Speaker 1: You're listening to episode seventy nine of GameSpot After Dark.
Speaker 1: This week, Lucy and Tomorris spilled the beans on Mass
Speaker 1: Effect Legendary Edition. I discover Russ for the first time,
Speaker 1: and we talk more about the medium. Anyway, here goes
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to episode seventy nine of Game Spot
Speaker 1: After Dark. I'm your host Jake Decker, and joining me
Speaker 1: this week is Lucy James. Hello, Kelli Plaguey, Hi, it
Speaker 1: worked that time we heard you, and tomorrow is.
Speaker 2: Saying Hi, technical difficulties fine, how y'all doing good?
Speaker 1: Good?
Speaker 3: I think if you can hear me.
Speaker 1: I can hear you. I heard you move your microphone.
Speaker 3: Too, Sorry, Warren, that's okay fine.
Speaker 2: I can't believe it's Wednesday already, although by the time
Speaker 2: this goes it will be Friday.
Speaker 4: Sorry, Friday.
Speaker 1: Let's live like today is Friday.
Speaker 2: How I lived my life like every day?
Speaker 1: What a way to live? Except not right now? And
Speaker 1: we can't go anywhere. Yeah, you know we've been doing
Speaker 1: this podcast more from home for like stop it for
Speaker 1: far longer than we ever did in dumb studio. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll stop never wait.
Speaker 2: We never got our sponsorship. I'll be a sponsor from
Speaker 2: four point.
Speaker 1: No, we stopped drinking four point and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: we're done listening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm drinking a Miller light right now.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we're not going to get sponsorship from them, too, big.
Speaker 2: Anchor in our fridge. Also, I've got to say I've
Speaker 2: moved on from white Claw lads.
Speaker 3: Me too. Actually, I'm all about Chin and Tonics these days.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, knew me.
Speaker 3: Whatever, we hang out like we do like girls' nights,
Speaker 3: and Lucy will be like, I'll be right back.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna get a G and T.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, oh, fancy, because it used to be
Speaker 3: like I'm going to get a claw. But we've all
Speaker 3: kind of we've all kind of graduated these like basically
Speaker 3: just like fancy your MIC's hard lemonades for when I
Speaker 3: don't feel like drinking beer because it just tastes like juice, which.
Speaker 1: Is never good. But I'm still just drinking whiskey where
Speaker 1: I met.
Speaker 4: Straight up drinking petrol over here. We done us all
Speaker 4: like that pure unleted down my throat.
Speaker 1: Just at the gas station. Well, anyway, tomorrow, why don't
Speaker 1: you start? What have you been playing this week?
Speaker 4: I've been playing a little game called Persona five Royal,
Speaker 4: a dangling thread which I'm trying to wrap up, and
Speaker 4: then you know what, I can say, Chido's Palace absolutely sucks,
Speaker 4: but and I hate it so much. I've been trapped
Speaker 4: in that palace for so long and it's so annoying
Speaker 4: to death.
Speaker 1: No Kumera's power.
Speaker 4: I think, I think on this is my third play through,
Speaker 4: and I think now I've reached the point where Okumra's
Speaker 4: Palace is not as bad like I think, because Okimura's
Speaker 4: Palace has a challenged her and there's enough there's enough
Speaker 4: like variety in what you're seeing and doing that you
Speaker 4: figure it out and it's more a case of like
Speaker 4: quickly moving between rooms and that kind of stuff she does.
Speaker 4: Palace everything looks the same, and it's got that really
Speaker 4: annoying mouse transformation maze thing and doors are locked. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and the doors are locked and every room looks exactly
Speaker 4: the same, and you're just like, I've been playing that.
Speaker 4: I've been stuck in that palace for maybe a week now.
Speaker 4: Because I go in there, I'll play for like twenty minutes.
Speaker 4: I'm just like, I hate this and I'm just turn
Speaker 4: it off and then have to start again, and each time,
Speaker 4: like I get more and more frustrated. So I do
Speaker 4: things like try and run past enemies and it raises
Speaker 4: the alertness level, and then very quickly you're at one
Speaker 4: hundred percent and then you're in that place where the battle,
Speaker 4: like in a battle, the enemies just keep coming and
Speaker 4: it's just like, oh God, why am I doing this?
Speaker 4: I'm like very slowly making it through. I hate that
Speaker 4: the like the kind of like as you approach the
Speaker 4: line where in Royal you get new content, it becomes
Speaker 4: more and more annoying and a grind. It's like the
Speaker 4: place where they put all the new core content is
Speaker 4: like the worst part of the game back to back.
Speaker 4: So I know it's going to get better, but it's
Speaker 4: just the slog there. It's just like, oh god, I
Speaker 4: wish I could just skip to the I wish it
Speaker 4: would be like, oh, yeah, did you play the original? Yes,
Speaker 4: skip this shit and like just level you up ten.
Speaker 1: I feel like Royal Too does such a good job
Speaker 1: of like of kind of foreshadowing things that are going
Speaker 1: to happen with characters in that epilogue really early on,
Speaker 1: so you're like, oh cool, I'm excited to see where
Speaker 1: these threads go one hundred and twenty hours later.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm like ninety five hours in and I'm just like,
Speaker 4: just I can't believe I've not seen almost the bulk
Speaker 4: of the new content and I play for ninety five hours.
Speaker 4: I'm like, God, they like in the future, they need
Speaker 4: to figure out a better way of getting the people
Speaker 4: who've done it before to the new stuff without going
Speaker 4: through all of it again. Like if this was my
Speaker 4: second playthrough, I think I'd be a little more lenient,
Speaker 4: But this is like my third playthrough. Now, I'm like,
Speaker 4: just just show me how all this matters. Like I've
Speaker 4: been I've been with the doctor for so long and
Speaker 4: still none of it, like it has become relevant, like
Speaker 4: he was cool and all that. But like between that
Speaker 4: and the new character, it's like, oh God, please take
Speaker 4: me there. So I'm kind of plugging away at that.
Speaker 3: You're really making me excited for my second play through.
Speaker 3: I've already planned even though I haven't finished it yet,
Speaker 3: because I want to play it with the Japanese voice.
Speaker 4: Are you signing? Are you playing the original?
Speaker 3: No Royal?
Speaker 4: You're playing Royal? Right? Yeah, okay, so yeah, the second
Speaker 4: time through is I mean, like first time through Royal,
Speaker 4: I bet it's fine. Like the I remember not having
Speaker 4: any problems with Hudo's Palace first time through, like it
Speaker 4: was funny and weird and when they there's like quirky
Speaker 4: bits in it and the characters turns to little mice
Speaker 4: now and then, and it's funny as hell. The second
Speaker 4: time through, I'm just like I know where this is
Speaker 4: going and I just want to be away from it.
Speaker 4: And it's frustrating figuring out because it's basically a maze,
Speaker 4: like you're amazing, you're doing amaze, and there's constant like
Speaker 4: blockades up against you, and it's just not enjoy it. It
Speaker 4: feels like the second time through or the third time through,
Speaker 4: it feels like it's not respecting your time. And that's
Speaker 4: that's true of most of the game, but the rest
Speaker 4: of the game has such a momentum to it that
Speaker 4: even like the stuff that you've done before and it's
Speaker 4: kind of like repetitive, you're just breezing through it. This
Speaker 4: is the first part where it like locks you in
Speaker 4: a place and you're like, you won't feel the sense
Speaker 4: of progression because you're stuck in this maze and everything
Speaker 4: looks the same, so but I know that once I
Speaker 4: get beyond this it'll pick back up, So I'm just
Speaker 4: kind of fighting through.
Speaker 1: I think the lesson here, sailing. I think the lesson
Speaker 1: here is that in twenty twenty six, when Persona six
Speaker 1: comes out, only play it once because is the released
Speaker 1: Persona six Royal Golden gold.
Speaker 4: Ah, Golden Royale.
Speaker 1: Golden Royale, and then that much better.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then I'm playing Hollow Night bits and pieces
Speaker 4: of it because I promised Jordan i'd give it a go.
Speaker 4: I got them, and has it got the compass now
Speaker 4: it hasn't clicked for me. It is it is good,
Speaker 4: Like I get it why people like it, but I
Speaker 4: don't get why people are obsessed with it yet, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean? Like I respect that people do
Speaker 4: and I can see what it might be doing, but
Speaker 4: like right now the world and that I don't find
Speaker 4: the main character or that interesting. From a design perspective,
Speaker 4: there's certain characters that this is going to make me
Speaker 4: sound bad, but certain characters that I just simple design
Speaker 4: characters that I'm just like, yeah, I don't really get it.
Speaker 4: It's like this is gonna sound really shitty. But Thomas
Speaker 4: was alone, for example, Like the reason I didn't play
Speaker 4: that because it's just a fucking square in it. Like
Speaker 4: I'm not being mean, but like, it's just a fucking
Speaker 4: square in it. And I looked at it and I
Speaker 4: was like, the square has death, but I'm still looking
Speaker 4: at I'm like, fucking square. And it was a two.
Speaker 1: D game, so it actually didn't have any depth emotion.
Speaker 4: Like I'm playing Or and I'm playing it on the
Speaker 4: serious X and it looks fantastic, but Or itself as
Speaker 4: a character is really bright on the screen, so it
Speaker 4: just looks like a bright ORB running around for a
Speaker 4: lot of the time. And there's times where I feel
Speaker 4: myself like detaching from that character and I have to
Speaker 4: stop and then look at it and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 4: it's like a cat rabbit. And then I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 4: it's nice and it looks cool. But like when that
Speaker 4: game is in motion, it just looks like I'm controlling
Speaker 4: an ORB. It's like, you know, when you Lucy, you know,
Speaker 4: when you don't mean any of you know, but Lucy,
Speaker 4: I'm sure won't get it. Most like when you load
Speaker 4: into an Overwatch map and none of the characters have
Speaker 4: loaded in, so they're just like a little orb and
Speaker 4: you're like, I hate this. Where's my character? It's like that,
Speaker 4: but like with but like I'm playing Hollow Night and
Speaker 4: the character I don't I don't know what its name is. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I know it has a name bug all Night, Hollow.
Speaker 4: My first name Hollow is second name Night something like that.
Speaker 4: I know Jordan's probably raging somewhere. Like I look at
Speaker 4: it and I'm like, I it doesn't hit. It's not
Speaker 4: working for me, Like it's not it's not doing anything
Speaker 4: for me. But like the world is fun. They've got
Speaker 4: a fast travel system where it's just a big confused
Speaker 4: bug that goes through like tunnels and stuff. And I
Speaker 4: like to combat quite a bit, and but it's just
Speaker 4: it's not like it's not really connecting the world. It's
Speaker 4: not connecting with me yet. But I'm very fairly early
Speaker 4: and I'm like three or four hours in, and I
Speaker 4: think the map still is.
Speaker 5: Like awful, really bad, like like all the games have
Speaker 5: much better maps, And I don't understand why where they
Speaker 5: haven't kind of like taken that and updated it.
Speaker 4: Why didn't use that? I bet you there is some
Speaker 4: sort of reasoning, design reasoning. It's not I'm not sure
Speaker 4: what it is yet.
Speaker 1: Did you get the compass because the compass shows where
Speaker 1: you are on the map.
Speaker 4: Yeah. But like I'm one of those people who like,
Speaker 4: I love maps when you can move while in in
Speaker 4: the map up, okay, and also like and also like
Speaker 4: I want more clarity in terms of where where I've
Speaker 4: been and where I haven't been. And I think the
Speaker 4: way the map works is like it doesn't fill in
Speaker 4: the map until you've like explored a chunk of an area.
Speaker 4: If I remember correctly, It's not like a far golf War,
Speaker 4: where like if you enter a room, it like fills
Speaker 4: that room on the map. So like I do that
Speaker 4: thing where I figure out where I need to go
Speaker 4: and where I want to go next, or if I
Speaker 4: pick up after a little while by like in Castlevania
Speaker 4: or like Metroid, you pick it up and you're like, oh,
Speaker 4: I can clearly see that this part of the map
Speaker 4: is where I stop going into this room, so I
Speaker 4: want to go back there and see what's there. It
Speaker 4: doesn't do that. It just feels that it gives you
Speaker 4: like a chunk of the map, and then it kind
Speaker 4: of like colors it in after you've entered a gonna
Speaker 4: beyond a certain threshold on that on that part of
Speaker 4: the area, and I'm like, I can't tell if I've
Speaker 4: been there or if I've not been there, or I've
Speaker 4: been there and I just haven't been far enough into
Speaker 4: it so that the map hasn't triggered like filling this in.
Speaker 4: I think that's how it works. The fact that it
Speaker 4: is ambiguous how the map works is a problem. Like
Speaker 4: I shouldn't have to think about whether this map is
Speaker 4: working or not. It's a map. It should just work.
Speaker 4: It's like the same thing with Control, where like you
Speaker 4: open the map and like I'm like, what elevation is this?
Speaker 4: Where is this? Where am I? Where am I? And
Speaker 4: then you know, everyone goes you don't and then you
Speaker 4: reach a point where you don't use the map in
Speaker 4: that game, and because the world design it's so good,
Speaker 4: but like that confusing moment where you're in a room
Speaker 4: in Control and you're like, wait, is the room I
Speaker 4: need to be on on top of this room below
Speaker 4: this room. It's just like I don't want to I
Speaker 4: don't It's twenty twenty one. The world sucks. I don't
Speaker 4: want to be putting mental energy into like whether I'm
Speaker 4: on the right place in the map, and a map
Speaker 4: is working, it should just work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've I've played a bit of Hollow Night. I've
Speaker 1: tried it many times, and I think, I'm I feel
Speaker 1: about the same as you. And then I get why
Speaker 1: people say it's a good game. I think it's a
Speaker 1: good game, but it I don't. I haven't hit that
Speaker 1: point where I've understand why it's like one of the
Speaker 1: best ever like so many my friends say it's one
Speaker 1: of the best games ever made, and I play it,
Speaker 1: and I'm just like, I'd rather just play like Dark
Speaker 1: Souls or Bloodborne or something that said. One day I'll
Speaker 1: finish it and maybe I'll have a more authoritative opinion
Speaker 1: on it. But as of right now, that's that's my take.
Speaker 4: I'm honestly I'm playing it because I want to give
Speaker 4: it an honest shake because I know people that love
Speaker 4: it so much, like Jordan loves it to death, and
Speaker 4: I trust Jordan and I respect his opinion, and I
Speaker 4: know that he's got good taste. So I want to
Speaker 4: give it at least like ten to fifteen hours. And
Speaker 4: it's the kind of game that I know is like
Speaker 4: in a genre that I love, So I'm gonna try it.
Speaker 4: I keep going more like hot shite.
Speaker 2: No, I knew that was coming.
Speaker 1: You waited a second too.
Speaker 3: Just see it in nice.
Speaker 1: Kelly, how about you?
Speaker 3: Well, I've mostly played Animal Crossing this week because I'm
Speaker 3: just kind of building out my island. I'm thinking about
Speaker 3: making well, I actually made the account already, but I'm
Speaker 3: thinking about, like actually using a separate Animal Crossing Instagram
Speaker 3: account to post like progress pictures because I like the
Speaker 3: community on there, so that's what I'm playing.
Speaker 4: I want to say what the account is called, and
Speaker 4: does it have a good name.
Speaker 3: It's uh, it's just inky Crossing, like with a period,
Speaker 3: so inky period crossing because I like the in Yes,
Speaker 3: I like the inky part of my name. It's the
Speaker 3: weep shit I put at the end that I would
Speaker 3: like to change, so uh, I went with that because
Speaker 3: a lot of people do like the crossing thing. I
Speaker 3: lurk a lot on the Animal Crossing Instagram. It's like
Speaker 3: the only thing I opened Instagram for because otherwise Instagram
Speaker 3: makes me very uncomfortable. Other than that, I saw Doctor
Speaker 3: Sleep over the weekend And how did you find that?
Speaker 3: It was just on TV?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: No, I meant like, how did you find a movie? Like?
Speaker 4: How did you find it?
Speaker 2: That is sorry to be your process in turning on
Speaker 2: the television.
Speaker 3: That is a very British turn of phraeze, is it? Yeah?
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 1: But I figured Kelly would pick up on it because
Speaker 1: I picked up on it.
Speaker 3: Well, I just I thought like maybe it was hard,
Speaker 3: like hard to stream or something, because I don't I
Speaker 3: don't pay attention to ship.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's long ago. There was a King.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Wow, I am so embarrassed that I did not
Speaker 3: catch that. So but honestly, that was a secret British
Speaker 3: test and I failed.
Speaker 2: Next time though, you'll pass.
Speaker 3: I will. And I can spot a Yorkshire accent from
Speaker 3: a mile away, so from a killing meat. So I
Speaker 3: got it anyway, Like home, my mom and I were
Speaker 3: just really bored and we put it on. And at first,
Speaker 3: you know, because I've read Stephen King, have watched a
Speaker 3: lot of Stephen King adaptations. I like Stephen King a lot.
Speaker 3: I had my ap English teacher in high school shit
Speaker 3: on me in front of the entire class for liking
Speaker 3: Stephen King. And I think about him a lot and
Speaker 3: how much I hate him. But anyway, the teacher, the teacher,
Speaker 3: I mean Stephen King. Yes, this is false, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: So I saw the movie, like my mom and I
Speaker 3: were just like flipping through channels and I saw it
Speaker 3: and I was like, oh, that's the follow up to
Speaker 3: The Shining. My mom hadn't heard of it, and at
Speaker 3: the beginning of the movie, I was like, you know,
Speaker 3: it's Stephen King, so like there's gonna be like an
Speaker 3: orgy or like, you know, something a little bit weird.
Speaker 3: And there was one scene where my mom straight up
Speaker 3: was like, you're gonna have to watch this without me.
Speaker 2: I hate this, And we got through it.
Speaker 3: So the beginning of the movie was definitely a little
Speaker 3: more like what the fuck is going on? And then
Speaker 3: maybe like an hour in, we were like we had
Speaker 3: gotten fully infested and we were like, oh, fuck, well's
Speaker 3: gonna happen. And you know, we've seen the We've seen
Speaker 3: The Shining, so we were like ready for it, and
Speaker 3: like at that point, like everything that happened, we were like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, I.
Speaker 2: Can't believe this is happening.
Speaker 3: And so we got really into it and had a
Speaker 3: great time and ultimately, uh, both of us really enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: My dad was like already asleep by the time this
Speaker 3: was happening, and then he woke up like at the
Speaker 3: end of the movie and like came out and was like,
Speaker 3: what are you guys watching? And we're like stop. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a it's interesting because there's like weird almost like
Speaker 3: TV movie kind of affects sometimes in that movie. And
Speaker 3: but that's like, to me, that is like so quintessentially
Speaker 3: Stephen King. That I was just like, I'm here for it,
Speaker 3: and I don't know, I really liked it. It's one
Speaker 3: of those things that because I'm not a movie critic,
Speaker 3: I'm like, I liked it. I had a great time.
Speaker 3: I don't really want to go any further than this
Speaker 3: to be fat. I read the book and I did
Speaker 3: not care for the book.
Speaker 2: The book reads like and I don't mean this to
Speaker 2: be like an insult, but it does. It just doesn't
Speaker 2: feel it feels like someone else wrote it kind of
Speaker 2: feel a bit more like fan fiction of Stephen King.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and.
Speaker 3: It's like, I mean energy wrote that book as a
Speaker 3: fuck you to Stanley Kubrick. So yeah, you know, I
Speaker 3: can see how it would have that energy.
Speaker 2: And so I really was not that but like jazzed
Speaker 2: about the fact that they were going to make it
Speaker 2: into a film. But I really enjoyed what Mike flanagan did.
Speaker 2: The one thing I'll say is that you and McGregor
Speaker 2: cannot do an American accent to say his life.
Speaker 3: I didn't mind it.
Speaker 4: All he can in Harlequin's his American accent. I think
Speaker 4: he's gone America. Yeah, he does, he does, and it's fine.
Speaker 4: Like I don't remember the night.
Speaker 2: Talked to Sleepy goes off the deep end a little bit,
Speaker 2: but I.
Speaker 3: Didn't notice that all the rose the hat that character.
Speaker 3: I could tell that she had that like because she
Speaker 3: had she slipped like a cant in there instead of
Speaker 3: a can't. And she's I mean, she lives in the UK,
Speaker 3: but she's from like Sweden. I think.
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't know that. I liked it overall because
Speaker 2: I think as well, because I was just in a
Speaker 2: very shining place. You know, sometimes you just get urged
Speaker 2: to go back to the overlook. I really want to
Speaker 2: rewatch the Shining but again that is not in keeping
Speaker 2: with twenty twenty one. No rewatch, which is my thing
Speaker 2: for the year.
Speaker 1: How long do you think that'll last?
Speaker 2: Well, Friend of the show.
Speaker 1: Haven't you already watched rewatch? Lord of the Rings though.
Speaker 2: That didn't count and it was actually technically last year,
Speaker 2: so its sorry. Friend of the show Andrew Golf keeps
Speaker 2: texting me about his succession Rewatch, and I'm like, I
Speaker 2: could fuck with succession again, but no, I'm not not
Speaker 2: doing it.
Speaker 1: It's the game spot stock prices. You're like, wow, there's
Speaker 1: some ship going on. Better watch Succession.
Speaker 4: You made the mistakes, stop, You're fired.
Speaker 1: Well, anyway, I liked the Doctor Sleep book. I thought
Speaker 1: it was I thought it was pretty decent. I definitely
Speaker 1: agree that it reads like fan fiction and it goes
Speaker 1: places that I didn't want it to go. But when
Speaker 1: I finished it, I was like, all right, I mean
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it. It was easy to read.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's but I think that's one things Stephen King
Speaker 2: has really good at doing, is like, in the sort
Speaker 2: of sillier stories that he does, you can tell that
Speaker 2: he doesn't belate the points as much. It's just it's
Speaker 2: just a breezy read.
Speaker 1: I haven't read a lot of Stephen King, to be fair, though,
Speaker 1: that was like, I don't know, I've read like The
Speaker 1: mist The Shining That at the Stand and on writing.
Speaker 1: I haven't read. I tried to read it, but it
Speaker 1: was that's the one with the orgy, and then I
Speaker 1: heard about and I was like, you know what.
Speaker 3: And Bolice who jack each other off.
Speaker 2: In the woods. I think, yeah, yeah, it happens this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who's doing a lot of drugs at that time.
Speaker 3: There's a lot going on in it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The Stand, though, is really good, and Stand is a
Speaker 2: like a touch point for a lot of more modern
Speaker 2: science fiction, like Lost is heavily based on the Stand.
Speaker 2: There's one character in The Stand who basically is like
Speaker 2: there's one character and the Lost sorry, who was basically
Speaker 2: a character from The Stand. Charlie from Lost is like
Speaker 2: the washed up rock star. Is that exact character?
Speaker 3: I would do like a Stand reread like book Club
Speaker 3: with You because it's I read it in high school
Speaker 3: really quick, Stevie.
Speaker 1: But after dark book Clubs, let's go start a new channel.
Speaker 1: Sean Luke.
Speaker 3: I really liked the adaptation of Gerald's Game, which I
Speaker 3: think is on Netflix.
Speaker 2: Oh I haven't seen that.
Speaker 3: Gerald's Game actually messed me up, like really messed me up,
Speaker 3: and like the I watched the adaptation and like it's
Speaker 3: not like I'm like, wow, that movie is so underrated.
Speaker 3: It was so good. I just like, for some reason,
Speaker 3: that one really messed me up, so I would recommend it.
Speaker 2: I feel like Stephen King, it's a list.
Speaker 1: Well, before we talk about the medium, I figured I
Speaker 1: could talk about Rust, because I feel like we're probably
Speaker 1: going to talk about the medium a little bit more.
Speaker 1: But I have been playing Rust. It's a game that
Speaker 1: I bought back in I don't know, twenty twelve, whenever
Speaker 1: it first went into early access, and didn't play it
Speaker 1: at all. Actually I think I may have started it
Speaker 1: up and just got died right away, and I was like, yeah, nope.
Speaker 1: I went back to it just to see what it
Speaker 1: was like. And by god, I am so fascinated by
Speaker 1: this game. I feel like a psychiatrist or a psychologist
Speaker 1: could do an entire dissertation on this game and how
Speaker 1: people interact with each other. I don't think the game
Speaker 1: is fun. I don't even know if it's good, but
Speaker 1: like it is just so fascinating the way Like I
Speaker 1: joined a lobby and immediately someone came up to me.
Speaker 1: He saw that I was like trying to get wood
Speaker 1: from a tree, and he's like, hey, I can give
Speaker 1: you some wood, and we like became friends and helped
Speaker 1: each other out for a little bit. Alternatively, like cut
Speaker 1: to like a couple hours later, I was trapped on
Speaker 1: a rock being attacked by a bear, and some people
Speaker 1: ran up and they're like, hey, with all of us,
Speaker 1: we can kill the bear. Here's a spear. Killed the bear,
Speaker 1: and they stabbed me in the back and killed me
Speaker 1: and took all my stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: But like, the lobbies you go into are like absurd
Speaker 1: because I don't know much you guys know, but basically
Speaker 1: all lobbies are set to wipe after a certain point.
Speaker 1: I think the whoever creates the server gets to decide.
Speaker 1: I'm sure our listeners have like known about RUSS for
Speaker 1: a long time and I have two, but I'd never
Speaker 1: really engaged with it. So the server wipes after a
Speaker 1: certain amount of times. So if you join a game late,
Speaker 1: there's like a very weird like class struggle going on
Speaker 1: because there's a bunch of people who have sent actually
Speaker 1: teamed up, created huge bases, have guns, flashlights and all
Speaker 1: this stuff, and then you spawn on the beach with
Speaker 1: just a rock and you're trying to survive when you've
Speaker 1: got these people out there who are like totally taking
Speaker 1: advantage of the fact that the game is entirely rigged
Speaker 1: in their favor, and there are no safety precautions for
Speaker 1: like new players, like literally you just like, like there
Speaker 1: are instances where people would build prisons around spawn locations,
Speaker 1: so I just spawn in a prison and I would
Speaker 1: just have to kill myself until I spawned somewhere else.
Speaker 1: But like, what's more interesting than that is that people
Speaker 1: take this to the extreme and do like crazy role
Speaker 1: playing servers, which is something that I find really interesting.
Speaker 1: Someone I watched Lote I know you watch as well,
Speaker 1: but Hassan Hiker he recently did like a he role
Speaker 1: played as a libertarian mayor for a server in Rust,
Speaker 1: and it's very entertaining. But like, the lengths people go
Speaker 1: to take it seriously are are so entertaining, and there's
Speaker 1: something really cool about it.
Speaker 4: I can't believe this game is still going because I
Speaker 4: remember when it first came out or wherever it may
Speaker 4: be in early access, I played it obsessively for ages
Speaker 4: and it was one of the most tedious, boring experiences
Speaker 4: of my life.
Speaker 1: And it still ends.
Speaker 4: It's so boring, But I remember the role playing part
Speaker 4: of it was really small back then, and it was
Speaker 4: more about survival and now it seems to have flipped around.
Speaker 4: I remember when I first started playing, like this was
Speaker 4: a common experience that happened to a lot of people,
Speaker 4: but I was like the story that you'd always find
Speaker 4: is sometimes you would spawn in and there'd be people
Speaker 4: waiting for you. They're like fully armed with guns, and
Speaker 4: they'd basically recruit you into slave camp labor camps. And
Speaker 4: that's exactly that's like happen. That happened to me immediately,
Speaker 4: Like I would spawn and there'd be three people with
Speaker 4: guns and'd be like, do not move on the ground,
Speaker 4: and then like they'd take everything out of you and
Speaker 4: be like follow us, and there was like walking dead shit,
Speaker 4: and it was like really really fascinating and interesting and
Speaker 4: like it sounds awful, but it was also like you
Speaker 4: could try and win their trust by like doing what
Speaker 4: they asked for a really long time and eventually like
Speaker 4: needing some sort of like escape attempt or something like that.
Speaker 4: And that was like that would happen once in every
Speaker 4: like once every like a month or something. Most of
Speaker 4: the time, you'd spawn in and you'd spend ages trying
Speaker 4: to build like some sort of encampment, and then someone
Speaker 4: would wander by it with a shotgun and just destroy you,
Speaker 4: and that would be russ. I remember bouncing off of
Speaker 4: it so fast.
Speaker 1: If you don't like set up your base or whatever
Speaker 1: to repair itself, it would just disintegrate over time. So
Speaker 1: like right now I'm not playing it, but all of
Speaker 1: my stuff is wearing down. But unfortunately I like stocked
Speaker 1: up on supply, so it should be fine. But it's
Speaker 1: just kind of like been in the back of my head,
Speaker 1: like I wonder if my walls have worn down and
Speaker 1: someone stole everything I spent like I don't know, an
Speaker 1: hour last night collecting or whatever. It's it's super fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's not for everyone. I think we gave it like
Speaker 1: a four, which sounds about right.
Speaker 4: Maybe the wildest thing about modern gaming is how certain
Speaker 4: people and certain movements online can take a game that's
Speaker 4: bang average, mediocre even and just make it the most
Speaker 4: popular game. Like sometimes it happens with games that are
Speaker 4: like almost objectively good stuff like you know, Fall Guys
Speaker 4: or Rocket League or or you know among Us, where
Speaker 4: there's something amazing there and they like it just gets pushed.
Speaker 4: Sometimes it's like let's find a third and make it
Speaker 4: amazing and like that seems to have happened with I
Speaker 4: know a lot of people love Rust and like, for me,
Speaker 4: it is like I call it a third based on
Speaker 4: my experience because I had nothing but a bad time
Speaker 4: with it every time I try to play it. But
Speaker 4: you go online now and people like there's like entire
Speaker 4: groups of people who are making it fun and amazing,
Speaker 4: and it's really weird how they move from game to
Speaker 4: game and they're like, let's take this thing and it's
Speaker 4: basically the equivalent of like games game stop stock, where
Speaker 4: they're like, here's something that's like on its last legs,
Speaker 4: let's just create an effort around and making it important.
Speaker 4: And that's what they're doing with games as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think to russ credit is that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of tools there that kind of
Speaker 1: facilitate role playing, and I just think that that didn't
Speaker 1: really catch on until later. But what what would be
Speaker 1: really interesting, and what I've been kind of looking into
Speaker 1: is maybe setting up like a game spot Rust server
Speaker 1: just to see what would happen, like for the community
Speaker 1: and like for other people as well, but just to
Speaker 1: see like what would happen because I imagine the fact that
Speaker 1: everyone in the discord kind of knows each other and
Speaker 1: we're all part of that. We have like some common connection.
Speaker 1: I bet you everyone would be very polite.
Speaker 2: I bet civilization I would not.
Speaker 1: Well, some people would traw like two more. But but
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like there's there's something so fascinating about
Speaker 1: it that I'm really enjoying. I'll probably bounce off soon,
Speaker 1: like I've been playing for about a week or so,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. It's just something that like.
Speaker 4: I would be up for, like a Rust server. I'm
Speaker 4: definitely on the game, but like I do that thing
Speaker 4: where I'd be like I would appear randomly and just
Speaker 4: cause a little bit of mischief and beef.
Speaker 3: That sounds great, Honestly, you.
Speaker 4: Never know when I'll appear, but I'll appear sometime, mister X.
Speaker 4: I'll just kick in the door running and like destroy
Speaker 4: one load bearing wall and an exit.
Speaker 2: Twenty dollars is forty dollars and it has like four
Speaker 2: hundred thousand very positive reviews on Steam.
Speaker 3: Looking at it right, Wow, I wouldn't.
Speaker 4: Pay forty dollars for it, absolutely not unless you're expensing that. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: I mean, actually, look all of the all of the
Speaker 2: reviews like started pouring in November twenty nineteen, and then
Speaker 2: January first, twenty twenty one, tons of them poured in.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's wild how that game is still going
Speaker 4: because I I remember when it first came out, I
Speaker 4: was like it was so busted because I remember I
Speaker 4: got into it because it was Face Punch Studios, right,
Speaker 4: and they made what do they make? They made like
Speaker 4: Gary's mod for Half Life and Countless Strike, and I
Speaker 4: was like, oh, they making this is their first full game,
Speaker 4: and I played it and I was like, this is
Speaker 4: fucking terrible.
Speaker 1: I yeah, I think it's just like because when it
Speaker 1: first came out, it was just kind of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is realistic Minecraft, except everyone's at dick. I guess
Speaker 1: not that Minecraft doesn't have a role playing side to
Speaker 1: it for certain people, but like, I don't know, the
Speaker 1: places it's gone has been have been pretty interesting, like
Speaker 1: even like like you talking about being a troll, Like
Speaker 1: I feel like it would be really interesting to have
Speaker 1: like a murder or like hunt a serial killer or
Speaker 1: something like that. I have a serial killer on the
Speaker 1: run and like a group of people would have to
Speaker 1: try to hunt them down or something.
Speaker 3: Now we're all sold. Now you've got I.
Speaker 1: Knew I just had to bring up someal killer and
Speaker 1: that would be it. Anyway, that's enough about rust, uh Lucy,
Speaker 1: what do you think of the medium?
Speaker 2: I am so I'm about halfway through right now. I
Speaker 2: I'm actually really digging it. So one thing I will
Speaker 2: say is that I'm being very meticulous and kind of
Speaker 2: examining everything and like picking up everything. And the one
Speaker 2: thing that I will say is that I think the
Speaker 2: voiceover is really really good. However, Cardinal sin over explaining
Speaker 2: every single point of the plot. Don't need it. I
Speaker 2: get it, like I get it. Otherwise a player is
Speaker 2: going to miss it. But it's just it's not to
Speaker 2: call the sea levels. But I'm like, chill, you don't
Speaker 2: need to. She also makes like kind of strange jokes sometimes. Anyway,
Speaker 2: that's like my one gripe with it.
Speaker 4: We had an interesting moment about that with the reviewer, right, Kelly,
Speaker 4: I don't know if we want to talk about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jordan, I tacked that too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so like we like I was reading it, I
Speaker 4: message Ord and I was like, and Kelly as well,
Speaker 4: like got involved in it. It was like, there's got to
Speaker 4: be a reason behind games doing this, Like why do
Speaker 4: get some games really do this? It seems like such
Speaker 4: an obviously like weird creative decision where a game is
Speaker 4: like really well written and then we do stuff like
Speaker 4: over explain itself and like the best not best, but
Speaker 4: like we richa Pump were like, is this an accessibility thing?
Speaker 4: Like is this potentially a way to kind of because
Speaker 4: some people they struggle with like connecting dots or inferring
Speaker 4: tone from speech and even like the acting, And like
Speaker 4: I was like, do you think this is kind of
Speaker 4: like a way for those people who might struggle reading
Speaker 4: body language and tone and that kind of stuff to
Speaker 4: be clued into the actual what's happening because they're over
Speaker 4: explaining it to some degree, and it's like a really
Speaker 4: interesting thought experience. I'm with you in that, Like whenever
Speaker 4: games do that, I'm like, wait doing this, like it
Speaker 4: seems so weird. But I also kind of like started
Speaker 4: thinking about whether there's anything more behind it, and I'd
Speaker 4: love to get in touch with some developers and be
Speaker 4: like why does this happened?
Speaker 2: Because like you can't control where the player looks, and
Speaker 2: so I was reading about this recently. So it's like
Speaker 2: a thing where it's like if they are going to
Speaker 2: miss something in the environment. The one sure fire away
Speaker 2: that you will get that information to them is by
Speaker 2: having in a voiceover, and so that is why in
Speaker 2: a lot of games you will get those kind of
Speaker 2: to some people obnoxious, but like if you're kind of
Speaker 2: rushing through a game and you're not looking at everything,
Speaker 2: not picking like the medium is full of collectibles that
Speaker 2: you don't even really need to pick up or look at.
Speaker 2: So if you're just rushing through Golden Pathing it, you're
Speaker 2: going to miss so much of it. And so that's
Speaker 2: why you get it.
Speaker 4: The ones that really get me are like, repeat the
Speaker 4: plot moments after it just happened.
Speaker 2: The one that sprung to mind was there's a tomb raider.
Speaker 2: I can't remember if it's Rise Shadow or the original
Speaker 2: twenty twelve reboot, but you can remember, I swear you
Speaker 2: can like adjust how often Lara talks to herself, which
Speaker 2: is like, oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can. I think it was like a difficulty
Speaker 1: thing sort of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it was in the difficulty menu, but
Speaker 2: you can basically turn off those hints, and that was
Speaker 2: a really cool way of doing it. But I just
Speaker 2: I can't recall any of the game that's done it, since.
Speaker 3: That's a that's a smart way to approach it, because yeah,
Speaker 3: this was It's funny because I had the exact same
Speaker 3: thought you did tomorrow where I read that part of
Speaker 3: Jordan's draft about how that this thing seem as lucy
Speaker 3: really irritated him, and I was like, yeah, it irritates
Speaker 3: me too. And then I kind of had this thought like, well,
Speaker 3: maybe like if I, you know, if I'm a player
Speaker 3: that can't see as well, maybe that's helpful or what.
Speaker 3: But I kind of thought maybe I'm overthinking it.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: And then Jordan messaged me like maybe ten minutes later
Speaker 3: and it was like, Tamor had this thought about this part,
Speaker 3: and I was like, okay, cool, so it's not just me. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I thought about it of the accessibility angle before. But
Speaker 3: if that's the case, like that makes so much sense.
Speaker 3: I just it just alway, It's a thing that always
Speaker 3: sticks out to me. Yeah, And like the the suggestion
Speaker 3: that I gave to Jordan was not to like change
Speaker 3: his critique because if it irritated him, it irritated him,
Speaker 3: and that's we can't change that.
Speaker 2: It's how he felt.
Speaker 3: And so it was just about phrasing it differently. So
Speaker 3: it wasn't like putting down the existence of that feature
Speaker 3: so much as it was just giving his particular perspective
Speaker 3: because regardless, I mean, we can't in a review, we
Speaker 3: don't really speculate as to the intent of any particular
Speaker 3: part of the game, because it's just that that's not
Speaker 3: helpful for an analysis and that doesn't matter. So it
Speaker 3: was just about like reframing it, so it's like, this
Speaker 3: thing is I found very intrusive, rather than phrasing it
Speaker 3: more universally because it is something that could potentially help somebody.
Speaker 3: Was kind of the way where we landed on that.
Speaker 3: That's more of like just like an insight into the
Speaker 3: review process and not really a conversation about the quality
Speaker 3: of the medium though, But I.
Speaker 4: Would love to know if there's any people listening that
Speaker 4: like play or have those kind of moments and are
Speaker 4: like that was beneficial to me, and what other circumstances,
Speaker 4: So if you are listening to because sometimes I'm like,
Speaker 4: I guess I also think about like in a world
Speaker 4: where we're easily distracted by phones and stuff like that,
Speaker 4: like that could be also beneficial. But usually when something
Speaker 4: important is happening on the screen. I am like pay
Speaker 4: attention and looking yeah, so maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: I will say kind of to build off that a
Speaker 1: little bit. One of the issues I ran into at
Speaker 1: the Medium was there there was a puzzle, Lucy, you
Speaker 1: probably know what I'm talking about, but you have to
Speaker 1: figure out a certain character and you have to look
Speaker 1: at this record of who attended this meeting and match
Speaker 1: up like which. And I figured that out almost immediately,
Speaker 1: like I was like, okay, there're this chair. And then
Speaker 1: I ran back down and it was like, now you
Speaker 1: can't do that exactly. There was no prompt and I
Speaker 1: was like what So I went back up and I
Speaker 1: had to look at the paper and like hit X
Speaker 1: on the paper to acknowledge that I understood it. And
Speaker 1: then the character was like, oh so, so and so
Speaker 1: was sitting at this chair for this moment, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I know, I figured this out already. You
Speaker 1: trust me a little bit.
Speaker 2: Please, I have the same thing. I think. Where I'm
Speaker 2: landing with the Medium is it is and I'm sure,
Speaker 2: like Jordan said this, so many people have said this,
Speaker 2: but it is like the Double a game that you
Speaker 2: don't see much of anymore. And it's also not very scary.
Speaker 2: The puzzles are not very taxing. It is just like
Speaker 2: I'm really enjoying it because I'm not overly stressed about
Speaker 2: it like I would be playing, Like I'm very excited
Speaker 2: for Residevil Village, but I'm already tense at the prospect
Speaker 2: of it. I feel comfortable in that world because it's
Speaker 2: like it's gruesome but within the confines of being acceptable,
Speaker 2: if that makes sense. Like looking at it reminds me
Speaker 2: a little bit of it's just like it's gruesome, but
Speaker 2: in a slightly cartoony enough way. I also cried like
Speaker 2: a baby at the opening of it. There's like a
Speaker 2: very a scene with but you kind of have to
Speaker 2: directly acknowledge some grief and I was like, oh no,
Speaker 2: just burst thus tears. And I think the premise is
Speaker 2: really cool. I will say on Series X a lot
Speaker 2: of Poppins on textures, couple of a few stutters here
Speaker 2: and there. I think the side by side stuff though,
Speaker 2: is really cool. But I can't like.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I was glad I played it in like a five
Speaker 2: hour chunk and then but I've a break from it
Speaker 2: just because you know, work and everything and so I
Speaker 2: think I'll go back to it tonight because I want
Speaker 2: to finish it. I want to see how it goes,
Speaker 2: because it's planting loads of really cool things. I didn't
Speaker 2: realize Troy Baker was in it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, the monster. Jordan told me that.
Speaker 3: That's who he plays.
Speaker 1: A monster.
Speaker 4: The more something, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I dig it.
Speaker 3: I mean it's it's game pass like if you have
Speaker 3: game Pass, there is.
Speaker 2: You know, give it a shot. It's like the perfect
Speaker 2: test case for a game Pass game, I think. And
Speaker 2: I'm enjoying it. And also it chucks achievements at you,
Speaker 2: like it just loves them your way. So if you're
Speaker 2: into that, then.
Speaker 1: What did you think of the setting before we move on,
Speaker 1: or what do you think of the setting so far?
Speaker 2: I guess I dig it obviously being despite what my
Speaker 2: sad little Brexit passport says, but despite being because it
Speaker 2: just says like great Britain and Northern I're like, shut
Speaker 2: up European. Yeah. So I've been to Poland quite a
Speaker 2: few times and it just feels very I don't know,
Speaker 2: it just feels very like it captures a lot of
Speaker 2: history in a weird way, like there's stuff that it
Speaker 2: mentions to do with the war and like certain political
Speaker 2: leaders and stuff where are like, yeah, this is this
Speaker 2: is setting a tone.
Speaker 1: It's like a game that only a Polish studio, yeah,
Speaker 1: or developer could make, which I really appreciate about it,
Speaker 1: Like that's with all of their games typically or most
Speaker 1: of their games I know. Oh, I forget what it
Speaker 1: was called the Cyberpunk one. Observer also took place in
Speaker 1: Observer took place in Crackout.
Speaker 2: Yeah. A lovely a lovely city.
Speaker 1: All right, Well let's move on to topics, and we
Speaker 1: are back with topics for this week. We have a
Speaker 1: big one and we've got Tamoora and Lucy here to
Speaker 1: talk all about it. But we got to see more
Speaker 1: of Mass Effect Legendary edition. Now everyone saw the trailer
Speaker 1: what from Monday, I think Monday or Tuesday, but you
Speaker 1: two get to see an extended thing.
Speaker 2: Forty five minute long BCD presentation thing, which was very cool.
Speaker 2: So the stuff that we got to see was a
Speaker 2: lot more, a lot more nitygree so, a lot of
Speaker 2: tech stuff, a lot of Here's what it looked like
Speaker 2: in June. Here's what it looks like. Now here's a
Speaker 2: layer by layer composite of all the visual effects we're
Speaker 2: putting on it. Pimp in the merch time. I did
Speaker 2: do a video where I kind of condensed this forty
Speaker 2: five minute long presentation into a eleven minute video, and
Speaker 2: it's really cool what they're doing, Like it's a very
Speaker 2: extensive visual overhaul. By that, I mean you know, they're
Speaker 2: taking all the original textures uprising them, putting in and
Speaker 2: improving a lot of visual effects that make a lot
Speaker 2: of difference. And I think it's weird when you watch
Speaker 2: the footage because you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I can
Speaker 2: sort of see the difference, and then you see the
Speaker 2: side by sides and you're like, oh my god, the
Speaker 2: entire lighting system just looks so much better. I did
Speaker 2: go in and capture a bunch I hit PABT there,
Speaker 2: but I did go in and capture a bunch of
Speaker 2: old mass effect one with no mods. And I just
Speaker 2: want to say, whoever a BioWare on the PC version
Speaker 2: said that it was running in sixteen by nine is
Speaker 2: a liar because it's not. It's like sixteen by eight
Speaker 2: and it just looks really weird in my footage, So
Speaker 2: grow up. But I know it looks really impressive. Talked
Speaker 2: to Mac Walters after to kind of and Kevin Meek
Speaker 2: and Crystal I forget her surname, but you know, members
Speaker 2: of the dev team, and they answered all the nitt
Speaker 2: Grey questions. So Pinnacle Station is not going to be
Speaker 2: incuse that code. Oh no, the time trials.
Speaker 1: The Pinnacle Station was just like the weird Combat Trials, right,
Speaker 1: that was it?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 1: I I don't care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the source code was apparently completely broken.
Speaker 1: The one where they introduced the Libertarians. That one's still intact.
Speaker 2: Rival I no, No, bring down the Sky.
Speaker 1: Yes, bring down the sky. That one, that one's still there,
Speaker 1: that's still there.
Speaker 2: I think the Pinnacle Station, from what I could tell,
Speaker 2: is the only one that's not there. You know, like
Speaker 2: multiplayer's gone, which is a shame, but they've rebalanced galactic
Speaker 2: readiness to kind of make up for that and the
Speaker 2: fact you don't have to play was it mass effect
Speaker 2: infiltrator on your phone? It looks really good. And that trailer,
Speaker 2: I'm going to say it, some choice cuts for b Roll,
Speaker 2: some very big moments in that trailer, emotional moments. But no,
Speaker 2: I'm super excited. Think I said it before. It's just
Speaker 2: nice to be excited about Mass Effect again. And I
Speaker 2: think modernizing Mass Effect one because, like I said, I
Speaker 2: was playing it recently, like that game, it feels its age.
Speaker 3: It sure does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the writing I think is still absolutely impeccable.
Speaker 2: And mass Efect one, I think story wise, I think
Speaker 2: Mass Effect one might be my favorite, but I think
Speaker 2: two is my favorite overall, and so modernizing it, changing
Speaker 2: the heart, huge changing Mako still messing around with the
Speaker 2: infantry though. Let's hope they makes some good changes there,
Speaker 2: but I don't think it's going to be a big thing.
Speaker 2: From what they were saying.
Speaker 1: The way like looting worked and Mass Effect one was
Speaker 1: so strange too, because there was like not tiered loop,
Speaker 1: but like you got so much crap that just piled
Speaker 1: up and you'd just be looking at like eight different
Speaker 1: ca Yeah, and you'd convert it, but you'd just be
Speaker 1: looking at like three different Camo and seven suits. You'd
Speaker 1: be like, I don't want any of these, really, but
Speaker 1: they're my best.
Speaker 2: They're there. So Actually, the part of the other reason
Speaker 2: that Tam and I were very excited, not just because
Speaker 2: the legendary edition, is because we could finally release that
Speaker 2: episode of audiologues.
Speaker 4: Cool Baby, which we.
Speaker 2: So a little bit of insight into that. We approached
Speaker 2: BioWare and EA. I think it was August twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: and then we filmed it April last year, and we've
Speaker 2: just been been sat on it because I reached out
Speaker 2: to them originally because of the tenth anniversary and so yeah,
Speaker 2: I've been sat in that for a while. And it's like,
Speaker 2: if you haven't watched it, it's Macwolter is going through
Speaker 2: the original design document. So make sure to pause and
Speaker 2: read through those because they are incredible. We tried to
Speaker 2: get as many of them in as we could.
Speaker 4: Those documents have never been seen outside of by people
Speaker 4: who worked on Mass Effect too, so they're like BioWare
Speaker 4: was very, very very pointed about us having that, being like,
Speaker 4: do not anywhere, do not tweak these, do not do anything.
Speaker 4: This is literally full of ideas that we put together
Speaker 4: for this game, and it's it's wild.
Speaker 2: But no, Mac going through that was and talking about
Speaker 2: the inspiration like Braveheart and Princess Bride and Butch Cassidy
Speaker 2: is really really cool. It's all in there. Please please
Speaker 2: be excited.
Speaker 4: Extensive chat about Thane.
Speaker 2: Creostensive fane chair and Garrison.
Speaker 4: Or as he was known to start with fan creole fan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's also like, while talking about as Effect, definitely
Speaker 2: want to pimp Leanna's stuff from Game Informat and key
Speaker 2: and stuff from the Gamer this week because Game in
Speaker 2: Former has like a month long stuff by mass Effect,
Speaker 2: the Gamer has an entire week and some of the
Speaker 2: stuff that they've both got, like Kean's been doing a
Speaker 2: bunch of interviews with like old Biway people, like finding
Speaker 2: out that Thane was not supposed to have like syndrome
Speaker 2: that was going to kill him, like because of a
Speaker 2: codex entry fuck up is wild. The stuff out of
Speaker 2: the ending, this stuff about like like more visual stuff
Speaker 2: in the allegitary editions. So if you want more mass
Speaker 2: Effect content games, well first all right and then go.
Speaker 4: We love Yeah. So I was devastated to learn that
Speaker 4: or see that. One of the developers was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: indoctrination theory doesn't really work for us. We don't we
Speaker 4: don't really believe in that. And I was like, how
Speaker 4: dare you absolutely listen? I know you might have made
Speaker 4: the game, but I don't get a ship where you think.
Speaker 1: Whatever. Yeah, I'm so excited. It's it's been too long since,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, it's been so long since I've been
Speaker 1: excited about Mass Effect, and especially this is trilogy that
Speaker 1: has been leaked and rumored for so long. To finally
Speaker 1: see it and see that it's coming soon is very
Speaker 1: excited and just has me excited for the future of
Speaker 1: that series, even so much so that I flirted with
Speaker 1: the idea of maybe reinstalling Andromeda. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: gonna happen, but I thought about.
Speaker 4: It playing it recently and he was like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 4: playing it for the third time. I was like, what,
Speaker 4: why is your buggle? What's wrong with you?
Speaker 2: He says bad? I mean, honestly, I never finished on Drama.
Speaker 2: I'm not I never finished on Drameda, so it's okay
Speaker 2: to go on my replaylist. I've been floating with it.
Speaker 4: I finished that game.
Speaker 2: He took time off of work.
Speaker 4: I took time off work to play that game, and
Speaker 4: I it made me like profounds, like, yeah, there's an
Speaker 4: alien in there that looks like it dressed in the
Speaker 4: Sports direct, which is like the worst part of it.
Speaker 3: I am so excited for this because Mass Effect has
Speaker 3: always been like around me, and it's one of those
Speaker 3: games that like I've played, but I don't have a
Speaker 3: lot of good like like a lot of like clear
Speaker 3: memories of because my memory is shit, and so I'm
Speaker 3: just excited. I feel like I'm going to be really
Speaker 3: like seeing it for the first time. And I always
Speaker 3: think about my little brother when I think of Mass Effect,
Speaker 3: because it came out when he was pretty young and
Speaker 3: he got so into it and it was adorable. And
Speaker 3: I'm just really excited because I think we'll be able
Speaker 3: to like play it at the same time and like
Speaker 3: talk about it, and I'm just really looking forward to it.
Speaker 3: I love it when a game that has like aged
Speaker 3: a little bit poorly gets a.
Speaker 2: New lease on life.
Speaker 3: And I'm excited to see what the game play and
Speaker 3: like mechanical tweaks, like the under the hood stuff is
Speaker 3: to kind of bring it up to, you know, modern times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they said they've unified tried from unified control scheme
Speaker 2: across three because going from one to two to three
Speaker 2: is like, well, so feels so different. So that's one
Speaker 2: thing I'm really excited about.
Speaker 4: Do you think this is paving the way for another
Speaker 4: Shepherd story because we have that Mass Effect for trailer
Speaker 4: and it looks like it looks like, yeah, they're like
Speaker 4: picking up the N seven armor, like they're on that.
Speaker 4: It looks like that, but like.
Speaker 3: She looks like she's a matriarch at this point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But like the speculation is they're on the hunt
Speaker 4: for Shepherd to find where where Shepherd is after the
Speaker 4: events of the last game. So do you think that's
Speaker 4: the case.
Speaker 2: Do you think is in like control as Cannon or
Speaker 2: they're going all the way back to the Normandy s
Speaker 2: A one crash site.
Speaker 4: I think I think like controllers Canon and and they're
Speaker 4: like on the hunt to find out like a shepherds
Speaker 4: am I It's like where is Jack Bauer? We need
Speaker 4: him again, like where is Shepherd? And it's not and
Speaker 4: eventually like they don't find Shepherd, but it's about the
Speaker 4: friends you made along the way.
Speaker 1: I think, like, well, because you've got Leara and she
Speaker 1: technically can be very old, so I could I could
Speaker 1: see what you're saying, but I could also see it
Speaker 1: maybe taking place away in the future and maybe you are,
Speaker 1: I don't know, still hunting down a dead Shepherd. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm not sure. I just don't want to
Speaker 1: play Shepherd, Like if they want to bring Shepherd and
Speaker 1: those characters back into it. I just don't want to
Speaker 1: play as Shepherd anymore because I feel like mass Factory
Speaker 1: kind of tied up their story.
Speaker 2: I don't, and I also bring all the decisions from
Speaker 2: the trilogy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just wouldn't work.
Speaker 4: See the coldest part of me I gift Solid too
Speaker 4: that you got to play alongside Solid Snake, and then
Speaker 4: you really appreciated how cool Solid Snake was because you
Speaker 4: were looking at him do his thing. Imagine this game
Speaker 4: where like you're you're kind of looking at Shepherd do
Speaker 4: his thing. Shepherd is just a figure and you're like,
Speaker 4: oh damn.
Speaker 1: So it takes your saves from the legendary edition and
Speaker 1: then that kind of runs parallel with what you're doing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's like the head. He's like the head of
Speaker 4: the Specters now instead of just the first human Specter.
Speaker 4: But he's am I we need, we need Shepherd to
Speaker 4: restore the Specters.
Speaker 2: I'm down.
Speaker 3: When you started this, I thought you said. I thought
Speaker 3: you were going to say if we thought this meant
Speaker 3: we would get a Kotor one and two collection, I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna put it out. I'm just I want to
Speaker 3: manifest if we're going to get mass effect like this.
Speaker 3: I really hope we get it with Kotor as well.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: I like that would like in addition to MASSAC because
Speaker 3: I've been wanting a mass effectory master for forever. But oh,
Speaker 3: that's my stream.
Speaker 4: You've seen the rumor, right there's there's one Star Wars
Speaker 4: game that's in production that hasn't been unveiled, and it's
Speaker 4: believed and rumored to be a reboot of Kotor.
Speaker 1: But like not in development by by any like known
Speaker 1: RPG studio, right was It's like they don't think it is.
Speaker 4: The thing that The thing that I think is going
Speaker 4: to happen is it's the story of Kotor, but we're
Speaker 4: in a different gameplay model, so it's going to be like, oh,
Speaker 4: here's the story of Koto in a action model, and
Speaker 4: it's going to be like the combat from Last Jenn
Speaker 4: or when we're doing a cult we're doing the Kotor story,
Speaker 4: which is.
Speaker 3: Going to excitement is diminished.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's Koto story, but we've used the gameplay of
Speaker 4: a pod racing.
Speaker 3: Game, no RPG or nothing, thank you very much.
Speaker 4: It's Maria Party.
Speaker 2: But story.
Speaker 1: Well, the other I guess kind of big news is
Speaker 1: Battlefield six was talked about during a what are they
Speaker 1: are briefing do investors or something like that for EAU
Speaker 1: and they hinted at some details. Now, it's been a
Speaker 1: while since we've had a Battlefield game. The last one
Speaker 1: was Battlefield five, which I think was like twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 2: Was gonna ask what's the naming convention has been for
Speaker 2: Battlefield because it was up to confusing and then there
Speaker 2: was confusing one Battlefield one one because of World War
Speaker 2: was that the last one?
Speaker 1: But you can go back to like Battlefield nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: Battlefield two Hardline, wells in Battlefield Bad Company one, Battlefield
Speaker 1: Bad Company two, Battlefield three, Battlefield Hardline, or Battlefield four,
Speaker 1: Battlefield Hardline, Battlefield won, Battlefield five. So it's a mess like.
Speaker 2: A little numbers thing that can stick on their wall,
Speaker 2: like a little poster that you'd have in it.
Speaker 4: It's just a flow chop, but it's like the number
Speaker 4: one and then an arrow into the number two and
Speaker 4: then an arrow into like three, four, five, six, seven.
Speaker 4: So it's just numbers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they should just I don't know. I hope it's
Speaker 1: not called Battlefield six. I hope they come something different,
Speaker 1: but they probably won't because I feel like those numbered
Speaker 1: ones sell better.
Speaker 4: That you will be just Battlefield or the Battlefield.
Speaker 2: The Battlefield Love.
Speaker 1: Will be like playing on supporting this game for the
Speaker 1: next decade. But the big takeaways is that there's a
Speaker 1: bigger player count, more player agency, and the announcement should
Speaker 1: be soon in a release later this year. I am
Speaker 1: looking forward to whatever this might be. I've played a
Speaker 1: lot of Battlefield, but Battlefield five was a huge disappointment,
Speaker 1: and I'm very curious to.
Speaker 3: See multiplayer wise or story wise.
Speaker 1: Multiple story has always been bad, well actually bad companies
Speaker 1: were okay, but the multiplayer wise because I feel like
Speaker 1: they always do. They try to do more interesting things
Speaker 1: than Call of Duty in most cases. And I know
Speaker 1: they are very different games, even though people love to
Speaker 1: compare the two, but I always was more interested in
Speaker 1: Battlefield because they leaned more into maybe not the weirder side,
Speaker 1: but it's they always seem more ambitious and more interesting,
Speaker 1: like bigger battles, destructible environments. They've had vehicles this entire time.
Speaker 1: They add jets to some games and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and this one's supposed to be bigger than like a
Speaker 1: bigger player count than anything So I'm super curious to
Speaker 1: see what they do with these large scale battles because
Speaker 1: I feel like that's something that they could potentially do
Speaker 1: something interesting with. But the more curious thing is more
Speaker 1: player agency. I don't really know what that means.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Heighten, I I was gonna ask what that.
Speaker 1: Meant, Like, I feel like they tried to say that
Speaker 1: for Battlefield five and they're like, there's more player agency
Speaker 1: because you can, like Fortnite, a little piece of shelter
Speaker 1: to hide behind, and it's like, no, oh, I don't,
Speaker 1: No one wants that. Don't do that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they always like they always create these new like
Speaker 4: bullet Point featureless, but inevitably they get filtered through the
Speaker 4: same model where it's like more player agency, what does
Speaker 4: that mean? Image? You can shoot down a wall or
Speaker 4: like blow up a building and it's like okay, and
Speaker 4: that completely changes the battlefield and no, I doesn't. I
Speaker 4: don't like.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing about the destruction is that it used
Speaker 1: to be way more open I guess, like you could
Speaker 1: destroy anything, and they've kind of walled that off a
Speaker 1: little bit as it's gone because they try to make
Speaker 1: it more like cinematic. So I'm curious if this more
Speaker 1: player agency is just going to be like you're saying,
Speaker 1: just you can blow up more walls, which would be
Speaker 1: cool if you could level any building and blow up
Speaker 1: any wall, like you couldn't like Bad Company. But I
Speaker 1: don't think that's going to be the case. I think
Speaker 1: they want their game to look flashy because it's EA.
Speaker 1: We'll see though, just speculation.
Speaker 3: Well, friend of the show. My dad really enjoyed Battlefield first.
Speaker 1: A lot of people did.
Speaker 3: He had a great time. He likes to play games
Speaker 3: on the hardest difficulty, and he completed it became a
Speaker 3: real game because he's my boy.
Speaker 4: I kept getting killed by a man on the other
Speaker 4: side of the map that I had no chance of
Speaker 4: shooting back at because he's like figured out how to.
Speaker 2: Shoot me from.
Speaker 4: This game.
Speaker 1: I remember playing the Alpha or Bait or something in
Speaker 1: the office for Battlefield five, and I like threw off
Speaker 1: my headphones and I was like, I'm going to rearrange
Speaker 1: my life so I never have to play this again.
Speaker 1: And then I didn't play Battlefield five ever again because
Speaker 1: I was like, I can't do this. Wow, But I played.
Speaker 1: I played so much Battlefield one. I really liked Battlefield one.
Speaker 1: It was it was fun and I played so much.
Speaker 1: Battlefield three four was busted as hell though, which was
Speaker 1: a bummer.
Speaker 4: We got like a bunch of us got the game
Speaker 4: and played it once. It was like me maybe.
Speaker 2: Cat lads, no, no, no, So a little bit of
Speaker 2: insight is this. This was twenty sixteen, Battlefield one, then
Speaker 2: Battlefield on twenty sixteen. The lads, we were six Stack
Speaker 2: in Overwatch every night. We had an Overwatch WhatsApp group
Speaker 2: called Overwatch. One day the seeds of descent were sown,
Speaker 2: I believe by Dave Jewett. Can he he knows what
Speaker 2: he did. And he was like, what did we just
Speaker 2: play Battlefield? And then like a couple of people play
Speaker 2: Battlefield and the rest of used to play Overwatch. Then
Speaker 2: eventually we all got Battlefield played once. They overtook the
Speaker 2: WhatsApp group and it was called Battlefield Bros. And then yeah,
Speaker 2: the rest of us.
Speaker 4: Then they abandoned the game. A month later we disbanded.
Speaker 4: Was it worth it?
Speaker 2: It's okay, Tamini still sticks six Stack with the boys.
Speaker 2: We've got two groups now, we've got PS four lads
Speaker 2: and we've got got PC boys.
Speaker 4: In an in review Lasting Power, I.
Speaker 3: Believe, I mean, I love this because in both are
Speaker 3: like Lucy and I. We don't actually play video games together.
Speaker 3: We play video games separately with a different group of lads,
Speaker 3: and in those groups we are part of the boys
Speaker 3: slash lads, so like the only female in.
Speaker 1: Each Yes, you've really done yourself in here. You guys
Speaker 1: did this yourself.
Speaker 3: We should probably play games together. But right now it's
Speaker 3: like I log on and it's like hey boys, uh
Speaker 3: and Kelly, and I'm like, it's fine, I can be
Speaker 3: one of the boys. I don't really care.
Speaker 2: I mean, one of our groups is called well sort
Speaker 2: of game of dads have big, big uncles.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we should do we should do it. We should
Speaker 4: do it games for actual like group where it's us
Speaker 4: a lot in there and play some games together. Finally, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's cool.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Bring us all right, let's move on
Speaker 1: to listener questions. All right, So the first thing I
Speaker 1: want to get out of the way is that the
Speaker 1: email seems to be broken. I kind of had a
Speaker 1: suspicion because I haven't gotten any GameSpot after Dark emails
Speaker 1: for about two months. But we've been dealing with so
Speaker 1: much stuff with this transition that I was I wasn't
Speaker 1: going to bring it up one to worry about outlook,
Speaker 1: which has been a thing. So anyway, the reason why
Speaker 1: we haven't seen any emails is because we're not getting them.
Speaker 1: So that means if you have questions join our discord,
Speaker 1: you can DM myself tomorrow, Lucy and we'll get you
Speaker 1: in there. If you don't want to join Discord, because
Speaker 1: I know some people find discord st or it's not
Speaker 1: really the thing, you can just tweet at me or
Speaker 1: one of us and if we see it, we'll make
Speaker 1: sure to add it to our ongoing list of questions
Speaker 1: and we can try to get that in. With that said,
Speaker 1: let's move on to the first question here, Calli, do
Speaker 1: you want to read this one? Yes?
Speaker 3: This is from Ryan Cooper, obviously on the Discord. On
Speaker 3: last week's episode, Calli and Jess talked about how games
Speaker 3: like Hitman and Mass Effect didn't initially appeal to them
Speaker 3: due to the hyper masculine representation of men and the
Speaker 3: marketing making the games feel like they would be Duebro games. However,
Speaker 3: once they played the games, they seem to enjoy them
Speaker 3: and find the marketing to be doing the franchise as
Speaker 3: a disservice so I want to ask what games have
Speaker 3: y all been initially wary of or I'm interested in,
Speaker 3: only to find that they were really up your alley,
Speaker 3: or even better, made you find out that you might
Speaker 3: actually be really into the genre or themes.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Ryan more Lucy. I'm sorry, but Dishonored. I
Speaker 1: didn't play Dishonored for the longest time because I didn't
Speaker 1: think i'd be into it. And I played it and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, wow, this is this is brilliant.
Speaker 2: Okay, you came through the other side.
Speaker 1: Fine, it's true. It's all that matters.
Speaker 2: Journey Man, Yeah, what about it?
Speaker 3: Made you think you wouldn't be into it?
Speaker 1: Other style? Primarily just like I didn't whale punk Whale Punk.
Speaker 1: I liked the graphics style, but or no reverse. I
Speaker 1: liked the like the game and what it was doing,
Speaker 1: but the graphics style just didn't do it in direction time.
Speaker 1: That's that's a much better way of saying.
Speaker 3: The graphics style.
Speaker 1: Graphics style.
Speaker 4: It's like it's like the award, like a category and
Speaker 4: then a ship awards and the best graphics style.
Speaker 1: Hey, that could make the key les more entertaining.
Speaker 2: Goes to the resident Evil four. I would say, I
Speaker 2: was very nervous about Resident Evil four, but it was
Speaker 2: my first Resident Evil game. I remember like a guy
Speaker 2: from school recommending it to me, and also in retrospect,
Speaker 2: he wrote.
Speaker 3: A little note in it and oh like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: he wanted to date you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, picking up on that, picking up on that as
Speaker 2: an adult. Yeah. I remember the last line of that
Speaker 2: letter being like if you hear a chainsaw run, and
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, this just put me off even more.
Speaker 2: Didn't play until like years later when it came.
Speaker 1: To did you still have this? Give it back?
Speaker 2: I gave it back.
Speaker 4: You didn't You didn't turn the note over because it
Speaker 4: said if you have a chainsaw run dot dot dot
Speaker 4: to me address.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: It was weird because his dad knew my mom, and
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm not going to do that anyway.
Speaker 2: I didn't play until years later when it was on
Speaker 2: Xbox Live Arcade remember the Arcade anyway, And I really
Speaker 2: really loved it because it was more of an action
Speaker 2: game and kind of goofy, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I've played myself here. I could have been enjoying this
Speaker 2: for so many years.
Speaker 4: So yeah, RESI foro hm, I can't think of one
Speaker 4: like I remember I think I've said this before, but
Speaker 4: I remember playing Mass Effect one for the first time
Speaker 4: and really not liking it me.
Speaker 2: Too, until I started it over.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I started it over and came back to it
Speaker 4: when I was like in the in the throes of
Speaker 4: a deep, deep depression and I was like, this is
Speaker 4: my ship. I love this shit, this is good.
Speaker 3: We love a depression play.
Speaker 4: Yeah. That, Oh my god, that was like the best
Speaker 4: depression player I've had ever because I was like, it's
Speaker 4: literally taking me to space so far from my current
Speaker 4: world that it is perfect. And I got really like
Speaker 4: obsessively into it. Yeah. So, and it wasn't nothing to
Speaker 4: do with the marketing. I think it was just it
Speaker 4: I couldn't get into my in the right head space
Speaker 4: for it. But then obviously no, I'm just like super
Speaker 4: obsessed with that franchise. But yeah, I can't think of
Speaker 4: anything like I think it took me a while to
Speaker 4: get onto like puzzle games, like mobile puzzle games like
Speaker 4: I For example, peggel Peggle was one where I was like,
Speaker 4: that's not for me because I'm a gamer, and then
Speaker 4: I played it and I was like, I'm really finding
Speaker 4: what a gamer is now, and this is I'm obsessed
Speaker 4: with this, and then like I got obsessed with like
Speaker 4: all of pop cap stuff with Like I still play
Speaker 4: Bijorl every now and then on toilet, which is some
Speaker 4: of the best, Like the only way to make using
Speaker 4: the the only way to make taking a shit more
Speaker 4: satisfying is to play a potfalizing Bajorl And it's like
Speaker 4: this absolute peak.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know how to follow that up. I
Speaker 3: was going to say that Dead Cells is probably mine.
Speaker 3: I know the question is about a conversation that I
Speaker 3: had so but Jess and I like it was about
Speaker 3: games that some of them we actually haven't played yet
Speaker 3: because of that weird roadblock for us. But for me,
Speaker 3: I don't even remember why I picked up Dead Cells.
Speaker 3: I've never been into roguelikes, Like I've never not that
Speaker 3: like I actively disliked them. I just like it was
Speaker 3: never like a big thing for me. There's some like
Speaker 3: Metroidvenia kind of aspects. I've never playing a Metroid I like,
Speaker 3: like it's just really not a Cali game on the surface,
Speaker 3: And I ended up like being coming obsessed with Dead Cells,
Speaker 3: like fully so obsessed. I love that game. I even
Speaker 3: recommended it to a friend of mine, who also was like,
Speaker 3: I don't think I would like that. The art style
Speaker 3: is ugly, and I was like, no, no, like, set
Speaker 3: aside your biases, you will fall in love with it. It
Speaker 3: was Jen, we gotta do the same things the graphic style, yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: We got to do the same thing with Jen with
Speaker 3: Hades because I don't think she's given Hades a proper shake.
Speaker 3: I was gonna.
Speaker 2: Say Hades the next the next one to hit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But I was like, Jen, I think you'd really
Speaker 3: like Dead Cells and she was like, oh, I don't
Speaker 3: like the look of it. And I was like, just
Speaker 3: just listen to me. And then it was the two
Speaker 3: of us. We lived together at the time, and it
Speaker 3: was the two of us just playing Dead Cells and
Speaker 3: then her husband being like hello, like do you guys
Speaker 3: want to like something and we were like not, no,
Speaker 3: absolutely not, like we have like stuff to do. Sorry,
Speaker 3: like let's uh, we would rather you do that. Thank you.
Speaker 3: So I'm glad. I'm glad I gave that one a chance.
Speaker 3: And it's it kind of it makes me want to
Speaker 3: go back and play, you know something like you know,
Speaker 3: some Metroid games and like or like the classical ones,
Speaker 3: not like a Metroid Prime.
Speaker 2: Obviously that's very different, but Kelly.
Speaker 4: Plays Super Metride, Super Machods fun.
Speaker 3: I it makes me want to play Super Metroid because
Speaker 3: it's like now I have sometimes like when you're not
Speaker 3: used to a genre, the same way that somebody who
Speaker 3: doesn't play games very often doesn't have the vocabulary for
Speaker 3: a lot of games. I think if you're not used
Speaker 3: to a genre, you don't necessarily have the vocabulary to
Speaker 3: be like interested in it because you can't spot those
Speaker 3: cool things like from a trailer or like you can't
Speaker 3: you can't see where the game is being inventive, and
Speaker 3: so once you have a little bit more of a foundation,
Speaker 3: you can get more into it. So I think, like
Speaker 3: I think I will go back and play some of.
Speaker 4: Those Metrods on the this Nintendo Classics thing that you
Speaker 4: get for signing up to the online thing, so it's
Speaker 4: on switch, you can play it, and yeah, fucking great,
Speaker 4: it's one of my favorite games of all time.
Speaker 1: Same, very good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just remembered one Guitar Hero Yeah all the time,
Speaker 4: mainly because.
Speaker 1: Like I was like, because you're a gamer, I don't know,
Speaker 1: It's like it was the music.
Speaker 4: I was like, I don't care about any of this music.
Speaker 4: This is peak white people music. Like it was like
Speaker 4: was what was it? What was like? I can't even
Speaker 4: remember some of the songs, but I remember playing like
Speaker 4: looking at it and being like, there's not a single
Speaker 4: song in this that I want, I know or I
Speaker 4: want to listen to. It was like proper, proper because
Speaker 4: I wasn't.
Speaker 1: Into Yeah, to be fair, it was like music one
Speaker 1: of them some respect on Frans.
Speaker 4: Yeah, even though I was like yeah, but like I
Speaker 4: I grew up listening to hip hop and rap and
Speaker 4: and like I just was not into that kind of Boston.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 4: I didn't want to listen to Boston David all that stuff.
Speaker 4: I was like, yeah, this is this is this is
Speaker 4: for the for the bread folk. And then like and
Speaker 4: then I played it and I was like, oh, the
Speaker 4: actual sensation of hitting the notes is still pretty good,
Speaker 4: even if I don't care about the music. And then
Speaker 4: I played that game until Sharp dress Man was on
Speaker 4: my iPod.
Speaker 1: I mean that guitar hero one was. Also. It was
Speaker 1: a lot of covers too, So that's what I was saying, Like,
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of people weren't super wild
Speaker 1: about the music in one even though they had some
Speaker 1: good songs, at least it has, at least I thought it.
Speaker 1: I did not like a lot of those covers.
Speaker 2: I'm on the wiki. The game features forty seven playable songs,
Speaker 2: thirty of which are.
Speaker 4: Covers ye that game. But like, after I played that
Speaker 4: game and like got over the fact that I like
Speaker 4: built a taste for that kind of music, I like
Speaker 4: fell down a quite a deep rabbit hole and then
Speaker 4: like started listening to a lot more rock and roll
Speaker 4: dad rock and now LEDs are playing is one of
Speaker 4: my favorite bands.
Speaker 3: Of so yes, oh oh my god, I love that
Speaker 3: Zeppelins so much. It's unreal in incredible what journey it
Speaker 3: was for me, sorry dancing.
Speaker 4: And then like, imagine, imagine how pleased I was when
Speaker 4: they released DJ Hero, which was like what that game is,
Speaker 4: but way more up my alley with music that I
Speaker 4: was into, like modern pop and and and like a
Speaker 4: little more like you know, rap, R and B that
Speaker 4: kind of stuff. And DJ Hero is perhaps one of
Speaker 4: the most underrated games of all time, and just like
Speaker 4: a feat of creative genius. The mixes in that in
Speaker 4: that game are unreal.
Speaker 2: I think beck is in that one, which is my
Speaker 2: own Yeah, because I didn't have a DJ Hero, but
Speaker 2: I remember playing it a couple of times.
Speaker 1: So good, but I never played it. I was the
Speaker 1: opposite of you tomorrow. I remember when DJ Hero came out,
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't think I'd like the music
Speaker 1: that much. Now I probably like it a lot more,
Speaker 1: But back then.
Speaker 4: Listen to the soundtrack, like it's it's phenomenal. It's it's
Speaker 4: like some of the same kind of quality that you
Speaker 4: might get from a girl talk, kind of like the
Speaker 4: modern mash up stuff like it. Some of it is amazing,
Speaker 4: Like there's gorillas mixed with heard it through the grapevine
Speaker 4: and it sounds so good, and there's like some of
Speaker 4: that sounds there's some real, real good mixes in there.
Speaker 1: Well, Lucy, do you want to take the last question
Speaker 1: for us?
Speaker 2: This is from Timmy bean Hey after Dark Crew. Some
Speaker 2: game developers nowadays are trying their best to create graphical
Speaker 2: photo realism within their games. For you, personally, which games
Speaker 2: do you think have been the closest to achieve achieving
Speaker 2: photo realism? For me, it was when I was playing
Speaker 2: Death Stranding on the PS four Pro. The characters in
Speaker 2: that games cut scenes looked so close to being real
Speaker 2: I was taken aback the engine. It's such treasure.
Speaker 3: Shout out to Tipic death str I seriously, I love
Speaker 3: death Stranding to the point where I'm like, I should
Speaker 3: have given it a ten. I love that game so much,
Speaker 3: so just shout out to you for destr I started.
Speaker 4: I started reinstalling it the other day because again I
Speaker 4: podcast that I love called Into the Eightha. They recently
Speaker 4: talked about playing death Stranding in twenty twenty and twenty
Speaker 4: twenty one, and it apparently it hits super different.
Speaker 1: I played a lot on PC when that port came out,
Speaker 1: and I enjoyed it. I don't know if I enjoyed
Speaker 1: it more. No, I think I did enjoy it more
Speaker 1: because I kind of knew what to expect as I
Speaker 1: was playing it, and that kind of just made it
Speaker 1: more relaxing in a weird way but also depressing.
Speaker 4: Replay it. Yeah, sorry, Lucy, And maybe that could be
Speaker 4: our game that we all play together.
Speaker 1: Oh shit, but you didn't finish it.
Speaker 3: You got too what like, Oh you didn't finish it,
Speaker 3: You're free.
Speaker 2: He didn't finish it, so maybe I'm freed. I'll add
Speaker 2: it to the list.
Speaker 3: But yeah, Photo Realism This is an interesting question because
Speaker 3: I don't really gravitate toward photo realism, like as like
Speaker 3: I'm not super interested in crazy high graphics. I don't
Speaker 3: have a super high tech setup, like I just have
Speaker 3: like a monitor that works and a PC that needs
Speaker 3: a couple of new parts, but it works. And you know,
Speaker 3: I don't care about like HD and I love I
Speaker 3: love like stylized, like really highly stylized art and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. So this is a hard question for me
Speaker 3: because it's like I don't even like register this kind
Speaker 3: of thing when I'm playing a game, like I'm not like, wow,
Speaker 3: it looks so realistic. I do notice stuff like I'll
Speaker 3: watch my dad play Call of Duty and I'm like
Speaker 3: on his Series X that I got in for Christmas
Speaker 3: because I'm an incredible daughter, and I'm like, wow, this
Speaker 3: game looks crisp, like like this map looks like a
Speaker 3: real place. I don't think like Call of Didy's the
Speaker 3: most photorealistic thing, but watching him play Black Ops Cold
Speaker 3: War of like actually noticing it pop on Series X.
Speaker 1: So I was thinking a lot about this. Part of
Speaker 1: me wanted to say read that redemption too, but I
Speaker 1: think I think the thing that really sticks out to
Speaker 1: me is half Life Alex, just because of how the
Speaker 1: characters act. Like It's not like a super realistic graphical style,
Speaker 1: but when you meet characters. Maybe it's partly because it's
Speaker 1: in VR, but when you meet characters, the way they move,
Speaker 1: the way they talk, the way they interact with the
Speaker 1: environment feels so real to me. I imagine it was
Speaker 1: very difficult to do on valves end. I imagine it
Speaker 1: was a lot of rigging and they had lots of
Speaker 1: little dots on their face or whatever they do. But
Speaker 1: to me, like that, just the way characters talk and
Speaker 1: move is just so it seems it seems like I'm there.
Speaker 4: M m yeah.
Speaker 2: I think for me, the one that springs to mind
Speaker 2: when I think of photorealism would be The Vanishing of
Speaker 2: Ethan Carter, just because of the photogrammetry that they used.
Speaker 2: That was the first game that I ever remember hearing
Speaker 2: about using photogrammetry as as an art technique, like going
Speaker 2: out taking pictures, scatting them in and using those as textures.
Speaker 2: And so it's actually cool to hear it and see it.
Speaker 2: More like, because I know Battlefront two did a lot
Speaker 2: of photogrammetry, was like they would go to Lucas and
Speaker 2: take pictures of all of the actual props and stuff
Speaker 2: from Star Wars and put them in battle from so
Speaker 2: vanishly we think i't er for me, but I think
Speaker 2: it's difficult because I'm like you, Cali, I prefer a
Speaker 2: stylized look because then my immersion is weighed, like less
Speaker 2: likely to get broken.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it ages better too.
Speaker 2: I think age is so much well, like it Dishonored
Speaker 2: for example, to always bring it back to Dishonored.
Speaker 1: Like hiographical style.
Speaker 2: The style of Dishonored is like aged so well because
Speaker 2: it's so distinct and it's an entire world that knows
Speaker 2: what its aesthetic is.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I think we've reached a point where environments
Speaker 4: for the most part can be super photo realistic, like
Speaker 4: Death Stranding and Red Dead. But the moment you put
Speaker 4: a character in there, that's when it breaks for me. Like,
Speaker 4: I don't think we've reached a point where characters look
Speaker 4: for like even Norman readers, Like in Death Stranding, I
Speaker 4: look at him and I'm like, he looks like Norman readers.
Speaker 4: But the uncanny valley is there, I think, like the
Speaker 4: closest I've come. Yeah, our closest I have come to
Speaker 4: like looking at a character and being like, I believe
Speaker 4: that it's weirdly eleen arr like still, like the the
Speaker 4: way their mouth and face moves is very exaggerated. But
Speaker 4: it's the one where I looked at and I was like,
Speaker 4: that feels like that's believable, and they overacted every part
Speaker 4: of it. But it's so like if someone refined that
Speaker 4: that could But like, for the most part, the moment
Speaker 4: you part a character into a world, that's when it
Speaker 4: breaks for me, and I'm like, I don't get it now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's kind of what I was getting at with
Speaker 3: Call of Duty, Like the environments are super sharp, but
Speaker 3: like the character, it's like the eyes too, like the
Speaker 3: eye yeah, teeth, yeah, yeah, the teeth absolutely. And I
Speaker 3: would say like I actually really noticed that in Cold
Speaker 3: War because the environments are really strong and then the
Speaker 3: characters come in and I'm like, oh, you almost like
Speaker 3: look out a place. At least that's how I felt
Speaker 3: about it playing on a PS five. But yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: trying to think of an example of like, like, I
Speaker 3: do think that the characters in Death Stranding look pretty good,
Speaker 3: especially uh Fragile, I think looks pretty pretty realistic, but
Speaker 3: like her skin's too smooth. That's another thing, is like if.
Speaker 5: You want me, yeah, it's pretty bitch, But I'm.
Speaker 3: I think to look photorealistic, I need to see some pores.
Speaker 3: I need to see like a weird chin hair like yeah,
Speaker 3: to make me to a be photo realistic and to
Speaker 3: be make me not feel bad about myself.
Speaker 4: But like the environment environment, there's some like GTA four
Speaker 4: mods that still are ridiculous, Like those are the ones
Speaker 4: that I remember looking at and being like, that's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: They make all the streets wet, Yeah, and everywhere that
Speaker 1: was the game or the mod stuff where I was
Speaker 1: like it was ray tracing before we had ray tracing,
Speaker 1: I was like, how are.
Speaker 4: You doing this.
Speaker 1: Well? Anyway, That's been episode seventy nine of GameSpot After Dark.
Speaker 1: Thank you all so much for listening, and thank you
Speaker 1: guys for joining today. Lucy, what are you up to
Speaker 1: this weekend? Where can people find you?
Speaker 2: Please? Go watch the episode of Audiologus about mass effect
Speaker 2: to cut character and the writing of the suicide mission
Speaker 2: like time and I worked very hard on that last
Speaker 2: year and we're very happy to have it out. Also,
Speaker 2: go watch the rundown of the Mass Effect Legendary edition.
Speaker 2: Please enjoy the ken burnsing I had to do because
Speaker 2: I had dickle assets to work with. But I way
Speaker 2: to work and I'm on Twitter at UC James Games.
Speaker 1: You paused after you said the Rundown and I was
Speaker 1: expecting like the Rundown starring the Rock from two thousand whatever. Anyway, Kelly,
Speaker 1: where can people find you?
Speaker 4: What do you up to do?
Speaker 3: You can find me on Twitter at inky dogico I
Speaker 3: n K y d O j I kko and maybe
Speaker 3: on Instagram as Inky Crossing because I think I might
Speaker 3: actually do that. As far as work goes, you know me,
Speaker 3: like a lot of my job really is behind the scenes,
Speaker 3: a lot of editing, So please just keep up with
Speaker 3: GameSpot reviews. I also want to give a shout out,
Speaker 3: and I feel like it's been buried now so I
Speaker 3: can't find the username in this moment, but I saw
Speaker 3: somebody on the game spot discord who watched the Pokemon
Speaker 3: Competitive series, so thank you so much. I really just
Speaker 3: want to give a shout out to that because I
Speaker 3: am so proud of the work that Jake and I
Speaker 3: did on that series on how to get into competitive Pokemon,
Speaker 3: and I feel like it's gone underappreciated. And that discord
Speaker 3: message made me so happy because the person in question
Speaker 3: was like, Yeah, this is the most fun I've had
Speaker 3: with Pokemon in a really long time. I've actually gotten
Speaker 3: into the competitive scene from those videos and that made
Speaker 3: my whole week. So, because I am not publishing anything
Speaker 3: of my own right now, I would love if you
Speaker 3: went back and watch those videos please.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow. What about you?
Speaker 4: Same stuff? As Lucy said, go and watch the audio
Speaker 4: logues and watch her features. Otherwise, I don't really do
Speaker 4: anything on this website anymore. I'm on Twitter.
Speaker 1: You can find me at jacob Deck and I think
Speaker 1: as of now, there is a bonus spoiler episode from
Speaker 1: the Medium up right now that John Luke did, so
Speaker 1: if you've played the Medium, be sure to check that out.
Speaker 1: And then I also cut a God of war PS
Speaker 1: five update comparison to PS four pro. You have to
Speaker 1: squint really hard, but if you squint you can kind
Speaker 1: of see a difference. It's kind of fun to watch
Speaker 1: and you can figure out what the difference is. You
Speaker 1: can tell the frame rate though. Those those sixty frames
Speaker 1: a second look great on PS five.
Speaker 3: Also, people should watch Status Party on the Citadel speaking. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: We actually used to have a Twitter account for Baldwin Shepherd,
Speaker 1: but I lost all the logins, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on with that.
Speaker 3: That's a series that Jake and John Luke did where
Speaker 3: they did a disaster run.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've been trying to like think about how he
Speaker 1: can do something similar for Legendary Edition, but I don't
Speaker 1: think we'd be able to recapture that magic, at least
Speaker 1: in the same way. I think we'll figure out some
Speaker 1: sort of I don't know, let's play for it, but
Speaker 1: I don't know what it'll be at this point. It
Speaker 1: should be interesting, but anyway, that's for me. Anyway, We'll
Speaker 1: see y all next week.