You'll be Gon'll be bad. It's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do
this for July fifteenth, twenty twenty four. For the next hour or so,
let me help you sort through the world of gaming on Game Mess Mornings
Live with Me Jeff Greb. Today we get an update on a beloved franchise
that may disappoint its fans, and Nintendo may do something surprising with its next
Zelda game. But first, please join me and welcoming today's co host,
the Game Mess Mornings. It's Emma Fife. Everybody, Emma, how are
you doing. I'm just great. It's very warm, I would say in
Los Angeles, but truly all over the country everywhere. Yes, it's yeah,
it's just a terrible time. But you know, it's just prepping me
for when I go to Japan in a few weeks in the summer. Not
the time I would choose to go. But if somebody else is paying for
me to go, then who am I to say? Exactly, yeah,
yeah, you got to go in dure it. If someone else is paying
for sure, yes, exactly, yeah, yeah. Jan is actually in
Japan this week. He's having a good time. He'll be back next week.
It's going to be a fun one because I think Back of Ours also
out, and I think Dan's got some time off later this week, so
I'm running the shop and I'm going to do some crazy stuff. I don't
know what that means, but I'll come up with something. So I'm looking
forward to all that. You are getting ready for Comic Gun though, how's
that been? I am, yeah, I am waiting for the other shoe
to drop. I've been talking with Hayner over GameSpot on the entertainment editorial team,
and he and I are both kind of like this is going really smoothly.
We're so busy, Like we're so booked and busy in our press suite
is going to be crazy, which Jan is going to be helping run with
myself and some others. But yeah, it's just like it's I truly am
like, when is something going to go horribly, terribly wrong, because so
far it's been really good. You just wait till you're there in the thick
of it. Then that's when something will go wrong for sure, exactly exactly,
well, I mean it always does exactly. Yeah. You can't you
can't prepare for these, Like I'm the kind of person that I go into
every production being like, well, something's going to go wrong, so I'm
just gonna roll with it. When it does. It sounds right. And
at least you'll be in San Diego, a town that I enjoy. That
was exactly. Yeah, it's very very pleasant down there, And at least
I will be in a press suite with air conditioning all day and not running
around to appointments, which is really nice. Exactly. In terms of games,
this week is a pretty exciting one for me. It's a college football
drops this week, and then so does nes World Championships, which I've been
waiting for. It comes out. I think it comes out the eighteenth.
I got to keep remembering that Nintendo doesn't do the Friday releases anymore. No,
they're on the Thursday, Sourday. Wednesday night we might have it usually
like nine o'clock Pacific time, so like midnight Easter. Yeah, so midnight
Eastern we might have it. So I'm gonna be playing this game in like
two days. That's incredible. I'm so excited. So to those those are
the two games I've really been looking forward to. I want to spend some
time with both. We should have a chance to play some college football during
the week. That is that out early Scottie college football. I'm asking chat
now for the college football fans that might be in chat. I know the
release date was like later this week, but I think there was maybe an
early access period that people might be I might start playing today and if that's
the case, we'll get our hands on that and try to play it earlier
in the week so everyone can get a look at that saus It's, you
know, the first time they've made one of these games in ten eleven years
or something like that, and a lot of excitement around it. So looking
forward to it early is tomorrow, thank you, Purple people Eater. Okay,
well then we'll get it on the way site as best we can.
Let's explain what we do here most weekdays. I Jeff Grub will help 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 were watching
live on Twitch welcome. You can always listen to the show later on podcast
feeds by searching for Games 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. All right, we have a lot to get into,
so let's start the morning mess with Crash Bandicoot artists claims a fifth game was
canceled. This is from Andy Robinson at VGC. A former Toys for Bob
artist, has claimed that a fifth Crash Bandicoot game was canceled at the studio.
Concept artist Nicholas Cole made the claim in a Twitter thread this weekend,
in which they shared news that a separate project they'd been working on with another
studio called Project Dragon had been canceled. Responding to fans speculating that the project
could could be related to Spyro due to its code name, Cole said that
it was not, but claimed that a version of Crash five had been canceled.
It is not Spiro, but someday folks will hear about the Crash five
that never was, and it's going to break hearts, they wrote. In
another reply, Cole claimed that Project Dragon and Crash five were two totally separate
canceled projects at two totally separate different studios. Crash Bandicoot developer Toys for Bob
split from Activision this year following Microsoft's acquisition of the Call of Duty publisher.
The studio later revealed it had signed a publishing agreement with Microsoft for its next
game. Speculation around that is that it could be spiral related. Yeah,
this is a bit of a bummer that they were, Like, there was
Crash five following up, though, the kind of critically beloved Crash four.
I know, a lot of fans really liked that game. I like that
game, and I don't really like playing a lot of Crash games. I
think Crash I, yeah, was really good. And I and so I
was Crash band you know, I was a PlayStation kid. I played so
much Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot two, and Crash Team Race, saying,
which is a Crash Bandicoot equivalent of Mario Kart. It's really fun. It's
really really fun. And then yeah, I mean Crash four. I remember,
you know, it had been a while since I picked up a Crash
game, and I picked it up, and the thing that was crazy to
me was that it was really really really fun platforming and the kind of wacky
way that Crash does it, which is typically you know, it kind of
shifts between the like two point five D and the three D you know,
view from behind going down, and then of course who could ever forget being
chased by boulders and dinosaurs. I mean, uh, yeah, I love
Crash Bandicoot and Tom Payne. You don't have to explain what Crash Team Racing
is to this audience. Thank you, Thank you. I find that,
you know, there's a lot of very young people that work in the gaming
industry and are that watch gaming things, and they're all like, we don't
know what anything is but League of Legends, And I'm like, sorry,
I'm trying to get the headlines on and I have the wrong headline. I
have the jan headlines. They're separate Turbo Shan headlines that I need to be
focused on. You know what, We got to leave that up because otherwise
it's going to play the intro again. Sean's going to send it to me
on slack right now. But yeah, no, you play Crash For you
really like it, just Crash for. It's really good. It's really good.
I remember I was streaming it and on that first boss it took me
a little while to figure out, like how you do the box because like
That's the thing that's fun about it is that all the levels and the boss
fights, they all have something about them, and it's like, once you
figure it out, it's like, oh, Okay, now I know what
I'm supposed to be doing. Yes, I don't know. It makes me
sad because I thought Crash for was stupendous and it would be nice to see
them keep building on the ideas that they had in that game, because I
thought it was very fresh. And my my thinking was that, I know
the Crash Insane trilogy remakes did very well. I know those games. Yeah,
that game sold a ton I thought Crash four didn't do that well,
but I thought it did pretty well compared to that. I thought it was
like several million copies, maybe maybe most of those right discount sales. I
don't know. I haven't really kept the track, but in my memory i'm
I'm like, no, I thought Crash four did all right. And then
it's I think, usually it turns out when I think, like, these
games do even a little bit better than that. I thought it was like,
yeah, Tony Hawk did really well and the Crash four did pretty good
as well. I could see them being like the Crash five game is is,
you know, canceled or never really got started in the first place.
It's always it's always murky with with game development, as you know. I
remember the Dead Space two thing where it was like I'm like, oh,
yeah, that game canceled, shelved or whatever, and I'm like, they
never started it. I'm like, Okay, they were thinking about it though,
And I think it was the same thing here. They were probably thinking
about it looking at what they were going to do next, and like we
could go right to Crash five, but we, uh, you know,
just did the The Insane Trilogy and then we did Crash four. Let's give
this franchise some breathing room work on some other stuff in the meantime, and
that's that probably is what led to the current thing where like Toys or Bob
is making maybe a spiral game and again and maybe they're making a spiral game.
We don't really know, and hopefully they come back to Crash I say,
hopefully they'll inevitably come back to Crash Bandicoot. Right, Crash Bandicoot's not
going to disappear forever. It did well enough at least to justify a return
at some point. Just the immediate Crash five is probably what we're not getting,
right. Yeah, I think there's room on the PlayStation for multiple mascots
because I always thought of Crash as kind of being the PlayStation's mascot. Now
obviously it's Astro yes, and Crash it is now an Xbox mascot because Xbox
owns exactly bizarre, bizarre world we live in. So weird, Yeah,
but it's so okay. So then if we have a Crash five, do
you think that it can kind of continue what they were what they were doing
and Crash four or does it need to be rethought once again? Because I'm
like, ah, I think more Crash for is kind of what I'm okay
with. I think more Yeah, I was going to say, I think
more Crash for it. It's in some ways similar to and you know,
we've talked about this at length obviously, though Crash four was a complete game,
whereas Astro was a pre pack that was surprisingly robust for being a prepack,
sure, but was not a full game experience. So I think that
again, it's like, we just want more Astro, we just want more
Crash yep. And I think that yes, And I think they can probably
look around and see what's working for Astro and recent Mario games. But Crash
has always been its own things. So if they want to just make totally
more Crash for as Crash five, I would be happy. I just hope
it doesn't take, like you know, with game development taking longer and longer.
I hope it doesn't get to a point where it's like, oh,
yeah, we're six seven years later and I guess maybe we'll do a Crash
fivew does anyone care anymore? I hope they could find some way to hit
these things like every three to four years, and there was a time when
it was like we were getting them every year without fail, and a lot
of those were bad in that time for being activision days. But I will
also say that as far as Crash four goes again, I had not touched
a Crash Bandicoot since og Crash Bandicoot two on the PlayStation, and I think
that I wasn't entirely alone in that it was a lot of people going,
oh, well, Crash Bandicoot's kind of back on my radar here, especially
with the Ensane trilogy. You're doing really, really well. So I think
that, you know, because part of me saying, oh, okay,
is it going to be another seven years until we had a new Crash game?
Is Crash opsolete at that point? And the answer is I don't think
so. Yeah, agreed. Uh so we'll see what happens with Crash.
Crash five canceled for now, you know, put on the shelf for now.
That's not going to last forever. But you know, look for the
Crash Bandicoot fans out there, I bet you your day will come once again.
And for the rest of you, if you haven't played Crash Bandicoot four,
go fix. That's the one where likely recommend. I was like,
I don't like Crash Mike, and Mike's saying, no, you'll. I
think you'll like Crash four. And I tried to Mike, Okay, you
were right. This is a good one. They finally finally made a good
one. Now I like Crash band good enough, but yeah, no four?
Is that really excellent? Absolutely? All right? This next one,
here he goes, is the headline from Ali Welship Polygon. Excuse me,
Princess Link will be playable in Zelda Echoes of Wisdom. Well done, Ali.
It's not often that Link's gallantry is called into question. But today is
one of those sad days. After thirty eight years of hogging the limelight,
the hero in Green has finally seated the starring role in the next The Legend
Zelda game to Princess Zelda herself. Who will be playable? Who will be
the playable protagonists of the Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom? But mere weeks
after her Big Enough a Big Moment was announced, it's been revealed that Link
couldn't help himself and his crashing Zelda's party. He'll be playable in the game
two. The news has emerged from an ESRB listing from the game rating the
game E for everyone. The SRB note that this is an adventure game in
which players assume the role of Zelda as she attempts to dispel riffs through high
Rule and rescue Link. From a three quarters overhead perspective. Players explore various
environment environments, will fighting stylized enemies like humans and creatures. Then the ESRB
dropped the bombshell as Link players use a sword and arrows to defeat enemies.
Zelda can use magic wand to summon creatures like wind up knights, pig soldiers,
Slime for Battle. I this is making headlines like across a bunch of
like Nintendo websites and stuff like Polygon. But I think we might have already
seen it because there is that intro moment in the trailer where Link runs into
the dungeon to save Zelda, and I bet you actually play that moment,
and that's maybe the extent of it. Yeah, that may be the excit.
Look, the only way that I could see this being fun and cool
instead of it being like, come on, y'all, you've played is Link
a bazillion times? We don't need to play is Link. The way I
could see it's being fun and cool is if there was like a parallel storyline
of like Link trying to escape the Negaverse or wherever the heck key is.
But yeah, I mean I I but again it's like I this was a
game I didn't know I needed. But I love that Link's Awakening. Uh
switch rema. I was about to say, DS what what? Years?
I would have played a Links Awakening remake on the DS for sure. I
do like that. I actually I loved the Link between Worlds DS game.
That was really really fun. It's so good. Uh. But yeah,
I loved that little link so I was so cute. Oh my god,
I remember there e three displays where they actually had little dioramas of the stages.
It was so amazing. Yeah, it's so cute. Uh. And
I think this is a great way to get get Zelda in on the action,
long long Overdale. Yeah. I mean from the beginning, I love
that. When they announced this, it's like, oh, Echo's wisdom and
she was the thing is the triforce piece of wisdom, wisdom right, and
things like that. And it even got me like looking at that old CD
I game where you play as as Zelda Ga, there's Wand of Gamalon and
then there's just another one though three actually the third and the third one is
like the top down like real kind of it plays like a Zelda game,
but you play Zelda one and it's it's very Yes, it's very weird.
Yeah, there's Faces of Evil and Zelda does Adventures the one I'm thinking of,
yes, doctor Randall. And I was looking at that there was there
were fan remakes of like Wand of Gamalon and Faces of Evil that like make
those games kind of like okay playable, playable yes, uh. And then
I don't know if they have the same thing for Zelda's Adventure, but I
might track that down. We'll see, all right, let's keep moving here.
The first BioShock four images has a reportedly has reportedly appeared online. This
is from Andy Robinson at VGC. In early mid development image of BioShock four
has repeatedly been shared online, showing an early glimpse at the two K A
sequels UI design. The image published by MP first is said to originate from
a work reel belonging to a two K visual effect artist, which hasn't been
linked to protect their privacy. Notably, the images feature the code name park
Side, which was referenced by journalist Colin Moriarty back in twenty twenty one,
in which he revealed alleged details on the new BioShock game, including its setting.
Two K First announced back into December twenty nineteen that work had begun on
a new entry in the BioShock series, but it has been tight lipped about
the pop project in the year since. The game is being created by two
k's new Cloud Chamber Studio, which was established especially for the project in two
k's San Francisco Bay Area headquarters in California, as well as in Montreal,
Quebec. Cloud Chambers team includes a number of BioShock veterans, including designer director,
design director Jonathan Pelling, and creative director hogy De la Plant. Yeah,
I'll get this picture up here for everybody to see. In a second.
There's not much to it. Mostly, I just wanted to like check
in and like, what do you think is happening with BioShock four? Because
we heard last week that you heard there was like a job hosting that was
like, hey, we were looking for someone to come and design some stuff.
And whenever people read this see that myself included it's say, oh,
I thought, you know, I thought you'd be way further than needing someone
to come in and do this job, but also game development. So MESSI
who knows if that's what it means? Do you think we see BioShock four
anytime soon? And does like a image from like maybe twenty twenty one do
anything for you? Does an image from twenty twenty one do anything for me?
No? I think Look, if it's anytime soon, I would say
summer twenty twenty six. Yeah maybe, if that I think would be the
soon, especially as you say the coming in to do design work. I
mean that can also be a later stage thing of ooh, you know what,
here's something we're testing in this game. It's kind of like when you're
making a movie and you're like, you know what, it's really missing a
scene that establishes the relationship between these characters better. Maybe it's something like that.
Game development doesn't work quite the same way, but you know, yeah,
I don't know, I'm with you where it's like it's let me reset
this. There we go. Yeah, So, I mean people can see
this image and okay, so it does show like the character looking up at
like some sort of obelisks, some sort of like temple thing where there's a
glowing light at the top of a structure, a glowing ball of fire.
Maybe okay, well, people can read into that what they want. But
we also do see the UI, the UX design, and to that I
would say, there's almost no way it looks like this all these years later.
It's probably had several revisions and mostly changed, and UX is all about,
like, you know, the very fine specific details, and that stuff
just wouldn't be settled at this point. So yeah, I think at the
very least the fact that like this happened, and I saw a bunch of
headlines about it. Shows that there's still a strong thirst for information and there's
a lot of just overall desire for a new BioShock game, something that's like,
you know, I don't think it's guaranteed. At a certain point,
people just put that in the back of their mind and they forget about it,
and they're like, yeah, I don't know. At one point I
cared about BioShock, but I don't anymore. Seems like people still at the
very least care about BioShock and are perking up when they're like they see even
a little bit of you know, a tiny little crumb like this has you
know, is the world still going to be like ready for or is BioShock
going to be ready for? How the world is going to you know,
take it in in a couple of years, Like, will BioShock still be
a big deal when it comes out? Do you think? I mean,
I think there are people who are BioShock heads. I think it'll be a
big deal to the existing fans of the franchise. It's becoming so difficult I
feel to be cross everything relevant. Yeah, you know, I feel like
it's very difficult to reach people outside of your core fan base in general.
Yep. I would put BioShock in that category. Yeah, And it's you
know, the gaming industry has grown so much since like two thousand and seven
and then when when was like twenty twelve for BioShock Infinite and then a BioShock
two. Between those two, yeah, they're like, there's so much has
changed and it is so different. And I remember thinking at a time when
BioShock Infinite came along, BioShock Infinite is like one of those games that made
me sort of look around and be like, is this does this whole industry
make sense? Because they spent so long on this game, and it obviously
costs so much money, and they could have taken several more years developing it
to obviously complete some of these features that they had to cut. This seems
unsustainable. And now we have this this new game that's taking even longer and
it's probably gonna be even more expensive, and is it going to be able
to hit even as hard as BioShock Infinite did? I don't know. That's
like that's still a big question. So it's a question. BioShock Incident sold
decently well, yes, but yeah. But again, it's like it's at
the point that we're getting a new BioShock game. It is a completely different
market than BioShock Infinite went into. Yep, definitely, and I just I
just wonder if it's the kind of thing where this game can it is going
to come out and most people would be like, yeah, that's great,
but I'm like already playing a bunch of freedom play games with my friends or
or you know, some people will show up. But it's like, is
it going to be five million or is it going to be fifteen million?
And that's a there's a massive difference obviously between those two. And I remember,
you know, Boshok Gnvident it was like, is this game a success
unless it sells like twelve million copies? Like, is that the only way
it could be a success. And now it feels like even the bar is
even higher for something like this at this point. But hey, but people
like BioShock. I hope this one's good. Hope it comes out and hits
the mark for a lot of people. All right, let's hit this next
quick story here. Sony Interactive Entertainment announces China Joy twenty twenty four lineup.
This is from sal Ramano at Kamatsu Sony. Interactive Entertainment has announced its lineup
for China Joy twenty twenty four, which will run from July twenty sixth through
the twenty ninth at Shanghai New International Exposenter in Shanghai, China. The company's
full lineup of playable titles is as follows. They have a PlayStation China Hero
Project, which I think is them teaming up with local, you know,
domestic developers in China. And there's several games there, none none that are
that are recognized, stuff like Daba, Land of the Water Scar and Evo
Tinction or Evo Tinction. Yeah, that's a good name right there. I
actually really like Evo Tinction. I don't know, I don't know how to
say it, but I like it. But for first party games, they
will have Astrobot, Hell, Divers to Horizon, Forbid and West and Ratchet
and Clean Grift Apart, and then they have a bunch of third party games.
I think this kind of just shows a couple of things that. For
one, yeah, they have a new first party game that they're showing off.
It is the new first party game that they have across the board.
Astrobot and they don't have much else there, and then they have some older
games that probably aren't out in China because of regulatory processes slowing those things up,
or maybe localization as well, probably a combination of those two things.
But they they are showing up and doing an event in China showing a bunch
of games. I do wonder if this is like the new strategy at Sony
because I was talking to someone else somewhere, I think I was doing my
Q and A over the weekend and someone mentioned like, oh, they're going
to be a Tokyo game show. Is this like Sony's new direction of showing
up to these events where Jim Ryan maybe didn't always like doing that because it
seemed like when Jim Ryan was in charge, they you know, that's when
they pulled out a E three and there was no more like PlayStation experience and
things like that. And now he's gone and it's like they're right back in
doing these events. Do you think this is the kind of thing where Sony
is trying to while they don't have a ton of games to show off,
go out and do like a public outreach in person, And do you think
that can make a difference for them. I definitely think it's it is them
trying to go out and do public outreach in person because again, and I
mean it kind of goes back in some ways to what we were talking about
with BioShock. Its that, like, the gaming market is so oversaturated now,
so anything you can do to try to reach new markets is something that
you are going to be doing. You have to at this point. And
you know, if if they don't, you know, really make a market
in the Chinese gaming marketplace this way, then you know, I'd be curious
to see what they do in the future. But this is definitely especially as
you know, with with something like hell Divers, which has had such a
big I mean, obviously there's been all the drama over it being pulled from
the Steam Store in different regions that don't have PlayStation and blah blah blah.
But I but again, they're in a position wherein they have to because I
mean, this is such a this is such an eclectic mix of games that
they're bringing to this show. So I think they're just cast in a wide
net and seeing what fish they catch. Yeah, and if you know,
it feels like a distinction between what they're doing in Europe where games come.
They aren't showing up to games Com and it's like, well, you know,
they've dominated Europe and and they like they could sort they really can soar
on their momentum in that on that continent because, uh, there is not
a lot of other competition, Like we saw we had a story last week
about Microsoft kind of like limiting what they're going to be doing in EMEA territories,
and so you know Europe, Middle East and Africa is like Xbox just
may may just say, hey, don't even worry about getting a console.
Here's other ways of playing Xbox games. So Sony's like, well, you
know that, maybe that's a waste of money to show up to games comm.
Now, China is a huge, massive, untapped market. They spend
it, they are they It goes back and forth between the United States and
China in terms of spending on video games. Uh. And in several of
the recent years, China was close to number one, if not number one.
Uh And they're probably gonna be number one, you know, going into
the future, especially if their economy rebounds here in the next several years.
Is China a console market the way that Japan no, not really market.
Yeah, PC mobile, uh mobile, it's a mobile market, Yes,
definitely. They they basically had regulation in place for a very long time that
they made releasing consoles in the country almost impossible, at least in the you
know, in the way that these companies would have been comfortable with. Uh.
You know that that would lead to things like the the I think it
was called the IQ, which was a sixty four controller that you plug directly
into a TV and could play in sixty four games. Yes, I v
yes, And that would happen like like during I think it was like during
like the GameCube years that Nintenda would release that in China, so they would
be behind. That's all changed. Those regulations are are uh, well,
they go. That's the sort of rubber bands where sometimes it's like much less
of of a of a blockage for these companies to get into China, but
then there's still a lot of regulations about releasing the specific games, uh,
where there's a massive backlog of trying to get stuff approved because if you don't
get explicit approval from the government in China, you can't release those games.
At least that's how it is at the moment. So yeah, at the
very least though Sony and Nintendo and Microsoft to a certain extent, I'm sure
I'll see China as a market of like, if we can make some of
this work, all of those headaches will be worth it. So yeah,
I expect Sony Interactive Interactive Entertainment to be at China Joy for the foreseeable future.
All Right, we're gonna take a quick break. When we get back.
We have updates on the Driver franchise, multiple updates on that as well,
and what's up with the Concord beta right after this. All right,
we are back and we're getting right back into it as promised. Ubisoft says
it's actively working on the Driver franchise. This is from Andy Robinson at VGC.
Plans for a live action series based on ubisoft a franchise A Driver,
have been shelved. The company has confirmed and actually, real quick, I'll
just hit that from Steven Toatillo, Ubisoft nicked to the Driver show. He
reported on this on his Game File email service. You could sign up for
a live action series based on Ubisoft's open world car franchise, Driver, announced
back in twenty twenty one, is not happening at least not as originally planned
with the upstart streaming service Binge. Game File can exclusively confirm we are no
longer moving forward with our partnership with Bene for a Driver series. A Ubisoft
rep told me this week. There were plenty of red flags about the project
already, given that the gaming centric bench was expected to launch in twenty twenty
two, but most recently in late twenty twenty three, was telling its social
media followers that we are alive, well charged up, and preparing for launch
and that never happened. All right, So, but that does not mean
the Driver franchise is done. The company has claimed it's still planning projects related
to this series, despite no major game release in over a decade. Ubisoft
announced back in twenty twenty one that had partnered with upstart streaming service Binge for
the series. However, the company told game File on Friday that it's now
not moving ahead with the company. The discovery was made after Ubisoft disclosed that
one of its movie slash video related subsidiaries, hot Rod Tanner, LLC,
named after the protagonists for the Driver series. Hot Rod Tanner's a great name
for someone who does about the drugs cars. Yeah, it's a really good
name that was dissolved in January that hot Rod Tanner LLC, which was over
was going to oversee The Driver's Show. We are no longer moving forward with
our partnership with Binge This and This is back over at VGC with Andy Robinson,
but we are actively working on other exciting projects related to the franchise and
can't wait to share more information in the future, a rep said. Earlier
this month, Ubisoft confirmed that production had begun on a Watchdog's movie starring Sophie
Wilde and Tom Blythe and director by from director Matthew Turrey, who did The
Deep Dark. Yeah, The Driver, Fran You ever played this much?
I only played a very tiny bit of Driver, which was kind of a
you know, I can't remember how Driver one went, but eventually, like
Driver Too, you could get out of the car and take other people's cars.
So it was an open world crime game, sort of like GTA,
but with a different tone. Yeah, it was. Yes, it had
its fans, I know that. Yeah. I think we maybe rented Og
Driver because it was on PlayStation. Like I played a lot of PS one
games because we would just go to Blockbuster and rent whatever. And I feel
like, we played this a little tiny bit and I went, this is
boring. I was a kid, you know. Yeah, And they supported
the franchise for a while. There was Driver two, and I remember Driver
three being very hyped up and being on magazine covers and things like that,
and then Driver San Francisco, which I never even really looked at. People
were in chatterstand I would like it. I'll play a Driver game. I
don't care. I was always more of a stunt man guy, give me
stunt man. Those were That's a real video game right there. Now that
I know about hot Rod Tanner, that was na. Like, you know,
I'm more interested. Now there's a piece of culture missing from from my
personal encyclopedia that I need to add to it, and that is hot Rod
Tanner himself. Yeah. The Wheelman I also should play. That was with
one of those with Vin Diesel. Is Vin Diesel in the video game of
the Wheelman? Or? Am I making that up? I can't keep these
things straight anymore. Do you think that there's appetite for a return to the
to Driver the video game series? I could. I could kind of see
it, just because so many of these other companies have like left open or
have like left the open world gaming a genre because they're so afraid of grand
theft auto. Maybe Driver could be like, hey, no, we're gonna
do that. We're gonna do it slightly different with a different tone again,
and maybe that could hit. Now. I don't know, what do you
think? You know, I'm not against them dipping a toe in the open
world driving an ahem market because, as you say, tonally, it is
different from my understanding. And again I'm not a driver player per se.
I think that competition is good, you know what I mean? Like,
competition is good. It would be nice if they were like, you know
what, we are going to make Driver, We're going to keep it being
tonally different from a GTA. We're gonna just live the the Adventures of hot
Rod Tanner and family. Uh, you get a collater sponsorship, you send
a car to space, you know, just go full fence and the Furious
on it. You help Danny Tanner clean up the house, yeah, you
know, his brother. Of course I would. I would love that crossover
see that happen in the video game. But yeah, yeah, I think
that there's come in with a different tone. And someone in chat mentioned why
they like Drivers so much and was like there was apparently good plot but also
the realistic car handling, and I'm like, oh yeah, I think that
would work even better today. I think there's more of an audience today of
sikos who are like, yeah, give me grand Theft Auto but very realistic.
I want to check that out, and I think like Grand Turismo,
yeah, version of of GTA, Yeah exactly, so I could and like
maybe even like you are the driver, so it's like it's your job to
make sure that the car is ready and doing all the stuff. I'm I'm
sure a lot of stuff was in Driver. Again, I never played that
much of it, but it's like I could see that totally working as being
like the sim version of of GTA now, but it's you be soft.
So I don't necessarily know that they'll go in that direction. They will probably
try to make it like a Assassin's Creed with cars drive up atwe mor assassin's
screen, you have to drive up a tower sync with your bird, like
your bird's a drone. Your bird is the firebird symbol from the front of
that car. Yeah, yeah, hey, go for it. I'm not
against it. I kind of like right now after talking about it curious.
I'm like, I should go back and put try Driver too, and then
try some of the other Driver games because I'm interested. Sticking with Ubisoft,
Ubisoft tests cardboard packaging. This is also from Steven Totilo at game file What's
Old is New as Ubisoft's annual report shows that it is exploring using cardboard packaging
for the physical release of its games. That's explained in a section about Ubisoft's
efforts to address climate change and decrease its carbon footprint. In twenty twenty three,
cardboard packaging was developed for the physical PC edition of Skull and Bones.
This cardboard version has the emissions linked to the manufacture of the box compared with
the plastic version. The first development is part of a I have to explore
eco design possibilities and help reduce the use of plastic. Also, it probably
costs less less, although you know it's plastic cases are probably pennies, but
cardboards even even less. Uh yeah, I don't know. If people saw
this, it was like it's almost like a not necessarily like the old PC
games that would come in like a big cardboard box. I think this is
so much just like a fold and half like pamphlet sort of thing with the
disc inside there, and it makes can you get uh, like you get
screeners? Yeah? Uh for if you're a member of a union and they
send you screeners that have been nominated for awards. Yeah yeah, I wonder
if. And they're testing it, and they're testing it with the PC version,
so almost no one would have seen this because who's buying a fucking physical
version of Skull and Bones? Show me that person. I need to know
who that person is. I would use buying Skull and Bones at all exactly,
and let alone the fiscal version on PC. But I gotta meet that
person out there. The implication here, though, is this could replace their
physical cases for all their games going forward. And I wonder how like collectors
feel about that, because I think part of part of the collection thing is
like, Hey, I want to have something that feels like the thing I've
always had, and I want to put it right on the shelf next to
all my other games, and I want it to be a part to feel
a part of that collection. And having different cases that are cheaper and lighter
and cardboard and thinner. I won if that turns some people off or if
they're like Listen, we get it. We understand what's happening physical games.
Can we if you're switching this, does this mean you're going to stick with
physical games and I'll just take whatever you can give me. And how do
you think happen? I mean, it is interesting because in the physical game
buying market, you do have both types of people. You have the people
that are buying it because they are collectors, the people who are buying it
because they are just physical media stamps. And I know a lot of people
who not a lot, but I do have a handful of friends who are
like that. Certainly when it comes to film and like you know, getting
television series box sets on Blu Ray or whatever the case may be, because
with good reason. I mean, we've seen instances of oh, this streamer
has been bought by this company, so they no longer have the rights to
things that you had previously purchased. So I totally totally get it. Gaming
is a different market, So I wonder if amongst gamers there are still a
lot of people that are just getting physical games because they're physical media people.
I think you're going to have more people that are part of the collector's market
and the way that these if I'm understanding how this cardboard packaging is, they're
these flat envelopes, So it's not like you can you know, fill up
a shelf with them and have that kind of display. Now from the point
of view of if you wanted to have it on display in the background of
something that needed to be you know, on camera, if you put it
forward in its cardboard, so much better than that plastic casing which will give
you a glare and this won't. But are they shooting themselves in the foot
in terms of sales on physical releases because they are alienating the collector's market and
are there people that are buying stuff more for the collection aspect than the I'm
playing it aspect. Now, I'm really in support of this because they should
have happened a long long time ago. Yeah, I think it's so much
better the planet. Yes, And I do think that they can make these
cardboard boxes much more sturdy than they've been in the past. I mean the
oh yeah, yeah, sixty four boxes. Those things basically disintegrated the day
you got them. They would just fall like you would look at them Donald's
Hamburger case if that, and it was like they would just instantly fall apart,
you know, which is why I think it makes collecting like Dan does
complete in box collecting for in sixty four, and I think that's been pretty
challenging for that reason. These look like those you know, the shiny plastic
and I'm showing it on the stream right now if anyone listen wants to check
it out. This looks like you know that that shiny plastic you know.
I had a Pirates Sid Myers Sid Meyers Pirates. I think it probably came
in the big one, but the way that they actually held the disc inside
of that big box was a folding cardboard and that shiny cardboard and that thing
is still I still have that somewhere and it's mostly intact. I think,
like basically the spine show somewhere and tear, and that'll be the biggest point
of concern. But also, you know, if you are the sicko collector,
you know, get your own box, like source your own jewel case
or your own cases, not jewel cases anymore, put in your own cover
art and all that stuff. I guess that's maybe defeat the defeats the point
of collecting, but I don't know, maybe not, maybe it shouldn't.
That could be fun too either way, You're right, I this seems like
a The plastic we were using seem pretty wasteful. We don't need to use
that, and of course you'd be Seft is likely going to save some money
by doing this as well, which may encourage them to keep doing physical games,
which is what a lot of people want. All right. Concord's beta
weekend has been extended. This is from Andy Robinson at VGC PlayStation has extended
the Concord Beta early access weekend until later today. I think if you're listening
to this live right now, I think you're going to have about three hours
left to play it today. I think it'll end this afternoon as my Yes,
see, the beta will run till twelve pm Pacific time three pm Eastern.
That's nine pm Central European standard time or summertime, yes, Central European
summertime, and that's today. That'll come to an end. Did you get
a chance to play Concord you see anyone playing it on stream or anything like
that. I was playing Immortality all weekend with Gabe. We're in our fmv
era. Oh yeah, that's a fun one. It's really good. I
enjoyed mostly mostly was that point of discovery of like, oh I can do
this, Oh my god. Like I went into it only knowing that people
really liked it, and I was like, well, okay, we wanted
to play something light together and it's so good. Yep. So we played
some on Friday, and I meant to play more, but I didn't.
Maybe I'll play something like right after this so I can talk about it more
on BombCast. Yeah, it's it's the kind of thing where I think I
enjoyed myself enough, but I also am not. I think I said wasn't
stirred by it on BombCast re Vengeance. Yeah, it wasn't like two moved
by what I played. But I think they made something that's decently solid,
and they're typinitely going to be better served by having people play it than the
trailer they put out. So I get why they keeped like opening it up
and extending these things. But I also don't necessarily know that they're they're not
winning over the whole world. There are a lot of people are like,
hey, this is more fun than I thought it would be, and then
there's a lot of people who are like, I'm good. I don't need
to play this, so, uh but what choice do they have. They
like have to like get it out there and try to try their best to
like the people they can win over, win them over. I don't know.
Have you heard buzz about Concord? You have people in your life that
are talking about it because they think they were hoping. Yeah, I think
they were hoping for some more word of mouth and it's just not coming down.
Well, there's an open baita next weekend. Do you think you'll check
that out? No? Yeah? Yeah, Well, I mean you used
to need the real Guardians of the Galaxy, right, you don't need these
imitators. Absolutely. The Galaxy game was pretty fun. Actually that was good.
Yes, I love that Guardians of the Galaxy game. Yeah. So,
I don't know, I feel like at this point of my good luck,
I don't know, I don't necessarily feel like paying much attention myself with
this game. Uh, so do what you gotta do. But yeah,
this does not feel like it's going to be a Hell Divers two situation,
right, This does not feel like it's going to take over the world.
Yeah no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah.
Well everyone I know is playing Chained Together so yeah, that's a real game,
tooky, I'm doing more chain together. I should. I should just
like call up Jan you know, on the computer right now in Japan to
go to internet cafe cafe in the middle of the night and we're going to
play some chain together, all right. Final story here. PS two emulation
just took a massive step forward thanks to pcsx two two point zero. This
is from Damian McFerrin at time. Extension PS two emulator pcsx two has just
been updated Diversion two point zero, bringing with it a raft of improvements.
The update comes four years after the previous stable revision, during which time the
emulator received over six thousand changes, passed one hundred million downloads, and celebrated
its twenty feth anniversary. This update includes a new UI design, the assimi
of plug ins, simplified configuration files, automatic game fixes, per game settings,
big picture mode, improve translation support, and vastly enhanced compatibility. There's
also fast mem e e and VU recompil our optimization, vulcan support, better
sound, improved controller mapping and retro achievements, as well as much much more.
Pcsx two is was already a really good emulator if you've been like downloading
the nightly builds. A lot of this should be in there already, but
a lot of people just go with that stable build and stick with that,
and they're about to get a lot of improvements with this two point zero version.
So very exciting and boy, I kind of I can't recommend emulation enough.
People always talk about Dolphin. Pcsx two has been out there as well,
kicking it, kicking button, and it's very good. I've been I
actually reinstall PS pcsx two this past weekend because I was like, oh,
there's some games I want to check out, and now I'm like, man,
I didn't want to do the thing that Dan did where I think he's
going to get one of like a hard drive or something for his PS two
and just have all the games on there. And I'm like, I definitely
could do that, but then that would lead me down the road of getting
a retro tink and and maybe a bunch of other and then that would lead
me to get all the other hardware that I don't have and get that plugged
into the retro tink, and then I'd have to mod each one of those
consoles or get the appropriate like special memory card then ena able to see to
play games off the SD I could just see myself going down that route so
hard, and Dan saying, join us. I want to. I just
don't have the money, so instead I redownloaded PCSX two. And then they
announced this, and that's that's very exciting. It's a very good still has
all of our PlayStation memory cards my parents' house. My brother came across the
memory cards and went this when my parents were retiring and moving to Arizona.
He was like, I just couldn't quite bring myself to throw our memory Uh
huh you back that stuff, back that stuff up. I think there's like
ways to like save that in the cloud. Now. God, I would
be so curious to know what's I mean. They are labeled like we had
one memory card that was just for Saga Frontier. I mean they re released
it on switch to the stuff. It's not it's not as obscure as it
once maybe was. But yeah, it's it's wild. Oh yeah, somebody
in chat uh my PS one memory cards with lunar stickers on them, yep,
definitely would find some lunar files on there. Uh yeah, you know.
But anyway, as far as as emulation goes, you know, I
gotta get back in the emulation game. I was a big emulator player on
PC as a young person because we never had a Super Nintendo. We had
a satis uh and then we had some friends that brought us a disc that
was just full of SNS games. Yeah, so like that was how I
played, you know, like Legend of Zelda Link to the Past for the
first time was like on a PC emulating it, you know, so true
for a lot of people. Yep, absolutely early on Super Nintendo emulation and
yes, and Super Nintendo emulation was just massive, and then the N sixty
four actually got one pretty early as well. Yeah, PCSX two two point
zero will be out, and then obviously stuff like the big Picture mode shouldn't
improve how it works on things like the Steam Deck. So very excited.
I'm going to mess around with this. Maybe we'll do some PlayStation stuff,
put PlayStation two stuff on the site this week, and maybe we can mess
around with this a little bit. Yeah, I play then not here that
Yes, that's actually a great idea because then it will make changelous and that's
what we try to do when people take time off here, all right,
let's see here. I got a pull question from last week that we are
going to get to right now. There it is, are you going to
play the Concord Beta? Let's see if you have anyone joining at you?
Emma, eighty seven percent said no, yes, the eighty seven percent of
people know what's up? Thirteen percent said yes, which is going to make
it more challenging for the next poll question, where I'm going to ask what
people what they thought about Concord Beta. But hey, I think part of
this is this was the like technically closed beta, so it was like a
little bit more challenging to get in there, even though they opened up to
anyone ps plus. But really, what's happening here, I think is people
are just don't seem to be in the mood for this game. People are
just not in the mood for it. Yeah, what can they do about
that? I don't know if there's much they can other than put it out
and hope that word of mouth sort of just steamrolls people into there. I
don't know. All right, I got a new question here in a moment,
but before we get to that, m A Fife, why don't tell
people where they can find you on the internet, what you have going on
and all that good stuff. Well, well, yes, I am at
em a fife on Instagram also technically on Twitter, but I don't use Twitter
anymore and my life is a lot better for it. I was getting a
lot of great information on there this week. You're reading good info on Twitter.
Yeah, it was just a real good source of calm, collected information.
Yeah, totally, yeah, Yeah, I'm sure it was all Harry.
I'm not saying anything, Chipowski, I'm all yeah. But what I
would like to say is to make sure that y'all head on over to GameSpot
if you're not watching on the game spot YouTube at nine am Pacific time today,
we're dropping a new episode of Star Players. It is the end of
our first block of four episodes, and our guest is Steve Oh. Yeah,
he was so delightful. Yeah. I directed all four episodes of this
first uh collection of episodes of Star Players and yeah, so you know,
please please check those out. We've so far we have episodes out with mona
exchange with uh Dominic, Monahan, with Aisha Tyler and Steve O will complete
the set. And he was he was really really fun, like he's just
a really like cool, open, honest. Yeah, he's great. So
I hope that y'all will check that out and enjoy and he and he has
great stories about how he really doesn't recall making the Jackass video game. Yeah,
fantastic. Okay, Yeah, I can't wait to hear this. It's
it's been looks like a lot of fun. The episodes have been a lot
of fun. Yeah, thanks, great work all around. I'm over here
like being like, oh man, this week's voicemail Dump Truck is going to
be fraught. I don't have to be careful. We have to be very
careful this week, everybody. All right, let's see new poll question.
If you played the Concord beta, how would you rate your time with it?
Out of five stars? And we'll have like the five star options there.
I think you can have more than if you can if you can't do
more than five on you my YouTube's is the one. I think you can
do more than four options on there. So yeah, out of five stars,
go ahead and rate that. We'll get the results and discuss it on
Game Mess Mornings on Wednesday. Here on Giant Bomb. Speaking of Giant Bomb,
tomorrow Dump Truck or no No, Tomorrow's no. Tomorrow is bomb Cast.
Uh Jan's out back of ours out. I guess i' might have to
host this show, So tune in for that train wreck everybody. It's gonna
be a good time. And then Wednesday Blake Clubs should return. Daiktana,
Yeah, yeah, I guess it's back. Jesus Christ. I was right
at the end though, right Dan, I was right at the end.
I was at the last boss. So if I had my save ready to
go where I was at the last boss and I just like firing the gun
and the game was over, we would be able to just move on,
right, and that's not cheating. Dake Aitana, look look forward to that.
I suppose because I'm not Game Best Mornings will return for the rest of
the week, starting on Wednesday. Of course, the dump Truck will happen
on Thursday, BombCast Revengeance on Friday. I will probably also get upf going.
We'll figure it all out. It's going to be somewhat of a lighter
week, but we'll hit most of the big things for you. Everybody do
our best on that, all right, Emma, thank you so much for
spending today talking with me about video games. I really appreciate it, of
course, anytime, but when I don't have conflicts. Hey, we appreciate
it anytime you can make it happen. We love it. Oh yeah,
real quick, here's the correction from will Hus College Football. Early access is
today at four pm Eastern. I'll probably listen. I don't know. I
might be back. Maybe we'll play some today then on the site. Maybe
it depends on how much time I have during getting back from taking a kid
to therapy. We'll see, all right, everybody, thank you for watching,
Thank you for listening. You are the best audience in gaming. Until
next time, have a good one, take care of yourself, and goodbye.