Hello, and welcome to side Quest. This is our weekly video game show
here at Geekbverse. I'm your host, the Traveler Dylan Muss, and have
with me the keyed kirklen Patzer. How are you doing, my friend,
I'm doing really good. Yeah, I had a good Monday and I'm excited
to talk some side quests with you. How was your camping trip? I
didn't ask you. It was really good. Yeah, I had a really
great time. We had some great weather. Yeah, it was potential for
rain on the weekend and we got some rain, but I feel like it
was kind of the best times we could have got it. Throughout the day.
We like, we went for a nice hike and then as we were
coming back the rain was rolling in, but like it never really lasted too
long. It got pretty windy one of the nights there, but yeah,
no it was. It was really nice, like nice eighteen nineteen weather,
you know, nothing too hot. We hit up the dog Beach and Marco
went for some nice swimming. It was a little bit too cold for any
humans to really dive in there, but he sure had a blast. And
yeah, it was good. First campionship of the year, so excited for
more. To come if we can tent together sometime here in the near future.
I don't think I've ever gone camping with you. When you said tent
together, I thought you might like physically be in a tent too. Why
not let's do it. That'd be so funny. Go camping MUDs and show
you guys can share tent in Kirkland. We got to do this, but
no, we definitely should. I have a couple. I don't really have
any books that are like close to Koloonna, so it'd be a bit of
a trek. But we should definitely plan one out because there's some good sites
kind of midway between Colona and Vancouver, so that'd be fun. Yeah.
Absolutely. One of our favorites is Kentucky Alane. That's definitely. Yes.
That place is great. It more on the Colona side than Vancouver side.
I will make you a track out there because it was really fun when I
went there. Yeah recently. That's awesome. That's great. Yeah. But
anyway, this is not a camping podcast, is a video game podcast.
Today we have a kind of a random smattering of topics, a couple of
surprise things, and then some games we've been playing a little bit of news
as well, but it was kind of a slower news week. We're right
on the cusp of it though, because right now is what is it gonna
be? May eighth. This episode comes out June ninth, tenth. That's
when a bunch of the showcases and things are happening, so we really don't
have much time before it really gets rolling here. Next week's episode is going
to be the review for hell Blade two. Me and Travis are playing through
that right now, so look forward to that and uh yeah, other other
shout outs here, you know, join the discord, jone the Patreon to
get episodes early and ad free. Last week did a review of Furiosa you
guys recently had a review of Apes and then the rankings coming out this week.
My game is out. You can go check it out postion problems Steam
now, which is very exciting, and let me know what you think.
Leave a review. Help me get those reviews on Steam. It helps build
the circulation of it. Yeah, any shout outs from your end of the
woods, nothing really yet, I think you got it all. June is,
you know, fast approaching. That's a busy month for us. We
had a lot of TV show not so much movies but mostly like TV shows
and retros are carrying on. And yeah, I'm not sure if you mentioned
it, but Alien that's the one. Yes, that's a good shoutout.
Yeah, Patreon a good place to go now to get those episodes nice and
early as we do that many many episodes. That one's going to be the
movies as the game one of the games. Well, so yeah, it
should be a good time. Yeah, I forgot about the game. I'll
see if I got the courage to jump on there. I think I think
me and Taylor are for sure on it. Travis is maybe, so you
don't need to, but it would be great to have you along for the
ride. If I'm at a joint, I'm not going to say anything until
like the day of just like slide. Great love that planning for I know
that you love your planning, like to generate some chaos here and there.
Yeah. Another thing I love is showing you the things that I buy that
I think are cool. And I finally I told you about this, but
it finally came in. Is my physical version of c of Stars. Oh
gorgeous. Came with this, like, yeah, I came with this case
that you can just like put around the switch version of it. It's not
like a different insert, but it's like, yeah, just like a little
cardboard case. But it looks really nice. You got like the inside there
and all that. That's beautiful. You came with a lot of stuff.
There's all these stickers for all these different characters. There's one set I'm not
showing you because it spoils a character that you probably haven't unlocked yet, but
you know, you got all the classics in there, the main squad and
all that. A very very detailed instruction booklet that is like really fun to
look through and just see like all the different buttons and different characters and explain
all the different mechanics. There's even like a notepad section, which is fun,
very reminiscent of the way games used to be, you know, when
they would come with like their actual full instruction booklet. Yeah, I miss
those. Those those had a special charm to them. And then a little
like map worldwide, and then on the other end is like a freaking Wears
with all the characters someone I swear, I think I did like almost one
hundred percent of that game. There are a couple of characters on here.
I don't recognize, so I don't know if there's more I yet to do.
I know there's a deal coming, so I don't know if it's like
they put them in there kind of for Manning. But yeah, I'm very
happy this final they came in. It looks really great. I'm excited to
stickers all over some things. The regular cover is very much like JRPG standard.
I feel like it. It reminds me of just so many other games
that have gone like that Crona Trigger. Yeah, like all those different titles.
But like the sleeve that is that is something in and of it.
I know, I think that's truly beautiful because I think it's like my favorite
of the key art from Steves, like that very blue purple, which is
very fitting for the characters. Yeah, and so yeah, it looks really
nice. And you have like the name on the side there too, you
all notice, so corgeous. Makes me feel just so terrible. I even
jump back into that game in a long time. That's why I brought it
up to put the guilt in the back of your head, to force you.
I have like a note kind of spoiler spoiler notes that I want to
talk to you about whenever you get to it. I'm not deleting that note.
I'll keep it there until the time comes, no matter how long it
takes. So yeah, that was cool. And then I also watched Todd
tell you about this, uh you know, Elder Scrolls Skyrim, one of
your favorite games of all time tomorrow in one of mine. I love the
whole series, and I feel like I had a pretty good knowledge have played
like all the spinoffs to my knowledge, but Kirkly, I just realized that
there's this whole sub series called the Elder Scrolls Travels, and there's four of
these games. Have you ever heard of these? I know, right,
I had never heard of this like two weeks ago, just randomly. But
they are essentially a series of mobile games like that. There's there's four of
them. The first two ones called Stormhold and the one's called Dawn Star.
And these like look pretty much like identical to like the original first two Older
Strolls games, like really old school, like really kind of two d art
and it looks like you just dungeon crawling. You play this on like old
flip phones or something like I don't even know how it would work, but
like it's very rudimentary. And then there's another one after that it came out
called shadow Key, and that one has a bit more of a three D
effect going on, and it actually looks really cool. And I was watching
some footage of shadow Key, I was like, man, I want to
go play this, Like it still looks old and dated, and because it
was on like a cell phone before cell phones were like, you know,
powerful gaming machines. I'm sure it's super janky, but I definitely want to
go check it out. And then what blew my mind too is apparently when
Oblivion came out, they released a phone game as well of Oblivion and it's
like a it's like a top down like isometric looking thing. I'm sure it's
looking at it right now. Yeah, but like it's just so cool that
it exists. I actually love the art style for it, and like the
kind of color palette is really wild. So I'm just so curious where it
falls into, like the story and like the scale and scope of it is
really crazy. So yeah, it's crazy. There's just like this whole like
realm of elder strolls games that I've never heard of. Because obviously there was
a card game. There's Alder strolls online, there's Blades, there's like all
these been, all these spinoffs, but yeah, I just these ones completely
went under the radar for me. I don't know if I ever had a
device that could play them when they first came out, I'm not sure,
but crazy that's hidden part of the history of the series, no kidding,
especially that it's like the same Oblivion title, Like it's not like some like
deviation, so therefore I would imagine it follows the state the same story.
And it's just so funny looking at this one image where it shows it on
the flip phone. You probably saw it, yes, yeah, Like what
was going through their minds were like, yeah, we're gonna target this audience
for the flip phone users. It's gonna be really big for our sales.
That's so strange. I know, like Eldest Girls has always been to me
the pinnacle of immersion in games. Yeah, and I feel like that is
like the least immersive experience of all time playing on this like two inch by
two inch screen or whatever it would be with like janky graphics, probably terribly
balanced. I don't know who developed it, I don't think, but does
that any hand in making that they were just like license it out for other
some other mobile, some phone company to make, I suppose. But in
that research I also found that there originally and they announced this was that you
three. There was footage and it was just like canceled later on, was
that Oblivion was gonna come to PSP back in the day. Really, I
am shocked that I never heard about that because I feel like, I guess
I didn't play it living rate when it came out, which because I was
a little behind on the tech, I didn't have a three sixty when that
game first came out, got it down the line, So I guess that's
maybe how it passed me up. But like, I feel like that's something
I would have bought a PSP back in the day just for that game had
it happened. And obviously now we have Skyrim on the switch, so you
can you have that portability of it. But yeah, I'm guessing there was
tech issues with it, and I think it was like a smaller game as
well, Like it wasn't the full open world. I think it was more
like smaller levels, probably more of a dungeon crawler sort of thing. But
even then, I probably would have bought a PSP back in the day with
my meek savings just to access that thing on the go, because it it
looks pretty good and like there's files that people have ripped so it's up online
that you can play it, like I could play it through an emula,
I guess if I want to. But it's it's crazy that that like happened.
I just totally I guess it didn't happen. It got canceled, but
the fact that it was announced, it was an official thing. They planned
it for a long time. It's it's pretty crazy. You know, they're
just part of Elder Scroll's history that completely missing from my brain there, No,
Yeah, I had never heard of that before as well. I mean,
for all of this news is brand new to me, which is funny
because it's not new news, right, like this is really old stuff then,
yeah, exactly, And especially the PSP. That's hilarious because I actually
owned a PSP for the good solid seven days or so with it's a funny
little period of my gaming history where a buddy of mine had a PSP he
and he was just like telling me about it and I got like super super
stoked. So of course it just like begged my mom to take me a
Walmart. Spent like all the money I had to get this PSP, and
I got a certain God of War game. I don't know what it was
what it was, but changed it Olympus maybe, yeah, probably it was
whatever one was on PSP, and I bought it and I was playing the
hell out of it. And that was in that time when you needed to
buy like an SD to like actually save, like there was no built in
SD at all, which I don't know if I just didn't do the research
to find that out, but I I just I never would turn off the
PSP to just save my progress. That was my strategy. So I'd like
play it on the city US going to school and then just like keep it
on in my backpack throughout the day. Eventually just died and I lost all
my progress, and I'm like, I can't do this. I just my
mom returned it to Walmart for me. I just just got my money back
without actually getting the SD card. Just completely threw in the towel and just
got rid of it. But yeah, that was like, why'd you throw
in the towel. I'm trying to piece two and two together. I know
it died, but like you could have just got in SD card, right,
you just weren't into it. You didn't like the feel of it or
something. I'm trying to remember, Like like that probably would have been around
the time that I was buying a p S three as well, So maybe
it was like, well, like I could get the SD card here,
your parents were like you can have one of the other kids exactly. Yeah,
like it might have been one of those things. But yeah, like
probably just like throwing all my money on it too. It's like, Okay,
maybe that wasn't the best idea. You know, back then you only
had so much money from Yeah, it was probably a better uh yeah at
the time, oh one hundred percent. I got way more hours of enjoying.
I mean that was like the peak MW two era too, so I
wouldn't have had that if I did and you know, swapping the PSP for
the PS three. But yeah, it was a funny little chapter of my
gaming career. I was a handheld PSB owner for five days or so.
I just remember being like like shocked that my mom was just able to return
that to Walmart, and it was just it was just completely fine because like
I had it for like five days and like didn't have a case for it
or anything like, it just had it. Yeah, but I wonder do
you think it was a case where it must have been a case where just
certain games needed more of that storage paces. I remember that was the thing
with GameCube as well, like certain games like Animal Crossing. I think SIMS
comes to mind, Like those are games that had to be sold with a
memory card because they required more space, and like the one that the console
came with, So like even if you deleted everything off your memory card,
it still wouldn't be able to like make a save file for those games.
Is that like the case maybe with God of War if like you would think
that they would like sell the game with that, But maybe that was just
a PSP issue in general. I'd never, I like, used it,
but I never owned it myself, so I would never really got in the
weeds of that kind of thing. Yeah, I'm not too sure. I
can't quite remember what all the details were around it, but yeah, I
just like I do remember playing through the beginning like three or four times,
so like it must have reset a few times there and then uh yeah,
it was just I mean, same sort of thing happened when I first got
my GameCube as well, Like I got it and I didn't have a memory
card at the time, so like I remember playing. I think I had
like Spider Man Unleashed or something and just like played it, kept it on,
you know. I think I also had Super Mario Sunshine, Like I
had a couple of games that I just didn't have a memory card. Or
I think what happened is I was in Albertasney family when I bought it,
and then I didn't have a memory card to like I like came back or
something along those lines. But yeah, yeah, it was memory cards,
man. I mean now it's a similar issue where I have like a terabyte
hard drive or whatever it is, and I still can't even play Call Duty
because it takes up like a quarter of the memory just for free to play
game, which is crazy. But no, it's funny that you know,
things like that, like the memory cards, once we're past the console generation
where we don't really need those anymore. After a while, you kind of
getting nostalgic for it, like, oh, it's fun to have memory cards.
But now, like with my switch, I'm at a point now where
I need to switch my SD cards out to play whatever game I went in
that moment, and it is so annoying. Plus you know, there's always
like updates for these games too, And like if you put if you have
like a physical game in your switch, no matter what SD card you put
in, it'll just automatically start downloading all the games on it. So specifically
in the case like metal Gear salwid the collection that I've been playing through recently,
where that has like six or seven things on it that are all technically
like different switch like widgets, like they're all their own little icon So whenever
I like switch my cards out, it just starts downloading all these mental games.
And I'm like, I'm doing this to save space. So it's it's
just obviously not built for that these days anymore. But I don't know.
I still I did like the GameCube system of it. It seems to always
work well for me. But yeah, I much prefer these days where I
mean, I guess you can still do that with external hard drives, but
I don't know, just with the digital nature of games, I don't like,
you know, you always have room for your save files, it's more
like the room to have the games on your hard drive right, oh,
one hundred percent, And like it's funny just thinking back of first time I
went over to a friend's house and they had like two memory cards in their
GameCube. It's like, well this guy's rich, Like like memory cards were
not cheap as well, like even PS one era PS two, like I
memory cards were a thing then, and like even recently, well recently this
is peak COVID time. When I was off for like a week because I
had COVID, I just played through Win Win Waker. That was my like
dedication. I just like like three days straight. I just played Win Waker
and that was it. Just being sick at home and uh, just like
looking at my cause I have my same GameCube with the same memory card.
Just seeing like my old save files of like Tony Hawk's Underground or like those
old titles, and just seeing like the last time I like like the save
data. It's just like this is kind of cool. It's like a little
uh time capsule sort of these old saves. So I finally have an old
Animal Crossing save on there. I should go back and visit my island from
fifteen years ago. I think Shaye does actually clearly disheveled, there's no one
living in the town, just covered in the meats. Because like, uh,
for Super Mario Double Dash, Super Mario Kart Double Dash, that was
like Shay's game, and like her memory card is in there because she had
like all the save data on there, and yeah, there's some old Animal
Crossing saves we've seen on there. And it's funny too just seeing like a
certain game that I like rented at a Blockbuster and like I just rented it,
but I still have that save data. I'm like, I'm never deleted
that. That's just that's just a little memory for me. Yeah, I
feel like for me, it's always like gotta have that Melee save, gotta
have I keep all my fire emblem once path of Radiance, I still always
saves, definitely Tony Hawk's Underground, and then other ones get lost to time
or like those Animal Crossing ones I got. You know, eventually I would
delete it because I wanted like that was a big, juicy memory card and
I wanted on it, so I delete it for other stuff and being able
to copy them or like getting a friend saved, Like that's a big thing
in like Melee because people have like mauded versions of the game that has different
unlocks and stuff, and see the transfer that between people at tournaments, which
is kind of a fun thing that you know still happens in the modern day
just because of how the the tech works of it. I yeah, there's
some there's something special about that era in time. But I like that I
don't have to think about saves anymore. And Steam is really good about cloud
saves, and like, oh yea, wherever I'm playing it has my saves.
That's much better, much more convenient these absolutely, it's so convenient.
Like I remember just building my computer, which is funny, always talk about
how it's like, oh, on its last legs now, But just like
thinking if I needed to get like a CD ROM and like maybe I don't
need one actually now that's just such a thing of the past, like like
no one has CBS or anything like that, just the way the technology I
am the last bastion I think I do still have are here. But when
I do upgrade, I'm probably gonna get a new computer this year and nice,
yeah, not gonna get a a disc drive for it. Don't need
that anymore. Yeah, times especially come, you can always get an external
you know, you always get extra ram if you have those old old discs
still laying around. Mm hmm uh. All of that, we're talking about
these other Scrolls Travels games. I wanted to bring up that, Like I
forget if I've mentioned to you or we talked about it, but like the
other the Elder Scrolls Castles is a game that's coming out at some point like
this year or next year, and that's like a phone game. I'd compare
it's like Fallout Shelter, but for Elder Scrolls, essentially where you're building and
like managing a castle. I think it's out in like some region now,
like maybe in Europe. They're doing like testing early versions of it. But
yeah, I think it's been like a bit since we've had a mobile game.
Like there was Blades, which was also on consoles or at least on
Switch. The card game must have been on phones, I would imagine maybe
it wasn't, maybe that's why it tanked. I don't really even remember,
but yeah, I feel like it's been a while since Elder Strolls has done
a phone game, So I'm excited for that one, just because follow Shelter
was cool and it's still getting support like they added characters from the show.
You know, they're still adding stuff to it, and so I think I
kind of want something like that with other Scrolls, that I can just quickly
jump in and get a taste, whereas you know with Marwin or Oblivion or
Scar if I'm jumping in there, like I don't know, usually I'm like
getting sunk into it again. But it's nice to do something you can just
kind of check in on here and there. Oh yeah, absolutely, that'd
be fantastic. I must have known about this Elder Schulls Castle just forgot about
it, but just like looking at it, I don't know what it is,
but just the aesthetic just does not scream Elder Schulls to me. Maybe
it's just I'm so used to like these recent game engines that they've had,
where I mean, it's a very different game obviously, but you're right,
it's just kind of like League of Legends or something. Yeah. Yeah,
definitely more like an animated type art style, which, like, I don't
know, Elder Scrolls is kind of weird in that way. Like even if
you just look at the different games like like Arena and Daggerfall, they kind
of have a similar look to them, Marwin is like very kind of washed
out and it's color, but it still has a lot of like crazy alien
these sort of things to it. And then Oblivion's more like really bright,
vibrant fantasy, and then Skyrim once again is kind of like dreary, but
a very different dreary than all sorts of different areas. But I but even
with that, I still think there is, yeah, some cohesion to the
visual style, even like Elder Scrolls Online feels like it fits that mold.
Yeah, well, but yeah, when I look at this, You're right,
it doesn't really call out to me with the Elder Scroll's visual So I
don't know. Maybe when it's officially out or finished, maybe it'll look a
bit different. But I don't know. Yeah, you're right, maybe maybe
that won't fill that Elder s Girl's inch for me. Then won't even really
look at like it that much. We'll see. It's funny that you mentioned
Fallout Shelter though, because I completely forgot about that, even though like I
did dabble in a bit of it when because that was when Fallout four got
announced, right, that's when that was out. Yeah, I'm trying,
I'm trying to it might have come out like a couple months beforehand. Like
I think maybe what happened is that June direct they like, yeah, Shadow
dropped Shelter, and then the game came out in the Fall, so they're
kind of like it was kind of used as a marketing tool for four I
believe. Yeah, but no, just that just that idea of like a
like you said, just like a return a phone game that you can return
to without too much commitment, like these main titles really require, you know,
I alluded to that. I've been dabbling a certain Bethesda game really that
definitely takes up a lot of time. But to just have something kind of
like Marvel Snap where you can just pick up and go and never really not
feel the need to like stay commuted, even if there is like a certain
battle pass that you want to participate in, like you don't really have to
grind for it to enjoy. Just just a nice little I was gonna say,
like Slice of Life game, but it's not really. It's more so
you're just taking a slice out of your life to pick it up fun.
Yeah, I guess it kind of depends on your relationship with it. Yeah,
but you just mentioned two games that I know you want to talk about
today, so yeah, and whatever order you wish it, tell me about
what you've been playing lately. Yeah, I'll quickly start off with Marvel Snap.
More so just because you know, last time I was talking to you,
that was a great discussion by the way that we had on Marvel.
So we gotta do that again soon because the june's all right around the corn,
so we'll do the next month preview or something. Yeah, No,
that's that'd be fantastic because I was going really hard after after we talk,
more so just because you you had kind of got me pumped on certain strategies
that I could use with my current cards, and I think that was probably
right before I was I acquired Ultron and then I just like made like a
heavy Ultron deck I've like only been using. Yeah, I've like only been
using that deck, and it got to the point where, like I was
having a lot of success with it. I think I grind like my peak
rank, which is like platinum era, which like I don't think i'd ever
gotten over gold before. I wasn't really like going hard in the past was
mostly just like trying on different decks, but this one I was like,
well, this deck is just amazing and I just keep winning, so let's
just keep going. And now I'm encountering things that I just don't have that
I just getting completely bobbed by. Like there's certain instances where I'm like,
I got this guy, It's so easy, and then he plays like an
arnhem Zola and it's just like, yeah, well, what the hell am
I supposed to do with this? Like I can encounter this, I need
like, uh, who is it that? Uh? Is it Cosmo?
That on reveals like I you need to like rethink my counters in a certain
aspect. And it's also like I've played this deck so much that I'm not
necessarily bored of it, but I just kind of want to try something new.
I haven't been acquiring too many like fun cool cards, so I've been
forced to make some just i don't know, trial decks with the cards that
I do have, and it hasn't really like hit too much where I've like
found that like almost Eureka deck where I'm just like obsessed with the game.
Again, I mostly was just grinding for the keys because after we were talking
about that, and now you know my name suggests I'm the key. I'm
holding on three keys right now. I am ready. I'm ready for someone
to drop in. I got a little bit excited when I saw Black Knight
on there, because that was a card that I have been wanting to get
for a while. But I was like, uh, Nomora, I know
I was, I had the same train. I really do want Black Knight.
I don't really care about Namora, so I'm gonna wait. Yeah,
and Scar, I think is the other one on there right now, And
it's like, yeah, like that's a good it's a good card, and
like like all of them are decent cards that I don't have, but they're
just not really screaming excitement for me right now. So I'm just kindahelming too,
So I don't think you're I think it was a good call to uh
yeah, wait, wait till you have four and then and then start thinking
about things more seriously. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or so that's kind
of where I'm at right now. Like I'm still playing like every day just
to you know, jump in those little daily missions or challenges and just stay
active on it, not going so hard like I was going in the early
months. And it's kind of like my EBB and flow with the game too,
where I do just get those obsessive periods where I am just like constantly
it's like, oh, I've done all my dailies, Like, come on,
I need more missions here, I need to get some more currencies.
But no, I'm still having lots of fun with it, and I'm looking
forward to next month to to see what those with them. Yeah, a
couple of the new cards look pretty fun. It's the Eternals month, which
I know you're not an Eternals fan, but the cardibilities are pretty nice.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, So that's where I'm at right
now. I'm holding on the three keys and uh, I think the next
one is kind of on the horizon. But yeah, that's where I'm on.
A Marvel Snap and then my other big game that I've been jumping into
pretty much one hundred percent, because you know, Shane and I have been
going through the show a Fallout, and we pretty slowly we're going through,
like I think we have one more episode which we might watch, you know,
after this episode that I record with you. And it's been really like
in the show, but I'm not really here to talk about the show.
I'm here to talk about jump back in a Fallout four and uh yeah,
I have not played this game since around the time that we did the review,
which is like earlier. Yeah, one of the first episodes. Yeah,
and I like, I, man, what a great game that is.
Like I I wasn't a super Fallout fan like I. I remember.
I think Fallout three was a game that I was like really obsessed with,
but one that I never had Like I just like when I found out what
it was, I was just like watching YouTube to like walk throughs of it
or maybe had seen it at a friend's house, and just like the idea
of it was blowing my mind at that time. I probably didn't put two
and two together. They're both Bethesda, and it's like Elder Scrolls and then
fall Out, and that's just probably why they were in the same vein of
games that I really loved because I had played a little bit of Oblivion back
in the day, but that was kind of it. And again another title
that I just played at a cousin's house or something, so that it was
like a game that I got like an appetizer for, but I never got
the full course. So it was just like I was always longing for it.
Always wanting it and never got the chance to really play it until later
in life, So I never played Follow New Vegas. Probably watched a friend
play it a little bit at then, but I mean, yeah, way
back in the day, we did a review follow four and I absolutely loved
it initially, and there's a lot of that game that I just had never
really done, Like I hadn't done any of the DLCs or anything like that.
I have the game. I think I originally bought it on PS four
and I don't know if it's because it's in my games catalog or whatever,
but I just had like a free PS five upgrade, which was kind of
news to me, So that was nice. And I mean the game runs
nice and smooth and looks great and which is fantastic. But in that version,
I also have like all the DLCs, which was kind of surprising to
me. Like I think it's like Nuka what is it New World and the
NUCA world Far Harbor. Far Harbor was was the big one I remember you
tell me about and haven't gotten there yet. On my current playthrough, it's
I'm kind of just leveling up my character and kind of a unique way from
where I play in the past. It's funny. I don't know if you
do know about the play style for like Elder Schulls games, but like stealth
Archers is just like the scumbag class in my opinion, which I'm guilty of
because I've definitely played a lot of stealth Archers where it's just a really easy
way to play the game. You're just I feel like I haven't heard the
angle of it being the scumbag class. I thought, oh no, we're
just like that's what everyone likes to do because it's fun and like it is
powerful. But yeah, they had this scumbag new one. That's interesting.
Yeah, I mean shuts out to my buddy Carson. He's the one that
first told me about stealth Archers, which is funny because he was telling me
about it while I was playing that play through like on a certain sky This
is probably like back in high school or something, but uh yeah, he's
telling me about it. I'm like, oh, yeah, what about that.
It's just like everybody that you know, they just they just jump in
there, they just make a stealth Archer. They're not really experiencing the game
like like you should, just trying to And I'm like damn you just like
open my eyes on maybe how I should change my most critical There's nothing more
satisfying than just sniping enemy and the rag doll of them just flying across the
rooms. There's reasons, there's reasons why people are attracted with that play style,
I think more so than just the the efficiency of it, because it
is, you know, it is very effective and there's no bows and arrows
and fall at least to my knowledge, but you can definitely make a similar
play style where you're doing stealth and like snipers, And that's pretty much my
first playthrough that I didn't fall out for. But this time around, I'm
really trying to change it up. I'm I'm trying to like really get creative
with my perks. I'm really focusing like most of my perks in ways to
access things that so like like maybe hacking or pickpocketing or not pock but yeah,
lock picking like those ones, just so I'm able to access everything in
the world, and then really going hard on like the gun mods, the
armor upgrades, like the science ones, just like things that I can really
manipulate my own weaponry. And it's been really fun, like focusing stats on
like explosives and stuff. I felt like first time I played the game,
I probably threw like one grenade or something like, I just never really used
that mechanic. But just like the efficiency of using like a pulse grenade against
since like I didn't even know those were really in the game until this current
play through, and they are so good, just like an emp on these
robots likes it works exactly how you had wanted to, and just other things
like that. Just now I'm starting to like get my strength up so that
I can get more of like the armor perks and really just get stated up
because I want to be able to make some really buffed up like melee weapons,
because melee weapons is not something I ever really like thought of going into
in a followup game, just because it is so range, like there's guns
that and everything, but it it can be very satisfying. From a few
videos I've seen online of just people like mass melee stats and you're reminded me
of one of my most memorable Fallout New Vegas runs. Well, and this
is when I had played the game multiple times. So now I'm like,
Okay, what kind of RAIDO build can I do? Now? And the
build was just yeah, melee weapons and explosives, so no guns whatsoever,
and just having like, Okay, I have a range option with the explosives,
but usually I'm just using that to like even just a ton of landmines
to cheese people a bit, and then getting like down and dirty with the
melee weapons. That was a very fun, very fun build, uh to
use. And yeah, I don't know, that's just one of the favorite
parts about going back to those games. There's just so much of variety to
the weapons and all the other things too, Like there's so many skill sets
outside of just combat stuff too, oh one hundred percent, and like just
the cause like those games are really just playgrounds, like like like with with
How Nutty, some of the just the big explosive guns that you can get,
or just like the more sciencey ones like they're there is a lot of
guns in that game that I just never really even accessed in my first play
through, Like I think I just got really comfortable and like I was probably
just using like a certain handgun and then like rifles, like that's probably all
I was really using on like my first play through of the game, And
now like I'm really trying to go into like like going into it, I
was like my role play aspect that I was bringing to the game. It
is just like a really heavy science ye type character, So like of course
that's what influenced all, like the hacking and like just like tweaking out my
gun mods and stuff like that. And then once I've started to level up
a little bit more, it's like, man, this could be like incredibly
strong if you are able to get some of these science mods and some of
these guns and really just spending time like on the workshow like the workshop table
even like the chems that you can make can really buff your character like quite
strong, especially if you get a few perks in it. So just things
like that, I think it's making me look at the game entirely different from
what I kind of saw it before. And it's I mean, it's been
refreshing jumping back to it, just because I'd been so long since I played.
I mean, like it's damn well been close to a decade now,
so since that game came out, which is pretty wild to think. Yeah,
but yeah, I know it's it's been really fun and just playing it,
like I remember the main story, but there's still a lot of side
quests and stuff that I that I hadn't gone through that I'm excited too,
Like like the what is it the Far Harbor Far Coast that one, I'm
really excited. Yeah, that's what I'm excited about because I remember when that
DLC came out, which again is like early podcast you tell me about it,
and it's just it sounds yeah new world. I mean as as it
sounds like, it really is just an amusement park where there's just like tons
of combat trials and it's like a fun setting. But yeah, there isn't
like the story element of it isn't that cool. But like Far Harbor introduced
a lot of really interesting stuff lowerwise, and like things that tie in to
certain things in experience in the main game. So it's a it's a good
one. What are you doing for quite like are you going down any certain
faction stuff right now? You do more side quests and exploring what's your play
style right now? So for this one, like I have a new character
from my previous one. I think I had the option to like bring in
my previous save data just because I had it on PS four, but I
was like, I'm just gonna start fresh. Yeah, and I'm I'm I
think I did, like like I have Valentine, like I met him,
and that's kind of like where I was at in the main story. And
then now what have I been doing? Not the Brotherhood faction. I think
I kind of made the decision going into it. Then I'm just gonna go
like full institute on this play through because I don't I don't think I was
with them the first time. You know, spoilers for how that game goes,
you kind of choose what faction you are for like the main story or
at least the ending of it. But that's what I was thinking about going
into from the get go. But I haven't really gotten to that point in
the main story yet to really make those decisions. But no, I've been
kind of just like not necessarily free roaming, but doing a lot of the
what are they called the Minutemen, like like settlement fact, I'm not building
the settlements, but just really like going out and like saving them. And
I just found it it was a nice way to kind of get all over
the Commonwealth because they do send you at all these various places to get these
settlements up and running. So I'll go here and there, and then on
the route, I'll just find like a random store that I'll go into and
then just like I don't know, just just exploring it. And it's kind
of a way that I've like when I do new runs on Skyron, for
example, like because I have played that game so many times, I kind
of have like a set role play element to like a certain playthrough and like
a lot of exploring, no fast trial or anything like that. And that's
why I'm doing more so on this Like I'll have because of a certain quest,
I'll have an objective and then it's like, hey, how can I
get there in a creative sense, And then I'll get there and then of
course get sidetracked on like meeting like a certain character that brings me on a
side quest, or or maybe I'll go into a store and just get one
shot by like a really high level like Moss that I wasn't expecting. It's
like, oh, wow, okay, I guess I guess I can't go
into there. But then I'll just kind of keep exploring in a certain area,
so I've kind of just been wandering and like it's funny because like as
I was mentioned, like I kind of have a set roleplay strategy. But
then I just totally get like sidetracked and deviated off. But so I haven't
really been going down any like major storylines yet. What was the most recent
one I did? It was, Yeah, No, I think my most
recent one I did was actually like the main story one with Valentine when you
are taking on catalog like like, that was my most recent mission. And
then I was just doing tasks here and there in Diamond City, which is
just such a great city. I completely forgot about all the certain characters in
there. So yeah, I know, I'm I'm I'm just looking forward to
just wandering and boosting up my character and really just getting maybe overpowered with certain
berks that I can make my character, and and I just I feel like
I never really truly understood the full potential of what you can do when you
like upgrade your weapons and stuff and like really boost up those perks. Like
I think I had like a certain shotgun that I just like improved the max
stat and it went from like sixty one damage to like one hundred and twenty
one, and I'm like, wow, I just doubled my damage just from
like one simple upgrade. So I can't wait to see what it is when
I'm like max level on a certain ranked or sorry like perks for the gun
mods or whatever the perks are called there. So yeah, yeah, no,
I'm I'm having lots of fun with this play through, and yeah,
I'm excited to kind of give you an update there once I've boost up my
character a little bit more. Perhaps, Yeah, no, I remember,
I really enjoyed the customization aspect of that game. I think that was like
when the game came out maybe one of the biggest things that stood out to
me, especially as like an older Scrolls fan too, where they're usually is
like somewhat limited, like you can maybe do an enchantment or something like that,
but just with yeah, with the guns and the visuals too, and
of putting all sorts of weird wonky things on it. I think it like
fed really well back into the exploration too, where you're like, Okay,
I'm looking for like certain objects in the world because they break down into the
different parts of like oh man, it's not screws and adhesive in it,
and now you need that for the certain part, So like you're kind of
looking out for other things in the world too. In a more meaningful way.
And then yeah, obviously the Armory has that that same sort of customization
to it, so that was like, yeah, definitely one of the biggest
improvements I think, uh in formula like from either of their series at that
time, oh, one hundred percent. And like I think seeing stuff like
that, whether it's the layered armor system where you have like shoulders, you
know, it's not just like iron armor, it's not just like one thing
that's everything, like those aspects that they brought into those games, or the
customization with the guns. Obviously, if you're translating that to like Elder Scrolls,
you probably can't tweak out you know, like you can't put a red
dot on a long sword for example. But but like I'm sure you're again
with to be honestly, yeah, it's true, but like you can still
kind of customize it in some aspects. So I'm really full that they translate
some of those systems into the next Older Schools game, which would be really
Yeah, I'd love to see more of customization like that. Was it Oblivion
that they had so you could like make spells in Yeah, yeah, Marwin
and Oblivion had the ability to make spells and Marwin had like Marwin had,
like each pauldron was an armor you had brace or armor you had, like
your chest, your greaves, boots, helmets you had like so much like
more so in that way, you could customize it a little bit more and
you could have like enchantments on each of those things, so you could do
some crazy stuff. O. Yeah, the spell making was definitely a big
removal that they had in Skyrim minutes. Yeah, So then I hope that
they would bring back. I don't know if they would. I feel like,
but this is not a big company to go back on things. Like
usually once they make some change, they keep going in that like one direction.
But I'd like to be proven wrong. That's like my biggest fear about
the leveling system, I think because I think initially I love the idea of
what they did with Skyrim, just because I was a very indecisive care like
you know, maker of my cares. I'm like, am I gonna want
to be an archer in twenty levels? Like I don't know, Like like
I like the freedom of it, But now that I've just played so much
of them, Like now when I play that game and I go back,
I like make a character and like self nerve in that aspect, like right,
like if I'm level forty seven, I'm a level forty seven archer or
like whatever my playthrough is, or like just a two handed user, Like
that's all my focus is on it. I understand why they bring it in.
And of course you can always make the argument what's like, well,
you can just do what I do and just like just self limit yourself.
But it's more so than giving the tools. But I think there's there's a
certain there's certain specialty specialness that's not really word, just just a certain zenise
qua about when they have those like old school RPG elements in their games.
And how do you feel about the the perk system in Fallout four? Now
then, like almost ten years later, how are you thinking of that system
with the uh what I put the putting the stars in a little chart there.
Yeah, I was a lot more or down for back then, and
I you know, don't want to put words your mouth. I felt like
you were pretty against it, like initially just just for how you unlock things,
and I definitely feel that way, Like again just comparing it to Skyrim,
like if I come across a master lock, why can't I try and
pick that master lock and just like get lucky. You know. Now it's
just like, can't crack that lock. That's too tough, like whatever your
character says whenever you come across those, and it's like, okay, even
if I save up my perk points and I want to max that out,
I can't do it until I'm like level fourteen or or you know, like
whatever it might be level twenty two to get those master locks. So I
really don't like those aspects to it. And also just okay, or as
I was mentioning to you, like I I've been trying to level up like
my armor level or my whatever the perk one is for melee weapons, I
can't get that unless I have certain strength stats, which I kind of forgot
about. So when I was like first making my character, I'm like,
oh, yeah, let's do like two in strength, you know, like
like eight in perception, and like you kind of like I wish I had
the chart there when I was making that, so then I knew which perks
I wanted to get first. Where it's it's a little bit annoying just ye
just how it goes. But those games have never really had a respec in
the way that a lot of other RPGs kind of have these days outside of
like mods and stuff. But yeah, I mean I've always been hard on
like Skyrim's RPG elements just because like I'm a purist, you know, I've
played so much mar Winn Toblivion, but like it is a system that I
can look at now and but yeah, there are a ton of improvements it
made from Oblivion and Marlwin, which, like, I don't know, there
is more fun to like some of this perk system. In other ways,
it's a little bit limited or they took out certain skill types from those games.
But Followed is like the Fall of four is just worse than Followed three
in every way for me, Like there isn't really like a shining light of
how it could be better. Like there's there's other things in the game of
course that are huge improvements, but I feel like the RPG element of it
is signific worse. And then seventy six I didn't really like what they were
doing there either, So yeah, I don't I don't know what the future
of that would look like, but I'm I'm hopeful that like to some extent,
like Elder Girls and followed stay in their own lane in terms of RPG
mechanics. So I'm sure the next Elder Strolls is still gonna have a really
good system. Yeah, I hope, even if it's just like a little
bit like even if it's very close to Skyrim Whig's a couple of minor tweaks,
I think I'd be fine with bad. I don't like, I absolutely
love the way that you go to your perk tree, at least in Skyri,
when you just looked at the stars and then they just come up with
the constellations. That is like, oh, that is a chef's kiss,
like the like the look of the chart I think you know. And follow
four but nothing will beat that, uh, the astrological symbols and and all
that and the like that's something that they've had at least since morowin, right,
like just like the different star signs, like when you're making your character
there, it's like you're born prob. I can't remember, yeah, just
because I haven't played deay Er Fall as much, but yeah, ask you
how did the perk system work? And follow three because I can't remember what
it was like, Like obviously you had the same I think it's called the
special is the acronym, but like was there like gun maniac or whatever the
hell they're they're called like like the set perks. Yeah, I'm trying to
remember how much fallout for removed, because that's definitely thing with the elder strollers.
You look at like how many just individual skills there are and like daggerfall
and like I'm making up numbers here, but it's like sixty, and then
Marwin has like forty five, and then up literally has like thirty, and
then Scarrim has like fifteen or something. You know, like they just kind
of simplified and like they streamlined things, like instead of all these different weapon
types, there's just like one hand and a two hand, and then that
breaks out in other things and they like took out mysticism, you know,
other little things like that. So when it comes to that was a big
one I remember in Marwin, right, Yeah, jumping around everywhere, yes,
which is one of the It was an annoying one, like one you
could grind, but also one that would just happen when you don't want to
level it up if you're trying to mindmax things. So it'd be annoying.
But so When I think about followed, it's hard for me to pinpoint,
like what did followut for remove a lot of those, but essentially in followed
three in New Vegas, which kind of have the same system, is you
are, yeah, doing your special stats at the beginning of the game,
and then when you level up, you get like whatever it is, like
fifteen points that you can allot different places, and so you can put those
wherever you want, so like by not like by like level five or something.
If you just put literally all fifteen of your stats every level into one
thing, like you could max it out, obviously you'd be majorly lacking on
other things, like usually want to balance it to some extent. And then
after you do that every like I think two levels, you would get to
pick a perk on top of that, and then those perks were based on
what your stats were, so like, once you reach forty and explosives,
you can get this thing or or some of them were like if you have
both explosives, maybe I don't pick up a random thing here like explosives of
big guns. Maybe you'd get like a specific percut unlock at that point,
and then certain perks you could upgrade and then your intelligence stat determined how many
like of those points you would get every time you leveled up, So like
intelligence was really powerful because then you would just like be more efficient every single
level you beget any more things. But then naturally you always have been in
that same way kind of closed off from certain elements of the build because of
like, yeah, if you put two in strength, there's certain perks deals
never be able to get until I mean, there is ways in the game
to increase your special stats, but that's very rare that you find those,
Like I forget if it's skill books or related to a bubblehead. I think
maybe it's a bubble head, I think, Yeah, so I think you
can only get like each stat upgraded once from that, right, that's how
it is the followed four from my Yeah, yeah, so so I don't
know in follow four, is it just putting the stars and the things or
because they took all the stat part of like here you get fifteen points to
a lot to different skills, right, yeah, So you choose your specials
at the start of the game, and then every time you level up,
you get a perk point and you can either put that in to upgrade your
specials so it's funny. I don't know why I remember this so vividly,
but on our review, Travis didn't know that you could like scroll down on
the perk tree, so he literally like maxed out all the specials before he
went to the second layer, which is just hilarious to me. But no,
yeah, so like, although you can kind of put them wherever you
want, if you only have two strength, you can only go two down
that ladder on the strength perks, right, and then of course there's really
strong ones once you get to like level ten or whatnot. But yeah,
that's that's how it's done. And yeah, so it's pretty much just like
less than what you do and fallo up three in New Vegas every level,
but then like every level you get a perk, whereas yeah, yeah,
pretty sure it's every two levels in in uh yeah, those games. So
yeah, just a I don't I really like really nerding out of the but
like the specific numbers of the stats, yeah, and doing that kind of
thing. So that was definitely a detractor where oh, rather than getting to
do like fifteen fun things every level up, I get to do one like
slightly more powerful thing, yeah, which I guess didn't feel as good for
me. But I guess you know a silver lining as well for this when
we're we're thinking head of Elegric six right now, is that I actually love
Starfield's RPG system leveled up. I thought it was really really good. It
took the elements of Skyrim that I enjoyed and made them even better in my
opinion. So I think that's another good sign of where we could go with
UH with other scrolls interesting. Maybe one day I'll get the experience Starfield.
It's one that I've still been very fortunate to not be spoiled on, like
at all, like I I've to this day. I don't think I've seen
like any gameplay other than what was like the early trailers. I'm I'm just
somehow I'm good at that, like whether it's a show that's until you put
all your you know, your notepads with all your spoiler topics, keep killing
that out because I'm sure one day I'll be able to jump in there.
Yeah. No, that's awesome. I'm so glad you've been because when you
first mentioned that earlier that you have been playing follow I'm like, that's weird.
Everyone else in the world, like watch the show and then has been
playing followed again. I'm like, you haven't watched the show, but I
like that's a little two and one surprise you had for me there. So
yeah, exactly, a little double whammy on you. Good stuff. How
about we take a quick break and we'll be right back. Okay, we
are back. I have three games to shout out today. I'm gonna start
with Wolfenstein the Old Blood. So two reasons why I decided to pick up
this game. I mean, one, this is reason Zero's is not.
One of the two reasons is that it's just on game pass courds, easily
accessible, I can play it. One is I I really was craving just
like a first person shooter campaign. I don't really play those these days,
right, Like if I'm playing the first person shoots, like I'm playing counter
Strike and I'm doing competitive stuff, or I'm playing Warzone with you guys and
that's competitive, or if I do play Halo these days, I'm just jumping
in to play a couple of online matches. And so I feel like it's
been a while since I've done like just a straight up first person shooter campaign.
I've done, like, you know, played arcade games, recently,
but it's differ than just like a straight up single player first person shooter campaign
all about just gunning enemies down and walking through this world, you know.
And then the other reason is because Indiana Jones coming out later this year,
and that's from Machine Games, and I've wanted to go back and check out
some of other machine games games. So me, Taylor and Scheffs, we've
talked about maybe doing a one episode retrospective of one of these Wolfenstein games.
Just I know it's not really like maybe it doesn't make a ton of sense
for a Nana Jones, but just to like do some research on machine games.
And so I'm I don't know if we're gonna do that. It kind
of depends on when the game comes out we which we don't have a release
date yet. But I wanted to play, so I wanted to play a
game that wasn't gonna be in way of that. I didn't want to like
play that game early, you know, so I went and played this game
instead. So Wolfenstein the Old Blood is kind of the prequel to the newer
Wolfenstein games, like the reboot of them. But before I talk about that,
I actually want to like dive into the history of this because I went
on a huge rabbit hole just looking through in the similar I was looking to
that rabbit hole of Eldest Girl's travels. I was just looking into Wolfenstein because
I was kind of curious about the series. I got a question for you,
because you know, I love when you go down these rabbit holes,
whether it's a rock climber that or not, a rock climber, a cave
explorer that just goes for terrible track climbing too, is another rabbit hole.
But yes, you like, is there a certain time, like is it
like two in the morning or something you can't sleep and you're just going down
these rabbit holes? Or does it start early and then it gets to two
am because you're just going so deep, or is it like early morning,
like like, is it a set time frame or is it just any time?
Just the curiosity could get anytime of day, man, anytime of day.
You know, it's I feel like a lot of time for video games
specific things. It is maybe I just hear someone say something in passing on
a podcast, I'm like, oh, that sounds interesting, I'll look into
it, and then then the rabbit hole begins. Yeah. Other times it's
like this, right. Yeah, I played through Wolfenstein and I was trying
to pick which game to play, and then I was just looking at the
wikipedo. I'm like, god, damn, there are so many more games
than I ever realized. So then I played the game and then I was
like, Okay, now I want to learn and about what I've missed and
what all these other games are. So it really happens anytime day, and
YouTube will get me too, because YouTube and that goddamn algorithm is so good.
It's too smart. Yeah, did you see that I sent you?
This video is when you were campings. You probably didn't watch it yet,
but the skyrom video, Okay, I saw it on there. I forgot
to come back to it. No, thanks for reminding me watch that,
because this is a This is another rabbit hole. I just discovered this YouTuber
named Anny Austin and he does all sorts of crazy videos. Fifty three PM.
You sent me that video, by the way, So yeah, that
was a late night rabbit hole. But that video is hilarious because he just
goes through and like it's just him trying to He just follows one river to
see like where it goes, and like the different waterfalls that go into it
and like where it splits off, and like it sounds very mundane, but
he's just you know, a funny YouTuber guy, so it makes it entertaining.
But then the rabbit hole is that, like his other videos are hilarious,
and he has he has a multiple series of videos Kirkling where he just
goes through and like what is the unemployment rate of White Run? That's the
title of video. And he was through and he just finds every NPC in
the city, determines what their job is, if they have a job,
all this stuff. It's absolute hilarious. So showing with do you remember what
MSIMS is? I'm always cus he definitely, Yeah, he came across him
in the video and he mentioned the Cloud District often so that I can't remember.
I can't remember if he was employed or not. But anyway, another
number, another rabbit hole of mine. But yeah, Wolfenstein. Here's a
crazy fact. Wolfenstein, the first game came out the same year that Mario
was invented. Isn't that insane? That first game came out in nineteen eighty
one. Is a old series, one of the new old series, just
because of like the side by side comparison I've seen from like Doom or Quaked,
like that early first person view. But I I like, I knew
it was old. But just when you say the year Mario was invented,
that that's that's shocking to me technically, because you know, Mario is introduced
in Donkey Kong when jumping around there, So technically Wolvestein came up before the
first Mario game even came out, which is insane to me. But yeah,
I had the same perception where oh, yeah, Wolfenstein was like one
of those first first person shooters that came out in the nineties, but no,
it turns out the first game came out in nineteen eighty one and it
was not a first person shooter because this was before that genre even existed.
But it's like a top down very like it's a very old game, so
visuals are very limited. Looks like an NES game. I think it's an
old PC game. And yeah, it's just like a top down kind of
stealth, stealth sort of game. I don't even know if there's really much
action in it, so that's that's crazy. And it was called Castle Wolfenstein,
and there was like a sequel, a very similar looking sequel called Beyond
Castle Wolfenstein. And then after that, in nineteen ninety two there's Wolfenstein three
D Sphere of Destiny, and that's where that's what we think of when we
meet you and we think of Wolfenstein. So that's where that kind of element
of it started. And then there was another one Returned to wolf Castle,
Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. And then in two thousand and eight, I
thought this was hilarious. There's a game Wolfenstein RPG. So there was like
a first person shooter hybrid RPG thing, which I think is more like turn
based but is still a first person shooter. So I don't know how that
works, but it's a game I really want to go back and check out
and hear about. And then there was another game in two thousand and nine,
Wolfenstein, and then that leads us into twenty fourteen, which is when
Machine Games, the studio that we were talking about earlier, started working on
it with Wolvenstegin in the New Order. And then the next year they released
The Old Blood, which is what I'm gonna talk about in a bit,
and then Wolfsneide two the New Colossus, and then that takes us into Young
Blood and Cyberpilot, which were like the two kind of spinoff games that came
out in twenty nineteen. So yeah, that's a very brief history. Obviously,
I've only played one of these games, so I'm not a historian on
it by any means, but yeah, like a much wilder history than I
thought. And I think even in that like what is that like ten twelve
games, there's like four or five, maybe even six developers that've worked on
these games, so it's all been all sorts of different people making them.
Like the one that looks like Doom was made the Doom team back in the
day, and then Machine Games was like formed to create this new game in
twenty fourteen. So yeah, some really interesting stuff with this, like very
under the radar series, Like I feel like the name is kind of iconic,
but like it when people talk about this, like I never really hear
them talk about specific games, so I feel like it is kind of a
weird, obscured sort of series that has never been at the forefront of first
person shooters, but it's certainly a big part of the genre's history. So
yeah, I feel like if you showed like specifically Wolfenstein like three D.
I feel like if you showed like an image of that to someone, they
probably would have just guessed it would be like Doom. Like it, it
does seem kind of like the you know, like the like the younger brother
maybe of Doom. I don't know which one came up first. Probably Doom,
I would imagine, yeah, but just yeah, I don't know why
that's I guess Doom is just an easier title to say, Like, I
don't know why that stands out more for people to remember. Maybe just the
the fact you're just battling demons and that's just just what those games are.
But like even the new ones, like they've they look pretty similar to me,
Like when when I'm comparing the two obviously doing there's a lot more crazy
demons and whatnot, but just the overall aesthetic of the characters. And I
haven't played either of the new ones, whether it's from machine games or what
is it? Is it ID software? Yeah, Like I don't know how
they feel, but they they it just looks like they would play pretty similarly.
So it's it's funny how even the new versions in my mind seem pretty
similar. But uh no, it's so funny that you jumped into this,
because I'm pretty sure the last time I was on side Quest, I was
mentioning how I saw on the PlayStation catalog they had all the Wolfenstein games just
on there, and I'm like, man, I am kind of looking for
a you know, just a simple shooter storyline, like I think the most
recent one i'd gone through on that was titan Fall two, and I truly
love that game. I think I beat it in one city. That's I
got to do that one soon. Absolutely fantastic game. I never played the
first one. I remember Briggs back in the day was a big titan Fall
fan. Yes, and Wolfenstein fan as well. Oh there you go.
So it goes at hand. So I'm probably gonna love this when I eventually
get to it, because I really love titan Fall too. But no,
I'm it's cool to hear that you jumped in there for that and like starting
on on this one. That's kind of interesting. Yeah, would you recommend
that because it is a prequel? Yeah, I mean, since I haven't
played the New Order yet, I don't know, like it's hard for me
to to recommend it, but I recommend it as like the starting point of
it. So I'll have to report back on that angle of it, but
yeah, once again, yeah, we'll sign a new Order. Then the
prequel came out, and then the sequel came out. I'd hate that it's
called the New Order and the New Clausus, like you call maybe the new
one the New Order, like when it starts the franchise again, but then
you just call it the Big Colossus or I don't know, something else,
like I don't I don't like the idea that there's two news in the title
there. But also I found it interesting that, like I feel like this
could have been to DLC, and I wonder why it wasn't. I wonder
why they decided maybe it just had enough juice in it, but like it
came out the year after, so it must have been in development or like
in the works before that game even came out. It makes me think of
actually coming because back then, back then when this came out was of course
Bethesda is the publisher there, and a similar thing happened with Dishonor Too and
Death of the Outsider, where that could have been a DLC but instead they
made it like a separate, smaller spinoff game. And I feel like that's
kind of what happened here as well. So maybe that was just like Big
Bethesda, the publisher there, was making the decision to rather than doing DLC
for these kind of smaller, mid budget games, maybe they would just do
the a whole new entry in the series. So kind of also an interesting
thing there. But yeah, I had a really good time playing through this
game. I think it was like maybe like eight to ten hours in that
range, so like a pretty it was like the perfect length of what I
wanted, and it was like it was exactly what I was looking for.
Where not a whole lot of story to it. Some of a lot of
the story I was just skipping because I'm like, I don't care about these
characters. These villains are not engaging to me, Like like if the enemy
is a Nazi, that's good enough motive for shoot them down. Like I
don't really need all these other big exposition scenes and whatnot. But yeah,
like just first person shooting mechanics. It's funny. It took like a little
bit for me to get used to it because you're just playing so much war
Zone lately, which is like the most polished first person shooter of all time.
Feels so good. Every movement and every crouch, the way the gun
sways in your hand, all that stuff like feels great. And so it
took me a bit to like calibrate to like, oh, yeah, this
is not the biggest budget game in the world that I'm playing right now,
But it didn't take long before I kind of got clicked into the movement and
the feeling of it and adjust the settings around to make it feel just right.
And in that way, it was like, yeah, it was just
fun. This really harkens back to like the Xbox three sixty era, where
I was playing all sorts of FPS campaigns, and I just don't really do
that anymore with games that are just like this is the first person shooter and
nothing else. But this was perfect for that, and that's one of the
things I love about this game did not have a single puzzle in it.
I am so sick of puzzles and games like this that it just feels like
it's there to slow you down, just to drag it out, or maybe
just like offer a palate cleanser. But it's like, no, I'm playing
Wolfenstein because I want to have like a first person shooter, high octane.
Yeah, set pieces sort of game, and it definitely fulfilled in that sort
of way, really good variety of locations and level design. There's like hidden
paths and hidden areas you can find, and like, I don't know,
it's not like, oh, you can go in STEALTHI or you can go
in loud, like there is a bit of that, but just in terms
of like how big these levels are, Like they're just big enough where you
kind of have a little bit of freedom and how you want to engage with
them. But there's like huge castle areas, there's a really cool town section
going through these like underground ruins and whatnot. So yeah, just like really
good variety there. Really enjoyed that. I actually really enjoyed the like RPG
Mechanic, the level lipsis them. It's like very simplistic, but there's like
twelve skills that you can get and you just to unlock them. You just
have to do a certain thing. So it's like you know, get fifty
kills like dual wielding, or get your HP like overload your HP to this
certain amount, kill four enemies with one grenade, and so it's like it's
little bonus challenges that like Okay, I'm gonna try and find the right spot
where I can throw grenade and get four enemies and then I'll get some bonus
out of it. Now I can carry more grenades so they're more powerful,
and so just little things like that that were really fun and incremental. And
then I found like I didn't even know it existed for the first like three
or four missions I was doing. But then when I noticed that, I'm
like, Okay, cool, I'm gonna try and do these specific things,
try go for more headshots, trying oh, I see the certain enemy type,
I need to get stealth kills on them. So it kind of like
just change the way I would engage with it a little bit to get these
these marginal little upgrades there, but tons of like good weapon variety. You
can like dual wield almost every weapon in the game, which is really fun.
Have likedual wield like AK forty sevens that you're going around with, And
yeah, I gotta say, like this is that very much had an Indiana
Jones sort of feel to it, with like crazy set pieces. At one
point you're like on this huge gondola and then it's getting shot down, so
it's like falling and you're like just holding on by the edge of your fingers
and transferring, jumping over some other things. So I feel like it's in
good hands for this team to be doing the Indiana Jones game. And there
was certain like sections where he I was in like some underground ruins temple area
where there wasn't really a puzzle, but like I had to walk in a
room like the way these fires lit up this big circles, like, oh,
this is like an Indiana Jones thing going on here too. So I
feel like when it comes to them like doing that, and I imagine Indiana
Jones is gonna have puzzles in it, which I would expect it to.
I think they're gonna hopefully do a pretty good job with that. What else
do I want to shout out here? One thing that I loved I think
you'll love too, because it felt like a very arcane thing is like the
melee weapon you have. I mean you have a knife, but you also
have it's like a just like a pipe, like a I don't know,
any sort of random pipe, and you can like click it together to get
like almost like a bow staff, or you can like unclick it to have
like two versions. Oh, yuse like bust out walls. You use it
as like a pick in the wall to like climb up different things and use
it like pop open all sorts of things in the environment. So it feels
like an Arcande like a glue gun or something where it's just like is this
multitool where it does a bunch of different things. So I really enjoyed that
one. And then I think the part that surprised me, and this maybe
is more potentially spoilers I don't even know for later on in this in this
twenty fifteen game, is that like the paranormal side of it, I never
really knew too much about like the story in a big way, but Wolf
and Sign what's all about. But like at some point it just turns into
like zombie fest. All these enemies you take them out and then they just
like you know, explode into like these zombie versions and you're going through like
graveyards and stuff, and then you know, big spoil here. The last
boss fight is like a humongous like mummy underground that's like one of those giant
like almost like God of War type bosses that is like smash yeah, and
like swinging his arm you like crouch under him, and it's like, man,
I did not see that coming when I was playing through ninety percent of
this game, because like that supernatural stuff just pops up in the last like
level or two pretty much, so I'm curious we're considering that's like at the
end of this prequel. I wonder where that stuff is in, like when
you get into the New Order and you're in that main game, and how
prevalent the supernatural element of it is. But yeah, overall, just had
a great time with this game, really really fun time, and I excited
to jump into New Order and New Colossus. I don't know if I'll get
to all of those before before Dana Jones comes out, because I don't even
know when that game's coming out, But yeah, I had a really good
time with this and Machine Games I'm a fan of them after this one,
so excited for their newest game coming out later this year. Nice. Yeah,
you're getting me excited to jump in there. M hm, Yeah,
you definitely definitely should. And well maybe I'll let you know if I think
Old Blood or New Order will be a better one to jump into first,
but yeah, I don't know. This seemed like a pretty good starting point
for me in terms of like introducing the character and the kind of setting and
what. Right. Yeah, I know you like you go to Castle Wolfenstein
in this, and I feel like in most of these games you go to
Castle Like I'm guessing you go there over and over again. Obviously the first
game is called that, multiple games are called that. I'm guessing it's just
a reoccurring area in these games that you would go to. So yeah,
yeah, I'm curious because, like I was saying, I think all of
them are on the PlayStation catalog when I saw them on there. Nice,
maybe I was unaware of a certain title on there, but I think I
don't know. I think I would just start at like the earliest one just
to go from there and play them in release order. But h m hm,
yeah, we'll see. Yeah, there's one of the older ones on
PC game Pass, like one of the PC only games I think from like
the mid two thousands, not the RPG one unfortunately, but yeah, one
of those exists there, and then yeah, everything else is on all the
new the newer ones are from on game Pass. I guess some of those
older games, like that original one, I'm guessing that's just one of those
games kind of lost a time some extent. I don't know if it's been
like, I don't know. They could do like a remaster collection with all
these random ass games. Put RPG in there, put those old ones,
the eighty one, the game from eighty one in there. Like, I
think that'd be a cool collection to get. But once again, since like
so many different developers made it, I'm sure there's all sorts of different engines
that those games are made in. It would probably be a total mess,
but it would be cool to get like a little historical package version where you
can try all these older games. But right, Yeah, looks like they
have four titles New Order, Old Blood, Young Blood, and then Wolfenstein
two on there. Okay, on on PC game Pass on PlayStations, Oh
nice, Okay, Yeah, so I think those same ones are on game
Pass plus that one random like two thousands one, So that's cool. Yeah,
that's interesting that they're on there still. I mean, I know a
lot of these deals happened pre Xbox acquisition, but that seems like it's been
on there for longer than I would expect. So that's cool for the sake
of people having access to that stuff. Yeah, and I'm like, because
I have like the highest here of the PlayStation. Plus I don't know which
ones are like extra or Premium. Maybe maybe a couple are only on the
Max one. But yeah, right right cool. Next up on my list
here is this game called Little Kittie Big City, which is a very cute
game that came out on Game Pass a couple of weeks ago. This is
a very short and sweet game takes like two hours to beat. I did,
like I've only got every Xbox achievement. That took me like three hours,
I think. But this is a game where you play as this cute
little cat in this kind of cute small Japanese city, and it's pretty much
like a three D kind of platforming collectithon sort of game. You're going around
collecting all sorts of different things, collecting money, buying outfits, doing little
quests for all these different creatures around town. It's kind of similar to untitled
Goose game in a way that you're like a lot of the objectives or quests
that you're being given is to pretty much just like troll people. Like one
guy is like a construction worker and you have to go in there and like
put your paw prints all over his freshly pored cement. Yeah, exactly.
You got to like steal someone's phone and bring it to someone else. You
like take a phone and like drop it in a toilet at some point,
so all just like these kind of you're like trolling people through this city.
But yeah, I had like a really good time playing through this. Obviously,
if I got the one hundred percent, it was like I was in
there doing all these different collectibles. It wasn't too uh, there's a couple
of them are pretty tedious at the end to just like do this thing a
hundred times. But for the most part it was just like one of those
kind of turn off your brain and just screw around and listen to a podcast
while you play sort of games. And I really enjoyed it. The movement
is really good. It was really fast and fluid. You're doing like some
minor platforming here. But it's interesting seeing this game and then like Stray from
a couple of years ago and how they both you know, are having you
as a very realistic ish sort of cat like rather than like an anthropomorphic type
cat, you're like an actual cat and have that sid sort of move movement
where Astray was much more like On Rails in the way you did things,
it felt, but this game is more free form, and I think because
of that, it ends up being a lot shankier when you're like getting glutched
in things or like freaking out. And Stray I think probably just had a
higher budget, more production values, a bit more polished of a game,
but they're kind of trying to do different things, you know. Stray is
like a very story focused single player situation, whereas this is more of like
three D collect collect Athon sort of space obviously. So yeah, I had
a really good time with it. Like I said, it's on game Pass,
so definitely an easy one to recommend, and really yeah, my only
con of it is like, yeah, kind of janky, and then so
much text in this game, so much dialogue, and it's like, I
don't think anyone who wants to play this game cares what like these characters have
to say, Like I was just mashing, but even though I was mashing
the A button to get through this stuff, they were still like sometimes it
would take ten to fifteen seconds of just like straight mashing to get through it
is and saying how much there was in here, But yeah, just like
the way you're upgrading your character getting better at climbing, and like you get
to some pretty crazy heights and different locations and like certain hidden locations and unlocking
shortcuts and whatnot. Like it's just such a well designed city that you just
get so intimately familiar with is you're going through it. And then it will
get to a point where you find one thing halfway across the city. You're
like, oh, I know exactly what I need to do with this one
item, so you pick it up and take it where you need to go.
So yeah, big recommend. Really really enjoyed it for anyone looking for
just a chill, relaxing kind of platforming sort of game. Big recommend for
me. Nice, Yeah, as soon as you said the title is just
like such a Dylan game, you can't feel like you told me about so
many just cute, little whimsical games with with funky titles. And I really
like the art style of it actually, m you know, it's definitely I
don't know, like it seems like a smaller studio just from like the aesthetics
of it. But like I'm I don't mean that in a negative sense.
It's just they're they're doing a lot with with maybe the resource that they have
to there's and just kind of like the like the zoomed in bug eye camera.
I don't know if that's always how like the gameplay is, but it
just seems funny like looking it makes it look like the human characters are a
lot bigger than they would be, which makes sense. Yeah, through the
eyes of a cat. So yeah, yeah, that's that's interesting. I
feel like Stray actually did have more of like a top downy like it felt
at least more top down than like this game is. So it has like
a different kind of perspective. I mean that's like not a realistic Japanese city
in the way that this game is, So it's kind of a different Do
you like Stray by the way? I really enjoyed it. I had a
great time with it. Yeah, Like visually it's really good. The music's
fantastic. I enjoyed the story, the traversal of it, and the different
things you're doing are pretty engaging. It's like switching it up enough definitely more
like there's crazy set pieces and stuff and it's like, yeah, it's like
three or four hours something like that, So okay, Yeah, I hope
they make a sequel. I mean, that game was very successful, so
I I'm sure it. I'm sure that studio is working on something cool.
But I do hope it is a cool I think there's room for them to
do a lot more in terms of mechanics and stuff. But yeah, like
just such a weird like playing a cute kab but you're in like this really
weird under the underground, like cyberpunk setting. Like that was a very wild
take on like what a game like that could be. So it was a
it was a good one for sure. Cool. Yeah. So that was
that one. And then lastly and this one, I've really just started.
I've only put like an hour and a half maybe into it. I just
picked it up. It's called Dread Delusion. It came out a couple of
years ago. It's been in early access, and it just launched one point
zero, which is why I finally decided to pick it up. But this
is a game that I've heard described and from the visuals described similar to Marwind,
which of course my favorite single player game of all time, so of
course I was in. They also they describe it as acid Fantasy, which
I think is a really cool description of like the aesthetics of this, because
yeah, it is a fantasy setting, but like the sky is like a
bloodshe shot trippy. Yeah, all sorts of crazy giant mushrooms and colors,
and it has like, you know, it has that Marowin sort of esthetic,
like it looks like a game that came on in early two thousands,
but like very intentionally, like really nice shaders and nice like effects in the
way things move around. So it's very intentional in going for that older school
design, but it still has some it's not just like a Marwin cop out
or clone or something like that, Like it's it's creating son sort of setting
with it. And yeah, like the visuals of it are are great,
the three D art of it. I really like the kind of low low
pixel count, Like the textures look really cool, and then like the there's
certain pixelar for like the icons and stuff in the game, and that looks
really great as well, like some potions that I'm like, damn, I
wish my potions looked as good as these potions. To the music is really
good so far. I don't know how much variety there's gonna be to the
music, but there's kind of just like this one, one or two songs
that I've heard so far, and it's really nice. So yeah, it's
it's kind of a it's hard for me to speak on the overall scale or
scope of AA because I'm not too far in. It seems like it is
an open world game like Tomorrow, where you can go around do whatever you
want. I've already accumulated like five or six side quests in it, so
it's like, okay, obviously I can go do different things if I want.
But it's maybe a bit more confined than a regular Elder Scrolls game in
that, rather than the setting being on in mar when you're on Vardenfeld,
this huge continent, this takes place in like these sky islands. It has
a very different esthetic than like a regular sky island because of the trippiness of
the sky and just the environment in general. But because of that, I
think they can maybe be a bit more particular about the locations that they're building,
because it's not like, oh yeah, every little hill and mountain needs
to be accounted for, like, it's just very particular areas in these floating
sky islands. So that's that's a cool, different sort of aesthetic to it.
It seems like there's an element at some point because I was just going
through the controls and I say that there's controls for a sky ship or an
airship. So at some point I'm going to get an airship and build to
maybe explore them on my own. So maybe once I get to that point,
it'll feel like a truly open world experience. At that point. It
seems like there's some customization too as well, to uh just the visuals of
like building out a base or something. So I'm curious to see what that
looks like. But yeah, it's it's really cool so far, I really
enjoy it. I like to set up a lot. It's got that like
jankiness of Marwind, which of course I'm like partial to, but it's like
not it's it's janky in a data way, but like it feels like a
very intentional way. So like I'm curious to see how I feel about that
as things evolve, because like, as much as I love Marwin, I'll
be the first to admit that it's coming. Bat is not great, you
know, from the lens of playing Oblivion or Skyrim or any other game really,
any other action game that's come out since then, does it play like
Morowin in the sense of like dice rolls for hits and such. No,
it doesn't. It's uh, yeah if you hit someone, yea, you
hit them, So in that way it feels good. There is a there.
So far, there's been a dice roll for the lock picking, which
I think is funny because it's like literally rolls of dice. It's like,
you need a four to get this. It feels like vol there's obviously yeah,
but it so yeah, you need a four to get this, and
it will like yeah, roll the dice and you can see that there.
But yeah, the combat itself is uh, there's hit detection. There are
hip boxes, which is great to see, so that feels good so far.
The stealth and like the you know, I don't have a bow yet,
so I can't comment on the stealth archeress of this, but I've been
trying to, like I cause I picked a stealthy ish sort of class and
I'm finding like really hard to sneak up on enemies. So far, one
guy got a stealth attack on one hit kill felt great. But I don't
know if they're trying to make it really like rewarding because it's hard to do.
But yeah, like I've found it's just like it's been really hard to
sneak up on someone yet because of their walking patterns, because of how open
the areas are, Like there's not a lot of boxes and stuff everywhere,
I guess, so maybe depends on the area. But then also, like
I feel like with first person games and stealth, a big part of what
makes that work is I think of like arcane and how you can peak around
ledges. You know, you can peak your guy back and forth. Yeah,
and they make it so like if you're behind a wall, like the
enemies probably can't see you. But in this game, like if I'm peaking
my eyes out just a little bit, like enemy will spot me. So
maybe my stats just suck because it's not RPG. But yeah, I'm curious
to see how that goes because like I did particularly pick a stealth based class,
and I feel like it's almost impossible like actually do that yet. So
once again, I am early on. Maybe I'll get better at it,
so we'll see how that goes. I like the setup, like building your
character doesn't take too long. There aren't too many stats in this game,
so it's not super RPG in that way, but I like the it kind
of has that Baldersgate element to it where you pick your background in a way,
and so you kind of pick two levels, like you pick essentially like
warrior, stealth, magic, or like speech based, and then once you
pick that, then you pick like a subclass within that, which is cool.
So like I picked thief, and then there was like, oh,
do you want to be or I picked like, I guess, like a
criminal, which is like thief based, and it's like, oh, do
you want to be like a hug for a thug for hire so you're more
like strength focused, or you could be like a thief who like dealt in
magic artifacts, so you have like magic thief and that's kind of the one
I went with, but like interesting kind of subclasses there. But also it's
like, yeah, you literally just picked two things for the character creators,
so it's pretty simple. And then yeah, you have all sorts of different
like weapon slots and magic slots. So I'm sure it's going to get more
complicated as time goes on, but yeah, I'm I've been having a really
good time with it so far, like I said, pretty early on,
so I'll have to report back on it. But yeah, it's it's a
really cool game with a really cool aesthetic that I'm glad that. I'm glad
that there's indie teams making games like this because this just feels like it speaks
to me as a someone who's nostalgic for Marwin. Of course, I mean
the sky, like just the aesthetic overall is definitely eye popping, and it's
I didn't know games like this or even created these days. This is really
cool and unique, and like the thing that stands out to me the most
over all of those things is actually the villains and the like the character design
of certain enemies. It's just it's so unique. It reminds me of like
maybe a Silent Hill villain or like a Studio Ghibli type character, Like like
it's just so all over the place on the on these villain designs, and
uh yeah, this this is really cool. Actually, I'm not gonna say
I'm gonna jump right into it. It's not quite my game i'd be playing
these days, but uh no, this is this is really interesting. I
would be kind of salty if you played this before playing Marwin. I be
honest, that's one hundred percent how about this, How about this Kirklin Elder
scroll six we got years still away? What if we do an older Scrolls
retrospective where we talk about Scott and we do Marwin. Just those three the
three games. I mean, we could go back and do Arian Daggerfall,
but I don't know if I want to commit to forty hours. Just seeing
how some of those games systems play. It's I mean, I tried playing
the original system Shock and now I couldn't quite do that. Well, the
remake just came out, well, it came out last yearnd PC only I
think it's just came out on consoles now, which I'm excited. Okay,
I'm interested on that. Let's put a pin in that one on the Bethesda
retrocah make you promise or anything. But it's something like it's like a bucket
list thing where I like, I do want to experience those stories, especially
for I mean, because I've played Skyrim obviously they talk about the events of
history, so I know kind of the main what happens in something like oblivion,
something like a Moro wind like I know all about Vivek and the legend
of what that character is. But that would be really interesting to go through
those fresh, especially in these in this era. I mean I made it
through arcs. I feel like I can make it true. If you make
you can have fun with Marowin. I mean, because I've thought about this,
I think I think the best way for us to do Marlwin would do.
We should do like a dedicated like actual first, like a pre episode
that's just like twenty thirty minutes of just like the Marrow and Beginner's Guide,
and I'll just like if it's and Taylor, for example, I'll just give
you guys the crash course of like here's what you need to know with like
the old jank of the game, and then you know, go explore,
do whatever you want. But like here's like, you know, ten tips
to survive in varn Felt, Like here's here's the things you need to know
because some of these systems are pretty archaic. But it's like even the RPG,
like the randomness of the attack. It's like if you build your character
right, like that's not actually gonna be an issue. Sometimes you use like
what your character is, but like certain things are very unintuitive. So yeah,
I think I think we should definitely do that. So when we have
any sort of idea of what Ilscroll six is coming out. We'll talk more
seriously about that, but at least we'll do Skyrim and Oblivion is like an
easier one, so we should definitely do those at very least. Yeah,
absolutely, I feel like I would rather do Marrowin and Oblivion most mostly just
because I play. I mean, I love Skyrim. I play that.
You don't have to twist maire him to play that game, but we've just
played it so much that, you know, going through a fresh play through
of another game, I think that would be more worth my while. But
yeah, definitely, Damn. I didn't know we're getting a whole new retro
just popping out of this episode. Well, like I said, it could
be years away, but it's good all because of Dread Delusion and then tomorrow
definitely, so yeah, once again, I will. That's definitely a game
we got to report back on. I feel like me and you we can
do our Fallout and Dread Delusion upgrade updates every once in a while. I
don't know how long this game is in terms of Elders scrolls. Of course,
hundreds of hours long all these games, so I don't know how much
content is in this one. But yeah, like I said, it's been
an early access for like two years, adding content, changing things, so
I'm sure sure there's quite a bit to uh to play. So let's let's
take our last break and then we just have two kind of shorter news topics.
We will be right back. Okay, we are back. First,
I want to mention this, So this was a couple of weeks ago,
Kirkland. You haven't been on since then, but our favorite arcane studios,
which you've mentioned today multiple times, Ark and Austin shut down. It's closing.
It's they said it's officially closed. But then here's the wrinkle whin I'm
bringing this up today is that technically they said he Red Falls closing, we're
not doing any more updates, see you later. But then Xbox said that
actually, we're gonna let Red Fall do their last update. We're gonna let
them finish what they were working on here. They're still getting shut down,
but we're gonna at least give them this final update. So I don't silver
lining feels like way too generous of a term to say here because they're still
getting laid off. But yeah, I don't know what was your take or
I don't know. I'm sure it was just sadness. But what did you
think about when you heard that news that are our great arc in Austin's getting
shut down? I feel like I was, yeah, like more so just
kind of in disbelief, like like that can't actually be a thing. Now
that I've had like some time, I feel like, I mean, Red
Fall wasn't great to understanding, mostly just the news round it. I never
got I was gonna say it, never got the chance to play it.
I never played it. I'll just say that. But it's it's okay,
yeah, like one one bad, one bad game I don't think is enough
to really close down doors. And but just in this climate, like it
does kind of makes some sense in hindsight, but at the same time,
it's just it just sucks, like knowing that to keep them open exactly.
Yeah, no, yeah, that's at the end of the day that that's
exactly what it is. You have like a billion dollar corporation that's just shutting
down doors on something because they lost some money there, which is super unfortunate.
And I'm just really hoping what comes out of this is like those super
creative folks at ARKI and Austin are able to just maybe get a better opportunity
elsewhere, or maybe deviate and do their own thing, or what other what
other opportunities come their way. You know, maybe it's something on the Sony
sphere. You know, as a as a PlayStation owner, I would love
to get some of those creatives over on that side, just because, like
I I know, that's like the people that are really great at their job,
like they will, like they'll keep making games. It's not like this
is the end of that. It's just I think it's unfortunate looking back on
uh, just just the greatness that they were able to to to come through,
and uh, it just sucks the way that it's like I think going
out because of Red Fall and and and stuff like that, Like it's just
kind of seen as just a dark like a dark spot. I guess on
the way they're going out. It's not like they're just going out with a
big bang and it's just yeah, no, like like ar King Austin is
still around, but like those creatives ended up dissipating and then the studio just
kind of fizzles out. It's just like no outdoors or shut that's the end
of that. So it's unfortunate that it went that way, but uh,
I'm really glad that we did the retro, you know, in hindsight to
that. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, I mean I think, uh,
you know. So, so what they announced here is that they're gonna be
able to do their final update. This is not like they haven't officially on
hundred confirm this, but it seems like the DLC characters like that part of
the DLC is not happening still like that part. They're still going to be
issuing refunds for like that pre order bonus stuff, but they're allowing them to
finish their May It was supposed to be their May updates, So we'll see
if it comes out in May. I don't have many days left for that
to happen. And I think the biggest reason for this is they've said that
part of this May update is, you know, there's a couple of new
content things like maybe a couple of new weapons or some changes to certain mechanics
like nests is one of the things. One of the kind of mini dungeons
you can do in the game. They were reworked those. But along with
this as well, they have the single player only mode because this is an
online only game, even if you're playing a single player. So that's one
of the things that's going to be patched in with this update. And so
I think that actually explained a lot for me of why they're allowing them to
do this update is because actually Dreadfall is a game that they're gonna shut those
servers off, like maybe even when the studio closes, and with the way
the game was set up, if they had done that, then the game
would just be not playable anymore, just like the way I'm so scared that
someday hit Man World of Assassination will not be playable anymore because it's fucking online
only for no reason whatsoever. So I think that's a big reason of why
they're doing this, and I would anticipate that they're going to shut the servers
off when this update comes out and they have the single player only. So
it's a good thing because now this game rather than just like let's say they
close the studio but kept the servers online for like another year or two,
because like the game is not very popular, there's not really much reason to
keep it on for too long. Then the game would have just been delisted
and gone forever, but now it will exist, it will continue to exist.
For a lot of people that doesn't mean anything. They don't care.
But for me, that makes me really happy that this game will still be
playable, it will still exist, and even if it's by far my least
favorite arcade game, I can still go back and check it out. And
if I can't do multiplayer, I don't care. I never even really did
multiplayer whin it. I mean it still is in the game that I'm not
doing it. I have more care about this from a single player perspective,
and it is a game I jump back into, and when this update comes
out, I'm very excited go jump back in and see what's new, see
what's changed. I've barely even like when they did the sixty frames update.
I went, I downloaded again and I messed around for a little bit just
to see how that felt, and it was cool, but I wanted to
wait until there was the more characters, which I'm obviously not getting now.
But at this point it kind of makes sense for me to just wait for
this update to come out and then jump back in and play that. So
I'll probably save that for an episode that you're on Kirkland, and I'll talk
to you about how my experience kind of my last steps through red Fall will
be. But I'm glad that they're getting to do this update. And you
know what, like it's another few weeks of work for these people too,
they'll get paid a little bit more while they're trying to find a new position,
so hopefully that is good for them, helps them, And I'm sure
they'll still get big severance package on there being laid off here too. So
so yeah, it's sad, of course, but I'm excited for this update.
Even if it's not the characters, I'm still excited to see what's in
it. And then also I like Raphael Cole Antonio, so the creator of
Arcane originally who did ours Fatalists all the way up to Pray and then he
left Arkane Austin. At that point he did Weird West with his new studio,
Wolfi Studios. He's been talking more and more about his next game,
and it seems like it might be a first person thing. They might be
going a little bit back to form with the with the Arcane field. So
that also got me just made me feel hopeful about like man like that is
a lot of the r Kane Austin team like left with him to make Weird
West, and so that there may be transitioning back into what the studio can
no longer make. It makes me happen. It's like, okay, you
know, at least from my perspective, like I'm gonna get still still going
to get some of these games in a different light. And I don't know
if they're going to hire more people to make those projects. I'm sure I'm
sure they got their eyes on the people leaving Arkane Austin and maybe bringing some
more of those people into work on that project. So maybe that's maybe being
a bit hopeful. But I mean, I love Weird West, so even
if it was just Weird West too, I would be over the moon.
But it sounds like he's doing something new and different, which is very exciting.
So there you go. There's that. And then lastly, the day
this episode drops that May twenty eighth, is the relaunch of Multi Versus,
which is a game that you know what about offline. I wasn't really playing
it much anymore, and then in the months and months and months and a
year that it was away, I was like kind of a weird strategy they
had for this game to turn it offline for so long, I don't think
I really care anymore. But then there's been some few exciting announcements actually recently
in terms of the big relaunch that they're doing. So have you checked out
any of this stuff? Have you seen any of these characters or modes or
anything like that. Yeah, I read the article that you shared with me
there, and yeah I got some new stuff. The new what is it?
Net my gosh net frame? Nope, improved net code? Yeah,
that code there you go. I think it has like rollback net code,
which is like usually the best, best type works best if people have bad
connections, like it just is the best. So yeah, that's like a
great improvement. I didn't really have any problems with the online to be honest,
but if it's gonna be even better, sure, that sounds great to
me. Another big thing is there is a PvE mode and one of the
things they showed in a trailer looked a hell of a lot like Target Smash
Target tests from Smash, which is one of my favorite single player modes from
those games. So that's really exciting for me, and that's gonna bring me
back in. Then of course there's four new characters that are dropping with well,
actually I don't know if they're coming out like the day the drop is,
but they announce them all, so I'm sure they're coming out pretty soon.
And those characters are Joker, Jason from Friday the Thirteenth, Agent Smith
from The Matrix, and then Banana Guard from the Adventure Time, So in
a very very eclectic group of characters. Of course, Joker, there's already
like what, four other DC characters that makes a lot of sense. There's
the two characters from Adventure Time, but then a couple other new ipre getting
into the fray here. I'm excited to see what those maps are so and
I think those are great picks. I think they're fun, weird picks that
I would not have seen coming. Well. I guess Joker was a pretty
obvious one, considering they've done so many DC characters. But I'm excited about
these characters and I think it's it's pretty fun and I'm definitely gonna jump back
into this game now and give it in a few games and check out some
of the single pair of content too. I think my favorite part about this
news, I mean I was kind of surprised seeing like Jason on there.
I think that's the one that stood with the most. But kind of the
way that they describe the characters, like Joker is a mage fighter if I'm
not mistaken, or like a Maze like a mage caster, like one of
those things I was kind of surprised about. And then when they're talking about
Jason, he's like a tankier type character. They said less like tanky large
character, but less so than Iron Giant, which of course makes sense because
he's the Iron Giant. But just like the way that they're describing it makes
me pretty excited to try them because I don't know, I don't know if
it's I don't know what it is. But when I whenever I think of
like Smash and like the heavy characters, I just think that they're most of
the time just bad guys. And I just when I play those characters,
I just channel my inner bad guys. So I just can't wait to play
Jason four He's and just take those those hits. How Jason in the movies
is just like immortal, Like I just want to feel that way and just
just have my hits really hit hard. Because when Jason hits he he he
hits the kill, so that'll be really fun. And then just the different
traps and whatnot and gadgets that Joker will be bringing that that is cool.
I did see that it's behind like the premium battle pass, which I feel
like the whole character unlock, and I should explain that just for Joker,
I think he's just the like the premium character, right, because I don't
know if I think I'm pretty sure with this coming back, like them rebooting
the game, the first battle pass is free to everyone, okay, is
the way they're framing it, which I guess you could just say is like
a free progression thing. So I don't know, I'm pretty sure Banana Guard
is like the easiest character to get, like you just have to like log
back, right, Yeah, so that's how you get him. And then
I think Jason might be in that first battle pass thing that you that,
like the free one. But yeah, I didn't look into Joker agent Smith,
but so it sounds like Joker might be a more of a paid character,
I guess, yeah, and can you. I guess you could just
save your tokens and then buy him out right again like any other Yeah,
perhaps just just like the way that they like. Even going forward, if
we get new characters in the game and they're pretty much like a like a
battle pass roll out, even if you're able to get them later on,
it just seems like one of those things where the new and I'm just basing
it off of other like PvP type games in the past, when whenever there's
like a new something that comes out, usually overtuned, usually usually a little
ope and if if you're paying money to get that character faster than other people,
and then I'm just getting bobbed online by a little Jimmy that took his
mom's credit card, And it's clearly just the character, not the skill,
you know, air quotes, But like I just feel like that's something that
would potentially deter me from the game. I'm never gonna be treating this game
as like one I really want to get competitive with and like really be in
the top percent. But I just like it is a free to play games,
so like you can make the argument there that you are getting access to
it, you just got to play to get these characters. But it's just
if I'm playing couch co op and I want my friends come over and they
want to play like Jason or something. It's just like, yeah, sorry,
I got a grind for that character. Like I just don't love that
whole aspect to it, and that's something that has been in the game.
Like it's not a new complaint I think that I've had with the game in
the past, but I don't know, I think the other like that's pretty
much my only negative I think that I have about this news, Like I
am excited to try it again, especially them just talking about how it'll feel
a lot better because of their net framework code, whatever the heck you called
it. Just those aspects, I think it is exciting to jump back in,
especially because it's like what it's been over a year, like almost two
years ago. Like I know the last time I played that game, it's
been a while. Song it's been off line at least a year. Yeah,
my timeline could be off because I only played it for like a couple
months I think before I kind of jumped out there, which yeah, I
mean, my biggest complaint with the game is that it just took so freaking
long downlocked characters and like the weekly rotation had so few in there that it
was just I don't know, I love in these games to play all the
characters and check all of them out, and I think you can do that,
like in the training mode you can see how they all feel. But
I don't know, it just wasn't the same to me. Call me old
fashion, but I like, I just want to give them forty bucks and
get all the characters, you know. Yeah, you know, maybe that's
the problem. Maybe they want like ninety to get all the characters, but
yeah, I don't like all the steps it takes to get these characters.
So at least it sounds like maybe a couple of them will be easier to
get jumping back in, and then obviously your old account will still be active.
So yeah, I'm definitely excited to jump back in there and see some
of that stuff as well. What do you think about Agent Smith as a
Matrix enthusiast about that character edition? That's wild. I'm excited to try Agent
Smith. I'm really hoping that they incorporate like the fact that Agent Smith can
just take take over like anyone. I'm not saying in the sense of like
he is a like a like a Shank Soung, you know, Moratal Kombat
character that can like take the form of anyone. I just I want to
feel like if someone like how do I phrase this, Like if I'm fighting
you and you defeat me, like he just pops up again, like out
of nowhere, Like like it's just like an endless wave type type hero,
which I think could be really unique in the sense that it is like a
platforming fighter. I really hope it feels more than just like a melee hero
in a suit, Like I really want them to tap into that Agent Smith
energy, which I mean, he's he's very capable of a fighter, but
shown in the game in the movies. But I feel like something that sets
it out is that just Agent Smith could be anywhere and take over like anything
and just just feel like you can't escape it. That's what I want to
feel your characters. Yeah, as somebod who's never really seen Matrix, I
don't. I guess I saw the new I wanted to jump into bad One
to jump into just watch the first and leave it at that. Yeah,
So no, that that's very interesting. Now you've compelled me more than I
expected. But I think, like I would guess he's more of like a
range type character, but maybe he's not. But I think that is kind
of an interesting design space in these games. And like I feel like even
in like we always had Link who's like more of a range character, I
guess, and Smash, but I feel like it wasn't until like Mega Man
and Smash four that we got like, oh, this character, the majority
of his movies aren't ranged, and that's like such a different play style than
I'm used to. So yeah, I wonder it'll be something like that.
When I think of Aiden Smith, I actually see a more of a melee
fighter. Okay, I thought he would be like using his gun or something.
He uses a gun a loss. I feel like, like, I
guess the main quality that they give them is that they're just so fast,
so like he's able like dodge bullets and whatnot, so like like maybe like
a like a super almost sonic like level of like speed of a character could
be interested on who is this guy I don't know's agent? Smith is the
Matrix So yeah, amazing cool? Yeah, do you think you're gonna jump
back in with me? You're you gonna be playing it all? Definitely,
I'm definitely gonna be jumping in again. I mean, it's free to play,
it's it's easy to jump into and like, yeah, the new characters
is exciting, but I'm also just excited to play, Like you know,
Tom the Cat again, got him tattooed on my leg. I gotta represent
my character and Iron Giant that's one I never got to play, so I'm
looking forward to that. Yeah, he was really cool. It's just such
a unique character for a platform fighter, so I really enjoyed him. And
then I forgot to kind of talk on the PvE element as to it.
I saw on the article there they're mentioning like certain like thematic type PV levels
I guess, like whether it's Batman and Velma I think was the pairing that
they had mentioned in there, and like seeing who's the greatest detective or whatnot.
Just those things are pretty fun, especially when they're breaking uh you know,
the multi verse and and like putting certain characters together that you wouldn't picture.
I think that stuff will be really fun to experience as well. Very
nice. Yeah. So yeah, like I said, that's out today if
you're listening to this, So yeah, I don't know, I don't know
what we'll talk about on side quest might be a couple of weeks, just
because next week's kind of all the hell Blade, but yeah, tune in
we will be talking about that stuff. I think that's all for today,
Kirklan. This is a fun episode, very random set of topics, a
couple of good tangents in there with travel, every card, every card that
was a good time. Thank you everyone for listening and we'll see you again
next time. But bye.