Speaker 1: What's up everyone? Welcome to the Game Informer Show, a
weekly podcast covering the video game industry. Join us each
and every Thursday for a discussion of the latest gaming news, reviews,
and exclusive reveals with Game and Former staff and special
guests from around the industry. I am your host, Marcus Stewart.
I am joined by Kyle Hillier. Hello. Hello, it's cover
reveal Week. It's exciting, it sure is. And joining us
for this monumental week is Charles Hart. How you doing.
Speaker 2: Hello, I'm good. I'm in a new house. It's Charles
House reveal week too.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we really sat those up perfectly. How is
the new house?
Speaker 3: It's cool.
Speaker 2: I got my I'll douce like, can I just move?
I got my gamer shelf set up here. We got
most of my different games. Kyle and I did a
stream for Luigi's Mansion two and Nintendo sent us some stuff,
including a Luigi hat, which I have put on this
big stuffed elephant I have here. I've also got my cat.
Speaker 3: What's the cat's name?
Speaker 2: This is Kit? And then down here we have Lando.
Speaker 1: Oh. I thought you were gonna say Cat.
Speaker 2: It is Kit the cat. They're both they're not they're not.
They're kind of both named after Star Wars characters. Orlando
is definitely named after Star Wars character. When we got
the second cat, I was like, I thought Kit the
Cat was a cute thing. But there's also a Jedi
named kit Fisto. Oh so it happens. It happens to
line up.
Speaker 1: There. Are you a particularly big kit Fisto fan where
you if someone calls you out, like, oh, man, tell
me your favorite kit Pisto moment.
Speaker 2: You know, I actually did like kit Fisto as a
kid because I just like, I have my favorite color
is green, and he's got green skin and a green lightsaber.
And I was like, I can't get better than this man.
Speaker 3: And he smiles real big an episode two, right, he goes, Yeah,
the good.
Speaker 2: Kit Fisto moment is in the like two D animated
Star Wars Clone Wars special and he has a whole
like underwater fight sequence. That's really cool. That was my
like kit Fisto favorite moment.
Speaker 1: Okay, but chriss Hare is Yoda. You're really big on Yoda,
who's also green and has a green one is green.
Speaker 3: That's the good point.
Speaker 2: I don't identify with the Yoda because he's so small
and I'm very tall, so it's we're not we're not
on the same page.
Speaker 3: On Luke's shoulder and he's a backpack.
Speaker 2: Well, then it's like I feel like Luke because I'd
be carrying people like a backpack.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and who wants to feel like Luke Skywalker?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Well, thanks for checking out, guys before we hop into
a very big show. Of course, you can support the
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smiling like we're all a bunch of kitfist those if
you do it like, there we go. If you're watching
the video, Kyle just at his best kit though, and
I was convinced. Yes. But yeah, Speaking of Game and
Former Magazine, our next cover story has been announced and
it is the casting of Frank Stone. A spooky cover
this month and it's booky also, I believe, and Kyle
you might know better because you've been here longer. Is
this the first super Massive game that has.
Speaker 2: Ever been on the cover.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm I'm almost certain it is, because I remember
Matt sort of presenting it and being like, Hey, what
do you think of this? And my main reaction was like,
I like the idea of getting a super Massive game
on the cover. I think that would be really cool.
So I yeah, because until Don was not on the cover,
the corry was not on the cover. Yeah, uh first
super Massive game? Yeah yeah, And this is a cover
story that I wrote. I flew up to Montreal, Quebec,
Canada with Alex Van Aiken and we visited Behavior Interactive,
who is the creator, developer, publisher of Dead by Daylight,
of which this game is based on If you're not
familiar with the casting of Frank Stone. It is a
collaboration between Behavior and Supermassive, where it is a single player, cinematic,
choice driven adventure game, very much in the vein of
Until Dawn or The Quarry, but it is set within
the Dead by Daylight universe. However, it's telling an original story.
It doesn't feature any of the existing killers from Dead
by Daylight and that it features a news murderer named
Frank Stone. It takes place in the small kind of
Pacific northwestern town of Cider Hills and the summer of
nineteen eighty and it stars Allen Wake hadn't gotten there
yet right like that was like he wasn't getting shown
up yet.
Speaker 1: No, not yet. I guess he would have been alive though.
Speaker 3: He was still in New York.
Speaker 1: I think he was writing books at that point, right
in nineteen eighty. Would he'd be like a kid?
Speaker 3: No, he was like a published author in like two thousand.
How okay, you look up Alan Wake's.
Speaker 2: Age one was twenty ten.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, it takes place in the year it
came out, and he was already like in his thirties
at least, all right, it was probably like, I don't,
let's see if we're getting way off track here. He
was born in nineteen seventy seven, so I guess, yeah,
you're right.
Speaker 3: You guys are right. I'm wrong. In the eighties and
the early eighties he had been very young.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, maybe he's just a good writer,
maybe he's writing just little short stories.
Speaker 3: But he's older than me. I forget that. Like characters
in fiction are like my age. Now. You know, I
spent so much of my life being like, ah, way
older than me. But there we're catching up. We're about
on the same. I'm like older than Han Solo at
this point, you know, Okay.
Speaker 1: I don't say that. But anyways, back to frank Stone.
We visited the studio. I got to interview lead developers
from both studios A Behavior and super Massive to learn
about how to collaboration came to be, how it was
like working with each other because they, you know, both
studios make two very different styles of games. You know,
Dead by Daylight being an asymmetrical multiplayer game until Dawn,
and at least super Massive horror games. You know, they've
done other things besides horror, but you know that's probably
what they're best known for at this point, you know,
very cinematic, just choice driven stuff, like they've gotten more
and more sort of like I guess, I don't know
if interactive is the word I want to use, but
like maybe a little less on rails with each release
since the until Dawn came out. And so it was
fun just hearing them like just sit down and sort
of like break down like who contacted who? Like whose
idea was it? Because like as and it was fun
because Alex and I sort of represented two sides of
the same coin. Where Alex is like a huge Dead
by Daylight fan, like he plays it regularly, he knows
all about that unif but is not really played super
massive games because he's not a big horror guy, as
he's set in his own words, he's a big, big
chicken when it comes to horror, Whereas I generally enjoy
super massive stuff and I am a big war guy.
But until this trip, I had only played Dead by
Laylight pre release. I think it was the first E
three where it was demoed in twenty sixteen, Like I
remember walking in and it was like it had a
big booth with a big line and I was like, oh,
what's this thing? I guess I'll get in line for it.
But other than that, I the first time I ever
really played it was in the week or two leading
up to this cover trip, so we were just like, oh, yeah,
we both kind of like this is made for both
of us if you fused us into one person basically.
But I got to play a prologue chapter of the game,
which is set it's like a pretty much a prequel
to the game, because the game set in nineteen eighty,
but the prologue I played was in nineteen sixty three.
If you fall any of the gameplay trailers that have
come out, you do see glimpses of that section where
you play as the police officer and you're investigating the
game's primary setting, which is the cider Mill steel Mill,
which is this like, at least in nineteen eighty, is
this abandoned steel mill that the four teenagers decide to
film their own horror movie in because it has ties
to Frank Stone, who is this infamous serial killer that
went on some kind of like rampage back in the day.
And you know this town, which is like a small,
unassuming point town, you know, but it's also like scarred
by this this dark history of frank Stone. So I
got to play the sixty sequence when the steel Mill
is still operational and you're sort of looking for this
missing child and you're you're doing some of the like
the supermassive stuff. I will say the thing that stood
out to me the most was and this is something
that the creative director Steve Goss was going on about about, like,
you know, when you see super Massive, you probably already
have like a pretty good idea of what to expect
from their horror games, and that working with Behavior for
the Casting of Frankstone sort of represent an opportunity to
break a lot of their own rules because they wanted
to combine the more overt Dead by Daylight mechanics and
sort of motifs into this game. Where he said, it's
not the Casting of Frankstone isn't a super Massive game
and as you know it, but it's also not a
Dead by Daylight game. Like they're describing me as something
like its own thing. And it was hard to see
that just because in the demo that I played, because
it's so early, I didn't get to see a lot
of the bigger changes that they told us about but
you could see like the Dead by Daylight flourishes or
either of you. Kyle, I think you are, But Charles,
are you a Dead by Daylight guy at all?
Speaker 2: I'm not a huge horror person or a huge multiplayer
games person, So both of these like developers are in
blind spots for me. Okay, But for some reason, this
is more. This is the most interesting super Massive game
to me, for whatever reason, I think because it's like
I am interested in the fact that it's connected to
a larger universe, if that makes any sense, Like I
like the idea of it existing in a pocket of
a larger thing. So I'm interested. I'm probably gonna play
this game.
Speaker 3: I guess it's my Yeah, the idea that they're branching
off from something that is like really like more defined
than you think if you're outside of the Dead by
Daylight world, Like that was something that I took away
from reading your cover story and the big feature that
Alex put together as well of just like learning that
the fiction of Dead by Daylight is actually like pretty
extensive and detailed and like specific, and like this is
like a casting frank Stone is like a great like
foot in the door for like to understand what's going
on there and it sounds cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they mentioned that they are uh. Dave Richard, who
was one of the lead and one of the principal
creators of Dead by Daylight on the behavior side, talked
about this is something that they've been wanting to do
for a long time because it was a lot of
the fan base I've been saying they wanted something like
this for He dropped an interesting little factoid where he's like,
a lot of like a sizeable portion of Dead by
Day Dead by Daylight fan base doesn't even play the games.
They just like absorbing the lore from like streamers or
content creators that play it because either they're afraid of
four games or more commonly, they're just not multiplayer people.
You know. It's like, Oh, I like the the mythos
of this world, and I like the vibe of it,
but I don't want to play with people. It's just
not my thing. Yeah, And I'm kind of that too
to an extent. So this was like an opportunity to
find a way, like you said, Kyle, to get them
into door a different way and also present this lore
but from a way that it's not presented it Dead
by Daylight so like, and Dead by Daylight is a
very very quick primer for what the lore of Dead
by Daylight is. But it's basically revolves around this weird
like living like universe slash entity thing called it what's
called the Entity, and it basically just goes around like
it can traveled through the cosmos, through time and space,
which also justifies why there's so many different media properties
and Dead by day likes. You could just go into
different timelines and it just goes into worlds and like
feeds on like powerful emotions, and then it just goes
around just like basically invading worlds and either creating killers
by driving them insane or just finding people that are
already evil and then just like plucking them. And then
also survivors are found because they wander into these areas
that the entity is touched and they get warped into
the entity itself, and so then the entity just for
some reason, yeah, we he went down the wrong hallway
and got sucked into this world. And then but the
enity just puts them in these endless trials of killers
trying to hunt down and kill survivors and survivors trying
to flee because it just generates powerful emotions of like,
if you're a killer, you're just like angry and you know,
full of bloodlust. And if you're to survive it, you're
terrified and maybe even hopeful because you think you're gonna
get out because you know you only have to turn
on one more generator. And like the antity doesn't care
who wins. It's like I get what I want either way,
but you're pretty much just trapped in this loop. But
because that by daylight takes place inside the entity, the
casting of Frankstone is an opportunity to kind of show
from the outside, this is what it looks like when
the entity invades a world. In this case, yeah, like
this is what it looks like when it had it's
starting to seep into a world and find like I
guess a killer in Frankstone, whether or not it creates
Frankstone or Frankstone was already evil, and then the entity
is like, Okay, I'm I want some of that. It's unclear,
but like give me some of that. But yeah, I'm
with you guys. Like that's an interesting premise. Again, for
someone that's not a big DVD person, it's like that's
a cool. This is a cool vehicle to sort of
like get familiar with the mythos of that series in
terms of like the pure gameplay all like the skeleton
of a super Massive game is the same of like
you know, you're you're making these decisions that can that
change the narrative as well as can either lead to
a character's death, like a permanent death or not, which
of course steers the story in a variety of different directions.
One interesting note about the death though, is that because
like in a traditional super Massive game, when someone dies,
they're just dead. They're out of the story, They're gone,
but dead by daylight. Death isn't really straightforward like that
because of the nature of how the entity works, Like
if you die in that game, the entity just wipes
your memory and then places you back at the start
of a trial, and then you know, that's sort of
the narrative conceit for why you're doing all these multiplayer games,
and the developers tea that that will be addressed in
some way in this game, which makes me wonder what
happens when a character dies in this game, you know,
like yeah, and they come back, and it would they
have their memory wipe like if your party members just
comes just gets off then comes back and is like,
I don't even know what's going on here, Like is
that something that sounds like something really weird? They sound
like they're going to play around with. But even just
like some of the stuff that I saw on my
demo was even replacing the sort of like supermassive style
button prompts where you know, the basic example'd be like, oh,
you walk to a room and it's suddenly a chandelier
is going to fall in your head and you got
to push X or it's going to crash and kill
or injure you. And now a lot of those button
prompts have been replaced by the skill checks that Dead
by Daylight has, So if you're playing Dead by Daylight,
like if your survivor, the goal is to like turn
on these generators to escape the levels, and it's just
this like basically stop the meter kind of minigame where
you're just like it's like this meter spinning. You have
to try to stop, and it's really tense because if
you mess up, it makes a lot of noise to
where the killer in the map can pinpoint where you are.
So like that minigame has been replicated exactly into this,
and it adds more nuanced to sort of like the
different outcomes of like a QT sequence where if you
if you nail it, you'll get like the best outcome,
which is relative of course, but if you like slip
outside of that, then it can lead to like maybe
one or two things going wrong. Like there was one
point where, without getting too specific, I was squeezing through
like a like a shimmy thing, and like a skill
check appeared that I missed, and then it wound up
with this character who was carrying a flashlight like getting
his hand cut, breaking the flashlight so I couldn't use
it anymore, and then he had this like permanent hand
injury for the rest of the demo that effected a
fight that came later. Like it was like everything I
could have gone wrong went wrong with him, Whereas when
I succeeded another playthrough of it, you know, he got
to keep the flashlight, which changed the fight dramatically later on.
So it's like supermassive. Yeah, yeah, uh. There's even little flourishes,
like there's like you hear like dead by Daylight sound effects.
There's collectibles that are dead by Daylight theme that I
can't talk about, but there's even little things like the
palettes are in the game, Like if you play Dead
by daylight, you're there are paletts that you can drop
to slow the killers if you're being chased, and like
there's a secret part where you have to move a
palette from in front of a door, which is like
just a small little knot of like, ah, I see
what you did there. So those are some of the
little ones. But the bigger, more substantial mechanic is the
filmmaking aspect, because the primary game, like I mentioned, is
you making a movie with this group of teenagers, and
you've got a super eight camera, like an eight millimeter
camera that you're using this for and that's like the
central to everything, not even just like the gameplay, but
to the story because it is an active like device
that you can use, Like you can pull out the
camera at any time during the game and start filming things,
and there's higns where you're gonna have to film. Apparently
the camera is magic in some way, uh, because it's
it's just got some arcane energy, but it can also
do things like there's an invisible the only example they
gave and they were also being very cagey about discussing
the camera by the way, so there's some big things
in store for this, But one that they did divulge
is like, oh, there's an invisible enemy that you can
only see with the camera. Uh, so you gonna have
to pull it up and try to, uh to pinpoint
it down. But it's sort of and there also might
be more than one camera was another thing they sort
of teased, like oh, but they did say that its
capabilities would evolve throughout the adventure too, so it seems
like a it's for again, supermassing games tend to be
pretty like like I would say, hands off, but like
you know, like like the gameplay is sort of like
it takes a bit of a backseat to like the
storytelling and the presentation. Usually like they've gotten, like I said,
they've gotten more sort of like engaging with like each
of the like the Dark Pictures and Quarry releases, but
this one seems to be the most active. Where again
they Steve Goss that had created director, talked about they
wanted to make it more interactive and make it more systemic,
because that's what Dead by Daylight is, which is the
hard opposite of what their games usually are, but they're like, okay, like,
how do we make this a little bit more like
less guided than our traditional releases? And they talked about
like the AI has like non scripted behavior now, which
is completely against what their games have usually been, among
some other sort of flourishes that they didn't want to
talk about. But again, it's it's it seems cool, like
I only play like like ultimately a small slice of
the game, but it looked great. Their games always look great.
But you know, this has made an Unreal Engined five
and like.
Speaker 3: Is that their first Unreal Engine five game? Do you know?
Speaker 1: Or I don't know? Was the Quarry Unreal five?
Speaker 3: I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I want to be surprised if that was the first one.
Speaker 3: But was such a weird trajectory because it was going
to be like a Steady exclusive for a while. Then
it's like, who knows what they built that game on.
Speaker 1: It was, yeah, remember when we were all going to
be Steady exclusives at some point.
Speaker 3: I still Stadia controller.
Speaker 1: I was a founder I was there in Vane one
and I got the Founder controller. So yeah, I actually
don't know, but I mean, this game looks awesome and
Unreal five.
Speaker 3: Corey was made an Unreal Engine four, so bam Unreally
five their first Unreligion five game. We can confirm thanks
to Wikipedia hopefully Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like I said, looks great, seems to play great.
I'm excited to see more of the the intersections between
the two sort of like Dead Dead by Daylight and
the traditional supermassive gameplay style.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And also again the story stuff. I want to see
like a narrative single player version of this this world.
So I'm like you guys, like I'm psyched for it
as I want to play some more of it. I
liked what I saw of.
Speaker 3: It so far, it seems.
Speaker 2: Is the title the casting of Frankstone, is that in
reference to like casting in a film sense.
Speaker 1: That's a good I you know, I never even thought
of that, because I thought of casting as like iron
like works, like like smithing, because he's got like the metal,
like the welder mask that he wears, and like the
demo that I played. The prologue, there is a point
where you go to like a cause it's it's set
in a steel mill, so you're in a steel mill.
So honestly I thought of that. But honestly it might
be a double entendre that I did not think of.
Speaker 2: My first My first thought was spells, and I was like,
it can't, Charles, it can't always be spelled. Sometimes other
fantasy exists.
Speaker 1: You have a magic camera, it's true.
Speaker 2: Man. Maybe it's all three yeah, oh man. Maybe it's Fishing's.
Speaker 1: Fishing with Frankstone.
Speaker 3: That'll be there, like a dating game style spinoff of Years, right,
or the April Fools game that they do is a
Frank Stone fishing game.
Speaker 1: Did you guys ever play that a hook on?
Speaker 3: No? I never did.
Speaker 1: I thought about going back to it because we did
talk about that game, and honestly, that game has a
little bit of significance to this because that was the
first time behavior who's like understandably very precious about Dead
by Daylights there it's their baby and it's a giant
success for them. But like we talked about like just
the process of them giving that up to Syop because
that team did the KFC dating game before that, and
how that was like tough at first but then easy
because it's comedy where it's like okay, like it can
be silly, you have you can do whatever you want
because it's not Cannon, but they're like, this is different
because it's a more serious thing Frankstone, I mean, and
that it is canonical. I don't know. There's a there's
a there's a whole little like section of the cover
story where I talked about just the the interesting relationship
between hooked on you in this game in terms of
like behaviors, level of comfort with letting someone else take
the reins that are biggest franchise. But yeah, the digital
issue is out now you can read it. Physical issues
will be out in mailboxes in the coming weeks, and
also we've got some online stories coming up as well
as videos. By the time you're listening to this, there
should be or there is a big feature that I
wrote for breaking down the camera mechanic, and then we
should have an m gt up I believe too, with
some exclusive kind of a gameplay footage that we got.
So yeah, keep an eye out on Gamingforma dot com
as well as our YouTube channel for more frank Stone
stuff over the coming months. But shout out to Behavior
and super Massive. They're very accommodating during our trip and
like I said, excited to see the game in full
when it comes September third which they recently announced the
release stay.
Speaker 3: For Yeah, not too far off. It's like a month
or so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh, jumping to our next game, Charles, you have been
playing a game that I've had my eye on for
a long time that I'm excited to hear some impressions
of which is a Ranger Colon A role puzzling adventure.
Speaker 2: Yes, or as I call it, Arranger Colon.
Speaker 3: I hardly know.
Speaker 2: Her game game fun. I haven't played that much of it.
I've played maybe, I haven't like left the starting area.
I basically just picked it up before we started recording,
just like I talked about a little bit. If you're
unfamiliar with this game, it is imagine like a grid
based Zelda like game. But the difference is that whenever
the main character, Gemma I think is her name, whenever
she moves, the entire line of the grid moves with her.
And this is something that I'm realizing now playing game.
This is unique to Gemma. This has not happen when
other people do it. And so she's grown up in
this town and everyone's like, yeah, I mean I was
doing fine, and then you had to like scoot the
whole line of grids over and you knocked my ladder
over and you broke the thing I was working on.
Speaker 1: Don't people liked freak out at this god likeability that? Yeah,
oh they don't like it at all, which fair I guess.
Speaker 2: But yeah, So it's it's a really interesting, uh like
central mechanic to base the game around. But it's it's
one of those things where it's like a very simple base,
and then as soon as you feel like you get
a grasp on what the mechanic is, they introduce something
new to like twist on it, or they introduce like
a new thing for a specific area. So one of
the things is there are like enemies in this game,
but you don't have a weapon on you. You have
to use your like slide puzzle skills to like just
there's a bunch of loose swords on the ground. You
got to slide the swords into the enemy and then
they'll like pop and explode and that'll like clear up
new paths for you to go. You can also do
that thing like in I think it's you can do
it in pac Man, where you go off on one
side of the screen, you come in back on the
other side. Yeah yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: The Mario Brothers too, System and pac Man and pac Man. Uh.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so that's that's pretty vite a lot of
times too, because there'll just be a wall in your
way and it's like, well, I needed to go left,
but if I go right, I can also go left,
which makes sense when you're looking at the grid. And yeah,
I don't know, I haven't played a ton of it,
but it's very very charming, very straightforward, but it has
that good, like simple charm to it that makes it
very easy to pay attention to and be engaged with,
but also not like so simple that I'm like bored
out of my mind. It's like just just enough riding
that line where I can enjoy it.
Speaker 3: Does it seem like it's it can get very complicated?
Because that was like my fear sort of looking at it.
I was like, this is kind of a cool idea,
like the way it looks, but I was like, I
because like those sliding box puzzles, I never enjoy those
because they get so complicated. But like, do you think
there's potential there? I know you're like a rubscube guy
as well, like right.
Speaker 1: At those kinds of puzzles, Right, Yeah, I saw that
video that I have it blown away. By the way,
I know I'm going.
Speaker 2: To be looking away for the next ninety seconds and
it's because I'm doing rubles too while we're talking.
Speaker 3: Also, congrats on winning Janet Garcia's apartment through a Rubik's
Cube contest? Is that what's happening?
Speaker 2: And then I don't know, I don't know what the
this is for context.
Speaker 3: This is a min max no context. We don't need
no context.
Speaker 2: Never mind, I own Janet's apartment now, but I'm letting
her and her fiance stay there.
Speaker 1: You arrange them out of there.
Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, they don't have to find other arrangements. Boom
brought it back. Uh, what the heck were we talking about?
Speaker 3: I was just asking if if there's a danger of
it getting too complicated.
Speaker 4: Yes, I don't can think so, but I'm very early still.
So it's a thing of like I could I could
see it getting difficult, but it seems to be doing
the thing where instead of like right when it gets
to the point where it's like, wow, I had to
think really hard about that puzzle. Then the like section
of that game ends, and then all of a sudden,
I'm doing something else and I have to worry about
some new thing. So at first it was like, how
do I get these swords to the monsters? And then
once that was kind of difficult, it became okay, now
how do I.
Speaker 2: Hold these switches down to go through the doors. It's
one of those switches where like the thing has to
stay on there, so you can't just put a piece
down and then slide to the right away from it
because then you'll pull it off, and so you have
to like manage that. And then as soon as that's
the thing, you know, they introduced some new concept. So
it's not a like complicated in terms of like one
kind end of really hard puzzle.
Speaker 3: It's not like you're constantly doing sliding picture pumps, so
that's not that's not what correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and the whole Yeah, it's it's pretty I
never got to a point where I felt like I
was like stuck in one spot. Like, you have a
pretty pretty free range of movement for the most part,
so yeah, it doesn't feel very restrictive combat. Yeah, the
the combat is basically what I was saying of you
just pull swords into certain enemies. I get to find
enemies that move, so they're usually just staying still. But
you just gotta ORIENTO the right way because you've done
that happened on.
Speaker 3: The screen, so we have. He could have just swapped roof.
Speaker 1: The cooking thing where he's like, this is what it
looks like when it's done.
Speaker 2: But yeah, no, uh, it's it. I have also not
been in a scenario so far yet where like time
has been an issue, Like there's no no pressure for
me to like move out of the way in time
to dodge things or doing anything like that. It's mostly
like you can look, you can assess for as long
as you want.
Speaker 3: And yeah, cool, so positive first impression, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I intend to keep playing it. It's not
supposed to be very long. They said four to five hours,
and it comes out on Thursday, which is today. This
comes out July twenty fifth. Take post on Thursdays.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, sometimes I sometimes I push it earlier if
things are going well.
Speaker 2: I think it's also double check. It's also coming to
Netflix Games, so if you have Netflix and a phone.
Speaker 3: Ranger, yeah, there we go.
Speaker 1: Have you guys used Netflix game? Are you guys Netflix subscribers?
I canceled mine, so I haven't had a chance.
Speaker 2: To Kyle and I both played Point P. Point P
is there is the thing we've talked about. That's that's
the that's the extent of mine though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. There's a lot of good games for
it though, like both I think both the Ox and
Freeds are on it, and I think Point Pie is
very hideous.
Speaker 2: Is there Dead Sales is there?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Oh Dead Cells? Yeah, and then the strategy game
that people love, Into the Breach, Into the Breach. Yeah,
there's good stuff on there. It's it's worth looking at.
I mean, it's probably one of those things like if
you maybe you have a Netflix subscription, that's part of it,
and that's great, but like you'd probably still want to
invest in like a backbone controller or something. But yeah,
it's like one of those things. It's like you have,
like if you're paying for Netflix, like you actually have
a pretty good video game library on your phone that
you might not be aware, which is cool.
Speaker 2: Netflix. Netflix. Games is so interesting to me because I
feel like so much of our time covering the games
industry will see a developer or game company or whatever,
and they'll clearly put a lot of work into making
a game and advertising and just going really hard of
like this is our game. We worked really really hard
on here it is, and then despite all of that,
the studio will like close or the game won't sell
very well or whatever. Netflix Games is like the opposite thing,
where every time I talk to someone, they have no
idea it exists, and it's like a it's a good product,
but it's like not communicated very well. And despite that
it's been years, it's still around. They're like expanding and stuff.
So I'm curious of like how at what point they
flesh out their marketing, if they do it all, or
what what that even looks like.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people don't even know how
to access their library or like, so is it like, yeah,
do I go into Netflix and the games are there?
Or do I have to download the game separately and
log into Netflix? Like how do you? It's not like
it's not as clear as like game Pass, right, Okay,
that's an app that it's just got everything there, you
know what I mean. It's like, how do I actually
use this? Yeah, I don't know Netflix Games everybody, but okay, yeah,
I'm excited to play a range Ride. I want to
get my hands on that. Uh so, yeah, excited to
see what you think of it as you can, and
you moving people around against their will. Charles me too,
speaking of losing things against your will. I have finished.
I played and finished Nobody Wants to Die. Have you
guys seen this game at all?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: I had a couple of trailers sent to me by them,
and I remember even looking at them and thinking like,
this looks cool, even if I'm not exactly sure what
this is.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, this dropped last week. I think it
was the seventeenth. It is a first person like detective
mystery adventure game set and maybe the coolest depiction of
a cyberpunk city I've ever seen, because you know, when
you think of cyberpunk, like they all kind of blend together,
like it's all just variations of Blade Runner, But I
think this changes that up because it's a mix of
that aesthetic with like nineteen like forties fifties art deco.
So like imagine if like maybe like BioShock like Rapture,
Like what if that was like a cyberpunk city but
it still had all the art deco stuff where it's
like flying cars, but all the cars look old and
like all of your cool gadgets have just like this
vintage quality to them, even though they're like infinitely more
advanced than anything we have. It's like such a weird mishmatch,
but it gives the game so much like personality combined
with like the kind of like jazzy noir soundtrack. It
has that. Again. You see cyberpunk games all the time,
but it's like this is one. I was like, this
is gonna stick with me because it has like that
that art deco really separates it from the pack.
Speaker 3: Story at pull up a trailer like it looks it looks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've pulled it up just now to look at it,
and I was like, oh, yeah, this is not I
don't know what I expected this to look like. I
think I was thinking of that game Nobody Saves the World.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's just because they had similar title.
Speaker 2: So I was picturing some like two D indie thing
and I was like, oh, no, this is like a.
Speaker 3: No it looks d. It looks you know, to lend
it a compliment. Yeah, and it does.
Speaker 1: I played it on PC. I believe it's also in
Placation five and Series X. But it not only does
like the art direction strong, but just like fidelity wise,
it is a it is a sharp looking game, like
the lighting is great, Like I I don't the studio.
The name escapes me, but I was.
Speaker 3: Like, play On, Critical Hit.
Speaker 1: Critical Hit, Yeah, play On is the publisher. They're a
Polish studio, I believe, But I was like, what else
did they done? It's like this looks like a lot
of money went into this, but also it's not a
long game, which maybe helped, Like you can finish it
in like five hours roughly. But the the idea the
game is that it's in like the like twenty three something,
like the year twenty three something, and you're playing as
this detective named Jack Kara. And the way the world works,
and this is maybe the most terrifying and like upsetting
the world I've been in in a while, where basically
humanity has solved like death, like they they found a
way to sounds great, sounds like nothing could go wrong
with that. And the way that they've done is that
they've created a means to extract your consciousness and put
it into another body, so people don't really die in
this world anymore, like death is very very rare. And
the way the system works is that the government has
legal ownership over your body to where when you come
of age, which is like and this takes place in
the future, Marcus, there might be some commentary about certain
things going on in our in our current society when
it comes to ownership of your body. But like the
waightst world works, is that the government has legal control
over your body when once you come of age, was
it's twenty one years old, at which point you have
to start paying a subscription to keep your body, if
you have to start paying to keep it, because otherwise
if you do not do that, they can seize you,
extract your consciousness, put it into this massive bank of
other consciousnesses, and then your body just goes up for sale.
Basically like other people that want to change bodies can
look at you and be like, oh, yeah, that's the
one that's got everything I want. I'll take theirs. And
then it's like you basically become like a used car.
So there's this giant So that's like a whole economy
and like like culture aroundness where like the hyper rich
will just like because they can afford best bodies, so
to be like all bodies are graded. We're like, oh,
this is an A plus body, and then it'll also
list like here's all the unique traits of this body,
good or bad of like, like your character Jack, he's
been our live for like three hundred years and he's
like in his fourth body and you can see like
his little profile was like, oh, he's the body he
has has like a allergies and they'll list that like, oh, yeah,
you're lactose intolerant by the way, and you gotta pede
on allergies just so you know. Or you got a
tattoo that might be problematic. I don't know if you
want to get that taken care of or just something. Yeah,
but that sort of like determines the grade of the body.
And then also there like there's this idea that every
time you switch to a new body, there's debate about
how much of your consciousness transfers over and whether or
not it might potentially degrade with each transfer of like
are you like and like? And that plays into Jack
where he has this like he lost his wife in
like a traumatic accident. You don't know what happened, but
you're kind of figuring that out. But he keeps seeing
her and he has like sink issues because that's like
a thing where like, oh, when you transfer to a
new bodies. Sometimes you have like this this mental issue
where you just sort of start to break down and
maybe start seeing things that may or not been real,
and you have to take this special medication called ambrosia
to sort of like fix those symptoms. So he's like
constantly chugging these things as he's like wigging out, and
you see like the substance that sort of like contains
your consciousness. It's called ickorite, and you just see it
like branching. It's like this glowing web of like energy
that's like flowing all over the environment. And he's like
struggling to get a hold of himself, but his sort
of like goal is that there's this the creator of
this system, or one of the creators is murdered, and
like really murdered because they the only thing that keeps
you alive is the ickerit that everyone has in their
brain with your consciousness, and you can completely fry that
then you're just like dead dead basically. And somehow has
someone has managed to do this? And you're trying to
figure out like how like it was it an accident
or did he kill himself or did someone else do it?
And for what purpose? So like the game is basically
the shorthand I've decided for is like it's Batman Arkham
Detective Mode the video game where you've got all like
four different tools that you're going into these investigative, investigative
spaces at these crime scenes and you're just trying to
piece together clues, and you've got like his main device
is this gauntlet where he can basically scan an environment
and then sort of like reconstructed and then replay it,
like you can scrub through it where you can kind
of see, you know, it sort of like reanimates everything basically,
so it's like, oh, this thing exploded, I can just
rewind to before it exploded and then kind of figure
out what caused the explosion or something like that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, incidentally, like the Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven the
game like had sequences like that as well. Yeah, that's
like a blade Runner thing too, like him looking into photos.
So it's like it's of the genre, right right, but
well done here it seems.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks like it's super super slick, just like
the animation the interface for like, it looks cool as
you're sort of like basically reverse engineering a crime scene
where you're walking inre like I you know, he's questioning
like I don't know how this guy could have landed here,
or how could he get shot from this angle? And
then you start to gradually put the pieces together, Like
you've got a UV lamp that you can use the
UH find like you know, hidden substances or bloodstains that
you can trace to a source. You've got an X
ray that you can use a scan through walls to
find like hidden wires that leads to generators. And he's
also got a like like just the regular version of
the Tech Division where you just flip it on and
you can see sort of like the objects that you
can interact with UH. Because this is one of those
games where, like you poking around is like important where
you'll find little clues that you know, whether it's like
a little book or a cup or something, but it
might have something important and UH and it does matter
in terms of the case as far as I can tell,
Like you'll pick up things where it's like, oh, you know,
you've you've affected the outcome of the story of your case.
Because it's like a choice driven game too, where the
only there's very few like characters that you're interacting with,
Like the main one is this woman in your ear
named Sarah who's like your partner, and you guys kind
of have like an uneasy relationship because she's, you know,
you've got a record of being like a hothead basically,
like you're you're sort of like the loose cannon kind
of cop guy where the chief is not really a
fan of you basically, and she's like the new rookie
on the scene who also has only lived in her
original body, where she's like I think they call her
a newborn, where like, oh, you've been alive less than
fifty years. That's weird, Like you haven't switched bodies yet,
so you're kind of having like your relationship with her
can change based on interaction of like how trustworthy you
are of each other, whether or not she'll go behind
your back with things, and some of the optional conversations
are pretty fun. Like I think the performances Buy and
Large are pretty good, especially Sarah. I think the main
guy is like James. He kind of comes off as
like very hard boiled, like noir novel style, like he's
kind of doing the like long monologues where he's making
a lot of like like metaphors that make limited sense,
and then like you know, he's like, oh, you know,
the rain is.
Speaker 5: Coming down like a cold sweat of fire, and it
reminds me of the part of the city, and he's
like going like that kind of stuff, yeah, which is
funny because there's a his character is a fan of
old like old crime movies from like the nineteen fifties,
and there's like points where he actively makes fun of
that kind of character, but then he's on like a
barely a step above them, and in terms of like
how like there's several of.
Speaker 1: His lines where I'm like, I don't know about that one.
I don't know that one made a lot of sense,
but it's good, but he's saying it with like one
hundred percent just like seriousness behind it. But like the
I think the dynamic between him Sarah is like really fun.
There's some really cool revelations but with both of them
that I won't get into. But like even the optional
stuff can like sort of like steer a story different ways.
Like there's one point where you go into like the
rich guy's house and you find like he has chocolate
and a jar like which has gone extinct. Basically because
ever there's like barely anything is like organic in this world,
Like there's barely a trace of green just because of
how you know, this is like late late late late
late stage capitalism, where like there's just building upon buildings,
and like food is barely real. But you find like
a piece of like real chocolate that has been preserved
for like over one hundred years, and you have this
optional conversation where she gets really excited when you find it,
and she's like, can you smell it for me and
describe what it smells like to you? Like she really
wants to know, and you can like end this right
away where you're just like, no, I'm not doing that,
But then if you go through it, you're going through
this semi lengthy sequence of just like I don't know,
it smells like mushrooms maybe, and she's like, really, can
you describe it a different way or like a like
an emotion, and you can just keep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really like I really like imagining the conversation
re action of like, oh, yeah, what does that smell like?
And you're like, I'm not telling you that showing someone
out like stop being weird, man.
Speaker 1: You can if you want to Yeah, I think that's
so funny.
Speaker 3: It's just would you is this like an action game?
Is there like are you shooting and running and or
is it? Is it all like just detective work? Okay,
that's cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you're moving around these spaces like you're
freely moving around the first person. You're picking things up,
inspecting them, but there's no combat, even though if teases
commat a few times, Like there's sequences where he pulls
his gun, but you're never like pulling the trigger. It's
sort of like something will always happen, or like usually
just something always happened, but I was like waiting for it.
A few times. They make it a point to establish
like he's got a gun, like you can look at
it and stuff and inspect it. So you're like, I'm
I'm going to shoot someone at some point, but no,
not really. You're just going around just crime scene the
crime scene, just doing these rather lengthy like reconstructions of
these scene, Like one scene can take like probably a
good fifteen minutes at the least, depending on how long
it takes you to sort of connect dots, and then
even after that, you're going back to your apartment and
you've got like a like a sort of like a
flow chart that you're putting together with all your clues
to try to figure out like, Okay, how do these
things come act? What am I? What are the conclusion
I'm drawing? And that is I think that changes based
on what you find too, or at least what you
sort of like decide, like this what significance you assign
to clues in the moment? Change it. But that even
that like little exercise of connecting dots is presented in
a really slick and cool way. I think the story
itself is generally pretty good, Like I think it's really
gripping just the world. Like I said, like there was
one there were multiple points playing this game where I
was just like almost like like genuinely upset of like
how could we let this happen? Like this is an
awful way to live? And a lot of the story
is sort of like the main villain is sort of
a guy that's like seemingly going against that status quo
in a maybe very destructive way, but you have choices
to where like you know he's done, Like you know
you could just kill this guy because you know he's
like a horrible person like this politician or this this
like celebrity, or he's like you know all the stuff
he's done and kill him now, you know, you'll be
saving a lot of lives, you know, and you know,
but an you kind of do the thing of like, yeah,
but this isn't the right way or you know that
kind of thing. But there's some pretty messed up people
in this world.
Speaker 3: Is satisfying you finished it right?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think by and large it isler's obvious that
stuff with the villain. I walked away not totally clear
on who he was exactly, and I don't know if
that's a consequence of the choices that I made, Like
maybe I didn't unlock a dialogue trig because you can see,
like when you get some conversations there, you'll see responses
that are locked and you don't know what they are,
but you can see there's a lot of like, Okay,
I did not I didn't find something that would have
unlocked this. And then there were times where I found
a thing and it's like, oh, this is available now, Okay.
So that's why I say, like it's important to poke
around and see how much you can find before moving
on or talking to someone. But I think the storytelling,
like for the most part, is like genuinely gripping, and
I was like invested in everything that was happening. And
like I said, the between the presentation and the world
and just the and and the investigative stuff, you know,
can get a little repetitive, like you are kind of
doing the same four general things for LinkedIn see what
is But like it's it's presented in such a cool
way that I never really minded. And again I was like,
I want to see what I would like to see
the answer to this. I'm very curious to see how
this unfolded. So I'm fine with scanning this thing again.
So yeah, it's cool. It's a cool game, and it
feels like something that kind of came out of nowhere.
But yeah, I'm still mulling on it. I'm thinking about
just the starting another playthrough, just to make some different choices,
see how differently things can unfold. But it seemed like
there's a lot of potential for things to go in
completely different directions because there are some pretty big decisions
that you have to make.
Speaker 3: Cool. Yeah, no, it doesn't. It feels like kind of
left field. I think it came out July seventeenth. It
looks like on Steam So yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: One of again, do I feel like I could talk
about the world forever. It's just there, like everything has
about the Great of Body subscriptions were they like promote
keeping your body healthy in a way that is like
almost like gross of like if they're very much like
please don't smoke and drink and not because we want
you to like feel better, it's because are your body's
gonna be loan to someone else, so don't give them
like a faulty body please. Like there's like these really
the everywhere. Yeah, like literally it's that of like like
you see posters being like, hey, you know, drinking is bad,
doing drugs is bad, and elite, We'll arrest you because
you're destroying the government property your body. It's wild. It's
it's a it's a wild game. So but yeah, that
is nobody says. Nobody says God, Charles, Nobody wants to
die out now PlayStation Xbox in PC. Kyle, you wrapped
up Ksugami Path at the Goddess recently. You gave it
a review score. Yeah, tell us all about that journey.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just I wanted to fall upon it quickly
because we talked about it a good bit last week.
At the time, Wes was actually the assigned reviewer, which
I mentioned just to explain like why suddenly I had
my name on the score he he Wes ended up
going on a surprise work trip and that took them
away from his console. And but I also bring it
up because kind of like earlier this year, Loralai in
the Laser Eyes, it was a game that I just
kind of started because I was like, that looks cool.
I'll check this out, like we check out so many games,
like we are constantly just starting games, So it really
is something special when it's like, oh, I'm finishing this,
like there's no way I don't finish this yet, and now.
Speaker 1: Nobody nobody wants to die. Was that for me? It's like, oh,
I've seen this and then you're like, oh, I think
I'm gonna finish this. Yeah, And that's Kunittugami.
Speaker 3: Was that for me, and it really surprised me for
a lot of reasons, because like, I'm not really a
big strategy guy. I don't really enjoy the act of
like in that game, you sort of assign roles to
people and then you place them on the battlefield kind
of so to speak, and like that's just not the
I don't enjoy that kind of gameplay, But it just
really worked for me here just because of the it's
never overly complicated. It's satisfying to kind of level up
those villagers and stuff like that, and then when you
sort of you can always run in and fight yourself
and like you can always kind of save the day ultimately,
Like I certainly played levels that I had to restart
and stuff like that, Like I wasn't like a breeze.
I did make it through without replaying any levels, though,
which I was very happy about in a weird way.
I was like, please don't make me like replay levels
I've already been. I don't want to do that. But
I gave it an eight seventy five, and it's like
it is one of the year's surprises for me. Not
that like I don't have faith in like Capcom or
anything like that. Like the first time I saw it,
I never thought it looked bad or anything, but it
was just one of those like I don't know what
this is. It's got a cool art style. We'll see
if it's like destined to be a cult Classic, and
it was just one of those that I was like,
this is great. I don't want to stop playing. I'm
going to see this to the end. And I really
liked Kunitsugami. Like, I bet, you know, I don't know
what the rest of the year will look like, obviously,
but I bet it'll be on my top ten at
the end of the year. Like it really surprised me
in a way that I wasn't expecting and really ultimately enjoy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I having a chance to go back to it
since we talked about it last week, But it's one
of those games where, like I said last week, like
it feels like this year's Exo primeal of like the
weird thing we weren't sure about that came out. It
was better than people thought it would be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah, I mean I Exo Prime will
never clicked with me outside of playing like one or
two matches, and I was like, I kind of get
this and it's kind of charming, but I don't really
feel super compelled to go back to it. But this
the loop is just really satisfying of like save the woman,
get to the end of the level, and then go
back before the next fight. You can upgrade a lot
of villages. You can fix villages, which lets you level
up yourself or your villagers, and then you can go
do some more fighting and then it's just it's very
good at that one more thing. Let me just let
me just take care of this before I go to bed.
And it's like a game that kept me up late,
and also in a way that I like. It's not
very narrative heavy. There's no dialogue, so it was it
was a game that I enjoyed, like putting on a
podcast and just doing some combat and strategy and just
playing through that loop over and over is very satisfying game.
Speaker 1: Do you think between this and Exo Primal, like those
feel like games were if they all came out maybe
the same year. I guess they did not really the
same year. They all came out close together, like a
year apart, but like they almost feel like a new
Capcom six. You remember the Capcom six back in the day.
Speaker 2: I like, yes, yeah, can you can you tell me
what this is?
Speaker 1: So that was an initiative from like the mid two
thousands that they just announced like six.
Speaker 3: It wasn't six though. I think that numbers.
Speaker 1: Think I think amount of being five maybe, but it
was like a bunch of games they announced that we're
all coming out at relatively at the same time, or
like they were all in development, but they were all
like five. I guess the Capcom five, the Capcom five. Okay,
I'm thinking of the Wyat six. Maybe I don't know.
It's a wrestling thing, but like yeah, but it was like, hey,
we got these five weird games that were working on
and they're all coming out in relatively the same time.
Speaker 3: They're all game cube games. Like Capcom was like, yeah,
where do GameCube?
Speaker 1: And it was Beautiful Joe. Yep, it was god Hand, No,
that was that was later? Yeah, Godhand was later?
Speaker 3: Was it really? Yeah? So because I have the like Wicked,
there's a whole Wikipedia page for it. It's p and
O three, which was which was pretty mediocre. It was
Beautiful Joe which was good, Killer seven, which is like
a cult classic, and then Residu Evill four was in
that bundle. Because it was really surprising that Capcom was
so focused on GameCube and they're like, we're making four
GameCube exclusive games or five. The fifth one ended up
getting canceled, which was like a Dragon game. I think
a dead Phoenix is what it was called, and it
never it ended up getting canceled. But Marcus, you are
totally right. This feels like a Capcom five thing where
they're like, yeah, we we have our big franchises and stuff,
we have our street fighters and that kind of thing,
but like we're gonna try some experiments here and see
what clicks. And that was like Exo Primal and count
Ugami feel like they totally fit that mold of like
we're gonna try something special. And I mean I Exo
Prime a lot. I mean I feel like though it
was like generally critically well received, I feel like it
kind of disappeared pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: But it's not a game that it's built for longevity
because it is very much a single player game disguised
as a multiplayer games. It had once you get to
the end of the story, it's like, oh okay, you
have to play a lot to get to the end
of the stories. You're like, n done. I mean, it's
a fun like it plays well, but yeah when I
saw the when I got credits, I was like, yeah,
I'm good. Yeah, And I mean Tougami it's not like
one that I'm like really eager to go back to
after seeing credit. So there there is new game plus
if you want to do that. But it just I
feel like it's sneaking up on a lot of people.
Maybe I'm alone in that, but it's like it really
game pass too, which helps.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, so if yeah, so if you like, if
you like action, if you with a little bit of
strategy in there, Like I feel like Pickman is maybe
the closest game you can relate to. It's not it's different,
you know, but it's like you're in control of a
group and you're kind of like using them to do stuff.
There's it's just got like the same emotions you know
that I have when I'm playing Pickment. So yeah, I
Nitsu goat me like one of my favorites of the year,
and I did not expect that.
Speaker 1: Do you guys think Pragmata will be like part of
this ill like their next weird thing? Like do you
think this will be part of the new Capcom five
or whatever number we're gonna sign to this?
Speaker 2: Do we know like what kind of game that is?
Speaker 1: I think they said it's an action game.
Speaker 3: I think we've seen gameplay right, It's like a third
person action game, right.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we've well, I think that first
trailer had I think that was it was in engine cinematics.
Speaker 2: Maybe, Okay, this is the game that like they did
the weird fake out trailer where they were like, here's
the release date. Actually it's delayed.
Speaker 3: Yeah that was it was a delay trailer. I mean yeah, yeah,
there was from a year ago. There is an official
gameplay teaser, and I'm like watching it now and it
kind of almost looks like third person shootery, kind of
almost like vanquish a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. For those that don't know, by the way, this
is the like Kajimo looking Astronaut game with the little
girl that has powers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it looks like the Kajima Productions logo is
the main character.
Speaker 3: But yeah, Marcus, you're totally right because it's like Capcom.
I know, we just included Resume four in the Capcom five,
but that was kind of an outlier because I was
an established franchise. It just gotta have a headliner in there, yeah,
because it was like it was weird because it was
a GameCube exclusive. But that being said, I feel like
Capcom now is like, look, we got Monster Hunter, going Strong,
we got residueval every year, Street Fighter, you know, those
games are bringing in the money, and then we're we're
also doing these experiments Pragmata Exo, Primal Tugami like that.
That totally fits them in. Just like there's a little
team to the side that's like, can we can we
try something here for a little while, and Capcom's like, yeah, yeah,
just you'll we'll bring you back to Resident of next year.
Why don't you work on Kinzugami for a while.
Speaker 1: Right, still waiting for deep Down, the next game part
of the Capcom four or five. If only deep Down
had been announced in this era of Capcom, it probably
would have kind of came out.
Speaker 3: Charles, you said you did start Kanitsugami at least, or.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did, like the first battle. I think I'll
go back to it. It was just last night. It
was like literally the first time I had turned on
my PS five since I moved.
Speaker 3: So it is easy. That takes what three hours?
Speaker 1: Tops? Don't you play video games while you're moving?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I have. That's what the switch is for,
for playing video games while moving.
Speaker 1: It's my favorite switch commercial. When they were like in
the moving truck, just.
Speaker 2: Playing the switches thing, not getting anything like the opening
of a Pokemon Emerald. Oh yeah, the kid's just riding
in the back of the truck, just like some kids
in the back of a U haul, like playing Mario Kart,
like bump for each other.
Speaker 1: That's going to be in the switch to commercial.
Speaker 2: I really hope so it moves where you move switch to.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good.
Speaker 6: Actually, my my brother does a really good impression of
Nintendo Direct voiceover guy of.
Speaker 2: Like Yoshi's back with a new adventure, and I I
really enjoyed it. Or when it's like this guy he's
got a very bright voice, but then he'll drop it
down to be like a mysterious world or Pragmata, just
just to be like a little more serious because he
can't be too happy about anyway.
Speaker 3: Browns and blacks in it.
Speaker 2: Is coming to switch Yes, yeah, become the king of
a criminal underworld. Game's good.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I haven't played that much of it, but I do.
Speaker 1: I like.
Speaker 2: In the same vein of what you guys were talking about.
I recently got when we moved into this house. One
of the things we found is my girlfriend's dad's old
box of consoles, so I now own like they had
no idea it was still there. I now own a
Super Nintendo, a Nintendo sixty four, and then a PlayStation
one and two.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah and now hell those are relics. Yeah, and
they also.
Speaker 2: Like didn't play them very often. There's a like green
translucent PS two controller still in the packaging, and that's
like my favorite. Like I modded my switch pro controller
to be translucent green. Like it's literally like the perfect
thing I would want.
Speaker 3: It's like a pistol control.
Speaker 2: It's okay, it's exactly get.
Speaker 3: Pisto question the N sixty four controller. If you kind
of just like shake it a little bit, does the
control stick like loosely kind of shaken there? That's like
the trick if for N sixty four controllers. It's like
Charles is actually going to get it. I wasn't. I
thought maybe he was that good. If it stands like
stiff and doesn't like shake loosely in the controller, like
you're in good shape. Like those are hard to come by. Yeah,
So like hold it flat, hold it flat, Charles, and
then kind of like how does it feel does it
feel stiff in there? That's good that's good.
Speaker 2: It's got a little give, but yeah.
Speaker 3: That's good because what the problem was they N sixty
four uses like plastic pieces for the control stick that
weigh down really easily. Over time, like follow up controllers,
they figured out how to do it better and they
would use metal and aluminum and stuff like that, but
those N sixty four ones use plastic. So like you can,
if you can see an overused N sixty four control,
you can spot one very easily because the control stick
is just like flailing around in there, so that looks
pretty solid.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, it's it's nice because, uh, it's very much
a thing where he bought it for GoldenEye and didn't
use it for much else, so it's all very lightly
used to Anyway, The only reason I brought all this
up to tie back to Kizugami is now I can
go to I always like to go to like retro
game stores just to see what they have, but now
I can actually be like, oh, maybe I can buy
these things and play them. They're for more than just looking.
Speaker 3: At You can get a Taggi for your PS two
and be like this is basically you can.
Speaker 1: You can get the Capcom five.
Speaker 2: It feels like the stuff I did the hall I
got recently, see what he got smart, And then I
was like, well it was only eight dollars, so I
got Final Thing game right as well, And then I
never played Got War the first one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those are great, So revisiting the original God of
War because you've played the more the recent two right right?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm I'm prepared to be like, oh, Creatos,
you're really right to be embarrassed about your past.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it would be fun to go back with that
context of like knowing where he ends up and seeing
where he comes from, like those Yeah, look at that
stories is really well done as a result.
Speaker 1: Yeah, playing those games now is like looking at Kratos's
high school Facebook messages and be like, oh, you are
a very different person.
Speaker 2: I think we've talked about God of War before, Kyle,
like way back, I think when we first started. He
reviewed Ragnarok as like the first thing you did when
you came here, and I was talking about how like
I never played the old God of War games. So
my perspective in the games is like a Treas's perspective,
Like I know as much about these worlds, this world
as he does, and so it'll be fun to basically
be a treyas and be like, Dad, you did what.
Speaker 1: I think I think the game today.
Speaker 3: Like I'm calling a shot here that could like if
you go back to Golden Now, you're gonna have a
hard time, Charles, But I think God of War would
still be fun today.
Speaker 1: Did you play the the DLC for Ragnarok, the Rogue
Light thing?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, because there's like there's like that that glimpse of
old Crados in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah really basically yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I was like I felt like that would be your
first like glimpse into like because you know, it's him
literally coming face to face with his old snell being like,
oh boy, oh that was me.
Speaker 3: Huh uh, you're not dressed for the snow.
Speaker 1: I would say God of War three still one of
my favorite action games of all time. I think God
of War three is a masterpiece. Yeah uh yeah. You
know what else is great real quickly out touching this
because I forgot to do it last week is a
Diabolo four vessel of Hatred's new spirit Born Class. I
got to go to the Blizzard campus, which was my
first time ever visiting yet I know it's one of
the Uh, it's up there. I feel like for for
like game studios you want to visit, I feel like
Blizzard is usually up there. And I'm not even like
a big Blizzard guy, Like I didn't grow up with
Blizzard because I wasn't a PC gamer, which is that
I feel like those two are basically the same things
to an extent because so many of their big franchises
were PC games, like I've I'm Just Diabolo and Overwatch
one that is kind of where my Blizzard, like I
guess fandom if you want to call it, that begins
and ends. But even then, it was still cool visiting
that campus and getting the full tour and seeing the
the war Craft I Guess statute that's in the front
that everybody's seen a million times. They have their own
Starbucks that makes them custom work like Blizzard drinks, like
they have drinks after their own Blue. They have a
Diabolo drink that someone recommended I get. I we didn't.
I wasn't able to go there and try it. But
they're like, yeah, we have our own secret menu where
you can get like a war Craft latte or Diabolo
frappe or something.
Speaker 3: And I was like weird.
Speaker 1: How like, how good do you have to be doing
to have like this Richie Rich set up basically where
he had if you're Richie Rich when he had his
own McDonald's, you know.
Speaker 3: I was like, we all know the reference, Marcus, I'm sure, Charles,
we're mcaulay call page.
Speaker 2: I've heard the name.
Speaker 3: From there.
Speaker 2: He's got rich twice. He's a rich guy owns some McDonald's.
Speaker 1: As a kid, I thought having his own McDonald's like
legitimately the coolest thing a rich person could do.
Speaker 3: That movie has probably led to a lot of you know, uh,
commercialism issues, and you know it's like that, you know,
back to the future. The ultimate win at the end
of that movie is he like McFly has a truck.
He's like, I want life. I have a truck now
that and like Richie Rich, are why we have so
many problems today, capitalists.
Speaker 1: This is why we're going to be selling our bodies inscription.
But I got to play about two over two hours
actually of the Spiritborn Class, which is the new class
coming to Vessel of Hatred, and basically it is this
cool like martial arts like spirit Master, where it's it's
native to the new region that the expansions introducing called Nothtu.
It's like a jungle region. The class itself thematically and
aesthetically very much inspired by like Central South American kind
of like culture. Like you could see a bit of
like like Mayan or like Inking in some of the
character design, Whereas like the combat Wise is a very
offensive focused class, which is what I love about it
because it's literally just a guy that goes in there
and just does a bunch of cool martial arts moves
and doesn't worry about blocking. It just dodges all over
the places. Like it's a very agile class where you're
just like backflipping all over the battlefield and then you're
just like cutting down a demon with like a cool
like one hundred pands slap or like uh because he
uses like pole arms and gleaves as like it's sort
of preferred weapons. You're just like spinning a glave and
just like slicing a dude up, and you're just like, yep,
that's that's how I like to play my action games.
I like a fast based dude that just does a
gazillion things very quickly. But then on top of that
they can commune with the spirit realm and summons these
four spirit guardians that it harness his power for. So
it's in each guardian, which are a jaguar, a centipede,
a gorilla, an eagle. Like they each more or less
feel like many classes in themselves because they each kind
of promote a different play style, where like the jaguar
is like a firebase and it's just about like relentless offense,
and the gorilla is the opposite, where it's about like
defense and just like you know, you can absorb a
bunch of punishment and then retaliate with these really heavy blows.
The eagles more maneuverability where you can just do these
attachment you're just like warping all over the battlefield and
doing like almost like final Fantasy kind of like like
like lancer jumping and then it's like electricity bass. And
then the centipede is like poison and debuffing opponents and
just like disrupting mobs. And they each have their own
abilities tied to them, and you can mix and match
your bill to be either a hybrid of different styles
or you can just go pure, like I'm just gonna
be pure jaguar and have all that stuff. So It's
like a really fun class just in terms of like
the amount of uh customization you can do with it
and and how you can just change your approach to battle.
But also it's just a fun class to look at
because like when you're just like like each of the
animals has like an ultimate attack, where like the ghost
animal just like shows up and then just like attacks
a bunch of people. Like you'll see the eagle just
like swoop down from above and like slam into like
ten guys and take them out, Or like the centiped
will emerge from the ground and then just like spraying
poison all over the place, and it just looks awesome.
Speaker 3: I'm not a big Diablo guy. I mean this is
totally unique, right, Like I know there's like necromancer classes
where you can like call the dead to help you, right.
Speaker 1: But this is, yeah, is more about yeah, like necromancer
is more about like summoning your own mobs to fight
other moms. But this is like like the animals. Don't
the animals only show up for like the ultimate attack.
Otherwise you're doing abilities where you're sort of like channeling
them or like if you're I'm using an ego ability,
that's me throw feathers at people, you know what I mean. Like,
they're not like manifesting entirely until you do their ultimate
but it is a completely unique cloud, like they said, like,
you know, it's the first class that isn't based on
like a traditional fantasy archetype like a mage or like
a rogue. Youino, Yeah, so let them sort of like
get more creative and also base it since there was
always planned for the expansion, like they started developing it
before the base game came out. They're like, you know,
we can tie the gameplay style and the fiction to
way location, whereas the other classes are a little bit
more Yeah, like they can kind of fit in anywhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they have to write, Like if you want
to give the choice of like five different classes from
the start, yeah, they kind of all have to fit
in some way.
Speaker 1: Right, And you can Also what's cool is that if
you play Vessel of Hatred, you can play the entire
base game as the spirit Born from the start. Like
you don't have to just wait for the expansion storyline
to play it. So if you just want another reason
to replay the game with an or the base game
of a new class, you're just like, yeah, I'm just
gonna go spiritborn and go fight little It. That'll be cool.
But yeah, I liked it. I think it's probably my
favorite class in the game now because it's it sings
to how I like to play my action games a lot,
and I just like the idea of customizing for spirit animals.
And also it reminds me of Legends of the Hidden
Temple vaguely because a red jaguar and a silver monkey. Technically,
and I asked them that question. It's probably the dumbest
question I asked them through my interview, and you would
not believe that they said that was not a direct Instora.
Speaker 3: Well, that's frankly, I mean we're being honest here.
Speaker 1: Come on, I said, you can lie and say it
is now, because I'm sure other people will ask you
don't have to.
Speaker 3: Get ready to ask this question. I answer this question
all day.
Speaker 1: You don't have to only disappoint me with this answer.
Speaker 2: Love the move as a journalist of being like you
can lie if you want. Oh you said no, just
go ahead and mind it's just actually, I think.
Speaker 1: You got other interviews later. You can lie to them
if you want.
Speaker 3: I'll have the.
Speaker 2: Exclusive, the one truthful interview, you can lie to everyone else.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Diabo for Vessel Matred launching October god eight.
Speaker 3: I want to say, and what most and you included.
I mean, Diablo players will probably like, oh, new class
and then I'll play this this this campaign. That's like
off to the side kind of right. It's like it's
not like they expect players to start the game over
with the new class, right necessarily.
Speaker 1: I mean you can't. You want to, you know, I don't,
but I don't believe you need to beat the base
campaign to play the expansion. I think it's just sort
of like off to the side, like, yeah, that's cool,
that's smart, whatever you want. Actually, no, I know you
can do that. They say that, like, yeah, if you're
in the middle of the campaign, you're like, I'm gonna
do to other up the Vessel Patred stuff, you can
just go do that.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's like it's like a shadow of the
r Tree approach a little bit right where.
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, does it scale?
Speaker 3: You just leave, you go to a different area with
you know, like you don't worry about overlapping with the
previous stuff, right.
Speaker 1: You're asking, does like the level scale?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think it scales the same way
it does in the base game.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah then yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and it is October eighth. Well ecee me
for Vessel of Hatred. Yeah, if you guys don't have
anything else to that you want to touch on, we
can get into some housekeeping and answer a few listener questions.
That sound good. It's dood alrighty, so housekeeping once again.
You can subscribe to Game and Former a print subscription
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Speaker 2: You did?
Speaker 3: Okay?
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replay of the Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask where we
made progress this week. We last week, Kyle, things happened.
A lot of things happen. We have like four new
masks now one episode skeleton. We raised a bunch of chickens.
We yeah, we, I mean, what Mars is in charge here?
Speaker 2: What dungeon are you guys?
Speaker 1: On the fourth one?
Speaker 3: We're approaching the fourth one, but the fourth one also
has maybe the most like pre build up. You know,
there's all those that has the you have to do
the most before the fourth Dungeon.
Speaker 1: It seems like there's some ghost stuff. I gotta shall
com mass that looks kind of cool. Some things are
happening that I'm excited about. So yeah, check that out
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super special shout out to our awesome podcast editor Matt
Storm aka a DJ Storm Again, be sure the follow
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a BioWare folks this podcast and yes, this is the
part of the show where you influence what we talk about,
which is our listener questions. If you would like to
ask us a question on this podcast, you can do
so one of two ways. You can either email us
at podcasts at GameInformer dot com, or you can join
the Game Informer Discord, which you do by subscribing to
our Twitch channel just one time and going into the
Game Informer Show channel and dropping us a question. I
usually go in there the morning of every podcast recording
day and pool for some questions. And we've got a
few here, a couple leftover from last week, but we'll
start with Sean via discord asking in the year twenty thirty,
the same amount of time will have passed from the
release of Pong as the time between the Right Brother's
flight and gury Gagaron's trip as the first person in
the outer space, which is fifty eight years. Okay, So
the question is, what, if anything, would you label as
the first person in an outer space moment in the
history of video game development? What was the Right Brothers
style milestone? Have video games as a craft landed on
the moon yet?
Speaker 3: This is this is a funky question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a really well thought out question. I
feel like.
Speaker 3: Before we say anything, I think the achievement of leaving
Earth's atmosphere and entering space is the more impressive achievement.
Just because we're sort of lining them up doesn't mean
we're relating the two.
Speaker 2: You don't think Pong and flight.
Speaker 1: And we we have sent a video game into space,
haven't we, like in one of those like kind of
like tying gift capsules from Earth in case someone finds
it like as a culture thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, there was an astronaut that was probably playing
Candy Crust just like while they were waiting.
Speaker 1: I thought was going way further back, like someone a
game Boy up or something.
Speaker 3: But I think I have a thought here that I
don't know if it's the right answer. I don't know
if there is a right answer, But I don't know
what you guys think.
Speaker 1: What's what is it?
Speaker 2: What's I thought you were gearing up, you're telling us
to go first.
Speaker 3: I have one. I think, uh, and I think it's
I think it is the switch. I think it is
the transition between home and portable console, like a home console,
like like video game consoles. Right, Like there were like
arcades and then like now, then we hit a point
where like, well you can get arcade quality at home,
but then there was always that divide between but then
you can't take it out of your house. But the
switch was that point where it was like you have
a console, you can play it on your TV at home,
and you you literally pick it up and take it
out and it's the same thing and it's portable, and
that was like that felt like magic to me the
first time I sort of really use the switch. So
that's my landing on the moon. Is the switch.
Speaker 2: I'll take you one further. I think they said by
twenty thirty, right, yeah, I think so we have to
still some time that this happen. I think like proper,
proper cloud gaming is the button that we hit of
like you can just open up your phone and you
can play any game and it's not like not as
much of a question of how good your internet is
just the idea that like video games transcending physical consoles
and just being a thing of like oh and like
now you can play Game Pass on a TV, just
being like, oh you have a TV? Can I download
this app real quick and then play the new Call
of Duty? Like while I'm in my hotel room and
I don't have to, you know, bring my tech along
with me, Like I think, I think that's the for me.
The space equivalent is entering the cloud, so.
Speaker 3: To speak at because that was I was going to say,
is like, well we can do that now, but it's unreliable.
And what you're talking about is like where we don't
even perceive a difference, right I'm saying.
Speaker 2: I'm saying, give it, give it six years, clean it up,
tighten it up, make it easier to tighten up, make
it a smoother experience. Because I've done cloud gaming, but
it's always like every few minutes I get like some
kind of visual glitch or like it goes out of
sync for a second, Like I wouldn't play an action
game on the cloud. But I know there's like I
know it's a whole thing in Japan. Correct me if
I'm wrong. It's not as crazy to put like a
cloud game on switch, Like there's cloud games on the
switch there that we don't have here because it's a
better infrastructure for that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So with that kind of like going with the I
guess history of aviation analogy, if that's like what you're
describing the man in the Moon moment. Would something like
Stadia be like the Wright Brothers, like we figured out
how to achieve flight, that's setting up.
Speaker 3: They do it without a living person or animal in there.
It's like we've got we've left the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I say like like Stadia is like the
Right Brothers playing like we can fly. It's a little
shaky and maybe you know you're not going super high,
but you can do it.
Speaker 3: But I thought that Pong was the Right Brothers.
Speaker 2: That's yeah, that's that's what this metaphor is.
Speaker 3: Like that Yeaong is the starting point, yes, like everything.
Oh yeah, and then it's like within sixty years we
were in space, right, It's like we figured out how
to fly and then we were in space six years later,
so we figured out video games? What what is the
big thing that we do sixty years later?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I condensed it down to like the
history of cloud gaming and general. Yeah, maybe I was
going to go back to like what about on Live
or something?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, on Live was like your nay, you're crazy
neighbor who set up a rocket that went into the
atmosphere and he insisted it went to space and you're like,
all right, I was gonna say, at least like a
hot air balloon or like, well I can.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 1: Maybe, Like I feel like there's multiple good answers for this,
like the smartphone, Like just the advent of the smartphone.
I know that's because I had such a profound effect
on gaming because now to your switch analogy, Kyle, you
could take games anywhere in a way that even the
game Boy couldn't, like, because everyone has to have a phone.
Everyone has a phone. Like even if you were in
a gamer, you had access to genuinely like good games
for the first time without having to like without requiring
any like extra purchase, you know, like I didn't have
to buy a separate dedicated device I just have it
now because I bought the first iPhone and like, for
better or worse, you know, people have taken advantage of
that and like not great ways. But also there's been
like a myriad of really good mobile games where like,
you know, so many people that consider themselves like, oh,
I'm not really a gamer, but then I put like
one hundred thousand hours in like Candy Crush or like
threes or something, and to me, I was like, oh, no,
you are. You just I don't think I like the
idea like being a gamer is like it's to the
point now where it barely means anything. It's like saying like, oh,
I'm a I'm a guy that likes movie. I'm a
movie person. You're like everybody watches movies. He's like, yeah,
you know, some people watch it and appreciate it more
than others. But it's like it's so like you, I'll
watch movies. Nobody goes out and goes like, you know,
I like movies as like a weird personality trait. And
I feel like video games have have gotten to that
point as much as a lot of like Gatekeeper gamers
tried to push back against like no, you don't like
you're not a gamer if you only like this kind
of like arbitrary thing, like there's a rule here, like
you only play phone games around a game. You're like, no,
that's it's become true. Yeah, yeah, it's so like and
I feel like this small art phoneus maybe was like
the final like glass shattering of that moment if we're
just talking about like the availability of video games to
the mainstream audience, whether we realize it or not. So
that I guess that'll be my answer for this. But yeah,
great question, Sean.
Speaker 3: I like that. It's it's a weird one, thinker.
Speaker 1: Let's see. Our next one is from Prodible via discord,
asking if any of you that have tried Zeendless Zone
zero have also tried ginsch an impact, Which did you
prefer and which world design which would be hub versus
open world and gamepay loop which would be missions versus
open world quests. Did you find fits the premium mobile
game style that Hoyo is best known for or known
for best? Like, I guess which game fits their premium
mobile design better? I would almost I have.
Speaker 3: I haven't touched Zendless Zone zero really, I played it
for like twenty minutes even that I played a bit
of Gensen. But I mean, I think you could just
just based on the success of Ensine. I think you
could argue that Gensen is like the one that's sort
of defined it, right, or like yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and your granted it's been out longer and we
don't know the full tail of Zeno Zone zero word
winds up success wise, I would almost say maybe zenless
because it's more compartmentalized the gameplay. Mm hm, like that
just makes it easier to like get in and out
of like I'm going to do like a mission and
then maybe spend money on it. Then something like more nebulous,
like an open world or anything can happen at any
time at any pace. I don't. I don't know. But
then maybe that's the reason why the open world would
be better, because you're maybe more likely to spend more
time in it, so maybe the temptation to spend money
is more present.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. I don't know if you're saying from
a player perspective or a company person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that's where I'm trying to figure out,
Like I should be looking this purely from like the
business perspective, right.
Speaker 2: I have only I've only played a little Genshin. I
haven't played Zendles Zone zero. But what struck I was
playing it in like my last weeks at fan bite,
because it was a game that just got a lot
of like website traffic, so it was like, I should
probably be well versed in this if I want to,
you know, cover it. At some point, I didn't get
very far. And the thing that stood out to me
is it was a game that the longer I played it,
the more I felt like it just didn't really respect
my time. It was like, oh, you can do whatever
you want, you just have to spend a million years
doing it or give us money. And I was like,
I don't want to give you money, so I guess
I got to spend a million year to do it
either of those. And something about a mission structure is
more appealing to me, knowing that that was the issue
I had with Genshen. But I don't know how. I
don't actually how it feels. I don't know if you
have to replay missions a bunch of times to get
new rewards, and if it feels as grindy as I
felt like genshen Felt, But I'm not not the wrong
person to answer this question for sure. I guess the takeaway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what is our definitive answer. Are we all
seeing genshen or we're all just like I don't.
Speaker 3: A little bit of a shrug just because I'm not
very close to genschen and I haven't played Zendless, you
know yet, and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Where does hank gy starrail fit into this is the
real question.
Speaker 2: That's a great question because I don't actually know that's
amonsture that game is.
Speaker 1: But that's like a turn based RPG. Yeah, it's turn based, Yeah, yeah,
which I've heard. It's very good, like all their games are.
It's really pretty awesome art style, awesome animation.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh so, yeah, that is our answer. Question mark
for that one last question. Luke Skywalker via discord asking,
after playing the beto, will Concord manage to carve its
path in the very crowded Hero Shooter space? Does it
remind y'all of previous experiences? And if it does, could
it captured some of the same match of those older experiences.
Did you guys play the open data this past weekend?
Speaker 3: No, just that first beta the one, yeah, which and
this is like, it's not a genre I dig deep into.
I don't really play online shooters, but I feel like
the sentiment was the same across the board, or it
was like generally the same as mine, which is like, hey,
this is pretty fun, like this is this feels good.
And then it's a little bit of like we'll see
if any of these characters kind of stick, you know,
like none of them really. I found one that I
liked a lot. I liked playing as it Z, but
I'm not like, what's her deal? You know, what's what's
her history? I want to know more about her. I
was just like, I don't know, she's she's like fun
and she can teleport.
Speaker 1: And they probably already answered that, right, yeah, like bios
that you can just look at.
Speaker 3: But I do I actually have confidence about Concord. I
think it will find an audience. I have more confidence
in it than I have most comparable shooters, just because
it feels so good. It feels good to play.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's weird because I I know what
I want from this game, But do you think it
should have been free to play? Do you think it
would stand a better chance if it was because right
now it's like I think it's gonna be forty bucks,
so like not full price by any means, But like,
is that too much of a barrier at this point?
And the I mean kind of.
Speaker 3: I don't like free to play games, Like across the board,
I am significantly less likely to try and play a
game if it's free to play. I don't want to
engage in free to play mechanics. I don't like Fortnite,
and not just because the cyber truck is in there now, Like,
I just don't. I don't want to play those kinds
of games. So I and I, you know, I recognize
that I'm not the typical player necessarily. I am way
more interested in Concord as a premium experience. That's way
more enticing to me than you know, going into a
free to play game and maybe having a good time.
But just I mean, it's you're always going to see
the sort of paywall barriers in any free to play game.
They're just there by design, and that takes me out
of the experience completely. When I play video games, I
want to be invested in the world and I want
to live in them. I don't want to think about
my wallet at all.
Speaker 1: Right, that's kind of where they lost me with Overwatch two,
among other things. Yeah, because you know, Overwatch one was
like a premium thing where it's like this, this works.
And I guess I'm also in that minority of like
I'd rather just pay for a thing upfront because at
least just like the design can't be infected with any
sort of like free to play stuff even just like
like like when it's free to play, like you have
to design everything with that idea that like we need
to get money somehow, even if you're not being super
nefarious about it, you just kind of have to because
otherwise how are you making money?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't fault that system like it's it's an
entertainment business. It's fine, but right because I don't want
to play it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I also like Hell Divers Too isn't free to play correct.
Speaker 3: It is not correct.
Speaker 2: So that's that's one to me where I'm like, I
think if you had asked me this question pre Hell
Divers Too, I think I may have maybe would have
been up in the air because I can't think of
an instance before that in recent memory of like a
newer IP relatively of like, this is a new game,
we're trying to break into the space and it's not
free to play. Because everything seemed to be going in
that direction. Then Hell Divers two was such a big
success that it's like, well, there does seem to be
an audience there that's interested in doing that. Now, not
everything is gonna be Hell Divers too, it would be
you know, it's a it's a high bar to set,
but I don't think it's impossible, especially because I don't know.
I think overwatched She was another great example. Like it
it felt like it they figured it out, and then
they unfigured everything out, and now.
Speaker 1: They they took something that was un screw up a
ball and they screwed it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's the thing of like what what don't
people like about Overwatch two in a broad sense the
fact that it's free to play, like the changes they've
made to the structure because of that. So yeah, no,
I have I do have more faith in the jone
games on This is someone who hasn't played Concord, but
it's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I guess I agree with you guys. Again,
I'm glad that it is the way it is, like
premium paid thing that gives me more confidence just for
what I like in these games. I it's it's so
hard to tell if it'll catch on, and these betas
are giving me, you like an idea of like the
players latch onto it doesn't oough to where they're pre
ordering this game now as they speak, or if there
you know, is anyone going to show up for what
is it? And the launches in that far away was
like two weeks away something like that. It's like August,
so it's not that much time between now and then.
But like all those players that played come back that
they like, they're weird, they're like big push ins, narrative
enough to like I want to know more about Linux
and also shoot people in the face. So yeah, that'll
be that'll be a very fun or like interesting one
to kind of track if this winds up being like
a ah or just like, oh my god, we've got
another hell Diver sue on our hands, folks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll see. I'm I don't know if I'm rooting
for it like I'm always let me rephrase that, I'm
always rooting for games to do well. I never want
a game to fail, but I'm optimistic about this one,
but I don't. But at the same time, I don't
know if it's one that I'm like gonna make time
in my schedule to play necessarily. But it's also just
not my genre really, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of like I liked what I played,
but I have no skin in that game where I
liked it enough where like, man, I hope this does
well because I want to keep playing more of it.
I'm kind of just like, yeah, observing, like, oh, this
will be interesting to see how people take it, as
I will see.
Speaker 3: I hope it does well because I want the people
who worked on it to have a satisfying like experience
of like, we worked really hard on this and it
went well. But I'm but I'm not rooting for it
in the same and the sense of like, I hope
it does well because I want to be able to
jump into server at any time and play.
Speaker 1: Sure. Yeah, ant of you guys heard that thundercrack by
the way, it's it's it's going down outside, So I
should probably run out there immediately and go get some
of that. Because it is the end of the show. Everybody,
thank you so much for watching. Yes, Kyle, want to
go out and get struck by lightning? Was that not clear?
Speaker 3: I would prefer you not watch that.
Speaker 2: A story you'd read about four it'side to gather lightning?
Speaker 1: Please? I was I was clearly referencing powder the movie Powder.
Speaker 3: Okay, Charles, do you know what the movie Powder is?
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing, John mulaney makes a joke referencing
Powder from.
Speaker 3: The movie Powder.
Speaker 2: That's the extent of my knowledge of Powder.
Speaker 1: I think, is Kyle, is Powder worth going back to watch?
Should Charles go watch Powder today?
Speaker 3: No? There's there's so many better old movies that I'm
sure Charles hasn't seen Power.
Speaker 2: Wait, so wait, can does Powder go outside to collect
the John mulaney joke is I went up, I went
outside about as much as Powder from the movie Powder. Q.
Speaker 3: Laughter Que.
Speaker 2: So I assume Powder was this shuting that would never
go outside. Now you're telling me powder collects lighting.
Speaker 1: Marcus.
Speaker 3: I believe he gets superpowers after being struck by lightning,
but not like not like comic book movie style.
Speaker 1: But not in a cool way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not in a cool way like we're medically worried
about this. This uh this, he's.
Speaker 1: Now very sick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but wait, is that superpowers? Or just regularly get his.
Speaker 1: Body reacts to electricity different from what I remember I've
granted I've not seen the movie, so I was a
kid in the nineties, but I used to come on
HBO quite often. I just remember the ending where he
becomes lightning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he has like electrical powers or something, but he's sick.
Speaker 1: He's like a white He kind of looks like Voldemort
if he was a child, Yeah, but still had his nose.
He's kind of got like that complexion, like where he
pasty and bold.
Speaker 3: Oh you know, I can see the reflection in your glasses. Charles.
It looks like you're actively buying powder on voodoo dot
com so you can watch it right away. Is that
what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: What's crazy is both my hands are in frame, but
I have a second mouse and keyboard down by my
feet through which I'm doing this act.
Speaker 1: So you got one of those foot pedals directed Powder.
Let me see, Powder came out in nineteen ninety five.
By the way, I can be both googled powders or
like Globlin was in powder. That's right?
Speaker 2: Who who plays Powder? Who's the titular powder?
Speaker 3: Sean the Boondocks Saints yeah, Yeah, one of yeah from
the director of Jeepers Creepers and Jeepers Creepers.
Speaker 1: To apparently the film was a financial success.
Speaker 3: Man back then so much do some weird stuff.
Speaker 1: It got mixed reviews, but it made money, which is
really weird even for nineteen ninety five. That would be
the one where like, oh yeah, people really wanted to
see this lightning kid get sick.
Speaker 3: We didn't have have you know, we were trying to
make do with Batman, and we're like, this is the
closest thing to a superhero movie that we got. We
can't be waiting around for Batman Forever.
Speaker 1: The Night and well at least not till wait Batman
Forever already came out. At that point, it was it
ninety five. I thought maybe forever. It was like ninety
six or something. Oh no, same year.
Speaker 3: Mary Steinbergin's in this too that.
Speaker 2: I hope for the this episode of the Game Former
show where we make the thumbnail, I hope Powder from
Powder is the biggest character in the little lineup.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell Lay like, we really got into Powder.
By the way, can you make sure that's in the
head to.
Speaker 3: Lay who when I give her requests like that. She's
always kind of like sure whatever, man like, doesn't ask
a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: All right, lay one of our desires, by the way.
For listeners, alright, let's get out of here and I
guess let's go have a Powder Watch party. How they sound, guys, Wow,
it's good. All right, Thanks for listening. Guys. We'll see
you next Thursday for another episode of the Game and
Warmer Show. Bye bye.