four twenty in the
afternoon. Yeah, I've been nine thirty and I'm like time to go to
bed, which is like I am tired. I mean, I'm always like
this. I'm tired literally all day until like nine pm. And then I'm
like, all right, it's time to be alive. Time to finish up
my flower Guide Animal crossing. Oh yeah, that's what Michael does. I
see him posting things and like for like published feedback and like ten o'clock and
I'm like, all right, man, get done. Michael and I have
the same like circadian rhythm, and that we're both completely nocturnal people. Yeah,
he always jokes that he doesn't start working until like four PM, because
I used to be a really nocturnal person. But then I would counterbalance it
by sleeping in really late. But unfortunately these days, the absolute latest I
can be asleep by is nine thirty. Asleep until is nine thirty. So
now I'm still awake at night. But also I don't get the lie in
yep, which just sucks. When I was in college, I literally would
go to bed at like six SAM and then wake up at four pm.
It's awful. It's so bad. It was so depressing. But that's just
like how my body is. So I'm just permanently tired, and it's the
life that I accept. Hey, I read a book all about sleep,
and there are people who are just biologically wired that way. You can't really
change it. And that's one of the It's one of the things that they're
trying to figure out with schools and kids is because obviously kids need to wake
up early to go to school because parents have to go to work. But
that's actually really bad for kids because especially teenagers, because there are some people
who just can't go to sleep at like nine thirty ten and they want to
wake up. They want to go to bed at like, I don't know,
two three am, and they want to wake up at like eleven or
so. Yeah. When I was in high school, I probably got I
want to say, like six hours of school week. Yeah, and that's
really bad. Yeah, fine, you just got to roll out of bed
and go on the zoom call stay in your pajamas, You're good. Yeah.
I totally don't do that at all. I totally don't stay in bed
until ninety four. I feel very seen. Well, anyway, why don't
we talk about what we've been playing this week? Callie? Do you want
to kick it off with some with your Animal Crossing corner? Sure? You
know, I'm just still playing Animal Crossing because I've finally gotten into this swing
of like decorating my island a little bit more because I was so focused on
collecting information for guides that like I really neglected the decoration part. So I've
been enjoying that. And like Jake said, I did complete the flower guide.
John Luke's helping out with some graphics for that as well. And basically
what I did was I looked at the data mind information and I sourced it
obviously, but I took that information and it's all very technical if you've read
the like raw data mind guides, and I tried to make it a little
bit more streamlined for people who aren't interested in like like flowers have jeans and
stuff and like you can totally I for the Turnip guide, I actually read
read literal code like I read code and deciphered it and then translated that into
like English for the guide and for flower guys. The guides were actually they
were. It wasn't just raw code. There was a technical explanation and there's
binary involved and like, so I stripped all of that out of Game Spots
guide and tried to make it a little more accessible. I still talk about
the genes though, and the guide, so shout out to all those data
miners I used. I don't know how to pronounce it. Palas Pah did
an advanced flower genetics guide, and I linked out to that in ours.
If you're curious about the actual technical specifics, that is what I do.
When does Museum Day or Museum Week start? That's soon, isn't it the
seventeenth or eighteenth, I forget, so one thing I'm really curious about.
So museum Day is gonna be fun. I'm gonna have fun with that.
I'm so curious about wedding season for two reasons. Oh yeah. One,
so I have seen I have seen all of the items online that are coming
in the wedding update, so I kind of have an idea. But the
thing I don't understand is in South if you're if your island is in the
Southern Hemisphere, is it also wedding season for you because it's full on winter
by by June in like the Southern Hemisphere, So do you have a nice
window wedding. Did they just have the different wedding season or is it like
well, because did they get like cherry blossoms at the same time we did?
No different? Right, Yeah, but this is the first time it'll
have been like a a post release update that may or may not be seasonal.
So I'm curious to see how that works. If you are in the
Southern Hemisphere, or you have a Southern Hemisphere hemisphere hemisphere, a Southern Hemisphere
that wasn't Australian. I tried my best, No I didn't. Anyway,
if you have one of those, and you know if it's going to be
wedding season or not. Maybe your Nintendo Direct is different or something and you've
got a different update from them. I'd be curious to find that out because
I have been having a hard time finding answers. I was gonna say,
you caant time skip, can you, because it's one of those ones that
patch in Yep. Yeah, so Cherry Blossoms wasn't like that. You could
from the very like from the time we got it before release, you could
time skip into April or October if you were in the Southern hemisphere and get
Cherry Blossoms. Yeah. So yeah, m yeah, yeah, you know,
exciting stuff for me. I read code, I have much of me
a week than I have. I drew some Punnett squares in my notebook.
I genuinely find that stuff fascinating. Though, Like me and my girlfriend have
been like getting into the flower game, I guess, and like we just
learned about how if you send if somebody else waters your flowers, like it
like the chances of them growing. So we like tried it one night and
then like I had like three times the amount of like flowers and hybrids grows,
so we're like, oh my god, we have to do this every
night now. So like I'm I'm I'm all in on the flowers. So
your guy has been excellent. Thank you. The visitor water and bonus is
sick. Basically you can get if you have five people water your flowers,
like, not including yourself, you have five friends come and water your flowers,
you have an almost one hundred percent chance of that flower producing another flower
the next day. So you could basically be like, Okay, here's my
path to flowers, invite five friends over, have them watering, give them
a prize or whatever. I don't know how you're dynamic with your friends is.
But we literally did this thing because John Luke's girlfriend and I play animal
crossing together sometimes, and we had this group and we literally just went to
each girl's island respectively and watered her flowers. Lucy, you should come to
the girl's flower watering knives man. Yeah, So you get like a super
good bonus. And then the other thing that people may or may not know
about it with flowers. Last thing I'll say about flowers, because this is
all I've been thinking about for the past like two or three days, is
you can clone a flower, so you can breed two flowers. Right,
you're probably familiar with how that works. But flowers can also produce another flower
by themselves if they're watered, and the chance of that happening with the visitor
watering bonus goes up as well. And the thing about that is, like
why that's important. If you're just you know, casual, you like the
color of a certain flower, that's a really efficient way to like duplicate a
hybrid. So if you only have like one purple rose, you can try
to clone it instead of having to get two more white roses and breed them.
But if you're thinking about the genetics of flowers, like the code that
makes a flower whatever color it is, there's multiple combinations that result in the
same color, and then those combinations like can result in a third new color.
And that's why getting blue roses is super hard. So cloning a flower,
if you know it's like the right genes, you can clone it and
it'll have the exact same genes. So that makes it way more efficient to
breed those really difficult flowers. And I laid that out in the Flower Guide,
like how that works, and I named them different things so you can
keep track, hopefully, but John Luke's gonna make cool arts. So because
it's all text right now, jeez, I feel like you need a degree
in like biology. Understand this area biology. Biology is bogology, genes and
stuff. It's Mandelian genetics, basic Mendelian genetics. She would have studied.
Probably your freshman year was like the Punet squares, so you have like recessive
genes and stuff, so you know, like dominant recessive genes, like when
you're talking about pea plants, like recormental test of the pea plants, there's
like capital R lowercase R don't come back to me. Yeah, So that's
in animal crossing, except it's it's coded just in binary. So the guide
that I looked at did translate it from the binary code into like Punnet squares
style letters, and then I then made an abstraction of that in my guide,
so you don't have to worry about all the letters and stuff and all
the science as much. I kind of get into it. There's a I
started college in science and it's coming in handy. I was gonna say,
if I was a ninth grade biology teacher, I would use animal crossings like
the way to teach the kids about this, Like that's that's the way to
do it. Yeah, everyone bring your switches into class. I mean,
like they're not ons playing Switch in class these days, and their classes are
all on the zoom. You know what they're you know what they're doing.
They're taking photos of themselves and then making that their zoom background, and then
they're hiding so it looks like they're paying attention and they're frozen, and then
they play Switch. Oh my god, Like why we did a board game
kind of day. We used tabletop sim at the weekend and we're playing with
Daniel Crooper from r KG and his zoom background is a loop of him reaching
in and looking like he's giving him a cup of tea, and then the
Crooper, like the actual Crooper like picked up a drink and like I didn't.
I was looking away at something else and I looked back. I genuinely
got the fright of my life because I know that he lives by himself,
so I was like, there's somebody in your house. Dan. Crowd are
used to work at game Spot had that like tweet that got like five hundred
thousand likes of him just walking in on zoom. And then I feel like
after that everyone just started doing all these like zoom zoom videos of people were
just walking in on themselves. It's good stuff. But anyway, Jean Lucue
even playing I'm playing a lot of things, but I've been playing rock band.
I thought. A few weeks ago, I mentioned how we were playing
Guitar Hero because my girlfriend got Guitar Hero because she loves Guitar Hero, and
that made me really want to play rock band because that's what I ended up
like really getting into. So we it was a bit of an ordeal.
It always is with that game. It always is. So I don't have
any of my old rock band stuff anymore, and the only one you can
play on modern systems is for I don't care for the song list in four
and I was like, I was like, that's not what I want.
I want rock Band one. I want rock Band two. Like that's what
I want. So I had my parents ship my Xbox three sixty across the
country here and then we bought on eBay like it was like two hundred and
fifty dollars and it came with like drum kit, guitar, microphone, and
then Rock Band one two, and then they threw in a copy of Jeff
Dam Def Jam Rap Star for good measure, which was great. Uh appreciate
that. And yeah, we've been playing and it's been a lot of fun.
It's unfortunately also been kind of a technical mess. The kick pedal likes
to disconnect, which makes the drums unplayable at times. Like it's weird because
it's like sometimes it's fine, like I'm not one hundred percent sure what causes
it, so like sometimes I'll be like, Okay, I'll awa slightly press
down on it and that'll work, and then event it'll just disconnect and I
have to like unplug it and if I replug it in and then it works
for like another minute or so, and then you can only play minute long
songs on drums. Yeah, and we're at the hard songs now. We're
at like Green Grass and High Tides, which is like nine minutes long.
And that's when I was like, we have I can't. I can't do
this, Like we can't. So we've actually put it on hiatus and we
ordered another kick pedal that should hopefully be arriving soon. My worry is that
I hope it's like, I hope it's not the jack, because if it's
the jack in the in the drum set, then I don't know what to
do because at that point that's just the whole drum sets no good. I
think in the room I'm currently in in my parents cells, there's a bunch
of rock bands. Yeah, I see drums back there. I'm pretty sure
I should just send you this stuff. It's like, alrighty, I would
love that if if you get The more important question I have is what do
you do with the drum set when you're not using it? Well? Actually,
like we now have a we have a corner that we actually have some
space we've been putting it in, which is nice. We would have not
been able to do this in our older apartment. I'm like, so for
multiple reasons, I'm very thankful we're in a new apartment at the beginning of
this year, but specifically also because of like we couldn't do rock band at
all, no way. But yeah, it's been it's like really really fun.
I forgot how good that game is. Uh like just uh we named
him? Can we say that. I'm not going to bleep it out because
it's too much. Let's been real guys. All right, wow loud.
The best part about it is like in the loading screens, they do these
like they'll have like real images is of like San Francisco, were like Paris,
and they'll like superimposed your characters like on top of them. But they'll
also put like your logo, so it'll just say like pussy eaters on like
the side of a van, or on like a billboard. He used to
see that in the loading screen. Also, the s is our money signs
because we don't need to bleep it in that case, we're good. Yeah,
yeah, that's good. That's through rock bands filter that it can get
our sensors. It actually didn't. They were like, you, this will
not work in online play, like we're gonna have to give you a different
name. And we're like, we don't care. We're not going online with
this. Let us keep it. I'm good. Did you see so?
A few weeks ago there was a guy who played Through the Fire and Flames
on Guitar Hero. But he's playing on expert at one hundred and sixty five
percent speed right, and he got one hundred He got one hundred percent of
all the notes and it was insane. And now the guitar player from Dragon
Force has done it where he's actually playing the song on a real guitar at
one hundred and sixty five speed, So it's a battle unbelievable. That's crazy.
Yeah, I know he's I know these people have had years to practice
this, but I still can't believe that. I should watch the video because
his hand is moving just like impossibly quickly. That's nice. It's unbelievable.
It's so cool because I want to say with originally when the Through the Fine
Flames came out, the original version of that song actually wasn't even played.
What was the end credits one? Because so I did this on Good Music
a couple years ago, and actually one of the developers on the one hundred
and sixty five percent run commented and said, this song was so hard we
couldn't put it as part of the track list in the actual game. That's
why it's the end credits song, which is a no fail state because at
the time, and not even I think only one of the developers could actually
finish it. It was that guy. Well, because I think the original
band didn't even play it live on the guitar like I think it was like
digitally altered to be at that speed. So the idea that the actual band
member can now not only play that song but play it at an even crazier
speed is like, that's insane. I need name again. I need proof
that the video is not edited, Like I need somebody in the background,
like doing normal stuff at normal like they're holding like a stopwatch or something,
and they can't look like one of those like TikTok people do this stuff doing
like did you go in a chima or something? Lucy, what about you?
What have you even up to? I haven't really been doing that much.
I've been playing a bunch of Oh Wow, played some Halo Reach,
or we tried to. The net code in the mass Chief collection is not
good, and it's especially not good when two of you in San Francisco and
one of you is in London. So if you weren't hosting, you would
get insane lag and we would have to alternate per level. Unfortunately, so
Cardi, our friend in the UK, was hosting the leave the first time,
and Tam and I were kind of going, this doesn't feel right,
it feels weird, and TAM's was lagging way more than mine was, and
then mine started to lag, but obviously I get motion sick, so we
had to we go through a bit of reach, a couple of hours of
reach. But then we've been playing a much of tabletop simulator, which is
really fun. Played some greed dice game we played. Tried to play trivial
Pursuit. That didn't work out so well because it's very fiddly to do all
the cards and all the pieces and for some reason we couldn't take just one
card. You'd accidentally take the deck the whole time. But you know,
there was Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit in there, so I didn't want.
I did want to play that, but no one played with me.
I've been played Scrabble, so it's been There's actually like quite a nice weekend
of just like playing board games that we had like a Zoom hang out with
some people too, and in between I'm just playing Person and five which is
great. And I'm I really really like the new Madame Boss Fight. I
thought that was really cool. I'm now at the place like fifteen hours in
where they've stopped handholding and it's all just the new stuff mixed in with the
old really well, or the new mechanics and yeah, already we've done that
much. Cool, that was bad grammar at the end, not really been
done that much, not really been doing that much close enough, It's fine.
I didn't notice. I mean, I've just been I've been playing a
couple of things, one of which I definitely can't talk about, not until
next week. Another one, I guess I can say I've been playing it,
but I don't think I'm going to. I'm just gonna ye save the
suspense. One of those is, and I don't know. I think I
know what the other one is. Wait, went to a preview. I
went to a preview yesterday to play something, And normally I would like to
share my thoughts on that, but I can't yet. But this is the
equivalent of tweeting an unhappy face and then everyone else going, oh you okay,
Han, what's up? Just trying to get some attention here. But
the other thing, I've been playing a lot of his Blood Born. I've
been hoping Matt Padgett is doing his first run through of this game on stream,
so I've been trying to play ahead of him so I remember everything that's
happening. And I haven't played that game since twenty fifteen, so I don't
remember a vast majority of it, like I remember Yarnum, and I remember
a bit of the Forbidden Woods, but like beyond that, I don't remember
a lot of this game, and it has been a lot of fun to
see those areas again. I've been trying out weapons I've never used before,
because you know, I beat the game four times back in twenty fifteen,
but I only use the saw Cleaver. I don't know why, but that's
all I did. Well, no hunter Ax is mine. Well, that's
so that's what I started with this time for the first time, and I
was enjoying that. But I really wanted to use Ludwig's Holy Blade because I
always thought that weapon looked cool, but I never tried it. I guess
I did use the crow Blades, is that what they're called Blades of Mercy,
and originally because I thought those were cool, but they weren't very effective
at least how I played. So where are you up to? I just
beat the one reborn and now I'm backtracking. I did Castle Kanehurst, which
I beat Martyr Lagarius on my first try, which I remember him giving me
some issues when I originally did it, and now I'm about to fight Abritus,
which I'm terrified of because of all the bosses and Bloodborn. That one
took me for ever and I am to fight it. But I did it
on New Game like plus plus plus because I didn't know what existed. Yeah,
so I'm hoping it'll be easier this time because I'm just starting fresh.
I'm not doing New Game plus. Yeah. And then on top of that,
I never played the DLC, so I'm excited to go. Ok.
I was going to say, because like the Ludwig is like, oh my
god, I think it's Ludwig, right, it's the horse. Yeah,
yeah, he's the one. I'm It must have been like fifty plus attempts
to beat him. I had to. I summoned the two NPC's for him
because so my boyfriend and I played through. It's really annoying because we're right
at the end of the DLC and the last and we also, you know,
finished the rest of the main game bar the final boss fight. I
think we've missed the true ending. So yeah, just that one boss fight.
Everything else was fine, like relatively fine. We would beat most bosses
three to three, goes Max Ludwig took hours, like hours, and I
almost rage quite a few times. There was parts where I was getting snippy.
There's points because he had animal crossing by then, so he just was
like, I'm just gonna let you do this. And then the one time
that I actually did it, he has a recording of me where I'm looking
at the screen and I don't think that I've done it, and I look
furious, and I just turn around to him and I look furious, and
then he like gestures to me to look at the screen and I look back
and I can see, you know, like, and I look back and
it's just sheer joy. It's like a shit meme template. But it's like
the least cute picture of me ever because I'm not wearing makeup or anything.
But he keeps using it as a reaction emission. I'm like, okay,
he would, but I want to I want to do my own run.
I've been having a lot of fun. I've also been doing choice dungeons,
which I like kind of dabbled and when it first came out, but I
didn't get super into them. And now I'm actually going through and doing that.
Like the design they're all like how it works is like the randomly they're
all randomly generated, but the best randomly generated ones, at least I think,
are used as like standards that everyone sees when they do. Like,
God, I'm describing this terribly, but basically there are some that are randomly
generated and some that aren't, and the ones that aren't randomly generated are still
kind of randomly generated, but everyone gets those same Chalice dungeons across the board
and design wise, like they're pretty simple, but some of the bosses you
fight, and those are all so much harder than a lot of the main
story bosses, like and a lot of them are repeats, like I'm fighting
rom again in one of the Childis dungeons, and it's so much harder.
Yeah. Yeah, there's one dog, fire Dog, that's like unique to
the Child Dungeons that probably the second hardest boss, absolutely painting the ass because
it's like, imagine like a giant dog that like rushes you and is on
fire. But it's like the in the arena feels like three times smaller than
it should be for like a boss like that. It is absolutely terrible.
It's like, so I've I've thought that boss once. I imagine I'll fight
him again, because that kind of seems like the trend in a lot of
these, and I didn't think he was too tough on that first try.
I'm I'm sure it's gonna get harder. But one thing I noticed is the
hit boxes were all messed up, like he'd swing at me with his like
jaw and I would dodge back and I wouldn't be I'd be i don't know,
like a foot away from it, and I'd still take damage. And
that was pretty frustrating because it's just like, oh, come on, I
was doing such a good job and I clearly dodged it, but the game
has decided no, I should get hit by this, which is frustrating.
But other than that, yeah, are you trying to get the Platinum?
Are you trying to go for that? I don't know. I just want
to play through it for now. I think I might do another play through
at some point, just with different weapons, because like I said, there's
so many weapons that I never used. But yeah, I don't know.
I just want to finish it for now and we'll see, we'll see where
it goes. It's been enjoying, Yeah, I've been enjoying watching Matt though,
because he's been doing incredibly well, like frustratingly well. Like I'll like
tell him to do things like I'll surprise a boss on him, Like you'd
be like, am I safe up here? And I'm like, oh yeah,
just keep going and there's a lamp. And then he'll walk into a
boss arena and I'll be like, all right, now you're gonna die and
he'll win, and I'll be like, come on, this is this is
this is no fun. You need to get mad sometimes, but yeah,
I've been really enjoying that. Anyway. Shall we move on to the topics
of the week. Oh? Sure? First one up here is a Mafia
trilogy has been announced and it's going to get a full reveal May nineteenth.
Ah. That teaser trailer look cool. Yeah, it looks great. Like
look and the screenshots because I don't think the Microsoft Store was a post to
put those up with it. I guess I don't think so, but I
don't because they also lead I assume it's a leak if the full reveal was
on May nineteenth, but it was like, oh yeah, full games coming
in August. But it looked really good because I never played Mafia one in
two. I did play three, and I got such a ridiculous glitch in
it that I fell off halfway through. Oh yeah, yeah, I couldn't
get through three, just because I don't know. The story was cool,
but I felt like story beats happened so far between, like all of this
monotony that I had so much trouble getting through it. But the one that
steals the show is Mafia one, because it, at least based on the
images, it sounds like they've done like a whole graphical overhaul, which would
be really interesting because I didn't play a lot of Mafia one, but one
thing I remember is that like you had to obey traffic laws and stuff in
that game. I'm been very interesting, John Nick, you played some of
it, didn't you? You played Mafia one? No? No, I
didn't. Actually i've I've wanted to, but I've avoided playing it because I
heard how dated it was, things like the traffic laws, things like some
of the missions being real monotonous. There's like this infamous race car mission where
you have to like beat like a like a like a Formula one race that
was apparently so bad because the story behind this is crazy, Like the developers
apparently like designed the level around like a top quality like racing wheel purph role
that they tested it on, but they didn't test it on like an actual
controller or like mouse and keyboard. So apparently it is completely unplayable, but
it's like required to beat the game, and it was so infamous that they
apparently like patched it out like that you to make it optional, which is
like, which is incredible. Uh so stuff like that, Like I find
I think that game was fascinating, but I never played it. I never
played two either. I want to play two. Two is really good.
I want to play two because the thing I didn't like about three was what
you were saying was like I really love the story stuff, and then I
fell off because it became like very monotonous checklist. Go here and take over
this part of the city and do the same five missions and then you go
recruit this guy, and it was like this boring, Like I was like,
I just want that story stuff. And apparently that's exactly what Mafia two
is. And Mafia two is like an open world, but like there it
didn't have open world checklist, it just had you know, like story stuff.
And so apparently for three, they said, like, apparently, I
guess that was a big complaint for two, So then they tried to correct
it for three, but then times changed and then everyone wanted it to be
more like two, which is unfortunate. But anyway, I'm really curious to
play those games because, like I've I've heard amazing things about two, and
I feel like one. I'm curious if it holds up, like the story
holds up, or how they're going to change that game, if they're going
to try and make it more accessible. Yeah, I definitely recommend playing two
when that comes around, because at least at the time, I thought two
was fantastic. It is kind of like a classic like Mafia gangster story,
So if you're not super into that, it may be hard to get into,
but it it does such a good job of like capturing the time period
from what I remember, And there's so many odd little details that are in
the game, Like in between missions, you go back to your apartment and
you could like you could like open up your fridge and drink a beer.
You could like grab it, you could call people up on your phone or
watch TV and stuff like that, and those would kind of like be in
between chapters from what I remember, and like, I thought the attention to
detail was super impressive for that game, considering it wasn't like a big budget
GTA game. And then the other thing I remember, too was that it
does have an open world, but a lot of the chapters really restrict you
and how you can explore that, Like sometimes you can't just explore wherever you
want in order to keep that narrative very focused, which I liked. The
one thing I remember not liking is that, like when you finished the game,
you couldn't just roam the city. So it was like, Oh,
I just finished this game with this incredible setting, with all these beautiful interiors
and cars and stuff, but I can't actually go and explore, at least
what I remember. Maybe they patch that or changed that at some point,
but I think I remember being kind of frustrated that lets you do that,
If I recall, I remember hearing that, Yeah, that'd be pretty cool.
Yeah, I don't know. That's that's all I have to say on
Mafia. I don't know there's anything you guys want to add. I don't
know anything about Mafia except for the Mafia three booth at E three that year
was really cool. Oh yeah. Remember I remember interviewing the developers from Hanging
thirteen that year and someone from two K so the very the beginning of Mafia
three is a bank robbery that's very, very similar to GT fives And I
said that in passing and someone from two K was like, do not ask
about that. I'm like, okay, sor yeah, if I remember that,
that's my Mafia story. What I remember is the title screen played all
along the watch tower and I was like, hell, yeah, that was
coolcy And I like that song for specific reason. I love that game setting,
that game setting. I would like to go back and finish it,
because I didn't finish it because I kind of got bored of the side stuff.
But like, I love that game setup is so good and and like
that game setting, and like the had like that documentary style like kind of
framing, and I thought that. I thought that stuff was so cool and
so well done. The acting was like phenomenal. Yeah, it was really
good, and but I mean for me, it was just the it was
a hot mass and glitches. Yeah, like, well, hopefully this collection's
better. Fingers crossed. Next thing we have here is Unreal five PS five
Tech them we finally got that PS five game play for a game that doesn't
exist. Yeah, I didn't watch the whole thing, but I'm not sure
how much you guys saw. I watched the tech demo. It looks beautiful,
did you see. So obviously they were like, oh, this is
on PS five, and Aaron Greenberg was like, or I think Phil Spencer,
both of them were like, we're using Unreal five two. Unreal yeah,
Unreal five two because they're using it for a hell Blade that's what hell
Blades being made in. And so kind of felt a verity bad for Xbox
after last week's Did Sony just like make a deal to like have them emphasize
that it was on a PS four dev kit? Was that what it was?
Because because in the interview afterwards, like they were saying like, oh,
yeah, like you know, Unreal two or the Unreal five engine runs
on every platform and it'll look great on anything and bobble you know that.
I mean, honestly, this is my least favorite part of new consoles launching
is like the I would you would kind of call it pettiness of like who's
going to reveal on whose? Yeah? And then yeah, but the TECHTI
business pettiness the business partners. But it's like the tech tema looked incredible.
I think everyone going nuts over the triangles. I think that stuff is legitimately
really cool. Like they were kind of talking about it where they were saying
how like the statue was like a model that they took straight out of Zebrush
and just put into the game without having to like do the usual like uh,
you know work that they have to do to like compress you know,
like textures and like to get that model actually like playable in the game.
And so then they were like, oh, yeah, we can do that,
and I was like, wow, that's crazy, Like how is that
not taking the frame rate? And then they were like and this room has
five hundred of those? And I was like, how like I legitimately want
I was kind of bummed that. I know, it's like because the tech
is still years out, so they probably don't want to dive too deep into
their like secrets, but I really wished instead of like a like a just
a straight up interview with Jeff Keeley, I wanted like a GDC like Ted
talk like explain to me how this works, because it sounds like mad Jack
and it's supposed to. Like if that stuff is true, which I imagine
it is, I assume they wouldn't lie about it. Like that is going
to be not only good for like your games are gonna look good, but
that is going to streamline like the production for like game artists like tenfold.
Like that is going to be huge for videocisms. I mean, Tim Sweeney
was like load screens or a thing in the past. That's like the huge
big they still had. She still had to crawl through that little squeeze through.
She had a squeeze through. I think that's the one thing about that
tech demo is like the flying at the end was cool, but for the
most part it was like very like expected game play, Like you're not showing
me like cool new gameplay things you can do with like hardware. It was
just more that it looked really pretty. Yeah. I think the other really
cool thing that I don't know people didn't really comment until I think like after
the fact, when more people realize that they've done it, was the epic
could now say that. So for indies, if or for anyone really it's
like if you use Unreal Engine when you hit three thousand dollars in a quarter,
then you have to pay them five percent to use the engine. Right
now, they've changed that so you don't have to pay anything to Epic until
you've grossed a million dollars and that's not within a certain timeframe. It's like
it's until you earn a million dollars and then you pay the royalties. And
they've backdated that to January first from this year. That's a massive It's really
cool. That's cool. I thought it was interesting to how they were talking
about how Unreal Engine has been is being used in movies and they're creating Unreal
five in order to leverage that as well, because they use it in Mandalorian.
Right, But now they're like, Okay, this is a thing that
this could become more common, like filmmakers might actually consider using Unreal Engine for
scenes and whatnot, Like maybe we should, I don't know, create a
version of this that let's filmmakers also go to town, which I think is
pretty neat. It's definitely broad thinking, I guess, yeah, oh sorry,
yeah, oh, I was gonna say, I wonder what it will
mean for Unity though, because like in terms of competitive pricing for engines,
right, yeah, I imagine Unity will still have its its place. It's
space. But yeah, you're right, the whole like not paying royalties thing
is is that's pretty huge. Anyway, next thing we got here is Tony
Hawk's pro Skater one and two getting a remaster. I had to include this
one. I'm excited for this. Can we talk about the way that Tony
Hawk leaked his own game via text message? Yeah? Yeah, I am
fully obsessed with Tony Hawk's social media presence. Yeah, just public presence.
I hope can people continue to not recognize him because of my favorite tweets?
What was the one where he was in Kat's Delhi in New York and someone
was like, oh, you look just like that guy. That is me.
I liked the one where uh she he was on an airplane and a
girl asked him, are you Tony Hawk and he said yes and she said
why. What was the same one where he was carrying a skateboard and someone
said, who do you think you are? Tony Hawk? Yes? So
anyway, I really hope that this Tony Hawk resurgence doesn't reduce the number of
tweets like that that we get. But I am excited, especially for the
I hope the soundtracks are are still I think it's like they said, a
lot of it is going to be the same, but I think some songs
aren't gonna make it. I imagine there's there's got to be some changes to
like licensing and stuff. But I mean Goldfinger is still on there, so
I was like waiting for the trailer, like the music to switch to Goldfinger
like part way through, just to like really give you that like oh fuck
yeah at the end. But like I ad into it. But now that's
stilling because they did that live concert of Superman. Oh they did yeah,
yeah, they did it live of a like Zoom or something. That's was
like, oh, that's weird, and then it will kind of makes sense.
All right. Did you see Skate three was trending that or Skate four
was trending that day too well, because it was the tenth anniverse you of
Skate three on Monday? Oh really Yeah, A lot of people were just
being like, all right, well, maybe Tony Hawk's remaster will be so
popular that EA will be like, Okay, it's time to make Skate four.
No, I don't think so. Yeah, Like I was gonna say,
wasn't there a thing recently where there was like a there's a skater who
was who was saying how he like was in an EA call where they wanted
him to like do a thing for skate but it was going to be like
a mobile game, and he'd like told him like no, like he I
think he said was like nobody wants a fucking skate mobile game. It was
like what he said it was because didn't he. I think they went off
online about like EA execs and following the money and stuff, and then Tony
Hawk comes out. It's like boom, going to Reminster. I was gonna
see that story from a while ago about Tony Hawk meeting with an Activision exec
and he didn't realize how successful his games were and they said they were going
to make another one. We'll give you a down payment, and then they
just gave him like five million dollars or something. It was something incredible like
that. Is this like really early, like like I think it was.
I think so maybe after the first or second game. I need to look
up the story. I remember reading it or hearing a while ago, and
he I just had like lunch with a game exact and just went here you
go. So I don't know if you guys saw, but Jack Black's YouTube
channel Jablinsky got the exclusive. They got the exclusive on Tony hawks pro Skater
one and to remaster, and like they probably play the game for like I
don't know fifteen percent of the video and the rest it's just Jack Black asking
Tony Hawk and all these other skaters how to skateboard. And if he's doing
kick flips, right, it's pretty good. Like I was like, all
right, I'm not gonna watch fifteen minutes of Tony Hawk's pro Skater one remaster
game play and I click in and it's mostly just Jack Black being Jack Black.
It's it's pretty good. The thing is, how do we get Jack
Black to do things with games fun? I know, I know, right,
I worship him the charity stream games. I would do anything to meet
Jack Black. Oh my god, my icon. Maybe we asked you,
you got to get in touch with Tim Schaeffer to put us in touch with
Jack Black and then or we get Tony Hawk on like six degrees of separation.
We can do it. We absolutely can, Like, oh yeah,
we can easily get in touch with Tim Schaeffer. I think it could be
doable. Well, yeah, let me look into this. This is a
great planning meeting for I'm Jack Black. I'm helping plan the charity stream,
so I'm just giving myself extra work. I just I'm really interested to hear
what he has to say about rock music and skateboarding. I want him.
I want to do a cast table read of School of Rock with him.
That would be incredible stream of that. I found the basis girl on TikTok
me too, yeah, because it was like, oh you, what was
it you were child actor or something, and then she does the face I
don't like. TikTok is great guys. Yeah, so I would love to
do a table read where it's just you and me doing the whole movie without
we don't need to script, and they're just watching you do it like they're
just like featuring me taking a break to cry about how much I love Stevie
Nicks. Going back to the movie. So anyway, Tony Hawk, Tony
Hawk and Jack Black, you know, speaking really quickly about famous people from
our childhood and their tweets. You know, one of my favorite tweets of
all time has got to be Shaquille O'Neal tweeting at Nottsbury Farm and my Butt's
too big to fit on the seats and the seats on the rides. Ah,
that's me yelling that tweet when when you said is so good people from
my childhood tweeting, I was like, oh, are we going to talk
about Brian Adams now? First of all, someone replied to his let's face
it weird slightly racially tinged tirade about coronavirus with more like crying Adams am I
right, which was just fantastic, but also grow the fuck up Brian Adams,
Like people are dying, No one cares about your royal albert Hole residency.
And I say this because I used to bloody love Brian Adams, and
I mean, like it's still like his music, but it sucks that he's
become a shitty person. You hate to see it. I hate see it.
Well, anyway, let's move on to listener questions. If you have
any questions, you can email us email us at after Dark podcast at GameSpot
dot com, or you can join our discord server by dm dming one of
us or emailing that email and we will get you right in there and you
can ask questions right from there. And this week every question we have is
from the discord anyway, Kelly, do you want to read the first one?
Sure? This is from Chase MM eighteen on Discord. First off,
love you guys. As far as I'm concerned you guys in this podcast or
the care to COVID nineteen. Legally, I have to say that we are
not the cure to COVID nineteen. That we appreciate that. I was curious,
as someone who loves modern games nearly namely sky God, namely Skyrim,
I was curious if any of you guys ever got into playing games with mods.
If so, what are your favorite ones? Thank you so much for
giving me something to look forward to each week. You guys are the best
friends I've never met. Ha ha, thank you, thank you so sweet.
I've messed around with mods quite a bit, actually mostly with Skyrim,
but I've done some with Oblivion, and recently I've been messed tarning with some
Red Dead mods, and I've messed oround some which or three mods as well.
I guess it depends on the game. Like Skyrim has some great mods
because that, like so many people are familiar with that game, the tool
is open and easy, well relatively easy to use. Some of like the
land Mass mods, I think are really good. I would definitely definitely do
the Bruma mod if you haven't done it yet. For Skyrim. It's like
a small contained story which takes place south of Skyrim technically, and you go
through like you have to go through like border border control, and you go
down to Sirah Dill and you complete some quests and Bruma. Unfortunately, the
story isn't done yet. They're gonna that's gonna be looped into the full mod
that's coming who knows when. But it's really neat, especially if you've played
Oblivion back in the day, you'll definitely really enjoy that. I highly recommend
checking that out video on Skyram mods. Did I've done a couple actually,
some like quality of life ones? I really like. There's one. I
think it's called I I've just got I've got so many things I want to
talk about here. I would. I think it's called a new Start,
which always makes me think of the only good joke from season four, probably
one of the few good jokes from season four, but basically, let's you
start a new game in Skyrim, uh in any way you want, Like
you can say I want to be a homeowner or I want to be somebody
who just arrived on the boat, which is pretty nice. I'm sure a
lot of these you may be familiar with, but those are my favorites for
Skyrim. For for Whitcher, it's all just quality of life mods I feel
like, or camera mods because there's no actual like photo mode in that game.
So I downloaded a camera mod which lets me, you know, come
up with my own framing and get Garrold out of the shot. If I
want to get like a Lance gap shot or something like that, take duar
photos of Garrel in the bath. I got plenty of those. I don't
need more. That's like you with your Tifa photos, Lucy. I am
not even kidding, I said as a joke. And I looked at my
camera, well my capture gallery, and there are so many pictures of Tifa.
I love her. I need that game to have photo mode, seriously.
Oh god. Yeah, they gotta add that at some point, right
because fifteen had it, didn't it. I think they added it eventually though.
Yeah. Just before before we move on, I just want to say,
Jake does do really cool videos on modern communities and like large scale mods.
I've done you one about sky Blivion which I think is the best video
I've ever made. And then I did one on Beyond Skyrim which covers Bruma,
and then I did one on Fallout New or fall Out Cascadian Fallout my
am so, yeah, be sure to check those out. I used to
now that we're done embarrassing. Jake used to be on Skyrim mods, which
is the top five Scyra mods the week that we see. Yeah, but
I personally never played Skyram on PC, so I would watch Step and Cam
put super cool mods on it every week. The only game that I ever
really played with mods now is OG Mass Effect. I got it in Steam
and so if you get the HD texture pack, which is amazing. But
also there is a mod specifically just for cutting the weight times, the load
times when you're in elevators. Isn't there a mod for controllers support too,
because yeah, it doesn't support controllers. Mass and keyboard. I downloaded that
pretty quickly. I was like, yeah, I don't play Mass Effect of
the keyboard. Yeah, because especially the original game is it's it takes some
getting used to. I can't you even imagine what that'd be like on mass
and keyboard. It's weight I actually I think the original is better on mouse
and keyboard, but maybe it's just because that game actually runs better on PC
yeah than the Xbox version. Yeah, I was playing on backwards compatibility while
ago, and yeah, the texture pop in is quite severe, so I
played on PC. Yeah. I wonder how much work they're going to do
on the switch versions of Mass Effects one, two, and three, which
are coming. I hope. I don't think it's going to be would.
I just want them to remaster those freaking games. And the thing is is,
like, if they do remaster it, i'd want it to be the
PS four one PC stuff because five, Yeah, I want that game to
look hot as as hot as it possibly can, and like, yeah,
I would love it on the go, don't get me wrong, But admittedly
right now, I'm not going anywhere. We've talked about it before. But
like, if they do it, I hope that they make it all cohesive,
Like you're not switching games when you finish one, you're just going straight
to two, straight to three. I imagine that would be very tough to
do, especially considering the jump between one and two. Like, I feel
like they'd have to rework and rebalance all of Mass Effect one. But I
mean to be fair, like that game is so beloved, like of all
the games that I feel like could actually I should not talk too much about
this because we have a question about remasters and whatnot. But one more thing
I do want to say about mods is that I'm very excited to see what
people do with Cyberpunk when that comes out. In terms of moding, the
weird thing is is that because there's already nudity built into the game, what
are all the people who make nude mods gonna do? Fembot That's what I
want to be. That was always the guns for boobs, That's what I
want. The weirdest mods, and and like the Nexus for like Skyron,
we're always like clean faces and like yeah, like like kids like anime girls
and like give give them like Final Fantasy like lightning hair, your hair.
Yeah, but also like the like Black Desert Online levels just intense exactly.
Yes, Yeah, there's some wild shit for Skyrim. I didn't like those
because they just know I hated, like, I'm going to be the only
one he looks like this, and all the other characters gonna look like rugged
like Nord characters. Like the best mods were always the ones that like we're
trying to be very lower appropriate. Like there were people who made like weapons
that were like lore appropriate, and they would like actually add them to like
the loot pool, so like you'd find them naturally as opposed to just like
you turn in the game and now you're like, cool, now I got
this like really powerful swords. Like I I always loved mods like that that
like enhanced the game. Like I was really into Fallow New Vegas. Mods
that's just like made that game like more intense. I think, like me
and Michael have talked about that before about how like we yeah, like mods
that like changed the time of day or like at all these like weather effect
filters and stuff like that. I don't often play games with mods because I
like, I'm so used to reviewing games just as they are, and that
like I don't want to confuse myself by playing with mods and then forgetting what
was modern. Obviously, I wouldn't be able to play mods for a game
that I got in advance, But I'm just so used to like giving myself
the pure experience of a game to prep for a review that I have a
really hard time installing mods because I feel like I'm gonna forget what's real and
what's not. But I will say one mod that I really really like is
the better Pigs mod for Starting Valley, because everything in that game is like
night Like you know, it's like pleasant, but the pigs are super ugly
and there's a mod that makes them cuter and I installed that shit a SAP,
So when I play on Switch now, I'm like, I can't even
own pigs, Like what is this? Yeah, it's weird because I like
a game like skyrimer Oblivion like that seems fine, Like I don't mind modding
that, but a game like Red Dead Redemption. When I was checking out
the mods, it's like, I don't really want to any of these mods,
Like I don't I feel like the game doesn't need this. And same
with Witcher to an extent, that's always saying like the only mods I got
where camera stuff because I didn't want to, like I don't know, I
don't want to like change the way characters look, or like change the loot
system or anything like that. Although there is a mod for the Witcher three
that was created by one of the developers at Sea Project Right that rebalances the
game to make it tougher I think, which which is interesting and one that
I've been planning on trying but I haven't done it. Yeah, I was
gonna say, like, like game, whenever I want to go back and
play a game, there's that part of me that wants to experience, like
I want to like recapture my nostalgia or like compare my nostalgia to when I
played it. So the idea of like putting on a mod feels weird sometimes,
where like I specifically want to play that original version and modding it kind
of feels odd. Like I prefer like like a like a full conversion mode
or something that adds it. Like I think I've got really into like portal
mods because people would just build like brand new like levels for Portal and like
that's cool because it's like that original experience is still the same. You're just
adding like new levels for me to play. I will say my favorite mod
of all time is somebody who moded They replaced all of the sound files and
Half Life two with them making all the noises. So it's just so I
specifically remember the gun boat, so it's like the guy being like of like
the boat sound and then like the water like and then like the gun being
like like all of these are playing at once, and I'm just like,
this is the There's a really good video of it. That's art. You
should go check out. It's amazing. That is art. Uh. Next
question we have here. The PS two Xbox one game Keep had some wild
games that have never been seen again, like Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg,
Sega Soccer Slam, and Psyops that were never seen again. Which game
from this air would you like to see remade or given a sequel? This
is from Jacob McCourt on Discord. Did anyone play Blanks the time cat that
got a sequel? Though there's a second one? Oh shit, no one
played it? Do they still make it? Clonoa Clonoah? I believe they
do. That was a game that I like had on the PS two.
I think they made like a wee one. Yeah, but I never like
followed it, And like you can tell how little I follow it because I
don't know how to pronounce it because I'm just like colon No, I can
imagine it written down. But that's maybe the only one from that time.
Oh do you remember air Blade? No? That was on a PS two
demo disc and I remember just playing the shit out of it. I think
it got released and I don't think anyone else ever did anything with it.
But it was basically like a skateboarding game, but you're on a horf a
craft like a hoverboard. Oh I think I played this. Wait? Is
that the one with the eye toy? No? No, no, no,
no, okay, super early PS two and you would just go around
and smash through billboards and do tricks and stuff. I'm gonna look this up
because I feel it was I think it was called air Blade. Did they
blade Blade? That's how they can bring it back. You get that product
placement see results about video game, but it's mostly just the blade. I
feel like they've remade Simpson's Hit and Run, but I might have imagined that.
Is that the one? No, I think that's the one everyone keeps
wanting people to remake. There's one Simon favorite I love fantastic. It must
be Hit Run because every time they like say something about like Simpsons and video
games, everyone's always like they got to do a remake is like Hit and
Run, And then it always turns out to be like a mobile update to
like that one mobile game or whatever. Yeah, so there was road Rage
and there was Hit and Run. I'm not liking road rage a lot,
but hit and Run I thought it was great. Air Blade was made by
Criterion. Oh really who also may burn Out and e Speed Speaking of dead
franchises bringing out Burnout. Yeah, you know what I played a lot of
on the PS two was at home DDR with a DDR mat. I would
play it with control. How do you do like the doubles with a controller?
On the defense? Oh my god? Oh yeah, I had EyeToy
was great. Me and my friends spent a lot of time on EyeToy.
But I feel like they did that for PS. Was there an EyeToy for
PS three? And then it just vanished and then I guess was sort of
it, but not as they had a camera. I don't know if they
had an EyeToy specific thing. Yeah, that was a big deal for me
and my friends. Ready for that Fusion Friends, Well, I guess there
was a Fusion Frenzy two. There was one. There was a second one.
I remember it not being very good and just going back to playing Fusion
Frenzy one. I feel like this is cheating or like it doesn't count because
it's Star Wars related, but I've always wanted a sequel to Republic Commando.
It's like one of my favorite war games. There are so many good Star
Wars games from the bat era of consoles. Oh yeah, god Og bettle
Front one and two. They added online multiplayer support to OG Battlefront on Steam.
Really yeah, that's part of Star Wars Day, which is cool.
I went on and it was only like ten people playing, but I was
like, yeah, like, let's go. I think I stopped too.
That sounds good. Final question here, Lucy, do you want to take
this one? Yeah? It's from Fogie Bear. My roommates have just gone
to take the dog out. Uh Fogie Bear and Discord. What are some
video game mechanics slash trends that you are personally over and or not interested in?
Me personally, I'm tired of games being open world. Prime example,
Gives of War five had a really strong beginning that was linear like the older
games. Then in the middle it went open world and the game fell apart.
In my opinion, we didn't do this last week, did we?
No? I think I put it on, but I think we scared.
I don't think we got to it. Okay, yeah, good good.
I would say, like detective Mode. I think I'm a bit over detective
Modes Batman like Scanning too or yeah, like because if you think about it,
it was I think it's used well in Batman. It makes sense,
but you know, seeing it an assassin's creed to an extent. It's in
Last of Us, it's in You've Got Witcher Senses, Day's Gone, Day's
Gone. Every game has it now, and sometimes I think it's just so
that it's a failsafe so a play it doesn't get lost, which I get.
I guess it's it's useful, but I think I don't know. Sometimes
it can become a crutch for missions that just immediately don't really interest me that
much. I think I think like the best ever detective mode is in Arkham
Origins, where you are basically reconstructing crime scenes, and they did a really
cool job with that, right. Yeah, it's like a specific mechanic as
opposed to just like hitting the button and you're spending like ninety percent of the
game with skeletons versions of people that you're just saying, yeah, I would
also be curious to see like because I feel like detective modes and a lot
of games, and I think a lot of the Witcher three right here is
where it just like highlights all the points of interest and you just go and
click on them. I think I'd be more interested if they just made that
stuff more obvious You've found them on your own, right, Like that's something
that I guess I think of La Noir right because that was you just in
an area and you're picking things up and examining that, and I find that
more interesting. I get why those detective modes are there though, because a
lot of people hate that. They just want to like find this stuff and
move on to the next thing. Yeah, but then it's just kind of
like if people hate it, then yeah, I'd be okay with not seeing
those. Yeah. There are a lot of games I feel like around that
era that we're doing, Like I'm not into games that just have skill trees
for like no reason. Oh yeah. One I remember really add was Mirror's
Edge Catalyst. It felt like it just had a skill tree for the sake
of being skill tree, Like you needed to like unlock the ability to like
roll, and you're like why, Like this doesn't even make sense in the
context of like the story, Like why like she's supposed to be a season
runner. Like it felt like it was just like adding like skill and locks
for the sake of doing it, and it wasn't really like an easy way
to hide progression or like show progress. Yeah, and I always found that
really obnoxious. Same with like adding stealth into games that don't need stealth,
like like it's just stealth light. Like I always find it weird when like
I rather a game like really like heavily commit to like being good at stealth
or being good at action or being good at both. But like it felt
like there were there were games that were like we're gonna try and be stealthy,
but like it didn't really work, Like the first Evil Within. I
remember that game stealth being I was literally just about say, I remember that
being particularly bad and Evil Within two. You yeah, because mechanics twos a
bit better, but the stealth mechanics don't work. Yeah, I remember.
I remember this annoying the crap out of me. If there was an enemy
who was lying in the grass, because there was a ton of them who
would lye in the grass and they would pretend to be dead. But if
you triggered a specific point, then they would come back to life, but
there were ways that you could come up behind them. You couldn't stealth kill
them until they triggered. And I remember that just immediately pissing me off and
I was like, I'm not gonna pay this the rest of this anymore.
I had other issues of that game, but I remember that one. I
like that game a lot actually as somebody who didn't like the first, but
yeah that yeah, yeah, I agree. I remember Evil even Evil within
one. I remember that also had like a Skille tree and like all like
a crafting system that's just like I don't need this. I don't need all
this like in a game like just because like I don't know it. Yeah,
a lot of systems that don't feel like they need to be in there.
Yeah, I mean to that Gears of War Point, I get it,
but it wasn't really open world because it was still like you have to
just go here and there's like kind of mini missions. Is I think a
big problem. I think Assassin's Creed Origins and Odyssey had the open world issue
of it being too big and there was just like content that was there.
It didn't feel meaningful. Competitive. I mean, Wicher being the other side
of that coin, where it's every side question, which I felt interesting and
like feeding into something. There's a there's a tass a coin to your when
which and coin is in the same sentence, That's immediately where my brain goes.
I mean, the big one for me. Jean Luke kind I already
said I was gonna say skilled trees like that was one of my problems with
Odyssey. I feel like it was just like a lot of unnecessary skilled trees.
I guess the other things when games make you walk through certain sections,
like you're just in an area and now it's like, all right, now
you need to walk to appreciate Marcus Phoenix putting is his ear to mode.
Yeah, Actually, when you have to accompany an NPC and you're running and
they don't run either at the same speed or fast enough. Fine seven remake
had that. Don't think I didn't know if square, Yeah, that's what
I was thinking. I'm thinking that is that is especially bad on when you're
playing on mouse and keyboard, because on controler you can like, okay,
I'll just have to like lightly feather the stick, and it kind of sucks
mouse and keyboard like you can't do that, so you're just like tap stop
tap, yeah, stop tap super nice, I would say, for me,
photo realism. I don't think in most cases photorealism, Like I think
there's like a tweet I think about like how we've kind of hit the ceiling
for like what increased photo realism adds to the experience of playing a game versus
is what it costs to do that. And there's like I really value unique
art style or like distinctive art style over photo realism, and I think I'm
just kind of tired of I would also like, m oh no, no,
continue to saying sorry, Oh, I just I've never been super like
invested in the the graphical fidelity of something anyway, So that's probably just me.
I was just going to add to that that like on top of that,
I find that sometimes that graphical fidelity comes up the cost of other things
that could have made the game better. So like an example that is is
Halo five, like was pushing for sixty frames a second and like really high
like quality graphics, and because of that there is a noticeable dip in like
the AI, like the AI in that game is not as complex, and
then like there's some like kind of like GDC talks about. They talked about
like kind of the trade offs of that, and basically it's like that game's
combat ended up suffering because they were trying to push like a certain presentation fidelity
and because of that, the actual like combat of that game ended up suffering
because of it. Yeah, whatever happened to like developers really pushing AI.
I feel like we don't get that a whole lot, like really smart enemies,
which is kind of a bummer because I remember that used to be such
a especially on like the Tom Clancy games. That was always such an important
like point on the box, like these AI will feel real and now,
like I was playing Breakpoint about a month or two ago, and it's just
kind of like it's just a shooting gallery, you know. You just show
up, find a high place and just boot pop them all. I feel
like AI is one of those situations where, like, like with video editing,
you notice it more when it's bad than when it's good. Like we've
hit a point where like good AI isn't impressive anymore because we expect the AI
to have a certain amount of intelligence, and so like it's either like so
impressive. I can't believe the AI can do that, or like this AI
really sucks and it's just standing there or glitching or whatever, but you don't
really notice like the in between of that. Yeah. Yeah, I still
feel like though AI was better in some of these older games than it is
now. Like I feel like a lot of developers have just been making games
to make it. Like I don't want to say a lot of developers,
but I feel like game design is kind of for a while, there was
trending in that position where it's like we want to we want to make you
feel like a beast, so we don't want these enemies to be too smart.
We don't have them to OU's smart you because you need to be the
killing machine here. I also think game design has its trends, right,
so like different buzzwords, different like marketing terms, even that you would hear
as the focus of the development, So like AI used to be that and
now in like the ray tracing era, or like the like super nitty gritty
technical perfections that you can achieve with modern technology versus like look at how real
it looks ten years ago. You look at that and you're like, but
we keep evolving with that. Yeah, I just never I mean, I
grew up primarily playing either like Nintendo or like Doom, so neither of those
is particularly realistic looking. So yeah, it's just something that I haven't really
Skyrim. Skyrim is just like it's from the era. It's from the end
of the era where everything looks like mud and like people's mouths don't move correctly,
and it is still one of the most popular games of our memory.
And you know, you can achieve a lot without having to put so much
because it is a very cost inefficient thing to do to make a game super
photo realistic. Also, I'm tired. I hate American cutesy esthetic. I
hate the way the Fortnite motherfuckers look. I hate them. I think it's
not five, it's not cute. I hate that, Like I hate that
faux Pixar shit. Yeah, like dream the dream Works smirk. Yes,
that's horrible, fake fake dream works. I love to do animation, and
I don't think everything needs to look cutesy or like anime. I just think,
like, find a more distinctive art style, like Disco Elysium has a
very distinctive, beautiful art style that isn't anime or fake dream works. Right,
So that's another thing I hate, and I'm getting pretty tired of Battle
Royal and Hero Shooters. Yeah, I would agree. So Baby, the
connection like dropped when I said that, it looked like you all quit the
call on it's too far Cally I offended everybody. Well, anyone tell Tom
what you said. I think that's as good as place as any to end
this show. Thank you all so much for tuning in each and every week.
If you want to join our discord, make sure to dm us and
we'll get you in there as soon as we can. And make sure to
stay tuned throughout June because our Play for All event will start and we're gonna
have a ton of cool stuff. Jack what's up? Nothing? Oh?
I said, Jack Black will definitely be there. Don't promise Jack Black anyway.
Lucy, where can people find you? Hi? I'm on Twitter,
on Instagram at Lucy jams Games and Kelly I'm on Twitter and also on Instagram,
but I barely post there. At k I n K y d O
j I k KO and Angel Luke. You can find me at John luk
Seppi on Twitter. Me and Ben put out a new Potato mode where we
play Mortal Kombat eleven and it was a good time. Let's go watch that
and you can find me at jacob Deck and I have a couple of videos
that should be ready for next week. Anyway, we'll see you all next
week. By