Speaker 1: What is going on?
Speaker 2: Everybody? Welcome to the Game Informer Show, a weekly podcast
covering the video game industry. Join us every Thursday for
discussion with the latest gaming news, reviews, and exclusive reveals,
alongside Game and Former staff and special guests from around
the industry. I'm your host today Alex van Aiken, and
today I'm joined by Marcus Stewart. How you doing, Marcus,
I'm doing good. Welcome back, Thank you. I have been gone.
This is like the second day I'm home in two
weeks pretty much. It's nice to be back.
Speaker 3: You're like a rock star now. It's just all over
the place.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was not for anything cool. Was for
a family reunion, which is a wedding. Yeah, I guess,
I guess I am a rock star. We're also joined
by Kyle Hilliard. How you doing, Kyle, I'm good.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me as always.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you sound tired.
Speaker 4: You sound exasperated, always tired, constantly ready to fall asleep
at the drop of a hat. It's my dad's superpower.
Just put me in a somewhat comfortable seat and I'm gone.
Speaker 3: I think that's called narcolepsy.
Speaker 2: Okay, uh and running this out. Returning guests for into
the show. Eric Van Allen, how you doing?
Speaker 1: Why did you pause there first?
Speaker 2: Did you forget what I was gonna I was deciding
whether I was gonna put where you work ahead of
where I introduce you. I was gonna say destructoids, Eric
Van or acts of the Blood Gods. Eric. That's why
I hesitated. I was like, well, he's his own person.
Let me say his name first.
Speaker 1: I am. I'm a well rounded person who would also
like the power to go to sleep whenever he could,
Like I have trouble sleeping. I don't know if y'all
got that or not, but I've never been somebody who
can just like go to sleep. You know, I have
a kid.
Speaker 2: You go, Eric, how are you.
Speaker 1: Kidless and still alive? So I was.
Speaker 2: I was wondering about that.
Speaker 1: Kidless and still alive and a gamer with like a
game pad underneath.
Speaker 3: I can see that at a Walmart.
Speaker 2: If people haven't heard previous episodes you were on, don't
follow you give him the rundown real quick on what
you do?
Speaker 1: Oh geez, what do I do? This is like a
family reunion. So I am a video game journalist and podcaster.
You can find me by day over at destructoid dot
com where most of my writing. I really edit more
often these days, but the last few weeks I've done
a lot of writing. I'll have an interview with the
Kaiju Number eight English dovecast that's going up sometime today.
I'll probably you might have read my preview of Elden Ring,
which we're going to talk about here in a moment,
but mostly otherwise editing and stuff. And then by night
I'm over at Axe of the blaygud and Independent RPG
podcast with Kat Bailey and Nadia Oxford, where we talk
all things RPGs all the time. There's a lot of
RPGs to talk about nowadays, so it's great. And then
Normandy FM with Kenna Shepherd, where we do kind of
a book club retrospective on different games. So we started
out with mass Effect. You know, given the name the
Mass Effect, choice came before the name. We chose Normandy FM. Afterwards.
It wasn't like we were just like Normandy FM, Oh
we should do mass Effect. Yeah, but we also did
Dragon Age, Last of Us, Cyberpunk, a bunch of other
like kind of story driven, choice driven games. And right
now we are in the middle of near Replicant, which
is has been a very interesting experience all things told,
because it's the one that Ken hasn't played. It's the
first time we're playing a game that he has not played.
And getting Kenneth Shepherd through New Repplicant has been a
journey in and of itself.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Well, yeah, find all those shows on wherever
you're listening to this podcast. Go type it up, tape
them in, subscribe to them, follow them, and follow Eric's work. Okay, Well,
like you all pointed out, we're gonna be talking about
eld and Rings Shadow of the Urd Tree today. Marcus
and Eric both played it themselves at a recent preview
event in California.
Speaker 5: And then we're also going to be talking about our
impressions of Haunty Wild Bastards Nine Souls, and to close
out the show, our Summer Game Fest predictions of course,
on that topic.
Speaker 2: If you want to stay up to date on all
things Summer Gamefest, stay tuned to Gaminformer dot com. This
whole next week, we're gonna be burning the Midnight Oil.
A few of us are gonna be on the ground
in Los Angeles playing games, writing up our impressions, who knows,
maybe a couple of videos here or there, but yeah,
it's gonna be a busy time. Go to gaminformer dot
com if you're curry us on hearing about all that.
And lastly, before we jump into the show proper, if
you want to support the show and you're enjoying it,
do us a favor. Go grab a magazine subscription print
magazine subscription that is, it's nineteen dollars and ninety one
cents for ten issues a year, or you can get
thirty four nine nine for twenty issues over two years.
And Eric, Eric's a subscriber. He got one right there,
that Star Wars Outlaws issue if you sign up right now.
Oh wow, we got Hades right there.
Speaker 1: Also have the notebook within reach.
Speaker 2: That's so funny.
Speaker 4: In the Laser Eyes notebook, a notebook that I am
really kicking myself for not actually using while I played
the game. It's like literally filled with templates that would
help would have helped me tremendously.
Speaker 3: But you know, Hindsight's twenty twenty, right.
Speaker 2: That's funny. Well, let's jump into Elden ring Marcus Eric.
I'd love for you two to kick us off. Eric,
since you're the guest. I'm gonna give you the honors.
Tell us about Shadow of the Air Tree.
Speaker 1: Elden Ring got DLC. Elden Ring got an expansion. I mean,
for those of you who played one of the goaties
of that year, there was really only one thread left
that elden Ring had to tug on, and that was
a giant withered arm sticking out of an embryo an
egg of some kind. So that is what we did.
Marcus and I traveled to la to tell on the
arm of set embryo and find out what was inside, which.
Speaker 4: Was literally there.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: They built like an arm tug machine.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was an arm tug machine.
I don't know if we were supposed to a little bit.
I gave it like a little yank, but I have yeah, yeah,
you gotta like you put it against your face and
all that, you know. I wanted to know what it
felt like.
Speaker 3: You know, you had a big sign that said please
touch this arm, which is I'm not making it up.
Speaker 4: Really that's fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because that's how you start the DLC. It
turns out.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so you for those of you at home
who might have played elden Ring if you beat a
certain lord of blood who likes to say a word
three times and then kill you once you have beaten
that boss. There is kind of a thing there that
was a lingering thread of a major story beat in
Elder Ring, and that is kind of where the DLC
kicks off, and we got to start from the beginning,
essentially like entering the DLC for the first time. A
lot of it is centered around Mikola, who is the
imperian that we have kind of heard things about, especially
if you do a lot of the endgame optional challenge content.
A lot of it centers around Mikola and Millennia, who
are like the twins of Ratigan in America, right They're they're
kind of the offspring of Ratigan America, and we get
a little bit of information about them. Now we're kind
of learning a lot more about them and potentially a
lot more about just the lands between how things came
to be the time way before any of the stuff
that we've done in Elder Ring prior. I feel like
a lot of the hints are that there is an
unsung history, a lot of stuff that went into the
eventual creation of the Golden Order under America that we're
going to learn about because it's been like covered up,
swept away by history, and now Mikola is trying to
expose some of it by going into the realm of shadow.
I love that it's the realm of shadow, is the
shadow realm. I did not find you he's Grandpa, but
hopefully as part of the DLC, we will rescue him.
Oki you gee my boy. So yeah, it's I don't know, Marcus,
maybe you could speak more to this, but it felt
weird trying to write about this because I really did,
like I came away from it with like that was
three hours of more elden Ring, and that's great. It
is definitely just more elden Ring. There are new mechanics
that they kind of trying to introduce, but I don't
know that any of it felt so groundbreaking that it
was like I was playing a new game. It was
like I'm getting a really good expansion to something that
I already loved, and so like a Gody expansion is good,
but it is also like it's more elden Ring. I
don't know how much more I can really say about
it at that point.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's what I said in my written preview
that you can read online now. It was like it's
the most boring take imaginable, Like, hey, they made more
of this and it's still really fun. But yeah, outside
of the like, there's a new progression sort of like
item called the scalder tree. I don't know how you
say it.
Speaker 1: Out loud, the scaate you tree or something like that.
You're supposed to scat while you use it. I believe
you go to the side of grace and then scat
into the fire.
Speaker 3: Meet the scatman.
Speaker 1: The scatman. Yeah, yeah, so the site of Grace.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like an item you find they're all over
the place. I think it's called scouted tree fragments, and
you bring them back to the site of Grace and
there's a new upgrade option and you feed this into
that and basically it basically just makes you sturdier and
harder to kill, like the more you plug into them.
So like, and then every time you upgrade, you have
to spend more of them to get to the next tier.
So like, you know, if it tooks one to get
one upgrade, then you need to next time. And band
I Namco, who were the pr reps that were there.
Nobody from from software was there from the for the event,
but they kept encouraging, like, hey, if you get stuck
on something, maybe go roam around and try to find
more of the Scatman fragments. Those might help.
Speaker 2: Okay, So like a similar kind of philosophy to elden Ring.
If you are underpowered, go somewhere else and find a
way to level up, whether by killing enemies or exploring.
Speaker 4: Here's my question, so like, are you going somewhere else?
Are you being transported to it a new place?
Speaker 1: You are in the shadow realm?
Speaker 2: And is it a memory or are you physically there?
Speaker 1: Great question. H don't really know. It's kind of I
would refer to it as like another plane of existence
because it is. I think even from what we played,
it felt non contiguous with like the actual elden Ring world.
You know how the elder Ring world is kind of one,
you know, big land mass with a few exceptions. There's
like the sky place you go to and stuff like that,
but it's largely one land mass. This was like we're
going somewhere else, We're going somewhere substantially different. And I
think that's important to note because the fragments that we're
picking up. There's one four or your character that, like
Marcus said, makes you do more damage and take less damage. Essentially,
it's like the easiest way to explain it. You can
also pick some up for your spirit ashes that will
kind of have the same effect on your spirit ashes.
Those only work in the DLC area there specifically for
the DLC, so it's not like you can go and
farm these fragments and then turn back around and now
you can be like Radon super easily or whatever. Like
this is a specific thing for the DLC, and I
think it's interesting because I was trying to probe some
of the band I namcofolks were there because, like Marcus said,
we didn't have any frum Soft people there to ask
questions directly. But my personal takeaway, my personal speculation is
that this is a way for them to kind of
add a power curve that gives you a little bit
of an effect no matter where you are when you
enter the DLC, because considering how deep into the game
the DLC is, you would have to probably be a
certain level to like manage to get there, unless you're
like a super hardcore power and you can like just
frame perfect everything. I don't know, but I imagine you
have to be at a certain point in this game
power scale wise to get in, but they still want
to have a ramp of some kind, and this is
what gives them the ramp. No matter whether you're at
like level one hundred or level five hundred or whatever, like,
there is still some level of ramping that has happened.
But I couldn't gauge whether because we had a very
fixed build. It was a very like.
Speaker 4: What I would say, like your characters.
Speaker 1: Enough nor yeah no, but we had something that was
probably like maybe ten to fifteen levels under where I
was when I beat elden Ring is what it felt like.
It had kind of like a pretty good level stock.
It had like plus twenty five weapons on a bunch
of stuff, so like you had equipment to go in there.
So it definitely felt like an endgame style build. But
there was still a noticeable difference when I started using
those fragments versus when I did not have them. I did,
like notice I fought one boss to kind of like
get engauge where that was at, and then used the
fragment and fought the boss again, and I could notice
that there was like not a huge difference, but like
a tangible difference between having them and not having them.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 3: The other thing is that the game now also adds
I believe they said one hundred weapons. Yeah, brand new
weapons of the game, and those you can take into
the base game, yes, which is cool. I played as
the Warrior class and he was wearing this like weird
bear claw like glove as a weapon. I forget what
it was called. It was like red bear something, but
it basically his attack was just like the super Agro,
just like flurry of just slashes where he basically comes
at you like a berserker like wolverine, and it's just
meant to be like, yeah, just like tear into them,
like don't even let them retaliate, just like stagger them
and then just like rip them apart. And then he
also had a like a two handed axe and he
could throw at people, which I used the locks. It
would do a lot of damage, especially to there's these
really huge and disgusting like scorpion bugs in one of
the kind of like legacy dungeons that a substantial amount
of its health, which is great because those things are disgusting.
But the weapons that I found in the game were
all really fun to use and sort of tinker around with.
At one point, I killed like this this invader like
fire night guy, and took his like big old broadsword
that could just light people on fire whenever it touched him,
and then I was like, well, I'm rolling with this
for the rest of my times. Is fantastic.
Speaker 2: On the subject, you mentioned legacy dungeons, the weapon count
I'm trying, is there one legacy so there's one new
zone that's the size of limb Gray or the size
of Leernia is what I've heard, or so the.
Speaker 1: Area that we played, and this is my speculation completely,
I feel like we did not see the bounds of
that area. I feel like there's got to be at
least there is at least one more thing that we
could have gone through a door to get through, when
then pr was like, don't go through that door. So
I have a feeling that there is like some more
to explore than what we even saw in the session
that we played. But we basically had what you would
call two legacy dungeons of some kind that were pretty
large experiences that were your classic like walk up to
an area you're going to kind of fight your way
through it. There's a fog gate at the end with
a big boss. We can talk about one of those bosses.
I personally don't want to talk about the other one
because when I saw it, I was like, huh, and
I want everyone else to have the huh moment too.
So the second one, the second one, Okay, the harder one, yes, Well,
it was interesting. I heard mixed opinions on which of
the two bosses was the harder one, because there were
actually some people that thought that the other boss, the
dancing Lion that we do see in the trailer and
stuff like that, was a little bit more difficult. But
I personally thought the second boss was harder, had a
harder time with that boss particularly. But we won't talk
about who they are for spoiler reasons. But those are
kind of your classic legacy dungeon, like like you're gonna
run through an area, You're gonna unlock some shortcuts to
kind of advance farther, eventually get to a point where
you have your side of grace right before the fog
gate door. You're gonna summon gold name people to help
you out, and then go in and fight the boss
and keep hanging your head against it until you win.
There's also I found an ever jail above ground, which
was kind of interesting, just kind of like one of
a fog Gate door that you go through and you
fight like a very classic ever jail style enemy. I
found two different other dungeons that were on the overworld
that had their own bespoke names and their own kind
of experiences. I did not see if there was a
proper fog Gate boss and either one of them, but
they did have kind of enemies from the Elbing Ring
that you would consider at least like sub bosses or
mini bosses of some kind of like ones that would
show up and be like a substantial thing that you'd
have to fight. Maybe once you kill it, it's off
the world forever and that sort of thing. Uh, Basically,
there was a lot to do in this one area
because the main area that you have is kind of
this big sweeping plane that has all these like spirits
and ghosts on it and kind of feels like a
place where a battle was fought before. And then eventually
we get to a crossroads that leads us to two
different kind of castle areas, and those are like the
dungeons but then scattered out and through like winding paths
and stuff, find some more off the side locations and
any things that offer a little thing to Jase, and
there's there's still a lot of that, and I felt
like any swamps in there, I mean.
Speaker 3: The rivers well humid, little humid by you asque but
like like one of the cool things about this, uh,
Because there were times like I was sitting next to
Eric as we were playing, and I would glance sometimes
at either his monitor or some of the people around me,
and I would usually always see something that I had
not seen yet, and even talking to people after the event,
but like, oh, what'd you run into her? What'd you fight?
And every person at least I talked to has something
different that the other one did not mention because I
was like, oh, yeah, I didn't find any of the
other regular I guess smaller dungeons that that Eric found
it or some other people found And then I was
just hearing, you know, I won't spoil anything anyone told me,
but she's like, oh, I found this like weird character
that I didn't know what their deal was.
Speaker 1: Or naked dude running around. At one point, there.
Speaker 3: Was legend about a naked man, yes, that I did
not find.
Speaker 4: But was it let me solo her? Has he been
like put into the game?
Speaker 1: Kind of we we asked. I did specifically ask. I
was like, are there any references to let me solo her?
Was not able to confirm, so I was as, that's why, yeah.
Speaker 4: And he's not available to help you.
Speaker 3: He's like, now you gotta solo me. That's the that's
the full circle.
Speaker 4: Yeah, did you guys were a I am, I'm intimidated
by this expansion, very excited for it, but like, I'm
not the best from player. I've gotten through a number
of from games, but like you know, the reputation of
expansions in DALC is like this is for the real
gamers out there. Like did you feel like it was
like too intense or too hard or was it like
about on par with the rest of the game.
Speaker 3: I think that And granted we were using late game
builds too, so we were pretty like I didn't find
too many of the like rank and file enemies too tough,
Like it was more just like, oh they're new, I
just have to learn, like what did this new thing do?
But then once you did, like, oh okay, I'm taking them
down pretty reliably. But there were some definitely some sturdier
enemies that were like I think I'm just gonna run
away from this guy because I don't want to fight,
Like like some giant night guys that were roaming around.
You're like, Okay, I'm gonna steer clear of them. Or
like the weird fire basket thing that yeah definitely rode
up to with just full of piss and vinegar, like
I'm gonna take this guy down. Did like zero point
one percent damage when I hit it, and then it
was like, wow, I guess I'll see myself out here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's there's definitely a Tree Sentinel type character where
it's just this giant walking wicker basket of death and despair,
and yeah, you could go fight it if you want to.
It's like, I know Elder Ring has the stuff too,
but I always think of Xena Blade Chronicles because they
always have that like one enemy in the first area
that's like level eighty. It's supposed to teach you like, hey,
don't go over here. You can't always beat the secret
boss that's over here. You might have to come back.
This is that guy, but like souped up to twenty,
like he just murders people for fun because he can
by existing. There are other enemies too that really did
I think through some wrenches at me, the Blade Dancer
ones that have like the circular blades and kind of
like can spin around and move really fast.
Speaker 2: Always those kind of enemies.
Speaker 1: They they messed me up pretty bad. In the span
of about three hours, I was able to beat both
of the major bosses that they put in our path
and some other bosses on the side too, so like
and that was with a bill that are you like
a FRUM guy?
Speaker 4: Are you like a FROM expert?
Speaker 1: Or like Eldan Ring is one of the few friends
that I've rolled credits on, but I've played most all
of them to some degree.
Speaker 4: You're probably about on par there because like there's the
experts there, like I'm I'm a weirdo who like doesn't
I would take a FROM game without bosses like I
just like explore it.
Speaker 3: I wasn't. I wasn't able to beat either of the
two bosses, and a lot of that was time crunch
of like I have to move on bes, I need
to see other stuff, so I can't spend as much
time as I normally would trying to get them down.
But like I think I spent a fair amount of
time with like the Lion and just like got close
on a few occasions but just wasn't able to seal
the deal. And okay, yeah so I but like I
it's hard to get a true sense of like how
much more challenging is this when you're using a character
that isn't yours and that you know you're and we're
just sort of thrown into it with a lim amount
of time. But like I did it, I wasn't like
overwhelmed by it, Like I was like, oh, this seems
harder more so because it's like this is a new
thing that I haven't faced before. But once you get
them down, like okay, I got you, I can deal
with this now. But there was definitely stuff that was
like Okay, this is gonna this is gonna take a minute.
I might have to come back.
Speaker 2: Later with It's also just like widely, I mean these
games wildly depending on your play style. Like I remember
there was certain Godric took me forever and then I
would see people just like cruise through him and elden Ring,
whereas I beat Malaketh the Black Blade on the first try,
and I know, like other people took them forever. It really,
I think just depends on your play style and if
you're in it in the moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm definitely excited to bring my my endgame like
blood build dude into the to the expansion because I
fired up Elden Ring just to get ready for the
event and I was like, oh, yeah, for how much
I like this guy. He's really strong, And then playing
me the expansion, I'm like, oh, man, I bet he
can mess up somebod these things in here.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe I had that moment where I was definitely
feeling because I did the Sorcerer Monk build that was
basically you have like martial arts hand to hand combat style,
which is like new for this expansion. So I was
trying to figure out how to do a lot of
that because it's very like poison stagger base, where you're
trying to basically just dodge hits and then bowl your
enemy over with so many hits that they eventually get
staggered and fall down. You even have like a sick
kind of spinning kick that you can do into the
air that's a weapons skill that was really brutal I
saw you.
Speaker 3: Doing that kick quite a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looked cool. It's a good move. It's a
good move. But I was doing that and then also
trying to use some spirit ashes that I will I
will just say are not the best spirit ashes compared
to what I have in the Bass game. There are
no black knife t sh No, they're not yeah, not
showing up to really play. They're just kind of showing
up to participate, you know. And so there was the
second boss. We had. You get two gold summons for that,
so you can summon in two additional NPC helpers and
then walk in and then some in your spirit ash.
You got four people like fighting this one boss, but
the boss usually made pretty quick work of at least
one or two of them. And I was having that
moment where I was like, I feel like this would
probably be a bit easier if I had a better
NPC helper, like one that either felt better suited to
the task or was able to do something else besides
just be you know, a goofy guy attacking an enemy
right now. So I do feel like some of the
tools made it a little bit more difficult, almost to
the point where I was like a little bit tened
to like we were technically allowed to leave the DLC
area if we wanted to go reset our stats through
a thing that you can do in the base game
to kind of do it a stat reset, And part
of me really wanted to just like dip out real
quick and go get like one or two spirit ash
that I knew how to get to, like just right
off hand, and then bring them back into the DLC
and be like, look, y'all, I need I need the
backup here. I need I need the real backup. But
I fought with what I had. But yeah, it's I
think it's going to be just oddly enough everything that
people probably want from this DLC. And I know that's
not the most like surprising, breath taking, earth shattering, you
know opinion you could have, but like, I just want
more elden Ring. I was playing this and I was like, yeah,
I really loved the experience of playing elden Ring for
the first time. And I think the stuff they're getting into,
like the mythos, the lore around the world is going
to be really really good to dig into, really fun
and enjoyable. I love this this whole. Like the theme
is that you're kind of following in Mikola's footsteps, and
you have all these different like followers essentially like the
Band of the Hawk from Berserk, who are all like
following in the footsteps of Mikola, and they're like, nothing
bad could ever happen to us. We're all following in
kindly Mikola's footsteps. And I'm like, I've played from soft
games before. You're all dead, like this is you're dead
if you're lucky, like it's gonna get much worse for
some of you. And uh, it's I can't wait to
see the directions that the DLC takes. Yeah, they it
doesn't seem like they blew it, you know, like oh
they've ruined eld and Ring with this.
Speaker 3: It's like nah, it's just like the three hours flew by.
And it's one of the few sort of like especially
like in person demos, where EST feel like sometimes I
played games at like these kind of events where I
don't feel totally comfortable, one because I'm not like in
my own space, but then also maybe the game is
like it's okay, like it's fine and points, but at
a time, like there's sons where I'm like, okay, I'm
ready for this to be over. You know, this is
one of those few demos where I was like fully
just in the zone, comfortable, just like I could do
this all day. I just want to go around explore.
Like when they when they called like the okay you
got thirty minute one, I was like, oh crap, man,
really okay, I just like I just want to go see,
like I see a cool thing over there. I want
to see what's over there, Okay. And yeah, I just
reignited my my love for this game and I cannot
wait to play it. And thankfully it is not far away.
Speaker 2: So awesome. I can't wait to play either. June twenty
first is when it releases, so not too long at all. Marcus.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I'm just gonna say I wonder I probably
should boot up elden Ring.
Speaker 3: For like an hour, I was thinking that is what
I did, and it made a difference, Like you don't
even have to go like do a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 4: Just didn't.
Speaker 3: I never know how to do all my stuff again.
Speaker 2: I've still got some lingering side stuff I could do,
so maybe I'll go knock that out. Yeah, I can't wait.
Speaker 3: Get familiar with your character again.
Speaker 1: The first thing I did when I booted elden Ring
up to get ready for this preview event, was like
I loaded it up and I was like, I beat
elder Ring, I took down Millennia. Like, I'm so good
at this game. I don't even need a refresher. I
start the game up and the first thing I do
is I hit X to attack. And if you played,
oh no, if you played these games, you know that
RB is attack, X is your flask of some kind.
So I was just sitting there chugging my mountain dew
while a dude was wailing on me, and I was like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, no,
I do need to play this game again and remind
myself how this works. Yea, so absolutely take the time
learn from my mistakes.
Speaker 2: Awesome, Well, Marcus, let's go over to you. You've been
playing Haunty, which is I've seen this on like screenshot
Saturdays and stuff throughout the years. I think that the
game's pretty popular and TikTok the developer, and like they've
kind of showcased their their progression. I believe, but yeah,
tell us about it. What's Haunty?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So I finished this a few days ago. I
have a review up on the site hopefully this week.
But it is a god it's interesting game. It's not
like an it's an action game really, even though it
doesn't really look like it is just based on like
the the vibes of it.
Speaker 2: So also, if you're trying to look this up at home,
it's Haunt and then two eyes after Haunt, Yes, hanty
one word though, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like the WE naming Convention.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, but.
Speaker 3: This is a one player game. But yeah. So you
play as a ghost who has recently arrived to the
afterlife or eternity as it's called. You don't know anything
about your life prior to death. You just have your
memory basically white. And in the beginning of the game,
you meet a little ostensibly an angel and the games
are called Eternians, but she's pretty much an angel, and
she's like beckoning you to ascend to presumably Heaven or
like a have an adjacent realm. But then as you're
kind of floating up with her and a really beautiful
and like moment, like the music swells and it's just
like like this is My biggest takeaway with this game
is that I think the art direction and presentation is
absolutely incredible. But as you're ascending, you found out that
you're still bound to the underworld and you're dragged back down,
and so you spend the whole game just trying to
figure out how to move on to whatever is on
the other side. You're exploring these different realms of Eternity
where it's occupied by other ghosts like yourself, and the
gameplay is it's a twin stick shooter where you're just
running around and you're using the right stick to just
fire these sort of like I don't know what they're called,
like spectral ghosts, lasers maybe, but their main mechanic outside
of just blowing things up, is that you can use
it to possess objects. So you can shoot certain things
and then you're you'll jump inside of them and then
you can interact with them. It's very Mario Odyssey in
that way, and that's the biggest thing reminding me of like, Oh,
I'm gonna jump inside of the either a stationary object
like a tree, and then I can shape the tree
and then it might drop health they're collectibles or like
like everything you jump into has some like weird, little
bespoke like mechanic that's either useful or just like I
don't know what this is meant to do, but it's
just kind of cute and funny. Yeah, and if it
doesn't have any real practical use, like you can inhabit
other characters, like certain enemies you can jump into and
then you can use their weapons to fight out their enemies.
But yeah, it's a lot of it. It's got some
like some bullet hell tendencies or somebody enemies are firing
like spread shots at you and like not like super
elaborate patterns, but you do have like a dash that
you can do to kind of dodge through it.
Speaker 4: Uh, you're surprised to hear you say it's kind of
like action y, Like I thought it was really sort
of like a passive kind of movement through beautiful art.
But yeah, there's like this is like it's an action game.
Speaker 3: Huh. Oh. Yeah, there's some like there's like some challenging
boss fights in there where they'll throw like a ton
of enemies at you and then they're all shooting like
fifty different projectiles and you're just like I have to
I am struggling to stay alive because you have like
when you start, you have like maybe three hearts and
you can you're collecting, like the big thing is like
not only that is a bullet help, but it's also
like a very big sort of collectithon game, where again,
the more I think about it, the more it very
much is Mario Odyssey, where it's or maybe like Mario
sixty four style, where like every like world you're in
is kind of like a big open sort of like sandbox,
and instead of finding stars like in Mario sixty four,
you're just finding these like actually, no, they are stars.
They're straight up stars, but they're they don't look like
traditional stars, but they are called stars, and they're hidden
all over the place, and every level has like their
set number of them, and you just do like weird
little either mini games or you just have to hunt
around and you'll find one like around the corner in
some obscure little spot of the map, and then you
know it's like, hey, you found the one for this.
So like some of them might be like hey, there's
like a recurring one where a character's like half, I
lost my dog, can you go find my dog? And
the dog is always off in some edge of the map,
and all you got to do is find a dog
possess it and then walk it back and she's like, oh, thanks,
here's a star. And it's Uh. What I like is
that it does get like you know, there's some repeatable ones,
but then there's some creative ones depending on which world
you go to. Like there's one world that is my
favorite in the game where it's like a big carnival.
It's like this big amusement park but all these rides
and it looks amazing and you can haunt the roller
coaster and then just ride it around all over the place.
That's like racing challenges. We're like, oh, if you can
get through this roller coaster with an X amount of time,
we'll give you a star. So it's very Mario inspired
in that way where you're just like, I think I'm
going to try one hundred percent and get all these
stars here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but just to be clear, not not a three
D game at all.
Speaker 3: Not a platformer, yeah no, and not a three game.
It's like a top down two the top down isymmetric gesh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like they're using three D objects, but like
two D sprites. It looks like like there's something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's it's the game. I get famously
maybe a too strong a word, but like they made
all the art in pro Create.
Speaker 2: Which is like oh cool, yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: I think right, that's like a really impressive iPad art.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, which is kind because as
the character turns, it's like changing, uh, like it looks
like a two D like illustrated game where like, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's pretty yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I can understand what you were saying that
this game does give that impression of it being a
lot more of a passive like narrative driven adventure, especially
the way it starts with the you know, the oh,
you're falling back to the world. That's like a kind
of a tragic moment. And there are more moments like
that for sure. Like there's a lot of like cinematic
sort of a sequences, and the game is that it's
like prettiest when it's like you're just moving through in
a world and then the camera just like pans out
to show like look at this beautiful city that you're in.
You're seeing all the lights, and just that's where the
art direction like really shines. And then the music. I forget,
there's like they said that it's like a I guess
a famous artist or something. They named the artist in
a way of like, look, we got this person. It
wasn't anyone that I was familiar with, but whoever it
is did a great jobs. It's one of my favorite
soundtracks of the year, So shout out to you, mystery
person that composed the Haunty. Yeah, it's it's got a
very jazzy sort of like mellow almost like a noir
kind of vibe to it, and like between like and
as you're collecting the stars, you're unlocking these vignettes that
kind of give you glimpses as to the ghosts like
life when they were alive, that are like really touching.
And there's no like voice act in the game, like
all the dialogue is kind of basically like voice bubbles,
but you're getting these very cute little like like short
little scenes of like, oh, this is them as a
kid and they like broke their leg climbing a tree
and that was like a moment that you know they
that stuck with them or like they were sick in
the hospital, but then their friends came to visit, or
they went with their mom to the beach and did this,
and you're sort of like trying to like the whole
game's mess sort of like you're getting these memories, but
then you're also having to learn how to let go
of them so that you can move on to, you know,
the afterlife proper because he turned to these. Whole thing
is like all the ghosts there haven't been able to
ascend because they're afraid of letting go of their memories,
because they're stuck on like, well, this is the only
thing I have left that makes me me, So why
would I every want to give that up? And you know,
and a lot of them even either are afraid or
hate the Angel people, like they're all warning you, like
I don't know, why are you chasing that angel? Like
they're nothing but trouble man. They just want you to
give up your stuff. Man, I don't know if they
could be trusted. There's like the closest thing this game
has to a main antagonist is this really funny like
scientist who is like more or less like grew from
Despicable Me, where she's to the point where she literally
has minions that look a lot like the minions, Like
they got big old goggles and suspenders, like, but imagine
the minions were just like painted black. It's basically what
they are, but they just keep I haven't seen them,
so I believe you.
Speaker 4: I haven't seen them.
Speaker 2: Movies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, actually it's weird. I've never seen any of those movies.
Speaker 4: You're good, Yeah you're totally fine, but uh yeah, no
effort please.
Speaker 3: But she pretty much comes up with like team Rocket
caliber schemes to try to catch your angel friend of like, yeah,
I can you know you don't understand I'm doing a
good thing for you because you know this thing is
trying to ruin your life and stuff like that, so
you're like fighting her weird mechanical machines every now and then.
But yeah, outside of like like there like criticisms, like
like some of the activities are like some are better
than others. There's a few where just like, Okay, it's
starting to feel like busy work. And honestly, the biggest
thing to stick out to me was I feel like
the movement speed is just like a notch below where
I wanted to be to the point where I was
like dashing constantly, and you can upgrade the number of dashes,
Like the three things you can upgrade are like your hearts,
your dashes, and how how long you can fire before
you have to pause and let it reload. And I
was like spending so much into the dash things like Okay,
I want to be able to dash like four times
in successions. I just want to The environments are big
enough to where you're like, Okay, if I just walk
through this, we're going to be here for a while.
So I wish the character moved just a little bit faster.
I feel it would make a big difference for just
how much a game kind of demands you to explore
and poke around and you're going to be doing like
trips back through places because you know you need to
go back to another world to turn in your stars.
He's can only turn in your stars at certain like
little terminals that aren't in every world, So I wish
there was a bit less of that. But other than that,
like I think it's like just it's a cool game,
Like it's fun. I'm still like hovering on a score
right now. I still have to very much write the review,
so you know, we'll see where I land. But I
enjoyed it, and like I said, I think it's it's
on my list for like the best looking games of
the year. And also the ending isn't the ending is
It hit me in a way I wasn't expecting. And
it's on my list of like best moments. It's a
it's a very it's a cool game.
Speaker 4: I'm excited to play it. I played the demo during
Steam Nextfest and really liked it, but I haven't I
haven't sat down proper and like played it. I think
we all have this big queue of indie games, right
Like I got through crow Country and Laurel Eyed, so
now I got Haunty and you know a bunch of
other there's other handful things I want to play as well.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Yeah, I'm excited. I wish reliciously that way you're talking.
I have been playing very briefly. I got a code
today before we started recording and did my best to
try to get a few levels in. I've been playing
Wild Bastards, which is a sequel follow up to Void
Bastards by Blue Manchew Games. Void Bastards I think it
came out twenty nineteen, leave off the top of my head. Yeah,
and I loved it. Yeah, I believe it was in
my top four games that year.
Speaker 4: It was like a first person rogue kind of game. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a yeah, first person rogue light with
you know, some immersive sim elements to it, and it
was kind of a lot of the enemies that the
the space that the characters exist in is three D,
but a lot of the characters and items are billboarding you,
billboarding to you, so they're always facing you, like in
h not always, but you know, kind of like in
Dune or Doom rather. But it was a really interesting game,
very comic book comic style. Yeah, some humor to it,
but I love the systems in that game. You could
play at stealth, you could play it full on action.
Uh and it was just like, you know, incredible. I
honestly I loved that game. So Wild Bastards is how
wild are the bad They're They're they're wild so far.
I mean, not really, They're They're I've played for about
thirty minutes. No, I've played for about thirty minutes, so
I'm very early. They're still introducing systems, but essentially it
is it's a spaghetti western sort of style but in space.
Uh so space cowboys, and I believe you have your
Wild Bastards. There's up to thirteen characters you recruit through
this FPS campaign, and I think it's a similar structure
to to Void Bastards, where if all of your people die,
you reset. I haven't died yet though, so I cannot
confirm if somebody wants to look at the Steam page
or something to let me know if it's a rogue light.
But yeah, so you kind of start off, you're on
the run, trying to there's like this this family gang
tell me you've heard this before, who are causing trouble?
And uh, they're after you? And so you Spider Rosa
and Doc Casino are the two characters you start the
game with. Spider Rosa. Uh is this this lady who has.
Speaker 4: Think is there's a character named Rosa in Brooklyn ninety nine?
It's like, oh, so a spider version of Rosa.
Speaker 2: From Yeah, so Spider Rosa has like two revolvers that
she dual wields, and Doc Casino had you you eventually,
I should say here's how here's that works. So imagine
something like if you played Void Bastards the star map
where you're kind of going from place to place, or
if you are playing something like Conquest Mode and Star
Wars Galaxies or sorry, Star Wars Battlefront where it's.
Speaker 4: Like, if you're okay, you're gonna have to explain better
than a mode in an MMOD no no sorry.
Speaker 2: Star Wars Battlefront Conquest mode where you're moving along the
board and an enemy is moving along a board. You know,
Citizens Sleeper has done similar things where like there are
external timers going on in the world. Oh clocks, clocks, yeah, yeah,
there are various clocks going on. Enemies are on. You know,
you're kind of you have up to a certain amount
of movement speed per turn on this overworld map, and
you're kind of going place to place on this planet
that you are on, and you hop from planet to
planet planet throughout the game. I'm already on like the
second planet or something, and they are you know, there
might be a shop there that you stop at. There
might be if you go out of your way to
use your movement, you know, you might be able to
pick us some extra gold or find some armor or health.
But you know you're using up your turn, and the
more you wait, the big bats are coming after you, right,
and so you're kind of like deciding, Okay, I'm low
on health. Should I go for this health or should
I kind of go after this enemy so I can
get to the end of this roadmap essentially, so I
can escape the planet keep going without dying. Right, and
as you're stopping on these planets, you are recruiting new
people to your party. So you actually start the game.
I said you start started with Dot Casino in Spider Rosa,
you actually only started with Rosa, who is the revolver lady,
and you have to go and rescue Doc Casino, which
involves going in and loading into these vignettes which are
like these FPS arenas, and they're they're Wild West, So
there's you spawn in, there's a certain number of characters
enemies that you have to take out before they take
you out a small little sandboxes and in the style
that Bluemanchew does, there are certain systemic things going on,
and it's very basic right now where I'm at. I
imagine it gets more complicated and more complicated with as
more enemies are introduced. But you know, you go through,
you play this FPS arena, you're gonna get rewards. I recruited,
I rescued and recruited Doc Casino. So now that introduced
a new feature where mid fight in the FPS arena
areas you can switch characters on the fly, and they
you can only have one. Even though you have a party,
you can only have one person in play at a time.
So they're kind of doing this thing where they like
almost like tapping tapping out for your tag team partner
and wrestling, but they like teleport wrestling. They teleport and
switch places. Right, And so you press Q, I'm playing
on keyboard, you spress press Q, and the characters will
kind of teleport, and now you'll have you're playing as
a character with the shatga and then if I switched back,
now I've got the revolvers again. And so you're managing
your party's health that way. If I've got a lower
health character, I kind of want to keep them safe,
where other other times it's more of a strategic like
I need this kind of weapon, or I'm going up
but against these guys will use the shotgun and at
As you go throughout these these planets and apps, you're
picking up new equipment. I equipped rocket boots to dot Casino,
so I have a shotgun, and now I can I
have this big jump I have now. Whereas for Rosa,
I gave her uh, I installed a speedloader onto her revolvers,
so her reload speed's cut in half. And that's kind
of where where I've gotten to in thirty minutes. But
it's a very promising. I will certainly be playing more,
Like as soon as we're done with this podcast, I'm
gonna be playing more. And it's it's it's promising. I
I love Bluemanshew games. The Card Hunter that they put
out Void Bastards was Void Bastards, I think is I
keep up with my top fifty games of all time,
and Void Bastards is like right there in the honorable mentions, Like,
depending on the day, it's probably in there somewhere. I
love that game, and so I'm really eager to keep
playing this one. I think it's got a lot of
cool systems going on. I know I've just scratched the surface,
I'm sure, but yeah, I've got two characters. It seems
like they're really leaning into Western archetypes and really playing
up the goofiness of it. One of the main antagonists
introduced in the first series of Planets is kind of
like this snot nosed brat cowboy of like the main
bad cowboy, like a nephew or something, and he's just
like really dumb caricature of like a cowboy, and it's
a lot of fun. I think they get pretty creative
with with the characters. I've I've seen it. I've seen
the next one I'm going after is this guy who
has he shoots finger guns, but he shoots fire out
of his fingers. So yeah, that's Wild Bastard's gonna keep
playing it. We'll try to try to give people an update.
But yeah, and I believe I don't know when it
is out. I just have a.
Speaker 3: I forget if it's going into if it's having an
early access launch or not. I can't remember from the announcement.
I think it's my beat CBA.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just as twenty twenty four. But I'm gonna keep
playing the demo and and see how far I can get.
And yeah, I'm really enjoying it. So it's Wild Bastards
by Blue Manshoe. Marcus gonna go back to you before
we get into SGF predictions. Even playing nine.
Speaker 3: Souls, Yes, nine Souls which soul's spelled s O L
no you because what there's a reason for it. But
this is a new action metro veny game by Red
Candle Games, who is best known as a Horror Studio.
They're a Taiwanese developer that made Detention and most recently Devotion,
which is a game that I reviewed and loved to death.
For those that I remember, Devotion was the game that
came out originally like in twenty nineteen and then got
pulled from stores for two years because it had that
meme making fun of China's president and now, and then
they brought it back in or Toda's day. I think
you can only buy Devotion through Red Candle's website directly,
like it's still not like on Steam or anything or
anything like that, but I highly recommend it if you,
you know, if you're a horror fan. Great game. So
this is them doing something completely different because this is
just a straight up just action game that is I
believe inspired by Chinese myth and Marcus.
Speaker 4: I'm looking at the trailer and I think probably another
thing that they decided to do with this is to
make it look slick as hell. Holy crap, looks amazing.
Is fantastic.
Speaker 3: I mean it's kind of like the haunty thing of
like speaking of like cool hand drawn looking stuff. This
game has a cool look, like not even just like
the artistry and the illustration, but just like the styles
are going for where I think they Cause I did
a profile on Red Candle Games for the magazine like
two years ago, and we talked about this game, and
I believe the term to use for it was towel
towel punk, of like combining cyberpunk with Taoism. It's got like.
Speaker 4: Oh right, okay, yes, yeah, towel like the thing you
draw yourself off after a shower, which is what I
admit I thought you said.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I get out of the shower, you know,
I like dry myself off, and then I'm like, damn,
this world's ruined and towel.
Speaker 4: Punk spikes, hitchhikers, Samurai, we've got a world to clean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's got. It's a blend of like like I said,
East like Eastern Asian Taoism with just like futuristic elements
where it's set in this cool world where you play
as I'm still like, I'm still only early. I'm I
put about like three hours into it so far, and
he plays this weird little cat creature who might be
a deity. I'm not entirely sure, but it opens up
and also right off the bat. This game is very
gory in a way that I wasn't totally expecting. Like
there's like a scene in the very beginning of a
game where your character just gets like messed up, like
like his entrails exposed, like messed up, and you're like, oh, okay,
we're doing this. Okay, but you know, you're you're living
in this village with these humans. They don't seem to
really know what you are. And his only companion is
this little kid who you know, they've been hanging together
for about a year, and your character's name is Yee,
and he seems very like pragmatic about things because this
this society worship is the souls. They're like these nine
sort of like what they consider to be gods, and
they adhere to this ritual but are like, oh yeah,
every couple of years, we like a chosen number of
us get to us send and go live with the souls.
And it's like the best thing that can ever happen
to you, right, Yeah, And you know Yee.
Speaker 1: It's like Ascension's always good. When is it ever not good?
Speaker 2: I'm never Whenever anybody talks about ascension, it's always with
good intention.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean haughty. It looks pretty beautiful this game
without getting into spoilers, maybe a little a little less
so you know, ye kind of is like like you
get the sense of like he knows more about what
this actually is than they do, and you know he
he kind of is like out to put an end
to these to these nine sort of deities that man
may or not be, like not actually be gods. You know,
they might actually just be uh like aliens.
Speaker 1: Why would someone ever put themselves up to be a
god if they weren't really a god. I think we
should just descend and not ask questions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the idea is that these these things
have like such advanced technology that the people on the
ground are like, oh, these guys, you know, they're magic
basically right, Like they're they're very much yeah, like like
they don't even know what electricity is. That's kind of
where they're what they're working at right now.
Speaker 1: That was that was me. The first time I saw
Dippin' dots was I was like, I have to be gods.
Speaker 4: The future? Baby still is they thirty years thinking? I
keep like I finished Lost Crown and I was like
that was fantastic. But I don't have any room in
my heart for another Metroid game. And then Animal Well
came out and I was like, well, this is fantastic,
but I don't know if I have any room in
my heart for another Metro inspired game.
Speaker 3: And now I'm looking at this and I'm like, damn,
I want to play this.
Speaker 4: Maybe I do have rom in my heart for another
Metro inspired game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I will say so far, at least in the
first couple of hours. I I the gameplay wasn't that
impressive to me, Okay, Like I was more in love
with the vibe and the story they were telling than
the moment to moment action. Because one of the biggest
inspiration that this game has that Red Candle kept saying,
is like, we really love Secaro Shadows Die Twice, and
we basically wanted to make a two D of that,
specifically in the parry system that that game is famous for.
So when you hear that, you go likehof, that's shooting
pretty high, Okay, because in my opinion, Soekara has the
best parry system of any game ever made. Uh So
it was like, all right, you're really you're going for it,
but like, hey, you know, more power to you. And yeah,
this game is like you're fighting enemies. It's going for
like a a pary pocus thing where like you can
dodge attacks, but they're very much encouraging, like, hey, you
should try to block this because if you do, if
you hit the shoulder button, you can do this thing
where ye can slap them with like a magic talisman,
and then if you hold the button, it just like
charges it up and explodes. It's basically like if he
was Gambit or He's like, I'm just gonna sticky with
this thing and then charge it up. Then you just
blow up into like a bunch of guts and it's
like an instant kill in most cases. So like even
though nailing a Perry is tough, they kind of reward you,
but like, yeah, but you'll kill them instantly, so you
should do it. I don't think the Perry timing is
anywhere near as height as Sacroos or other games. I'm
still kind of getting used to it, but I don't
like quite where it is. And outside of that, and
there are abilities that you can unlock in a big
tree that you know I have to go through, but
like sort of like you start with like a basic
three hit combo that feels like okay, and like the
the general platforming stuff feels just like fine, but it
doesn't feel like exceptional. And I think that following something
like Prince of Persa the Lost Crown, which have like
surprisingly great combat, yeah, I think this kind of like
it's more glaring that this feels like a step or
two below that so far, but at least where I'm
at in the point of game, I've started to unlock
a couple of moves like I can. A big one
that I almost think should have should just be in
your arsenal and shouldn't be an unlocked is that I
have the ability to run down, which makes things a
lot of each because I can just run just you know,
jump into attack or do stuff, and it's like, oh man,
this makes getting around so much more fun. You should
probably just give this to people. And then I unlocked
the drone or like it basically a drone like your
he has like an AI assistant where it takes the
form of this weird like blowing butterfly thing and you
can use it to scout ahead, which is like a
cool idea for a Metrovna where like you can reach
an area where like Okay, I don't have the odd
and get through this, but I can send this thing
out ahead to see like what's over there though, let
me see how far I can go and at least
get a sense of what I should prepare for. And
then it can also hack into doors and unlock certain
areas for you, and it looks like you could do
other stuff that I haven't, uh like unlocked the as.
So I was like, okay, that's cool idea, but so
far I think the combat is just it's just on
the bubble of fine.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, yeah, talking me out of it a little bit, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I wish it was better. And I've
looked ahead at some of the other like unlockables in
the skill tree, and I look at and go like, okay,
that seems like something I would want or something that
might remedy my issue with this. So you know, maybe
we'll see where it is. Maybe it's like a slow
burn kind of a game. But right now, the vibes
and the story is carrying me for like, they've introduced
some really cool ideas with its world and sort of
like the story they're going they're trying to tell with it,
where I was like, Okay, I want to I want
to at least get to like the first Soul or
God and see how that goes down. And with nine
of them, that's like a lot. So I wonder how
big this game actually is and how long it takes
to get to each one. But like for Red Candle
Games is first ever like side scrolling action game, it
seems like it's probably better than it should be given
that they have no experience making that, but also the
inexperienced sort of shows in that area too. Yeah see,
I'm going to stick with it for a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm curious to hear more. It's always interesting when
those games are really hitting on one one angle really
well and then kind of falling down when it comes
to you know, how it feels to play. But I
don't know, Like, like you said, the the the narrative
framing of it all sounds interesting. Their art style certainly
looks really compelling. So yeah, keep us updated. I'm curious
to hear more. But let's get into our Summer Gamefest predictions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that did it? Did it?
Speaker 2: Center Games Fast sounds like we do now? Is there
not a.
Speaker 3: Summer Games Fast like song that plays every year. It
might be you.
Speaker 1: It's just like dragons.
Speaker 2: The theme song is It's and now welcoming to the stage,
Jeff Keeley.
Speaker 4: World Premiere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the theme.
Speaker 3: Really like too emotional about a bigot the guys. I
am so excited. I cannot believe they've read to let
me show to see you guys. But here it is.
Speaker 4: They tried uppets showing up for no one in particular
except for k was very excited about the Muppets. But
the rest of using Okay, that's fine.
Speaker 3: Who haven't they done yet?
Speaker 1: They had Big Bird on stage John last year? Right,
they got to put up there. I thought the Big
Bird counts as a Muppet because Muppets, right, Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 4: Know, it's not. It was not an accusatory question.
Speaker 3: I don't reason this is good Sesame Street puppets aren't
good enough to be Is there like a weird class
thing going.
Speaker 4: On in their own thing? As I wonder? Are they
like a separate you know? Is are Burton Ernie? Are
they muppets or are they Sesame Street puppets? Are they
Sesame Street?
Speaker 2: Let me let me reveal something, do you? Kyle might
shock you. They're all Puppets.
Speaker 3: Company will literally your house. It's separate.
Speaker 2: Big Bird, Big Bird.
Speaker 1: It's Kermit like holding a pistol up to the door,
like open it up. I just want to talk.
Speaker 4: Hey, I'm here to kill you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got a clock.
Speaker 1: Okay much what.
Speaker 4: Are you doing now?
Speaker 2: I thought it was clear that was Elmo.
Speaker 3: He said he's not a muppet.
Speaker 2: He's a muppet. He's a puppet.
Speaker 1: Almo's holding a gun. Almo could be whatever he wants
to be.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of the uh And if you guys
are old Conan fans, the Ginger no bit the dog.
Speaker 2: One, No, I don't know that one, and he has
like that.
Speaker 3: He does the dog training class and he's like he's
got the guy and the dogs. He's, oh, yeah, I
just can survive like fifty pounds bite pressure, and then
the dog just pulls out a gun and shoots the gun.
Speaker 4: I showed that to my daughter recently, and it was
it was funny all over again. It's such a good bit.
I didn't really Ginger yeah, because it's like.
Speaker 3: And then he they do a bit with Kermit or
Kurmits with Conan and then randomly has nothing to do
with the bit, but then Kermit just goes ginger no,
and then adult just shoots Kermit. It's those random dumb
things that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Well, speaking of random dumb things, let's get into our
Summer Game Fest predictions. I don't think we really have
a format for this other than we're just gonna We're
just gonna throw them out there. Marcus, I'm gonna go
to you first. All right, guys, I always looked at
you for for the bold predictions.
Speaker 3: Well I got one right here. You called it a
random dumb thing, But this is gonna turn out to
be the smartest thing that he was ever said about
Summer Games Fest this year because I think and also
I think we're gonna I don't think it's necessarily our
predictions have to happen at Summer Games Fest. Proper of the.
Speaker 2: Summer gaming conferences that are happening mostly in June.
Speaker 3: Summer of Games, and a lot of them is weekend.
I'm gonna say that the Sony will properly reveal the
PlayStation five pro.
Speaker 4: Okay, probably at SGF.
Speaker 3: And I know you're gonna say, well, they just did
a thing, but back then that was a state of place,
state of plays are smaller than the other ones. They
do PlayStation showcases like those are like the big ones.
I like, yeah, we got some stuff.
Speaker 1: I saw people saying this online where they're like, well,
state of plays they're not the same thing as a showcase.
And I'm like, we used to just have Nintendo directs,
and then before that we just had hey a streams
going live, Like I they need to have better taxonomy
of what their things mean. That's that's my side tangent
to all that.
Speaker 3: I mean even Nintendo does that. We're like, hey, this
is a partner showcase. It's not the main event.
Speaker 2: This is an end the.
Speaker 1: World direct that's easy to understand, and they're being very
upfront about like, hey, this is third party partner stuff,
whereas Sony's like, it's a state of play, you.
Speaker 3: Better tune in. It's not a showcase.
Speaker 1: You better tune in, like right.
Speaker 3: Like State of Play US showcase, Like what is that?
What actually is better than the other one? I thought
immediately evident.
Speaker 1: I think it's because one company is more comfortable admitting that,
like this is not going to be their big name
stuff in a show and they're cool with it being
one thing, and then the other company like maybe doesn't
want to say that out loud.
Speaker 3: Well, you know what, they're gonna say their big thing
out loud at on Jeff Keely stage, Like they're gonna
be like, hey, that PS five pro And that's been
rumored for a while and has also been rumored to
be shown off at this this year at some point here.
It is whether or not any of us actually want
it doesn't matter.
Speaker 4: Yeah, is it redesigned?
Speaker 3: You think?
Speaker 4: Because I still hate the aesthetic of the PlayStation five.
Speaker 3: I think the rumors were that more or less it
would look the same kind of I mean, they released
that slim version, remember that barely looks different?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just I don't. I really. There was a
quote from some executive when they revealed the PS five
and they're like, give it some time. You know you're
gonna come around on this thing. And I still hate it.
I moved my consoles around my house a lot, like
that's just the kind of gamer I am. I I
pick up my console from the living room and I
put in the bedroom and back and forth, and I
I hate moving the PlayStation five.
Speaker 2: It all sucks. You can't. It always feels like it's
going to fall apart.
Speaker 4: You can't pack it.
Speaker 3: You can't lay it flat without the stupid little cheek
thing on it.
Speaker 4: You can't flat.
Speaker 3: Like what were they thinking? They said, wouldn't be cool
if this looked like a weird modern art piece that
also looks like setto Kaiba's coach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it looks like it's ugly. To a higher
popped collar, it's always been to go yea further.
Speaker 3: If anything, the pro probably has a higher collar because
it's the better version. So it's like, we got it
has to be higher because it's.
Speaker 2: The had a top hat as well.
Speaker 4: It's it's so boring. But like I do, if they
were like, this is a fun throwback, we're going to
make it look like a PlayStation two, I'd be like,
thank you. That is a block with like horizontal lines.
That makes it easier to put in places, you know. Yeah,
so that's I guess you can. That can be a
side prediction is that it still is not the design
that you want. Yeah, I hope they make it should
be redesigned, but it won't be redesigned.
Speaker 2: I hope they make it a circle or like a triangle,
like a pyramid, pyramid.
Speaker 3: Hang it around your neck, like a Millennium puzzle.
Speaker 2: That's how you that's the new PSP. Baby, all right,
I'm gonna throw I'm gonna throw one out there, Marcus.
I think we're gonna see a new gaming handheld announced
from one of the major publishers.
Speaker 3: Oh, you got to commit to one of them, do
I I thought I knew where you're going with this, because.
Speaker 2: All right, I'll say it. I'll say it. I'll say
it PSP.
Speaker 1: That's not that's not where I was going either.
Speaker 2: They released the Xbox there, well, there are there are
rumors of a PSP, but yeah, that would.
Speaker 3: Be weird after they put out that portal not that
long ago.
Speaker 2: That's no, it's it's most certainly PS five pro.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think we're gonna see the Xbox handheld,
and I think it's out this year this fall.
Speaker 3: Okay, what do you think they'll call it?
Speaker 2: Something stupid?
Speaker 1: The handbox.
Speaker 3: It'll still be.
Speaker 4: The hand job, the ex hand, It's Xbox something, right,
It's never gonna be it's Xbox Xbox three sixty.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be the Xbox Go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, something like that, right, the x deck and then
in parentheses, not to be confused with the PSP go what.
Speaker 2: They call uh it was x cloud, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think it'll be Xbox Cloud, the x go,
X pocket pocket.
Speaker 2: X pocket. Oh that could wear X pocket to.
Speaker 4: Be clear, I would love pock. That would be I
would be more excited about that announcement than like a
new like a PS five pro or a new iteration.
You know, there's that in the document they had that
like spherical that cylindrical Xbox right like right, like, I
would much rather have a new handheld weird funky thing
than like a new iteration of a console, because we're
not ready for PS six right, We're not there yet,
So yeah, I would love some some kind of dedicated
handheld again, would be really cool. I would love the
switch equivalent, the Steam Deck equivalent of an Xbox.
Speaker 3: That would be really exciting. Well, I wonder if it
would have a dock so that you could play it.
Would they go that far?
Speaker 2: I'm sure probably a dock that you buy separately, same
as you do with like the Steam Deck and other stuff,
where it's like here's you can get the deck by
itself whatever they end up calling it, and then like
here's a doc you can also buy if you want
to you can wirelessly cast from your Xbox to your
some of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's like the portal play.
Speaker 2: I think it'll be stand alone, but with the option.
Speaker 1: The dirty secret is that if you have a Steam Deck,
you can do PlayStation remote play on it. So like
you kind of already have a PlayStation portal. If you
have a Steam Deck, it just it runs a little bit,
you can do it. Yeah. Yeah, I do think a
lot of the future of console hardware is moving in
this direction. Uh, it makes a lot of sense for
it to do so, And I think the switch was
a like sea change in all of this. So yeah,
heck yeah.
Speaker 4: Anything they can do to have you play your games
but not actually have them locally or own them, that's
that's the long term.
Speaker 3: Somebody will walk on stage like you could play the
new Call of Duty on this thing. It's coming to as.
Speaker 1: Yeah, being in Call of Duty and someone says like,
I'm using tilt controls.
Speaker 2: This God, yeah, I think we're getting an Xbox portable device.
Speaker 4: I'd love that. That be exciting, that'd be cool.
Speaker 3: I would like to see that.
Speaker 2: Who's next, Who's going next?
Speaker 4: We did some predictions over on mid Max recently, and
my three which we can sort of we can talk
about here is here they were is Gary Oldman on stage.
That was my celebrity cameo specifically Gary Oldman, some in
Castlevania like a new Castle Vania. And then I'm going
quickly through these because I already tked about these another podcasts.
And then I did the one My Big Pie in
the Sky. I don't think this is gonna happen. One
was a Kingdom Hearts one remake. But now now Keighley
has basically heard that and was like, no, what were
you thinking? Oh, he's Kingdom Hearts for specifically while we
were While we were I looked it up and he did.
He did Umbrella Kingdom Hearts. Okay, he did specifically site
for Like the direct quote is people keep asking about
Kingdom Hearts. I don't know why.
Speaker 3: Leave me alone?
Speaker 1: Like the Garry Oldman thing? Is this a Leon? The
professional tie in that we're getting? Are we finally getting
a Leon? The professional video game.
Speaker 3: Man context for that? I haven't listened to that episode
of the mid Max Show yet, so I don't know
what your I didn't see show your work for that.
Speaker 4: Sure, yeah, I'll do it quickly because I'm sorry if
you listen to both pogcast I don't want to read
right too much. But I was like, celebrity, right, definitely
some celebrity. We had Nicholas Cage recently, so I googled
Nicholas Cage contemporaries and Gary Oldman was on the list,
and I was like, that's a good one. He has grant.
They had al Pacino video games.
Speaker 1: They had al Pacino, So who needs a paycheck right now?
Speaker 4: Who in There's no world for Robert de Niro. The
guys kids can play Fortnite every day for the rest
of his life. Robert de Niro won't get on a
plane to come to SG.
Speaker 3: I think you know what you get. You get Chris Hemsworth,
he's on he's on that furiosa high. You get who
seems like he'd be.
Speaker 2: Upposed to guy that talks like this?
Speaker 1: So I re searched who in Hollywood needs a paycheck
right now? And Bruce Willis is not a.
Speaker 4: Bad Bruce Willis is not appearing in public anymore. That's
why because he's he has a yeah, yeah, I'm sorry,
this is how you learned.
Speaker 3: Learned this that yeah, A couple of years ago.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's not acting anymore or anything. He's out of
the game. Yeah, it's it's sad, it's a bummer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is this is this is like the second
worst way I've learned about a bad celebrity.
Speaker 3: Piece of it's.
Speaker 2: Gonna it's gonna say kind of kind of going off
tangent here. You're gonna hear like World Premiere, and it's
gonna be a black screen, and you're gonna hear some
men and women aren't looking for money. They can't be bought, bullied,
reason to negotiated with. They simply want to watch the
world bun mister Wayne. And then it's and then he
walks on on stage and it's Mike Michael Caine.
Speaker 4: Not to bring this down again, but another actor who
has fully retired and will not be getting Oh god,
doesn't have it acting, Yeah, popping up a video game.
As far as we know, he's he has committed. I mean,
nothing's wrong with Michael Kaine, as far as we know,
he's just.
Speaker 1: He's just like a check and like is still working.
All right, let's like narrow this down.
Speaker 4: I think you're saying specifically a Nolan verse.
Speaker 2: I'm just no So what's actually gonna when when Xbox
when you boot up Xbox, canna introduce a new Quartana assistant.
But it's going to be celebrity guests, and so you're
gonna get you there like and check out this, and
they're gonna press the Xbox button and you're just here,
Oh my god, and it's what's her name? I'm just
doing impressions at this.
Speaker 1: Point, I know, to do the Jim Carrey. Somebody stop me.
Speaker 2: No, no, the Oh my god, he's been it's what's
her name?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know that it's no, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's what's her name?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Jennifer cool j Coolidge.
Speaker 4: That is a good Jennifer Coolidge. Okay, good, thank you all,
Like a little sprinkling of a Kristen Wig character, like
on top.
Speaker 2: Of good times, good times.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but other celebrities, because it's like they've gotten truly
like massive.
Speaker 2: Timmy the game, Yeah right, yeah.
Speaker 1: Have we had Jamie yet? I feel like Jamie Lee
Curtis comparance.
Speaker 4: My prediction for that was like that's a shoein like
her and Kate Blanchett are there to promote the Borderlands movie. Specifically,
like that's almost like that's like like that's a guarantee.
Almost Jack Black shows up.
Speaker 1: To Kevin Hart was just on that KAI stream, right,
so like you know, he's playing around in the realm
of video games.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean Jack Black feels like if he's
not there for Borderlands, then he might be like, hey,
I'm in at Minecraft being well I.
Speaker 4: Think off stage and walks right back out. I'm here.
Speaker 2: We're gonna we're gonna do some journalism Tenacious D tour dates, right, Okay,
tour doesn't start until July.
Speaker 4: They're going to be.
Speaker 3: Would that be an exciting thing? Or we'll just be like, oh,
it's Jack but yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: What if he goes out on stage and announces Brutal
Legend two with okay, we're talking, yeah, and like that's
part of the Xbox Show, is like Double Fine announces
Brutal Legend two.
Speaker 2: I was literally my prediction was gonna be a Double
Fine announcement, damn it.
Speaker 4: Then Brutal Legend to colon This one's not an RTS,
that's what it was called, and.
Speaker 3: Then we all go, oh, crap, we hope it sells
a million copies that it will close the studio.
Speaker 1: They're standing there like sweating nervously. Is like they're holding
like an Elmer Fudd gun on the side of the
stage like this better go Well.
Speaker 3: We got jack block out here. I have a actually
have an Xbox prediction. I think Clockwork Revolution pops up
again and we get a release window for that game.
Speaker 1: Oh right, that's a good one.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The the Nxile Themepunk kind of BioShock infinite looking
thing that was shown last year.
Speaker 4: I have not seen gameplay right all pre rendered cut scene.
Speaker 3: That trailer had. That trailer did have some gameplay, but
it was like bits of it I couldn't remember. But
it has not popped up at all since then. Uh.
I think I feel like this is the time where
we get something about that game again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good one. I like that one. Yeah,
it feels it feels like the times.
Speaker 2: Right, you go ahead, you go ahead.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna throw one from from down the court on Xbox.
I think they're going to announce more Activision Blizzard games
coming to game Pass, and I think they're gonna tease
something about star Craft now now Pie in the Sky
dream here is that they dig out the files and
have like done a remastered. We have like brought back
what what was StarCraft Ghost, like put it all together
into a playable version, and we're putting it on game Pass.
That's my like from the other side of the court,
hucking that ball for the thing that pays off your
tuition thing. I want, I want them to do something
with StarCraft because like Blizzard has not done anything with
StarCraft since like hots, and it feels like a franchise
that could still have that weight and you know, make
use of the buffalo if you're going to buy the
whole buffalo, right, So, I don't know, Like I think
StarCraft could be a pretty good one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're gonna put a master chief in StarCraft.
Speaker 4: Finally, Like if they did, if they did Ghost, like
they would just start over, right, Like that could be
a surprise announcement. I mean a lot of stuff of
ghost out there for a while though, I know, like
I think at one point it was playable to something
to it, right, Yeah, So it does make me wonder
if they went back in there and just tried to
treat it like some sort of archival thing, like for posterity.
We brought it back and we like remastered and like
tried to stitch it all together and make it work
and function as sort of like a novelty.
Speaker 3: Like Star Fox two a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly like Star Fox ta.
Speaker 3: Honestly, that would be cool, like instead of just like, hey,
we put the games you like on game Pass, here's
like this this thing that never came out that we
somehow got functional and we put it because uh, Sega
did that recently too, where they had that uh remember
on Steam they released that unreleased Golden Axe game that
was like, hey, we did not finish this, but we're
just gonna put it out there, like we were working
on a new Golden Axe and it just fell apart
at some point, but here's what we had. Like they
just do that basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we're going to get a new game
reveal from Rare.
Speaker 3: Oh so not. We're just gonna ignore. We're never gonna
speak of ever Wild ever again.
Speaker 2: Correct, We're gonna pretend.
Speaker 1: That rebrand ever Wild.
Speaker 2: They're gonna bring back Viva Pinata and I'm gonna I'm
gonna scream, I'm gonna cheer.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 4: I think I think Rare the market is there for
a new Viva Pinada like for real, like a cozy
game like yeah, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2: Or like a remake of the first one. I mean
I would want a new one.
Speaker 4: But yeah, well, I mean you look at rares like catalog,
like there's never gonna be another cameo. You know, there's
never gonna be another grabbed by the ghoulies. If you
have a Pinata feels like a sugar bet to me
than even Banjo Kazui in a weird way. Uh, just
because that's what I don't know. I feel like, especially
game Pass people would love like a cozy triple a
rare Vivada in twenty twenty four five, and I.
Speaker 2: Think, yeah, I think they they get the hype out
with that, and then quietly in interviews they like firm
elder ever Wild was shelved.
Speaker 3: Somebody asked them, like, so y'all still making.
Speaker 2: That, yeah, and they answer that question. So it's out there.
Speaker 4: But Thieves is a fantastic but they don't.
Speaker 2: They definitely do not announce that they are shutting they
stop development on on ever Wild because they don't want
that publicity, but they'll quietly confirm it. So the news
is out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's easier to just rip that band Aid all,
it's not like the game was making noise over the
last few years.
Speaker 2: Well, I think with Arcane and Tango, I think they
are going to avoid any sort of news of canceling
projects for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 3: Speaking of a not or recording controversy with Xbox. This
is a weird prediction, but I would say Phil Spencer
takes the stage at the showcase, and maybe he's created
by even the smallest smattering of booze, Like I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't think he.
Speaker 3: Gets his normal warm reception this year.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised if that happens, though.
Speaker 4: I don't think we see him at all. I don't
think we see any Xbox executives.
Speaker 2: I think we do.
Speaker 3: I think we do too. I think I think fills
the kind of guy that's he feels like I gotta
show my face to say face basically a little bit
on Twitter. True. I mean, but that his showcase. That's
after his interview with Ryan McCaffrey, right, yeah, he's I
was gonna say he's doing an interview conferrent, I know.
Speaker 4: Couple.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: How many interviews he's doing and where and when is
like a different question. But he is doing at least
like one like public facing interview live streams.
Speaker 3: So the I G N one is the big one. Yeah,
So like he'll be a He'll have been out there.
Speaker 2: So I think there's others unannounced probably too.
Speaker 1: I think someone someone at an outlet somewhere probably has
interviews lined up and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I feel like he'll come out. You know, there'll be
an initial like like hey, Xbox Yeah, and then somewhere
in that corner of whatever the Microsoft theater here, but
like a oh or just like.
Speaker 2: I think I think some random guy's gonna scream out
and it's gonna be like an awkward moment.
Speaker 1: I was saying, Boo Earns. I really really that the
f F Tactics thing is real, the one that we've
been like speculating about for years because of the video leak.
I feel like every year, I'm just like, it's the
year f F Tactics. Give me the remake, the remaster, whatever,
just put it on modern systems. The fact that I
can't play that on my switch right now is like
a crime against humanity. And like the Tactics ogre one
worked really well.
Speaker 2: So speaking of tactics, we need metal slug Tactics.
Speaker 3: What they just that just popped up this week?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that just popped up story yesterday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been traveling. I've been traveling.
Speaker 4: What this is how you learn?
Speaker 1: It's that a fall Fall release window I believe was
the new tip.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, yeah trailer.
Speaker 4: Okay cool. I'm not even a tactics guy, but I
just I love the way that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love metal, slug and tactics.
Speaker 3: But yeah, like that was when I was in my head.
I was expecting, like, oh, be cool if you see
that this weekend, and they were like they just got
ahead of it, like, no, it's here.
Speaker 2: It's oh cool, Okay, sorry to interrupt.
Speaker 1: No, it's all good. I mean, it's going to be,
as far as I can tell, a good year for
the tactics that goes. So that's why I'm hoping that
like f F Tactics gets out there and like leads
the charge a little bit. But I feel like ever
since the Nvidia leak that you know, led a bunch
of stuff out early, but also has like a few
things lingering that have not come to fruition yet. Uh,
Tactics has been the big one for me. I'm just
like that's that's such a big piece of Square history
that I feel like is not as easily accessible as
other games, even other like It's you can play f
F seven, like Classic f F seven on pretty much
anything these days, but you cannot find some other like
Final Fancy games quite so easily. And the Pixel remasters
have helped with that and all that. But now it's
Tactics needs its time. We got to understand where we
came from. We just had Unicorn Overlord that was like
Argua that was way more influenced by Tactics Ogre and
Ogre Battle and all that. But like we need to
honor the history, the legacy a little bit. So yeah,
I think that game back up again recently. Unicorn.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I started it but then got pulled away from
this other stuff. But I've gotten back into it's a
good time. It's a good time. It's a good time.
Speaker 1: Vanilla Ware does not miss.
Speaker 3: I feel like a lot of these are Xbox I
feel like for those of no know Jeffkeeley got ahead
of the show and basically said, hey, don't get it'll
be okay. Yeah yeah, yeah, He's like, you know, slow
year for the industry whatever. That actually means to him.
But so it's almost it's weird to try to predict
things that aren't super exciting, to try to match the
expectation that he said of like, well, what's like a
what's like a Batier announcement that he can make. But like, uh,
for Xbox, I was I think that they will announce
the next wave of first party games going to PlayStation.
Speaker 1: M M.
Speaker 3: But but here's the next like two or three d's
that we maybe in the next year, you'll.
Speaker 1: See like major Xbox titles going over to PlayStation, and.
Speaker 3: I think I will say one of them will be
either a Gears or Halo game, Like it's gonna be
one like damn busting, like whoa, Like never thought we'd
see this here, Like it's gonna be an old Gears
or an old Halo.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, Halo. The Master Chief Collection
makes so much sense for that because that's something it's
like it's not infinite, you know, it's not the thing,
but it's too excited. But it's the Master Chief Collection,
you know. Really, we think that the Sony people should
should become accustomed with our history now that we're starting
to play some of our games and all that. You know,
they can frame that very well, like we're bringing some
historic Xbox games over to PlayStation so that the Sony
players can can check those out.
Speaker 3: We're doing you a favor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to get the Halo master Chief Collection,
and then gear's the dom collection, you know, like what
would you call the master gif Collection of years.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's the three Games without Judgment. Is that
kind of what it is?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Emergen trilogy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so maybe just the Marcus Phoenix collection or something.
Speaker 2: Here's the more Emergence collection, Emergence, yeah, yeah, and then
maybe if you're good, we'll give you Judgment Torque collection.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's the road Run.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's that's what we get. We get more
PlayStation Xbox, the PlayStation announcement. I don't know what else
they get, throwing it a round it up. Maybe what's
an old Xbox thing that they don't care about?
Speaker 1: Killer Instinct?
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, that that Xbox one launched Killer Instinct.
Speaker 1: Sure right, yeah, yeah, just slide it over there scooch
it on over.
Speaker 4: Maybe time for a new Hayes slide announcement. It takes
two is twenty twenty four, you know, they Joseph Faris
likes as you know, kee Lee.
Speaker 2: I feel like that's yeah, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: I like the more boring version of that is that
he just comes out to talk about that movie they
announced a while ago.
Speaker 2: Oh right, if he's there, Well, no, it's not. It's
not the Game Awards.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say it could be an SGF. Hasn't
he been a an S yet before?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I just think it's too soon. I was
gonna say, if he was out there hanging out an award,
he could confirm that they're working on a new game
before doing that.
Speaker 3: He could always give lips so, hey, we're our next
project is underway, and then that's like, that's all he says.
Speaker 1: Those are my favorite announcement.
Speaker 2: But he'll be he'll be in his seat like Jedi
Servi jedis Fallen Order.
Speaker 1: Where oh yeah, where they're in the crowd.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they don't even have a name for the game,
like Jeff's next one with a microphone, like, hey, what
are you? What are you doing here? I didn't know
you were coming.
Speaker 2: They had the name right for Jedi Fallen Order, but
that was it.
Speaker 1: I remember which announcement you're talking about they were sitting
in the in the crowd and.
Speaker 2: Was hosting the Vincent Pala thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah him, yeah, yeah, I love those announcements because they're
always just like I'm going to tell you a game
is happening. We have nothing to talk about our show
right now. Please join our studio. Because this is a
recruit we're hiring.
Speaker 3: I'm like, unlike the general vibe, we are hiring. Actually,
you know what's the weird thing about doing that is
like either they know in advance, like, hey, we're gonna
come up to your chair at this point and you're
gonna announce your new thing, at which point it's like
when I just have them on the stage to do it.
Why try to make it seem like this is like
an old Yeah, but it's like a bigger deal to
go on stage and say like, hey, the studio is
super respected and loved, we have a new thing coming.
Speaker 2: Well that means more production costs, motion graphics, pain.
Speaker 1: That's a bit instead and bits are better.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I was say. The alternative to dat is
that it's not planned and they put this poor man
on the spot and he has to be like what,
oh I mean, yeah, we're working on something new. I
don't even know if I'm supposed to say this yet,
but I'm on I have a camera. Believe it or not.
Speaker 2: We're just not sitting here doing nothing.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, if they put a camera on you
at SGF, you have to legally tell them what game
you're working on them, that that you sign that when
you walk in the door, even if you're not a
game developer exactly.
Speaker 3: That'd be funny if someone didn't play balder're like, I
can't I can't tell you. Jeff, like we didn't talk
about this, and it just gets like this really awkward
moment where he's like, come.
Speaker 2: On, tell me what you got about it?
Speaker 3: Jeff, you know this. I can't talk about this. What
are you doing?
Speaker 2: Anyways? I'm trying to think of anything out We folks
all on Xbox today.
Speaker 1: I had one other that's non Xbox. I know that
two K has been out there saying they're going to
reveal a sequel to one of their biggest and most
beloved franchises or something like that. I think a lot
of people have taken that to mean Borderlands. I'm gonna
throw this out there. When was the last time we
heard about a new Sieve. Has there been a new
Sieve recently? I feel since the last there was.
Speaker 4: The expansion, what would it be like there was like
the sci Fi one, but that was like the last.
Speaker 1: One that was like it's probably not x Com. I
feel like they maybe don't do x Com for a
while now that you know they don't have Jake Solomon
and that whole crew there Anymoreization.
Speaker 3: Six was a few it's it's been long enough.
Speaker 4: That was twenty nineteen. That yes, twenty sixteen, twenty.
Speaker 1: Sixteen, Yeah, when it came out, and then it's largely
just gotten like ports and updates since it did have
like leader passes and stuff like that. They tried to
do passes, but I don't know, maybe it's time for
a new version of SIV. I could see that happening
because also like what they've also, they.
Speaker 2: Were they were staffing up for it, I know specifically
for the CIV although I think that was that was like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it wasted to platform. It was ported to
like PS four and Xbox one in twenty nineteen, like
that was the last big SIB six update.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it seems like a good time. It's that
or like Mafia maybe like Mafia makes a sudden reappearance.
Speaker 3: You know they're working on X. They announced that they
were working on Mafia for like two years ago or
last year for the anniversary something for the series, or like, yeah,
we've already started work on the next Mafia, but don't
expect it for a while.
Speaker 4: This was a big embarrassing question. But that remake of
the first one came out right, Okay, Yeah, I played two.
I remember liking two back in the day, but I
never played one or three.
Speaker 2: Blake, He's talking a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I started and I started three. Yeah, but yeah,
I think everyone it's funny, he said Borderlands. I I
feel like everyone's maybe maybe it's more hoping that it's BioShock.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that would just be strange because
there's Judas coming out as well, and I think it
would be hilarious for like a new BioShock and Judas
to come out in the stame like window, because everything
I saw of Judas was like, yeah, that that looks
like BioShock.
Speaker 3: No, they are working on a new Bioshot, but yeah,
clout Chamber like that is happening for sure, and.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but will they wait until Judas is out? The door,
you know, going to.
Speaker 3: Be just that that BioShock things already been floating around
for years now, so it's like, yeah, honestly, it was
a race to see who would reveal their game first,
whether it was that or Ken Levin. Yeah, and honestly,
I think I put my money on the bioshot popping
up before Ken Levine's game. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can't think of many other like beloved unless we
go into sports, but even then, I'd be surprised to
see like an NFL two K make a return or
anything like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, top spin already, right, Yeah, I could have been
one that.
Speaker 1: Actually, I feel like the big sports resurgence this year
is just NCAA football coming back or now it's called
college football because I guess they don't have the license
or they didn't want to get the license. But uh,
that one is going to be the one that eats
of all the oxygen this summer, and I'm excited. I
love college football. I'm so happy for that. But uh yeah,
I'm not really caring about most other sports games now
at this point.
Speaker 3: I'm like actively trying to fay, like, what else this
two K do that isn't the big stuff that isn't
sports that Yeah, I would qualify as like, hey, you
guys love this, you're excited for it, and there's too many.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I think that's going to do it for
the show this week.
Speaker 3: That was a funny the obligatory Holli Night Silk song
of course.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes? Or release date?
Speaker 3: What do you think? Yes? Yeah, it's under your show. Honestly,
it just shows.
Speaker 2: Extra perfect perfect. Well, everybody, thank you for listening to
this episode of the Game and Former show. Be sure
to go and follow Eric Van Allen here on social
media at c mousy that's s E A m o
O s. I check out his workover on Destructoid actually
blood God in Normandy f M. Follow Marcus here at
Marcus Stewart seven, follow Kyle at Kyle M. Hilliard, and
you can follow me at It's van Aiken on on
on socials wherever you wherever you want to talk to me,
I'm there. Wherever you social yeah, where wherever the town square,
local restaurant.
Speaker 3: I'll be leaning against the coffee shop. You can find me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, but uh yeah, don't forget uh. Support
us via Print magazine subscription, Gameformer dot Com Slash subscription
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all that stuff. Thanks everybody for for tuning in this week.
It's gonna be a fun week again. Stay tuned to
Gameformer dot com uh for all things Summer game Fest.
It's gonna be a good time and we'll see you
on the other side. Goodbye.