Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Game Informer Show, a weekly podcast
Speaker 1: covering the video game industry. Join us every Friday for
Speaker 1: a discussion about the latest gaming news, reviews, and exclusive reveals,
Speaker 1: alongside Game Informer staff and special guests from around the industry.
Speaker 1: I'm one of your hosts today, Alex van Aiken. Today
Speaker 1: I'm joined by Charles Hart. How you doing, Charles, Hello,
Speaker 1: I'm good. I just got my head shaved for charity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys raised what one hundred thousand dollars one hundred
Speaker 1: and one thousand dollars. Ever at min max, it's.
Speaker 2: Actually one hundred and two thousand dollars. If you can play.
Speaker 1: Wow, it just keeps going up.
Speaker 2: It was, Yeah, it was pretty It was pretty crazy.
Speaker 2: It was pretty crazy. And at the end someone donated
Speaker 2: two thousand dollars for me to shave my head to
Speaker 2: look like a monkey mask that we had named Butterman.
Speaker 1: Got it. That's a lot of that's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff it was.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of stream lore. You had to be
Speaker 2: watching the whole time to understand. But it was a
Speaker 2: really good bit. And then afterwards I got to shave
Speaker 2: my head all the way so I didn't have to
Speaker 2: look like this weird mask the whole time, which was cool.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad to have you here, Charles, even if
Speaker 1: you have no hair anymore. We're also joined by Marcus Stewart.
Speaker 1: How you doing, Marcus?
Speaker 3: I'm glad I still have my hair so that you
Speaker 3: still like me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I didn't realize it's how you judged people, It's how
Speaker 3: you picked your friends.
Speaker 1: But you know, no, I am known to judge. Why
Speaker 1: do you think I wear a hat every week on
Speaker 1: this video call?
Speaker 3: Okay, I thought it was like an Ello cool J
Speaker 3: kind of thing you always work.
Speaker 1: It's actually not that bad. But you know I do.
Speaker 1: I do. I'm a hat wearer. I collect them. I
Speaker 1: like them. Hey, fellow hat gang, Wesley LeBlanc, how you doing?
Speaker 4: Wes doing pretty good? Got a hat and a lot
Speaker 4: of hair, A hat.
Speaker 2: Best of both worlds.
Speaker 1: There, You're not a hatfish.
Speaker 4: No, no, hatfish.
Speaker 1: That's what they're calling it, and I don't like it.
Speaker 1: I just want to say, let's get into the show proper.
Speaker 1: We got weird energy this week. This is the third
Speaker 1: time we've recorded this intro because I'm I think we're
Speaker 1: all on one. But yeah, it's gonna be a great episode.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about the outer worlds too. West's
Speaker 1: gonna be getting into his review of that. Charles's gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about the first couple of episodes of Dispatch,
Speaker 1: which is a very cool game featuring Aaron Paul and
Speaker 1: a lot of other great talent. Ninja Guiding four Marcus
Speaker 1: is gonna be diving into, and then towards the end,
Speaker 1: I will get into some of my impressions from the
Speaker 1: first season of Battlefield six. I got a preview event
Speaker 1: that I went to last night actually and played two
Speaker 1: new maps that I really enjoyed, and got some hands
Speaker 1: on with a new weapon. And then after that, after
Speaker 1: all of that, we're gonna be wrapping up the show.
Speaker 1: Charles interviewed Samantha bay Art and they play Carlock from
Speaker 1: Balder's Gate three, so you should definitely stay tuned. They
Speaker 1: also play a character and Dispatch, is that correct?
Speaker 2: You know they play Cider in Absolum, so they play
Speaker 2: one absolute character.
Speaker 1: I apologize.
Speaker 2: I apologize, honestly, no one knowing them, knowing how these
Speaker 2: voice actors get around, I wouldn't be surprised if they
Speaker 2: also have some kind of role of Dispatch or.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I feel like, you know, when you get
Speaker 1: to the caliber of Samantha bay Art and like the
Speaker 1: ben Stars and all those folks, I'm like, oh, I
Speaker 1: just expect you to be in every new game that
Speaker 1: we're talking about on the show this week. So my
Speaker 1: my mistake. But Absolum, that's a that's a game I
Speaker 1: still need to get to before an inter of your talks.
Speaker 2: Freaking It's freaking good. That's my review out of ten freak.
Speaker 1: Fan. If you're a fan of Absolom or Balder's Gate three,
Speaker 1: I think you'll really enjoy this conversation with Samantha bay Art.
Speaker 1: That car that Charles had, it's called you Carl's Heart.
Speaker 2: WHOA No, I like that?
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, the shaved head version of Yes this is.
Speaker 2: My new yeah uh.
Speaker 1: And before we dive into the show proper, I just
Speaker 1: did want to give a shout out to a good
Speaker 1: friend of ours and former graphic designer Jen She runs
Speaker 1: a handmade dice jewelry company called Yannier Uh, and she
Speaker 1: just launched a modular RPG dice jewelry set on Kickstarter.
Speaker 1: It's called the Monolith Collection. The whole idea is that
Speaker 1: you know her jewelry for a long time, has had
Speaker 1: a lot of demand, just kind of really ramping up
Speaker 1: to be able to meet demand finally in a like
Speaker 1: really big way. And then also, uh, there's like really
Speaker 1: cool earrings and dice chain necklaces. Actually have in my
Speaker 1: my drawer. I have an older set. This isn't what's
Speaker 1: on Kickstarter, but just to say show you that I
Speaker 1: am a fan. She makes these beautiful Oh yeah, that's it.
Speaker 3: Yeah for audio listeners, like a gold chain with was
Speaker 3: like green green dice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pinky green greens. Yeah, like kind of a lavender
Speaker 1: at green. Anyways, I've been a fan for a while.
Speaker 1: We're friends. Big disclaimer, she used to work here. Big disclaimer.
Speaker 1: But if you're interested in modular dice jewelry should go
Speaker 1: check out the kickstarter. She blew through her goal. I
Speaker 1: think she's at like sixteen hundred percent over over her
Speaker 1: her starting goal, and there's a bunch of really cool
Speaker 1: stretch goals, so like it's a very popular and you
Speaker 1: know six I also, do.
Speaker 2: You mean sixteen hundred percent? That's the right number? Yeah,
Speaker 2: sixteen times that that's crazy. Shout out.
Speaker 3: That's so much.
Speaker 1: I actually worked on this Kickstarter. I've been working with
Speaker 1: jen for a few months now on photography and videography
Speaker 1: that you see as part of like the big rollout,
Speaker 1: So yeah, go check it out. If anything, if you
Speaker 1: maybe you know RPG, dice jewelry, don't your thing, should
Speaker 1: go check it out, look at my cool photos and
Speaker 1: then share it with a friend who might be interested.
Speaker 1: But yeah, check it out. The Monolith collection on Kickstarter
Speaker 1: by Yanier. That's why a ni are really cool stuff.
Speaker 1: There's earrings, eyeglass jewelry like glasses, chains and necklaces, and
Speaker 1: they're all swappable so you don't have to keep rebuying
Speaker 1: different chains and stuff. You can actually just change out
Speaker 1: the pendent, which is really cool. So yeah, go check
Speaker 1: that out. I wanted to shout that out. There'll be
Speaker 1: a link in the in the podcast description if you
Speaker 1: want to quick an easy way to go do that.
Speaker 1: But all that out of the way, let's get into
Speaker 1: the show proper. Wes gonna kick it off with you
Speaker 1: diving into the outer worlds too. I have played probably
Speaker 1: five hours and I'm really enjoying it. You have beaten
Speaker 1: the game, however, yes, what did you think I gave?
Speaker 4: I'll just do my score right off the top, I
Speaker 4: gave it an eight point seventy five out of ten,
Speaker 4: which is a very good score, one of my highest
Speaker 4: scores of the year. I'm gonna read the first paragraph
Speaker 4: of my review because there's a lot to talk about
Speaker 4: in this game. It's a you know, it's a traditional
Speaker 4: Western RPG, but I feel like my first paragraph kind
Speaker 4: of sets the tone for where I'm going when I
Speaker 4: talk about this game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he thought he thought he cooked on that intro.
Speaker 3: Actually, that was the editing note that I left him.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: The Outer World's two doesn't drastically change the already great
Speaker 4: formula developer Obsidian Entertainment created with The Outer Worlds more
Speaker 4: than half a decade ago. Instead, this expansive sequel follows
Speaker 4: in the footsteps of many other great RPG follow ups,
Speaker 4: with more places to explore, more loot defined, and crucially,
Speaker 4: plenty of new ways to directly influence and shape your
Speaker 4: own adventure in space that its main narrative is anti climactic.
Speaker 4: I'm left amazed by how much Obsidian was able to
Speaker 4: cram into this thirty hour odyssey with side content that
Speaker 4: we've seamlessly in and out of the Golden Path in
Speaker 4: a level of reflexivity other RPGs often try and fail
Speaker 4: to achieve. So yeah, basically, this is not an RPG
Speaker 4: that breaks the mold of Western RPGs. Like, if you
Speaker 4: know the type of RPGs that studios like Bethesda and
Speaker 4: BioWare and even Obsidian have been making for decades, now,
Speaker 4: that's what this is. But all that said, they attacked
Speaker 4: this sequel to the twenty nineteen Outer Worlds very smartly.
Speaker 4: They pretty much improved on every single aspect. I don't
Speaker 4: think there's anything left untouched here other than maybe the
Speaker 4: main narrative. I think I wasn't super high on the
Speaker 4: finale and like how it wraps up the entire narrative,
Speaker 4: Like I really enjoyed the main story throughout my adventure,
Speaker 4: but then when I finished it, I was kind of
Speaker 4: just like, oh, Okay, yeah, I guess that's I guess
Speaker 4: we're done with that now. But that's okay because the
Speaker 4: side content that I played along the way felt it
Speaker 4: was so good and well crafted and felt so seamless
Speaker 4: that it kind of felt like the main narrative, which
Speaker 4: kind of boosts the entire package up. I am that's
Speaker 4: thoroughly impressed with how Obsidian handled the side quests and
Speaker 4: the companion quest in this game. I think that they
Speaker 4: feel quite integral to the main story, especially in the
Speaker 4: sense that it's an Obsidian game. What you learn and
Speaker 4: what you do is going to impact a lot of
Speaker 4: your story, and that goes for the side content. I
Speaker 4: was learning a lot of things, getting key information, key items,
Speaker 4: key objects, meeting key people that actually directly affected the
Speaker 4: main quest that I would do after. And I think
Speaker 4: Obsidian very smartly introduces the side quests at the perfect time.
Speaker 4: So if you're a very diligent player and you receive
Speaker 4: a side quest, I highly recommend going and doing that
Speaker 4: side quest because there's a good chance it will influence
Speaker 4: and effect the main part of your mission coming up next.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 4: Outside of narrative, it feels a million times better. I
Speaker 4: think anbody that's played the Outer Worlds One knows that,
Speaker 4: Like it wasn't the best feeling RPG, it's it's strength words, storytelling,
Speaker 4: and the fun world. Gunplay kind of sucked. Every gun
Speaker 4: felt the same. This is like a proper first person
Speaker 4: shooter feeling game. Every gun feels different. It feels really
Speaker 4: really good. You know, It's not like a. I'm not
Speaker 4: saying this is like a call do You're a Destiny
Speaker 4: type of feel, but like, as far as first person
Speaker 4: shooting RPGs go, I think it's probably one of my
Speaker 4: favorite blow Starfield out of the water. That's not that
Speaker 4: this is like needs to be compared to Starfield.
Speaker 1: But I mean there's there's some natural you know, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: dna ye.
Speaker 2: A game like this where people are like the gun
Speaker 2: play is actually good. Though, I feel like that's always
Speaker 2: the caveat of like I like Fallout but or I
Speaker 2: like the Outer Worlds one. But so it's really cool
Speaker 2: that that's a thing of like you'll just like you won't,
Speaker 2: you won't feel the need to rely on like the
Speaker 2: time dilation stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Fallout has that because of they know that the
Speaker 4: shooting sucks, and they did the time dilation because a
Speaker 4: similar I think through line from New Vegas is like, yeah,
Speaker 4: our shooting is not the best. Let's let players slow
Speaker 4: it down so they can get the key week spots
Speaker 4: they need to hit. To that end, I honestly didn't
Speaker 4: really use time dilation that much. I think it has barely.
Speaker 1: So far.
Speaker 2: It has its use.
Speaker 4: I guess if you want to slow down combat if
Speaker 4: you feel the need to. There's a couple like puzzle instances,
Speaker 4: like trying to get through a spinning blade, for example,
Speaker 4: but I rarely used it in combat. I don't know.
Speaker 4: I just didn't feel the need to that the gum
Speaker 4: play it felt good enough where I was like confident
Speaker 4: in using my weapons in my arsenal.
Speaker 1: I do like to hear that they integrate it into
Speaker 1: environmental puzzles. That's cool, don't It gives it another reason
Speaker 1: to use it.
Speaker 4: Don't get too excited. It's like a handful of times
Speaker 4: I did it pretty late in the game and I
Speaker 4: was like, oh, yeah, that's I forgot that. The time
Speaker 4: dilation slows things down and you can use it this way.
Speaker 4: There's not really many puzzles happening in this game or anything.
Speaker 4: The points where there are puzzles is where you're going
Speaker 4: to use your gadgets. Most okay, gadgets I didn't really
Speaker 4: touch out on my review because it's like kind of nitpicky,
Speaker 4: I guess, but like they're fine. I didn't really feel
Speaker 4: the need to use them too often.
Speaker 1: Are you talking gadgets like grenades and that's.
Speaker 4: No like the on your weapon. Also, time dilations of gadgets.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's one that melts bodies discovery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have those. I didn't realize that's what those
Speaker 1: are called.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I use grenades a bunch. I actually really
Speaker 4: like there's a large amount of grenades. I want to say,
Speaker 4: like a dozen different types, and I really enjoyed using
Speaker 4: all of those.
Speaker 1: Something else that your kind of character build by the way, Oh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, goodoint. She probably jumped into that. So everybody starts
Speaker 4: as an Earth Directorate, which you're basically is is a
Speaker 4: space cop a more humorous like buzz light your type
Speaker 4: of space cop. You can change your background into, like
Speaker 4: how you became an Earth Directorate agent. Mine was more
Speaker 4: of just like a gambler who was using it to
Speaker 4: find another way to get more money. But I know
Speaker 4: that you can be like a reformed prisoner who is
Speaker 4: like making up time sentence for crimes by being an
Speaker 4: Earth Director and you can be.
Speaker 3: So I was an archaeologist and yeah when we did
Speaker 3: the cover story build, yeah.
Speaker 1: I was rusted about. So I'm just like ended up here.
Speaker 4: That's what I chose in the cover story. Trip was
Speaker 4: just like I have no idea how I got here,
Speaker 4: But we're gonna roll with it, and yeah, there's a
Speaker 4: you get to pick some perks and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: I kind of played it as a I don't want
Speaker 4: to call it straight shooter, Like mechanically I was not
Speaker 4: a straight shooter, but I was kind of like a
Speaker 4: cool guy who would do anything for money and wasn't
Speaker 4: really concerned with morals too much if somebody was paying me.
Speaker 4: And I actually thought the game like really responded to
Speaker 4: that in an interesting way, and I get the sense
Speaker 4: that it would respond to you in a lot of
Speaker 4: interesting ways. For the cover story, I did played very dumb,
Speaker 4: like there's an actual dumb trait or perk or whatever.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm playing right now. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if I was really hot on it the first few hours,
Speaker 1: and now I'm like, maybe I wanted to play like
Speaker 1: a real character. Yeah, I'm kind of playing like a
Speaker 1: Tim Robinson esque character. Like one of my companions gets
Speaker 1: their arm blown off early in the game, and my
Speaker 1: guys like typical rookie can't like you know that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Like, yeah, but I don't know how. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm getting a lot of dialogue options for dumb that
Speaker 1: are like really funny. Yeah, yeah, me laugh.
Speaker 3: You can just treat the game like a comedy, I mean,
Speaker 3: even more so than it kind of already is.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I think Marcus am I remembering wrong was
Speaker 4: dumb one of the ones where they were like, it's
Speaker 4: very funny, but it might be better for a different
Speaker 4: play like a second play through.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like that in one with like some of the
Speaker 3: perks and flaws, or the flaw specifically like not that
Speaker 3: you know, you play however you want. But they kind
Speaker 3: of looked at it the way I always looked at
Speaker 3: the dumb tray of like this is a second play through,
Speaker 3: Like my first play through will be like a little
Speaker 3: closer to serious, and then next time just who cares?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm thinking about rerolling honestly and kind of
Speaker 1: playing a more straight laced character or or either a
Speaker 1: renegade or like a smart person like yeah there are
Speaker 1: not just like somebody that's dumb.
Speaker 4: Something I like that the dialogue does, is which I
Speaker 4: talk about in my review, is it kind of teases
Speaker 4: out the other ways that something could have gone. So
Speaker 4: like I might not have an option available, but I
Speaker 4: can still look and see what's required for that option.
Speaker 4: So often I'm like, oh, this this plotline, I would
Speaker 4: have been coasting if I was a reformed prisoner or whatever.
Speaker 4: Or I actually didn't see anything for dumb, which is
Speaker 4: kind of funny because that means dumb is not going
Speaker 4: to help you at all throughout the game, but there's plenty.
Speaker 1: Of it actively hurts you. I think, Yeah, select, I
Speaker 1: had to select like five different skills that I'm completely
Speaker 1: locked out of. I but then I chose brilliant as
Speaker 1: one of my positives, so then I could I couldn't maximize.
Speaker 1: I think I could pick three traits to like specialize
Speaker 1: in at the start and get ahead start on, but
Speaker 1: I was locked out of five because I was dumb.
Speaker 1: So I'm just like really into a couple of topics.
Speaker 1: I think they described.
Speaker 3: That during the cover story West as like you would
Speaker 3: be a brilliant like a savant basically of like you're
Speaker 3: you're overall like an idiot, but like in very specific
Speaker 3: ways you are just like a genius.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yeah, I'm gonna enjoying. I do enjoy that
Speaker 1: part because like, my guy's really good at engineering.
Speaker 4: He's like, I don't ask me, like, don't ask me
Speaker 4: to talk, but I can I can solve your he's really.
Speaker 1: Good at engineering and medical, but anything else is like it's.
Speaker 2: Like you gave Albert Einstein a gun and you're like,
Speaker 2: go see in the world, and he's like, well, if
Speaker 2: anyone knows any questions about relativity, I can answer that,
Speaker 2: but I don't know how this thing works at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you mentioned flaws. Flaws is probably the thing
Speaker 4: I'm most hot on coming out of this review. I
Speaker 4: adore the flaws system. I know it was in the
Speaker 4: first game, but I think the flaws here and two
Speaker 4: are so much fun and funny enough. During our cover
Speaker 4: story they were like, flaws are really good for other
Speaker 4: playthroughs because they can harm you. But I ended the
Speaker 4: game with I think nine flaws, which is kind of
Speaker 4: a lot. But I just really enjoyed the way it
Speaker 4: was like shaping my character, and it made me feel
Speaker 4: really seen in a way I've never really felt in
Speaker 4: an RPG. I feel like typically RPGs react based on
Speaker 4: your dialogue choices, or like in Balder's Gate, like, oh,
Speaker 4: I'm blowing up this person, so now they're not gonna
Speaker 4: be able to join my party because I blew them
Speaker 4: up with barrels of fire, and it's like that's really cool,
Speaker 4: but that's how a lot of RPGs react. I think
Speaker 4: Flaws feels very meta in the sense that it's almost
Speaker 4: like someone at Obsidian is watching me, because I'm the
Speaker 4: type of person in any game I play where when
Speaker 4: I'm out of combat or even mid combat, I reload
Speaker 4: like I'm always loading. I never reached the bottom of
Speaker 4: a clip. I like to top off all of my clips,
Speaker 4: and pretty soon into the game it was like, hey,
Speaker 4: here's a flaw that you can accept. We notice you
Speaker 4: really like reloading, so we're going to give you this
Speaker 4: flaw and it will increase the magazine size of every
Speaker 4: weapon you ever get. But if you ever let a
Speaker 4: clip reach zero, you're gonna have an eight second of
Speaker 4: an extreme damage nerve, which I really liked because sometimes
Speaker 4: I was nerved and I was like, ah, dang it.
Speaker 4: But other times, often I'm just having these extra large clips,
Speaker 4: and I really like that the game is constantly watching
Speaker 4: how I'm playing and reacting to it. And sometimes it
Speaker 4: feels almost like I'm being called out. And those are
Speaker 4: the flaws where I would deny them, and I'd be like, no,
Speaker 4: I decline this flaw. I do not want this get
Speaker 4: out of my face, Obsidian, but I think you would
Speaker 4: have declined as an example kleptomaniac. So this is a
Speaker 4: very This is a very BioShock esque game. I know
Speaker 4: games did it before BioShock, but it reminds me of BioShock.
Speaker 4: Where you enter a room, you kill the enemy. There
Speaker 4: are eight hundred items to pick up in the room.
Speaker 4: You can pick up bottles of alcohol, you can pick
Speaker 4: up medicine, you can pick up food, ammo grenades, there's
Speaker 4: drawers just search, there's cabinets to search everything like I have,
Speaker 4: I would defeat enemies in a room. And then if
Speaker 4: you watch my screen, it's like my guy just looking
Speaker 4: down and me just bashing square to open everything. I'm
Speaker 4: like square square, square, square square to take it all,
Speaker 4: take it all. And eventually it was like you're a kleptomaniac,
Speaker 4: you get like if you sell things to vendors, you
Speaker 4: get a lot more money and their prices are lowered.
Speaker 4: But the flaw part of it was if you see something,
Speaker 4: you have to take it, which is not good when
Speaker 4: you go to places where you don't. I'm trying not
Speaker 4: to spoil because there's certain locations I can't talk about
Speaker 4: but like you go to places where you don't want enemies,
Speaker 4: and if you steal, you will have enemies. And if
Speaker 4: you like literally, if you look at an item and
Speaker 4: it pops up on your screen and it'll say like steal,
Speaker 4: the game will do it for you. And I was like,
Speaker 4: I'm not. I know that I like to take things.
Speaker 4: I will take things on my own time Obsidian, And
Speaker 4: there's a ton of flaws, even like, literally in the
Speaker 4: last five minutes of the game, I received a flaw,
Speaker 4: which was hilarious because the game's over, but I was like, oh, wow,
Speaker 4: you really are watching me all the way up into
Speaker 4: the final moments, and I really appreciated that. It was
Speaker 4: the most It's why I talk so much about reactivity
Speaker 4: in the review, because it just felt so reactive to
Speaker 4: what I was doing. Because it's it's doing all the
Speaker 4: usual RPG things. The dialogue choices to shape how you're
Speaker 4: doing things. Oh do you want to sneak through this
Speaker 4: place or do you want to go guns blazing? Did
Speaker 4: you find the item to open this door or do
Speaker 4: you need to go through a shaft? Like none of
Speaker 4: that felt particularly new, though I do like having those
Speaker 4: options in combat. It was the flaws that felt different
Speaker 4: and felt like my playthrough will be wildly different from
Speaker 4: any of your guys's playthroughs, especially as someone who took
Speaker 4: nine flaws I probably received. I probably saw fifteen to
Speaker 4: twenty total and took nine of them. And it's funny
Speaker 4: because you'll get flaws where the game is like, we
Speaker 4: really do not it straight up says we do not
Speaker 4: recommend this on your first playthrough because they're just that drastic.
Speaker 4: And I think that's something that's super exciting as someone
Speaker 4: who doesn't typically replay games, just because with our jobs,
Speaker 4: you know, it's kind of hard to take the time
Speaker 4: to replay stuff. But this was one where I was like,
Speaker 4: I could see just how different I can make a
Speaker 4: playthrough between flaws, between my background and skills and perk selected,
Speaker 4: and I think that's really really cool.
Speaker 1: You know, I've decided I'm going to stick it out
Speaker 1: with my dumb character. Yeah, and not only that, I'm
Speaker 1: going to accept every flaw that it's given to me.
Speaker 4: That is that is the play That's the exact playthrough
Speaker 4: I had in mind when I beat the game. I
Speaker 4: was like, if I do another one, I'm taking every
Speaker 4: flaw And I think dumb is the way to go.
Speaker 4: I think that would be a legitimate blast. And there's
Speaker 4: there's a lot of dialogue where the game kind of
Speaker 4: warns you ahead of time. I skipped pretty much every
Speaker 4: boss in the game because I dialogued my way through it,
Speaker 4: which the bosses are fun, but I really liked the
Speaker 4: idea of trying to like use my speech and my
Speaker 4: I kind of focused my skills on speech and and
Speaker 4: being a leader and non mechanical stuff stuff that works
Speaker 4: in dialogue. So it was fun trying to see how
Speaker 4: far I could take the game, where I even didn't
Speaker 4: like the final boss. I almost stopped like the fight.
Speaker 4: Eventually I did not, and I kind of wanted to
Speaker 4: actually like have combat for the final fight, but I
Speaker 4: saw the way forward where I could have skipped the
Speaker 4: final boss fight, which I think is really cool. But
Speaker 4: it's cool because the game will say, it'll kind of
Speaker 4: tee you up. Maybe one of your companions or someone
Speaker 4: else you're talking to will say, you might be able
Speaker 4: to talk this person down, but if not, just know
Speaker 4: that we're going to have to kill them type of thing.
Speaker 4: And you have companions like Asa, who's part of a
Speaker 4: cult she loves killing like everything, she just wants to
Speaker 4: murder people. Every time a dialogue choice pops up, she's
Speaker 4: right there and she's like, well, we could just kill
Speaker 4: them and skip all this. And then you have someone
Speaker 4: like Niles, who is very he's an Earth director and
Speaker 4: agent too, and he really like respects you and the
Speaker 4: ideals of the Earth Director, and he's like, we should
Speaker 4: talk them out. We shouldn't kill them. We need to
Speaker 4: bring them justice, give them a proper trial. And so like,
Speaker 4: going into dialogue, I was aware whether or not I
Speaker 4: could come out on top without shooting, and often I
Speaker 4: was able to. And you, really, I'm doing like ten
Speaker 4: to twelve dialogue choices and like having an actual discussion
Speaker 4: with this person on the ethics of what they're doing
Speaker 4: and why I think they should stop. And it was
Speaker 4: just really cool to see how responsive the game was.
Speaker 4: I was very surprised that, I think, other than the
Speaker 4: last fight, I only fought one boss. All the other
Speaker 4: ones I talked down out of their position. And it
Speaker 4: even goes beyond that, like you if you kill a boss,
Speaker 4: that comes up later. If I didn't kill a boss,
Speaker 4: they wouldn't necessarily appear later, But like me choosing not
Speaker 4: to kill them would have an effect later. The game
Speaker 4: was often reacting and bringing back past decisions and stuff
Speaker 4: that I made, which I think is really cool.
Speaker 3: It's awesome.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I know Obsidian's known for that. That's kind
Speaker 4: of like their bread and butter. That's why people love
Speaker 4: New Vegas so much. And I know Outer Worlds one
Speaker 4: did a lot of that. I just think that this
Speaker 4: is probably the most in depth and the farthest they've
Speaker 4: taken that system without breaking out of the mold of
Speaker 4: Western RPG. I think maybe their next game, like they
Speaker 4: could take their work they've done here and create like
Speaker 4: a new RPG type that doesn't feel so typical Obsidian,
Speaker 4: I guess, but this really feels like they've taken that
Speaker 4: Western RPG formula that's so popular here and stretched it
Speaker 4: to like the maximum limits and the best way.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, random question, did you do you like this
Speaker 3: game more than a vow? Did you play about?
Speaker 4: I have played some avowed, and I guess that gives
Speaker 4: my answer because I mean, I had to play this
Speaker 4: game for work, but this was a work game that
Speaker 4: I wanted to play, Like when I was working, I
Speaker 4: was playing it. When I would get off work, I'd
Speaker 4: be like, talk to my wife, we would, you know,
Speaker 4: hang out with our kid. Kid goes down and I'm like, hey,
Speaker 4: I'm going to play Out of Worlds two for five
Speaker 4: hours tonight.
Speaker 6: Is that okay?
Speaker 4: And She's like, yes, I will read a book next
Speaker 4: to you. Whereas sometimes I'm reviewing a game and I'm like,
Speaker 4: I'm only doing this during work hours. Yeah, I do not,
Speaker 4: this is work, whereas avowed I did not. I have
Speaker 4: not gone back to finish I liked about, but I
Speaker 4: do think Outer World's two is probably the Obsidian game
Speaker 4: of the year for me, which is wild to say they've.
Speaker 3: We should we should have had as our category for
Speaker 3: go to the best OFSIDI the best Obsidian game.
Speaker 1: That reminds me. At the end of your cover story, Marcus,
Speaker 1: you said, and I'm curious. I know Marcus wrote this,
Speaker 1: but Wes, I'm curious if you how you think it
Speaker 1: resolves it. He says, quote I enjoyed roaming the game's
Speaker 1: opening hours, and I'm eager to see how my actions, good,
Speaker 1: baden everything in between shape this role playing adventure. Obsidian
Speaker 1: has enjoyed a twenty twenty five. Few studios can boast
Speaker 1: from the well received avowed in February to the strong
Speaker 1: early access launch of Grounded two in July. If the
Speaker 1: Outer World's two sticks to the landing, it will have accomplished
Speaker 1: one hell of a hat trick. West. Do you feel
Speaker 1: like they have kind of done that?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I think. I mean it's it's unheard of, right.
Speaker 4: I don't know if any studio that has released three
Speaker 4: games at least in triple A.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 4: Thelavier Studio releases, Uh, Lavier and Nelson releases like one
Speaker 4: hundred games.
Speaker 7: A year.
Speaker 3: One as we were talking, Actually.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, But to release three baseline good games like
Speaker 4: About and Outer World's two great Grounded is not really
Speaker 4: my style. So I know people like Grounded to what
Speaker 4: its early acxis, and that's I'm not big into survival games. Like,
Speaker 4: to release three games on this caliber is a is
Speaker 4: a feat for them to be at least good, I
Speaker 4: think is pretty unheard of. I think the closest I
Speaker 4: can think of is like maybe Insomniac over at PlayStation,
Speaker 4: but they don't do multi release years. I just feel
Speaker 4: like they have a kidence that's very commendable and uh,
Speaker 4: kind of unheard of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And granted this is sort of like accidental, like
Speaker 3: because the Valve was supposed to come out last year
Speaker 3: and got delayed, so they didn't plan to release three
Speaker 3: games in one year. But you know, yeah, the point
Speaker 3: still stands that it's remarkable that all three of them
Speaker 3: seem to have stuck the landing.
Speaker 2: I bet if there was a studio that would contest it.
Speaker 2: I feel like there's like a twenty thirteen or twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen that maybe Ubisoft could say, like if we get
Speaker 2: like a like a Black Flag and a Far Cry,
Speaker 2: Raymon Legends Raymond, that's only that's the only one I
Speaker 2: can think of, And that's also like, yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: long it's been a long time since.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think twenty thirteen they would have just had
Speaker 3: Raymn Legend and Assassin's Creed. Yeah, black Flag was that year.
Speaker 3: I think Far Cry it would have been four, and
Speaker 3: I think that was a year after.
Speaker 1: I think you're right, yeah, because it was on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but the year after it was also Unity and
Speaker 4: Rogue in the same week because of the next Gen,
Speaker 4: so that's a three year game too. But even then
Speaker 4: you'd be.
Speaker 3: Those two games and then yeah, Assassin's Creed games in
Speaker 3: my opinion, but and.
Speaker 4: Plus we learned with Obsidian, like they're very sequestered in
Speaker 4: their teams. Like the Outer World's two team has been
Speaker 4: working on out of World two for years. It wasn't like, uh,
Speaker 4: they were all working on a vowed or grounded that
Speaker 4: game dropped and now they all.
Speaker 1: Switched all separate yeah, separate game directors.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I don't know how many people work at Obsidian.
Speaker 4: We we asked studios and yeah, it's become like a
Speaker 4: thing to like hide for some reason lately.
Speaker 1: My theory is that studios that do that don't want
Speaker 1: the pup then number to be public because it's easier
Speaker 1: to track likes and I don't know, layoffs and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. I don't know. Maybe that's cynical. Take
Speaker 1: it's because that they have a lot of They also
Speaker 1: have like a lot of contractors, I bet so maybe
Speaker 1: they want to make sure that they're including them when
Speaker 1: they when they quote that and they don't have the number.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of reasons. I think neither
Speaker 1: here nor there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I don't think it's like an Obsidian thing
Speaker 4: they're trying to it's probably no.
Speaker 1: I've noticed it's a trend. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've noticed
Speaker 1: it elsewhere in the last couple of years, several other
Speaker 1: places for sure. But yeah, man, I can't wait to
Speaker 1: play more of this game. Hearing that you can do
Speaker 1: so much with speech as well.
Speaker 6: Is really cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can. It goes pretty far. I think, honestly,
Speaker 4: if the if the main narrative had wrapped up, it's
Speaker 4: a shame because I was really all in on that
Speaker 4: main storyline up until basically kind of like the finale,
Speaker 4: and the finale is bad. It just feels so here
Speaker 4: or there in a game where there's so much density
Speaker 4: and everything you do, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 4: you get to the end and it's like A or
Speaker 4: B type of thing, and it's not like that black
Speaker 4: or white, but it just felt very like this game
Speaker 4: is so wide and you can do so much in between,
Speaker 4: and then all of a sudden, the finale it's just like,
Speaker 4: all right, a little binary kind of Yeah. I don't
Speaker 4: want to say it's like an A or B decision,
Speaker 4: but it did. It did just feel kind of and
Speaker 4: I guess this is something games always struggle with, like
Speaker 4: they have to reach the same ending essentially, Like I mean,
Speaker 4: not every game can be a Balder's Gate three although
Speaker 4: I wish a lot of games were, but like they
Speaker 4: have an ending in mind, and it can go a
Speaker 4: couple different ways, but like, ultimately you're gonna go to
Speaker 4: this final location, for example, and watch the events play
Speaker 4: out there, And I kind of just wish that it
Speaker 4: had some more reactivity and flexibility that the rest of
Speaker 4: the game had it If they had nailed the yeah,
Speaker 4: this would have been like probably the RPG of the
Speaker 4: year for me, which is crazy because it's a fantastic
Speaker 4: year for RPGs. I think there's a couple other things
Speaker 4: I should touch on real quick that were kind of
Speaker 4: hit or missed. Companion quests. I think people still might
Speaker 4: like Outer World's one companions more. I think Out of
Speaker 4: Worlds to have some strong companions. But what you're saying, yes, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 4: some of these some of these companions don't really open
Speaker 4: up until, like you get them all pretty early, and
Speaker 4: they each have like a couple companion quests to round
Speaker 4: out their story and fully upgrade them. I didn't like
Speaker 4: two of them didn't get any companion quest until I
Speaker 4: was on the Final Planet basically, and I was at
Speaker 4: that point, you're kind of locked in on who you
Speaker 4: like to take with you, and I did their quest
Speaker 4: just to see where they went, but I had no
Speaker 4: interest in like actually learning about them because I'm barreling
Speaker 4: towards the finale and oh, now you bring this up.
Speaker 4: Now we got to go do this stuff, like do
Speaker 4: you not understand what we're doing here? Still cool though,
Speaker 4: and I think that they are very useful in combat.
Speaker 4: I died a lot in combat because I wasn't using
Speaker 4: my companion abilities, which uh, I guess I didn't expect it.
Speaker 4: But they play a pretty heavy role in combat and survival.
Speaker 4: They can really, for lack of something that's not a cliche,
Speaker 4: like change the tides of combat for you. And then
Speaker 4: there's a few bugs that I had. Reviewing games in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five is always weird because like there's always
Speaker 4: a day one patch. Sometimes you don't even want to
Speaker 4: mention bugs because they're going to be fixed, but I'm
Speaker 4: going to mention them here just because they kind of
Speaker 4: were pretty persistent for me. I could never use up
Speaker 4: on the dpad in the menus the first time I
Speaker 4: opened a menu, so I'd have to like open a menu,
Speaker 4: close it, open it, and then use up. Not a
Speaker 4: big deal, but PS five PS five.
Speaker 1: Pro I haven't had that. Yeah, yeah, it was a small.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a small bug. And I was like,
Speaker 4: I don't think this is a big deal, but just
Speaker 4: mentioning it, and then I had to reload to save
Speaker 4: a couple of times. Funny enough, the ending, I had
Speaker 4: a bug where I couldn't get the ending I wanted
Speaker 4: to because the prompt would not appear, like it was
Speaker 4: telling me do this, and the prompt wouldn't appear, And
Speaker 4: so to fix it, I had to go pick an
Speaker 4: ending I didn't want and then kind of follow this
Speaker 4: like just kidding route to get to where I wanted
Speaker 4: to go. It was very weird and it was like
Speaker 4: the It kind of rubbed me a little sour because
Speaker 4: it was right at the end, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 4: I thought this was a bug that was going to
Speaker 4: end the game for me. Shout out to Obsidian for
Speaker 4: helping me get to the ending I wanted. But yeah,
Speaker 4: there's just a couple of things you might run into.
Speaker 4: I think it's the least jinky Western rpg from Xbox
Speaker 4: I've played. Like Obsidian during our cover story was very
Speaker 4: open about like jink, like it's part of their DNA
Speaker 4: and if you know Bethesda Games, if you know Obsidian Games, like,
Speaker 4: it's kind of just par for the course. Not much
Speaker 4: of that here at all. Really, this feels like a
Speaker 4: very polished product on PS five pro It's I there
Speaker 4: was a mode I used that was a smooth sixty
Speaker 4: f yes with an upbres resolution, gorgeous. Game did not
Speaker 4: feel jinky at all, and yeah, felt great, played great,
Speaker 4: looks great. I know some people don't like the art
Speaker 4: style as much, which is something I'm learning as we
Speaker 4: post coverage from our cover story trip. I guess people
Speaker 4: don't really love the art style too much. It is
Speaker 4: pretty outlandish, but I like it. Not a reason to
Speaker 4: not play the game, though. If you don't like the
Speaker 4: art style, There's so much happening here that I think
Speaker 4: anybody who likes RPG should check it out. But yeah,
Speaker 4: eight point seventy five out of ten Obsidians my favorite
Speaker 4: Obsidian game yet easily love it.
Speaker 1: I will say, not the best steam Deck game, some
Speaker 1: of the anteriors. I did the tutorial area on steam Deck,
Speaker 1: and then I did some open world on steam Deck,
Speaker 1: and once you get to the open world stuff, steam
Speaker 1: Deck kind of falls apart, unfortunately. Verified It's like.
Speaker 3: We noticed you like playing speed that games, so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, bummer. But it's definitely one of those things that
Speaker 1: I'm like, maybe maybe I think about getting one of
Speaker 1: those Xbox Allies.
Speaker 4: A little bit better.
Speaker 1: I mean, I could also play a lot of things
Speaker 1: with windows, so I'm like, oh man, yeah, yeah, well cool.
Speaker 1: That is our discussion on the outer worlds too, Charles.
Speaker 1: Speaking of kind of narrative games and choices, You've been
Speaker 1: playing Dispatch, which is a game about you playing a
Speaker 1: dispatcher who sends heroes, rehabilitated heroes to crime scenes to
Speaker 1: like help people. Is that correct?
Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, so Dispatch is it's from ad Hoc Studio,
Speaker 2: which is some people that used to work at Telltale
Speaker 2: and they have basically they've basically made a new Telltale game.
Speaker 2: I don't know what Telltale they like left and came back.
Speaker 2: I honestly didn't really keep track of all the.
Speaker 3: Ins and out they're making The Wolf among Us two
Speaker 3: somewhere anyways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is this is like the first first
Speaker 2: one of these types of games that we've had in
Speaker 2: a really long time. And yeah, I've done I've done
Speaker 2: the first four episodes and it's very good. It's like
Speaker 2: the acting is very good, the script is very good,
Speaker 2: the animation is gorgeous. It's the way it works is
Speaker 2: you're essentially watching an animated, an adult animated superhero show.
Speaker 2: So I think like an Invincible or like an animated
Speaker 2: The Boys or something, right.
Speaker 3: Which is how this game started originally, right like it
Speaker 3: was gonna be like a animated show.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't They wouldn't tell me what streaming that I did.
Speaker 2: I did a feature on them a couple issues back.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't tell me what streaming service it was. My
Speaker 2: guess is it was Netflix, because Netflix had a bunch
Speaker 2: of like choice based narrative of stuff on there for
Speaker 2: a minute. But they were just making a superhero workplace
Speaker 2: comedy where you could like pick different dialogue options and
Speaker 2: it's going to be interactive. And then when that fell
Speaker 2: through because of COVID, I think they had to just pivoted.
Speaker 2: They're like, we'll just make another game, and yeah, you're
Speaker 2: essentially watching the show. And then as moments where dialogue
Speaker 2: choices come up, you'll see them pop up on screen,
Speaker 2: and then there's a little timer that's counting down and
Speaker 2: you'll get to press whatever dialogue option. But it's extremely seamless,
Speaker 2: to the point where my partner was she was sitting
Speaker 2: on the couch next to me and she's playing Haiti's
Speaker 2: two I think on switch to and wasn't looking up
Speaker 2: at the screen and didn't understand that I She was like,
Speaker 2: this is a really long cut scene. It's weird that
Speaker 2: you haven't gotten to play the game yet, but it's
Speaker 2: so smooth and seamless that like you just wouldn't even
Speaker 2: know that you're playing a game, and all the dialogue
Speaker 2: options are very natural. It comes very easily. Also, I said,
Speaker 2: I said Invincible in the Boys it is adult. There's like, uh,
Speaker 2: this is two for two in games. I wasn't expecting
Speaker 2: to have nudity that have more nudity than you'd think
Speaker 2: they have, the first one being Baby Steps. Of course,
Speaker 2: this one's not as extreme as Baby Steps, but like
Speaker 2: one of the opening sequences, there's like a super villain
Speaker 2: who's like kind of naked and there's a lot of
Speaker 2: swearing and there's blood and it's I I don't know,
Speaker 2: I like it. I think it's a it's kind of.
Speaker 1: Like Charles likes nudity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Nudity Games twenty five.
Speaker 3: In terms of the violence does any does it even
Speaker 3: approach invincible, because I feel like that's kind of in
Speaker 3: its own class.
Speaker 2: No, it's it's not. It's not gory. It's just as okay,
Speaker 2: I would say. I also, the parts I've seen so
Speaker 2: far haven't been extremely combat heavy. I was just also
Speaker 2: due to the nature of the game. But it's it's
Speaker 2: very much I don't know, yeah, yeah, uh the So
Speaker 2: that's part of the game is you're watching these things,
Speaker 2: you're interacting. A main character is Robert Robertson. He was
Speaker 2: a hero named Meccha Man and just kind of like
Speaker 2: an Ironman type guy. But his suit gets destroyed and
Speaker 2: he like, he's not a billionaire like Tony Stark would be.
Speaker 2: He doesn't like run a company. He's just is Mecamn
Speaker 2: like full time. So when his suit gets fully destroyed,
Speaker 2: he's like, I don't have any money. I can't remake
Speaker 2: the suit. And he gets contacted by SDM, which is
Speaker 2: a superhero dispatch network, and they're like, hey, if you
Speaker 2: come work for us, we have a bunch of like
Speaker 2: former heroes that like can't do work anymore. They work
Speaker 2: in our office. We might be able to fund a
Speaker 2: new Meca Man suit because you're like good for the
Speaker 2: world or whatever, And so then part of the game
Speaker 2: plays that interact the story element. The other part is
Speaker 2: this like interesting kind of strategy game. So you have
Speaker 2: like a map of your like section of the city,
Speaker 2: and you'll see little events pop up around the map.
Speaker 2: And you have a roster of different super villains turned
Speaker 2: heroes that are basically getting like rehabilitated in society and
Speaker 2: this is like their chance to like have a stable
Speaker 2: job and maybe do hero work at some point. And
Speaker 2: they each have like different stats, so you can and
Speaker 2: be like, well, this person's really good at speech, but
Speaker 2: this person's really good fighting. And the instances that come
Speaker 2: up are very varied, so it'll be like, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a robbery, and it'll give you little keywords of
Speaker 2: like the bandage is fast, so you're like, okay, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna do someone has high mobility, but also be stupid
Speaker 2: things of like there's a cat stuck in a tree,
Speaker 2: someone needs to coax it down. I'm like, all right,
Speaker 2: that would be a speech thing. Or someone needs to
Speaker 2: figure out how to get these cars at a gridlock. Okay,
Speaker 2: that would be like an intelligence thing. And each have
Speaker 2: different like modifiers and abilities like one of them Sonar's
Speaker 2: he's he's a literal batman. He's like got like a
Speaker 2: human body with like the head of a bat and
Speaker 2: he has like a normal form and like a feral form.
Speaker 2: So every time you send him out, his charisma and
Speaker 2: intelligent swap with his like combat and health. So it
Speaker 2: goes back and forth depending on what it is. So
Speaker 2: when you're leveling him up, you can just put all
Speaker 2: his points into one of those stats and then if
Speaker 2: the relevant thing comes up, you're like, well, he's really
Speaker 2: good at this stuff. Just you have to hope he's
Speaker 2: in the right form. And Yeah, so that that part
Speaker 2: of the game, I was like, I was in it
Speaker 2: for the story, isn't it for the acting performances. I
Speaker 2: was like surprised by how fun. I also thought the
Speaker 2: game was in just like strategy element.
Speaker 1: That's cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's very seamless. I played the demo Steam Next
Speaker 4: Fester this year. Something that I really enjoyed that you've
Speaker 4: kind of touched on is how seamless it is. It's
Speaker 4: not like a Telltale game where they'd be like, what
Speaker 4: should we do and then they give you time and
Speaker 4: everyone's just kind of paused. Like I don't know how
Speaker 4: they did it, but like when you pick the dialogue option,
Speaker 4: you can't see the seams of oh they're swapping in
Speaker 4: this cut scene or this vo like it seems it's
Speaker 4: really really impressive. I you mentioned Invincibler. I wish I
Speaker 4: wish Invincible looked as good as this game. This game
Speaker 4: the animation is so pretty, it's awesome.
Speaker 2: Like we talk about games with good writing, and there's
Speaker 2: uh as as people who play a lot of games,
Speaker 2: we do have a sense of of like this game
Speaker 2: has good writing, and that's often like for a game,
Speaker 2: like we're thinking of writing in terms of how you're
Speaker 2: interacting with stuff or I don't know, there's all these
Speaker 2: like caveats you have to have. Dispatch is a very
Speaker 2: well written thing, Like it's it's as good as a
Speaker 2: good TV show would be, Like this should be if
Speaker 2: this was a show, I would be like this should
Speaker 2: be nominated for Emmy's Like it's just really really good writing.
Speaker 2: And then when you when you're selecting stuff, also I
Speaker 2: should mention it it's you feel your choices really have consequences.
Speaker 2: They have I have like really tangible effects that I've
Speaker 2: done and I can't talk about all the things, especially
Speaker 2: in like chapters three and four, which I can say
Speaker 2: I've played but they don't want to spoil it all obviously,
Speaker 2: But there's stuff where like I'm making the decision here
Speaker 2: and it's it's not like I wasn't on the podcast
Speaker 2: last week talk about blood Lines Too, but I reviewed
Speaker 2: that and that was a game that, like for everything
Speaker 2: Wes was saying about Outer Worlds two's reactivity, I was like,
Speaker 2: there's not there's a very non reactive game in blood
Speaker 2: Lines Too. Dispatch is very react and stuff comes back
Speaker 2: in ways that you're not expecting. When you make these
Speaker 2: big decisions, they're treated as big decisions, they're built up appropriately,
Speaker 2: and then when you make the choice, I will say,
Speaker 2: it does slow down with like bigger stuff where it's like,
Speaker 2: all right, it's your call, man, and then you'll have
Speaker 2: a longer timer when it's like, you know, there's gonna
Speaker 2: be a thing that has a lot of consequences. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I'm already like four episodes in already thinking
Speaker 2: like wow, I kind of already want to start a
Speaker 2: new save file and just do the opposite choices of
Speaker 2: a lot of the stuff I made because it's not.
Speaker 2: It's not necessarily like and there is stuff where like
Speaker 2: I can be a nice person or a bad person,
Speaker 2: or like I can be a jerk or whatever, but
Speaker 2: there's a lot of other stuff where it's like I'm
Speaker 2: kind of just making an arbitrary decision of like which
Speaker 2: person I like here, which decision I want to make here?
Speaker 2: And I could have easily gone the other way.
Speaker 1: How many episodes in total? Is it five? Six?
Speaker 2: There'll be eight episodes total, eight, and it'll be we're
Speaker 2: getting two every week. So two came out day of
Speaker 2: recording on Wednesday, the twenty second, and then there's two
Speaker 2: more on the twenty ninth, two more the week after that,
Speaker 2: and then the last two episodes come out on November twelfth.
Speaker 3: How how long is an episode?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: Is it like TV length? Like an hour?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's probably about an hour. I think it's it
Speaker 2: could be a little bit longer depending on how long
Speaker 2: you're like pausing in menus during like the strategy stuff.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's about now, so pretty similar to like
Speaker 1: an older Telltale game, you know, yeah, like those are
Speaker 1: about the same, you know, one to two hours.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: How do you feel about the episodic because I feel
Speaker 4: like a lot of devs that did that kind of
Speaker 4: we still get episodic, but it's like you can have
Speaker 4: all the episodes at once, so you get the structure,
Speaker 4: but you don't have to wait. They are very purposefully
Speaker 4: being like, no, we want you to wait every week.
Speaker 4: How do you feel about that?
Speaker 2: I I generally I don't really like it. I think
Speaker 2: I think the way they structure in episodes is really
Speaker 2: good and smart, like I like I especially like being
Speaker 2: like at the end of the episode, you kind of
Speaker 2: get a recap of all the choices you've made and
Speaker 2: how they are relative to other people's choices. I do
Speaker 2: like that, and I like that there's clean spots where
Speaker 2: you can just be like I'm gonna be done for
Speaker 2: a day, or I'll just play an episode today, but
Speaker 2: I'm not. It's it's also hard for us because we
Speaker 2: play a lot of games, like for work. It's really
Speaker 2: hard for me to play a little bit of something
Speaker 2: and then be told to come back every week for
Speaker 2: a month or so. But I think it's to each
Speaker 2: their own. That's kind of how I feel about a
Speaker 2: lot of TV these days. Of like if a show
Speaker 2: comes out and it's just the first episode, I'll usually
Speaker 2: watch the first episode and then kind of forget about
Speaker 2: it because I'm getting into other routines of stuff.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it sounds like Dispatches. If you weren't reviewing
Speaker 4: it for work, you'd still probably return each week.
Speaker 2: You think, Oh yeah, I think quality wise, it's definitely
Speaker 2: worth returning for. But I did get to the end
Speaker 2: of episode four and I was like, dang it.
Speaker 1: What's like to do the whole thing?
Speaker 4: What's the I guess without spoiling much, like, what's the
Speaker 4: overarching like what is the narrative building towards because in
Speaker 4: the demo I didn't get a sense of that. It
Speaker 4: was just guy down on his luck. Here's your new job,
Speaker 4: Like where where are they? What are what are they?
Speaker 4: Where are they going with that?
Speaker 2: So it's uh, the main thing I would say is
Speaker 2: there wait, sorry, I'll pause for a second. Are you
Speaker 2: guys still there? It's like really freezing up on my end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, weird.
Speaker 4: Clapping for It's like it's weird.
Speaker 3: It doesn't like it's either any individual person. It's like
Speaker 3: it's just discord.
Speaker 1: Yeah you guys, discord. Yeah, everybody keep recording. Yeah, mm hmmm,
Speaker 1: let's keep recording and everybody disconnect and reconnect.
Speaker 2: Disconnect now.
Speaker 7: Yep, h okay, that seems to have worked.
Speaker 1: Yep. Everybody's still recording.
Speaker 2: Yep, yes, okay, cook much better.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's weird.
Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah, So, uh what is it building towards? I
Speaker 2: would say there's there's a few.
Speaker 4: One do you think I need to reask that? Do
Speaker 4: you know if that park got fucked up?
Speaker 2: I think I think it because it's our individual recordings.
Speaker 2: It's probably fine because you I think you finished it properly.
Speaker 2: I was just waiting for everything above.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 6: Sorry, yeah, no, you're fine.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah. So so there's there's a few thread lines
Speaker 2: that's building up. One is there's like, uh, depending on
Speaker 2: how you want to play it, there is kind of
Speaker 2: like a romance thing that's kind of foreshadowed in the
Speaker 2: very beginning. There's some options there, like it's not necessarily
Speaker 2: like you're locked into one person. And then there's obviously
Speaker 2: the overarching thing of you're trying to get your suit back.
Speaker 2: So there is like progressive stuff of like he's trying
Speaker 2: out new stuff, he's got a guy that's helping him
Speaker 2: with things, and you're seeing like the progress of that
Speaker 2: and they haven't said it, and this is not a
Speaker 2: spoiler from a later episode that we haven't gotten because
Speaker 2: I haven't seen it yet. But Shroud is like the guy. Uh,
Speaker 2: he's like the big bad essentially. I imagine we're fate we're
Speaker 2: ending up towards some confrontation with him. Also, because I
Speaker 2: don't think i've heard him talk yet, and I know
Speaker 2: he's voiced by Matt Mercer, and I'm like, we're not
Speaker 2: gonna have Matt Mercer voice this guy and not give
Speaker 2: him any lines.
Speaker 4: I thought you meant Shroud, uh Streamer or whatever. I
Speaker 4: don't know. I know that name because this game does
Speaker 4: have like names like that in thescast, and I was like, Oh,
Speaker 4: that's cool that that guy is gonna be the big
Speaker 4: bad I guess, but Matt Mercer makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will say to that. To that extent, I
Speaker 2: did interview a bunch of people from the cast. We'll
Speaker 2: have clips going up this week. I have a piece
Speaker 2: that went up. I interviewed Aaron Paul about the game
Speaker 2: that was really interesting. But it's yeah, it's weird, Like
Speaker 2: you've got like your class like Laura Bailey's in the game.
Speaker 2: You're like, yeah, of course, Laura Bailey will be in
Speaker 2: the game. Travis Willingham, who's married to Laura Bailey, also
Speaker 2: in the game. Matt Mercer. Of course, these are all
Speaker 2: critical role of people that do like every voice acting
Speaker 2: gig you'd imagine. And then there's like Jack Septic guy
Speaker 2: is just one of the guys. Uh, moist critical is
Speaker 2: just one of the guys. Thought squad on a musician?
Speaker 2: What was that?
Speaker 4: A lot of peers, fan of games, A lot of peers.
Speaker 2: Yes, uh, and yes, it's just just a lot of
Speaker 2: a lot of people. And Uh, it's a thing I
Speaker 2: think when I saw the lineup of the credits, Uh,
Speaker 2: kind of kind of feels like stunt casting to an extent,
Speaker 2: where which is to say, like we're casting someone for
Speaker 2: the name or their persona rather than like their performance.
Speaker 2: But there's not like I know who Jack Sceptic guy plays,
Speaker 2: because the guy is like very irish. There's not a
Speaker 2: moment in this where it's like that's just Jack Septic
Speaker 2: guy humor. They're just they just wanted to make references
Speaker 2: to his stuff. It's like, no, he's just one of
Speaker 2: the casts. And they all do really good jobs. And
Speaker 2: it's also very natural sounding dialogue. So it's I think
Speaker 2: it's very easy for someone that's like maybe not had
Speaker 2: a ton of voice acting experience to come in read
Speaker 2: the lines and make it sound natural.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, And I remember you asked them about the
Speaker 4: like stunt casting and a specifically Jack Septic guy and
Speaker 4: it wasn't wasn't somebody like during COVID. I just put
Speaker 4: him on background a lot while I was working and
Speaker 4: I was like writing this character, and sure enough I
Speaker 4: needed an Irish voice and Jack Septic work.
Speaker 2: It was that was that was her mooice critical where
Speaker 2: they like hit his streams on a lot and they're like,
Speaker 2: I just feel like his voice would fit for this character.
Speaker 2: They did, also, to their credit, say that like they
Speaker 2: didn't just cast everyone they reached out to. I think
Speaker 2: they reached out to people that probably didn't give good
Speaker 2: auditions or they didn't they didn't like the vibe.
Speaker 3: For Yeah, they didn't call me back, so they watched.
Speaker 2: A lot of super replay.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: The Another one was a thought Squad who's like a
Speaker 2: musician I hadn't heard of. She's the rapper and they
Speaker 2: found some more videos and like it, and in the
Speaker 2: my interview with her, something I really liked is. I
Speaker 2: asked people, I was like, what is there anything about
Speaker 2: dispatch or ad hocs, recording process the You're like, I
Speaker 2: wish more games were like this, and thought Squad was like, yeah, honestly,
Speaker 2: it's really cool that they like reached out to us
Speaker 2: and they like genuinely gave us a chance. There's not
Speaker 2: a reason they wouldn't they they could have just casted
Speaker 2: it normally, and instead they're like, we think this person
Speaker 2: would be a good fit for the role, and then
Speaker 2: gave them like a really good chance. And now they're
Speaker 2: like I thought Squad's like, yeah, I had never done
Speaker 2: a video game before. I'm not a huge gamer. I'm
Speaker 2: in this space now, and that's just like cool. And
Speaker 2: it's cool that it worked out too that it's not like, oh,
Speaker 2: they're giving them a try. It's like, no, that's a
Speaker 2: that's a real character. They're doing good, they're earnest good performance.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Awesome. Uh well, Marcus, we're gonna send it over to you.
Speaker 1: You reviewed Ninja Guide in four for us, and I'm
Speaker 1: really curious. I mean, we've had a lot of previews
Speaker 1: for this game, you know, we've of course it was
Speaker 1: on our cover story. Shay's talked about it a fair
Speaker 1: amount on the show with us uh and that as
Speaker 1: of you. But like you have beaten the game, now
Speaker 1: you've reviewed it, I'm very curious what what your thoughts are.
Speaker 3: Hey, were you Hyabusa's back baby? Sort of, he's there,
Speaker 3: he's in the background. He's not he's not the star
Speaker 3: of this game. They got a new guy at the Helm.
Speaker 3: His name's Yakimo. He's a really, uh cool looking ninja kid.
Speaker 3: He speaks like this a lot, like he's got a
Speaker 3: little bit of like a teenage Christian Bale batman kind
Speaker 3: of performance going on. Yeah, and uh, and he's kind
Speaker 3: of a he kind of is a representation of sort
Speaker 3: of like the different direction of the game in general,
Speaker 3: because one, this is not developed by Team Ninja. This
Speaker 3: is Platinum Games Latin, hen you might know from other
Speaker 3: great action series like ban Ata and Metal Gear Rising
Speaker 3: and whatnot. Vanquish, I'm glad that you said, Vanquish. We're
Speaker 3: gonna ignore wood West said, but yes, this game is
Speaker 3: a lot of fun. I'm a Ninja Guiden fan, especially
Speaker 3: to three D Ninja Guiden games that started in the
Speaker 3: two thousands, and I'm also a big Platinum Games fan,
Speaker 3: so this was like a like hearing this collaboration between
Speaker 3: Team Ninja Platinum Games, this was like, Oh, this is
Speaker 3: video game Christmas for style of actions sikos like myself,
Speaker 3: And I'm happy to report that it has worked out
Speaker 3: because this game is so much fun and it's also
Speaker 3: a little wild that maybe the best compliment I can
Speaker 3: give is that if you're a die hard three D
Speaker 3: Ninja Guiden fan, I would bet you wouldn't tell that
Speaker 3: this was a different developer at the helm because Platinum
Speaker 3: and granted had guidance from Team Ninja. But this feels
Speaker 3: like a proper Ninja guiding game like that doesn't feel
Speaker 3: necessarily like a Platinum game pretending to be Ninja Guiden.
Speaker 3: Like the physics and just like the tight control that
Speaker 3: made the three D Ninja Guy game so good, like
Speaker 3: all of that is here, as well as the brutal
Speaker 3: difficulty that the series is rather infamous for, like the
Speaker 3: three D Ninja guid in Games into two thousand, Like
Speaker 3: those were the souls likes before souls likes became a thing,
Speaker 3: Like those were if you wanted to have gamer creds,
Speaker 3: so to speak, you talked about like, oh I beat
Speaker 3: Ninja guy in one and two or and I like
Speaker 3: one hundred percent of it in whatever, and yeah, no problem,
Speaker 3: Like that was like legit impressive at the time, and
Speaker 3: this game is challenging. It's tough. It's like, you know,
Speaker 3: the average grunt enemy can tear you to pieces unless
Speaker 3: you're on your game, and that's what makes it so
Speaker 3: much fun. So it's sort of like the general like
Speaker 3: plot premise is that you're playing this new ninja Yakama
Speaker 3: who's part of the Raven Clan, which is like an
Speaker 3: it's part of the Higabusa clan, but it's sort of
Speaker 3: like a like a more secretive kind yeah, like kind
Speaker 3: of like they're like the Black Ops branch of the
Speaker 3: high Abusa Clan, where like nobody knows about them that
Speaker 3: and they kind of just do sort of like shady
Speaker 3: wetwork kind of missions, like the stuff that, yeah, the
Speaker 3: proper Hyabusa clan would never kind of touch. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, we'll do some like political assassinations or whatnot
Speaker 3: if you pay us enough. Basically, you know, regardless of
Speaker 3: whether or not it's morally ethical or not. And so
Speaker 3: Yakimo's sort of like seen as like the rising star
Speaker 3: in this clan, and he's on a mission to kill
Speaker 3: this priestess who is housing the dormant spirit of the
Speaker 3: Dark Dragon, which is the recurring antagonist in the Ninja
Speaker 3: Guiding games that Reuhyabusa has defeated countless times but has
Speaker 3: never truly killed. He's kind of like Dracula in Castlevania,
Speaker 3: where like sooner or later he's gonna come back. So
Speaker 3: Yakimo following sort of this prophecy of the Raven clan, like, oh,
Speaker 3: you got to kill the priestess and that'll take care
Speaker 3: of it. And you get to the priestess who winds
Speaker 3: up being this very very surprisingly kind of like bubbly
Speaker 3: and charismatic and very like like flirty and teased like teases.
Speaker 3: Yakamo kind of says like, hey, you know that prophecy,
Speaker 3: it's actually not really what you think it is. What
Speaker 3: you should really do is let me go. And also
Speaker 3: we need to release the dragon because then you can
Speaker 3: purify it and that will end it for good because
Speaker 3: killing me, he's just gonna come back again, and like
Speaker 3: another priestess, so why why even keep doing that? And
Speaker 3: their relationship and kind of one of my biggest criticism
Speaker 3: of the game is the story Ninja got In games.
Speaker 3: I've never had good stories in my opinion, they're just
Speaker 3: they are just like anime action bs and I.
Speaker 1: Like smashing you know, action figures together. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of the storyline.
Speaker 3: It's like, Oh, I got my cool, hot ninja boy
Speaker 3: and my hot priestest girl and they're gonna go on
Speaker 3: an adventure to kill a dragon. And that's my excuse
Speaker 3: for why I'm gonna like murder like twelve hundred other
Speaker 3: people basically, and that's pretty much all it needs to be, honestly,
Speaker 3: Like the fact that like there's there's no chemistry between
Speaker 3: these two, like they kind of almost have like like
Speaker 3: a cloud Earth kind of relationship of like, oh, the
Speaker 3: gruff guy with the really kind of like nice flirty
Speaker 3: girl that's kind of trying to penetrate his shell. But
Speaker 3: it's even like it's nowhere near as explored because one
Speaker 3: you almost spend most of your time communicating with her
Speaker 3: over your comms, like she's not physically with Yakimo for
Speaker 3: most of the adventure, but there's moments where there is
Speaker 3: like there is a hilariously just like unearned sense of
Speaker 3: like ore tease of a romance between the two where
Speaker 3: you're like, why are we doing this? Like they haven't
Speaker 3: even come close to like they merely know each other,
Speaker 3: but it feels like obligatory, like whoa, these guys have
Speaker 3: to kind of have something, and it's like no, no,
Speaker 3: they don't.
Speaker 4: Oh, Marcus, I just want to let you know what
Speaker 4: you have brought on yourself. You said the words, there's
Speaker 4: not much chemistry between the two of them, like Cloud
Speaker 4: and Earth. There is a lot of people on the
Speaker 4: internet that would.
Speaker 6: Disagree with you.
Speaker 3: Chemistry.
Speaker 4: You're correct, they don't. It's it's all about on TIFA.
Speaker 4: But I just wanted to warn you for the comments
Speaker 4: that was surely becoming.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is just excuse for West to come out
Speaker 2: as a TIFA stand.
Speaker 3: It depends on you who you took on that date
Speaker 3: during the Golden Saucer. You know, maybe you can disagree there,
Speaker 3: but but yes, all of that is irrelevant almost because
Speaker 3: the action in this game is so damn good. So
Speaker 3: Yakimo's got four different weapons that you gain. They're all
Speaker 3: kind of like demonic arms. He's got like his starting
Speaker 3: kind of dual katanas you get the staff. He has
Speaker 3: these like this sort of like a rapier that transforms
Speaker 3: into a drill when you use these Blood Raven attacks,
Speaker 3: which is like a new mechanic for Ninja Guide, and
Speaker 3: where if you hold the left trigger while you are attacking,
Speaker 3: and as long as you have enough of a meter field,
Speaker 3: you'll basically do like stronger variations of your normal attack,
Speaker 3: Like they're a little slower, but they transformed the weapon
Speaker 3: into a sort of like almost a demonic version of
Speaker 3: yourself to where like, oh, a Blood Raven attack with
Speaker 3: your swords makes the sword like extra long and like
Speaker 3: crimson red, and you'll just like deal a ton of
Speaker 3: damage to more enemies at once. I mentioned like the
Speaker 3: the rapier can turn into this drill that you can
Speaker 3: just like toss guys in the air and then just
Speaker 3: drill them apart. Like the staff turns into a big
Speaker 3: hammer that you can smash dudes apart with, and like
Speaker 3: there's a the enemies have certain attacks and defenses that
Speaker 3: can only be broken by using the Blood Raven attacks.
Speaker 3: So like the gameplay is already pretty fast paced and
Speaker 3: a lot about like within like nanoseconds trying to react
Speaker 3: to all these attacks coming after you, but the blood
Speaker 3: Raven attacks kind of make you study the enemies even
Speaker 3: more because now you're trying to watch, like, Okay, this
Speaker 3: guy's eyes are glowing red and he's got like a
Speaker 3: little glow. I can only break through that by using
Speaker 3: my blood Raven attack that I have to weave into
Speaker 3: this combo string that I'm already doing right now to
Speaker 3: like stun him, and then you can go in there
Speaker 3: and deal with with more damage and it feels awesome
Speaker 3: like this game, Like the best thing about this style
Speaker 3: is action genre when it's done right, is that it
Speaker 3: makes you feel like the coolest guy that has ever
Speaker 3: picked up a controller. Like everything you do, you're just like, man,
Speaker 3: no one looks as cool as me. Did you see
Speaker 3: that like ten hit combo that I popped the guy
Speaker 3: in the air, juggled them, then did a Zuma drop
Speaker 3: where it's just like a spinning pile driver basically like
Speaker 3: no one else could have done that, And like all
Speaker 3: the moves are easy to execute but also still have
Speaker 3: enough like kind of like technical aspect to them, because
Speaker 3: it's kind of like fighting game inputs, but it's all
Speaker 3: like simple fighting game inputs, So just like, oh up,
Speaker 3: doown X does this one attack or quarter like they
Speaker 3: have quarter circles like you do, Like quarter circle, X
Speaker 3: will do like this spinning move that just like he'll
Speaker 3: like spin around and hit like a bunch of enemies
Speaker 3: within a radius, and then like your standard like you know,
Speaker 3: like XX triangle whatever. They have like a nice challenge
Speaker 3: room that they present you constantly when you buy new moves,
Speaker 3: so you can kind of try out everything. But I
Speaker 3: also recommend not feeling obligated to unlock every new move
Speaker 3: every time you have the opportunity to do so. I
Speaker 3: think it is smart to sort of like acclimate yourself
Speaker 3: with what you have, because you have a lot to
Speaker 3: work with at the start, and they throw a lot
Speaker 3: at you very quickly to where I think our video
Speaker 3: game mind's kind of like, oh, I should have this now,
Speaker 3: But then that's like another new input you need to use,
Speaker 3: and it's easy to just unlock a bunch of stuff
Speaker 3: in succession and forget that you even have it at
Speaker 3: your disposal. So I could if I could offer a
Speaker 3: pro tip to players, like just leave stuff available until
Speaker 3: you think you're ready to start adding to your arsenal,
Speaker 3: and I think you will have a better time, and
Speaker 3: will also find yourself using the different maneuvers because the
Speaker 3: game rewards kind of like smart implementation of your combos
Speaker 3: and different maneuvers. Because like I said, the game's hard,
Speaker 3: and they throw a lot of enemies at you. The
Speaker 3: enemy variety I think is a little I say, say
Speaker 3: a week, but it could be better. Like I think
Speaker 3: a lot of the encounters kind of as you move
Speaker 3: throughout the different worlds though, throw like a decent selection,
Speaker 3: but then it kind of remains that selection until you
Speaker 3: reach the next brand new area and y. And because
Speaker 3: the encounters can drag sometimes, which is with my other
Speaker 3: kind of criticism, like as fun as the combat is,
Speaker 3: like you, you will be tired playing this game, Like
Speaker 3: your hands will hurt. And I'm speaking from experience, and
Speaker 3: it's one of those times where I almost felt old
Speaker 3: of like, oh my god, please tell them I'm not
Speaker 3: aging out of this genre. But there were plenty of
Speaker 3: combat encounters where I've like, you know, playing ten fights straight,
Speaker 3: and because of how like on on the ball you
Speaker 3: need to be and how quickly you need to get
Speaker 3: these inputs in to keep up with everything around you,
Speaker 3: you will put the controller down and be like, oh
Speaker 3: my kind of almost achy, like if it was a
Speaker 3: cartoon character. I feel like smoke what coming out of
Speaker 3: my hands when I finished playing like a really long
Speaker 3: combat encounter. But like I mentioned before, like it all
Speaker 3: feels super good and it's so fun to play outside
Speaker 3: of battles. This is a very it's a throwbacky in
Speaker 3: the sense of like I think like Soul's likes have
Speaker 3: almost become the de facto action game at this point
Speaker 3: to and where players expect kind of like maybe medior
Speaker 3: exploration outside of battles, whereas this is very much like
Speaker 3: old school in Ninja Guided and kind of what stylish
Speaker 3: action games used to be of. You're just moving straight
Speaker 3: down largely linear corridors, and then occasionally you'll find like
Speaker 3: an alternate path that'll lead you to like a secret
Speaker 3: or a challenge room, or one of the very very
Speaker 3: boilerplate simple side quests that you can do, which it
Speaker 3: all boil down to, hey, can you kill like five
Speaker 3: of these enemies over here? And so it's like refreshing
Speaker 3: in that sense. But I think if you're looking for
Speaker 3: maybe something a little bit more robust, that could be
Speaker 3: maybe a little bit of a disappointment, And I think
Speaker 3: it just comes into like maybe your many your age,
Speaker 3: even like depending on when you got into action games.
Speaker 3: They don't really make action games like this anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and but I like I enjoyed it as an as
Speaker 3: an old person.
Speaker 4: Like it's been what like fifteen years since the last
Speaker 4: one or something.
Speaker 3: Since Ninja Guiden three. Yes, not since the last Ninja
Speaker 3: Guiding games. I mean we got Rage Bound this year
Speaker 3: and then The Black Remastered, but this is the first
Speaker 3: like mainline number game since three, which was twenty twelve.
Speaker 4: Does it feel kind of like an old Ninja Guiden
Speaker 4: but like for twenty twenty five or do you think
Speaker 4: that it feels more in line with like it could
Speaker 4: have come out a couple of years after three, uh
Speaker 4: and fit right in.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, that's an interesting question. I I don't know if
Speaker 3: this game is doing anything that I mean, if we're
Speaker 3: talking strictly technology, I mean, this game runs it like
Speaker 3: I think one if you have the display to do it,
Speaker 3: which is you know, insane. I mean it runs out
Speaker 3: of Smooth sixty on Xbox Series X, which is where
Speaker 3: I reviewed it. So like maybe in terms of the performance,
Speaker 3: I don't think you could get like this is good
Speaker 3: looking game I don't know if that's I feel like
Speaker 3: that might be lost in some of the discussions too,
Speaker 3: is how good this game looks Like the environments look good,
Speaker 3: the like it never stutters or like they're throwing so
Speaker 3: much at you, and it maintains that silky smooth just
Speaker 3: like fast paces. So and I think that does help
Speaker 3: with kind of selling the action. So I don't I
Speaker 3: think that aspect you couldn't have achieved, you know, into
Speaker 3: twenty tens. But in terms of the mechanics, I mean,
Speaker 3: there's nothing crazy about the mechanics, even though there's new
Speaker 3: stuff that couldn't have been done before. But I also
Speaker 3: don't think that's like a knock against it. I think
Speaker 3: that's sort of like something that maybe like I don't
Speaker 3: know who brought like the new ideas, like if it
Speaker 3: was all Platinum or if it was Team Ninja and
Speaker 3: Platinum together. So I don't want to pin it on like, oh,
Speaker 3: this would have happened if Platinum had stepped in, you know,
Speaker 3: because I don't. I don't really know. But it is
Speaker 3: like it's something that feels like it could come out today,
Speaker 3: but in the ways that I kind of mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: like it also feels like a throwback to like the
Speaker 3: stylist action Heyday in a good way. Yeah, Like it's
Speaker 3: fun the other the thing that disappoints me most about it, though,
Speaker 3: and it's funny because it's almost sort of like there's
Speaker 3: something serendipitous about this. So this is the fourth numbered
Speaker 3: Ninja Guiden game that is headed by Platinum. Platinum has
Speaker 3: lineage to Devil May Cry because you know, there was
Speaker 3: developers that left Platinum that worked on the Devil mc
Speaker 3: Cry games. The fourth Devil May Cry game also started
Speaker 3: to do protagonists, but also had Dante playable, but they
Speaker 3: it's funny how both Ninja Gayden For and Dil May
Speaker 3: Cry for handle the returning staple protagonists in the same
Speaker 3: bad way. Because Ninja Guiden four you play is for
Speaker 3: you eventually, but it's only for a handful of missions.
Speaker 3: In the latter have and all of his missions are
Speaker 3: just him going through the same stages you played through
Speaker 3: as Yakimo. They're like shorter variations of It sucks, but
Speaker 3: it is like the same content and you even refight
Speaker 3: the same bosses. And even though there is a narrative
Speaker 3: explanation for it that like makes sense, but it still
Speaker 3: doesn't make it, you know, any more exciting that like,
Speaker 3: oh that I already killed this admittedly really cool boss,
Speaker 3: but like you're just doing it again as Rio Hyabusa,
Speaker 3: who does play differently than Yakimo. And yeah, I've gotten
Speaker 3: flat for saying this, but Ryu is fun to use
Speaker 3: in this game, but I think Yaka is the most
Speaker 3: more fun, just because Yakomo has like the four different
Speaker 3: weapons you can cycle through, whereas Reu just has the
Speaker 3: Dragon sword and his Nimpo magic fun in his own way.
Speaker 3: But I just liked having the options of cycling through
Speaker 3: so many different weapons and creating these crazy combo strings
Speaker 3: with Yakimo actually can't really do with Reu, but yeah,
Speaker 3: it was. It was crazy how much this reminded me
Speaker 3: of Double Bay Cry for in the second half of Like, oh,
Speaker 3: you're running through this again as the series fab protagonist,
Speaker 3: but in the most boring way possible.
Speaker 1: Also, like who cares if there's narrative reason for it?
Speaker 1: If the narrative isn't good.
Speaker 3: That's like, oh, I understand why this is happening, but
Speaker 3: I still wish it wasn't happening. Yeah, So yeah, that's
Speaker 3: I think maybe that's probably the biggest bummer is just
Speaker 3: the reuse stuff, because like hearing that he was also
Speaker 3: playable was really exciting. And I think the fights against Reu,
Speaker 3: because you fight him a couple of times, like those
Speaker 3: are fun because it's like the you know, like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm fighting the guy that I've been in the last
Speaker 3: three games. I know what he can do, but also
Speaker 3: I get to know what it feels like to be
Speaker 3: on the other side of his sword because oh my god,
Speaker 3: he's super hard because he should be because he's the
Speaker 3: super ninja. So like the fights against him are more
Speaker 3: fun than actually playing through him, which is a bummer,
Speaker 3: but overall fun game. I love Ninja Gayding four. I
Speaker 3: think it's you know, it's a nice return to form
Speaker 3: after a Ninja guydon three you know famously was not
Speaker 3: very good and even with the Razor's Edge sort of
Speaker 3: like band aid that they did, it was still the
Speaker 3: worst of the three or at the time three ninja
Speaker 3: guy in games. Yeah, but you know, it's nice that,
Speaker 3: you know, or finally the series is back and it's
Speaker 3: finally kind of like back on a on better footing.
Speaker 3: And I hope we get like more games with Yakomo
Speaker 3: because it certainly seems like they have kind of laid
Speaker 3: the runway for a series starring him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thanks for kind of running that down. I
Speaker 1: think I don't know if I don't know if this
Speaker 1: is I'm also not a character action guy, so I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm gonna if I'm gonna swing this one.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Do you feel like you've gotten what you needed out
Speaker 3: of it just watching the footage, Like, do you feel
Speaker 3: like you need to play it because of how hard
Speaker 3: it is and it's it's pretty demanding, Like you're like,
Speaker 3: it's fun to just look at it and admire, But
Speaker 3: I don't know if I need to be the person
Speaker 3: doing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it definitely strikes me as like one of those
Speaker 1: games that I could pull up on Twitch and just
Speaker 1: like enjoying the background and like, oh, dang, that's a
Speaker 1: cool fight, you know that kind of thing. But I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily need to need to check it out myself.
Speaker 1: But I am happy for the Ninja Giden fans out
Speaker 1: there that there's like, finally, you know, a good one
Speaker 1: of those again to go and play. Yeah, and kind
Speaker 1: of there's you know, flaws.
Speaker 3: And like the last I'm pretty sure this is the
Speaker 3: last year of the Ninja game, right, I don't think.
Speaker 1: There's anything else after this, and yeah.
Speaker 3: So I think it kind of compleats like the streak
Speaker 3: of Like all of them are good. I think we
Speaker 3: can all agree.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think my favorite one has been Schanobi
Speaker 1: Art of Vengeance out of out of what's come out
Speaker 1: or actually no, probably rage Bound, Ninja Guiden, rage Bound,
Speaker 1: It's probably is really good. Yeah, if you're gonna play
Speaker 1: one Ninja guiding game, I feel like, what do you think?
Speaker 1: I feel like.
Speaker 3: There's so much it's hard because they're so.
Speaker 1: They are so different. Yeah, they are, I think.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're a Ninja Guyden fan, you should
Speaker 3: play both because you're you're eating real good this year,
Speaker 3: and even the Ninja Guy in two Black from January
Speaker 3: if you have a great remaster of a very good
Speaker 3: Ninja Guy in game. I don't know, Wes, I feel
Speaker 3: like we're gonna have to have that conversation. I mean
Speaker 3: I have.
Speaker 2: I think it's I.
Speaker 4: Feel like playing Ninja God in four and then you
Speaker 4: decide either Rage Bound or Shanoby, because Shanoby and Rage
Speaker 4: Bound are kind of doing the same thing in the
Speaker 4: sense that they're like two D action games, whereas yeah,
Speaker 4: rage Bound is so different from four other than like
Speaker 4: the fact that you're going to hear similar names and
Speaker 4: it's demons and.
Speaker 3: You also fight Reu Hai Busa at different points in
Speaker 3: both ka.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's gonna do it for that topic.
Speaker 1: Going to transition to our last topic before the interview
Speaker 1: with Samantha bay Art, I got a chance to go
Speaker 1: hands on with the season one content for Battlefield six.
Speaker 1: Uh So I got to check out like I got
Speaker 1: to check out a new sniper, which was really cool,
Speaker 1: but like the main I think the main draw for me,
Speaker 1: at least with two new maps. One is Blackwell Fields
Speaker 1: and one is Golden State. And Blackwell Fields is like
Speaker 1: very battlefield map, like you know, you're driving over and
Speaker 1: like if you hit like oil rigs, they'll like shoot
Speaker 1: oil into the air and like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff on fire, and you know, it's very very battlefield.
Speaker 1: And then Golden State is in this like idyllic you know,
Speaker 1: California neighborhood that's like really green and lush and like suburban.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they also both sound like Pearl Jam songs to
Speaker 3: me for some reason.
Speaker 1: That's funny. Yeah, they do, and I'm I really enjoy
Speaker 1: both maps. Actually, you know, sometimes DLC maps in in
Speaker 1: shooter games, they can be hit or missed. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like, especially when they launched so closely after after
Speaker 1: the main game, is like, oh, these weren't included in
Speaker 1: you know, it was a choice to include these later
Speaker 1: on rather than with like the base the base launch maps,
Speaker 1: and that could be good or bad sometimes depending on
Speaker 1: like confidence levels. But I think that this one, this
Speaker 1: drop of maps is really solid and is going to
Speaker 1: serve as like incentive to keep playing Battlefield six. I
Speaker 1: think these maps and stuff are dropping. It's at the
Speaker 1: twenty six the twenty eighth of October, so it's next week.
Speaker 1: I think it's the twenty eighth on Tuesday. And yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm really enjoying them. I think, you know, I
Speaker 1: have realized, like, as I've played Battlefield six more and more,
Speaker 1: I think I'm a tank guy. I I you know,
Speaker 1: I in the past, she always was like kind of infantry.
Speaker 1: I was sniper, you know, And now that I'm like
Speaker 1: playing Battlefield six, I'm realizing that, like, man, maybe I'm
Speaker 1: the vehicle guy, but not not the choppers, not the jets.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm just like, you know, oh.
Speaker 3: I'm a chopper guy, even though I have no right
Speaker 3: to be. I I crash it every time I've ever
Speaker 3: gotten into one.
Speaker 1: But I still, yeah, and that's why I'm not a chopper.
Speaker 1: What's really funny is the Golden State map. You can
Speaker 1: drive golf carts around and so you'll just see like
Speaker 1: helicopters crash into golf carts and it's really good. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the flow of the maps are really really great too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm really just enjoying Battlefield six. It's it's for sure
Speaker 1: gonna be on my top ten somewhere. It's really kind
Speaker 1: of doing it for me. And you know, as they
Speaker 1: continue to roll out, there's also more modes coming that
Speaker 1: I actually didn't get a chance to check out yet.
Speaker 3: Can you do private like matches like team on team stuff?
Speaker 1: Maybe through portal Battlefield Portal, but uh, there isn't like
Speaker 1: a easy like custom game straight from the menu or
Speaker 1: it's just you and your friends.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, like we should do like team
Speaker 3: GI against another outlet, like our squad, another squad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we would have to have like.
Speaker 3: H I don't know if I don't know if the
Speaker 3: game allowed that, but it's just it's just.
Speaker 1: We have to have like thirty two verse thirty two.
Speaker 3: You can't like four or five on five or does
Speaker 3: it have to be.
Speaker 1: The maps are I mean, we can do the infantry
Speaker 1: only maps, but if you're playing battle you want to
Speaker 1: do like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll get a bunch of XGI thirty two for
Speaker 3: game and four place like it's thirty two other people
Speaker 3: from a different outlet and it's easy.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Well, be sure to follow the guys here. Follow Charles
Speaker 1: at Chuck Duck three six five, Follow Marcus at Marcus
Speaker 1: Stewart seven. Wesley you can follow him at West of
Speaker 1: LeBlanc on Blue Sky or at a Underscore am Underscore
Speaker 1: Wesley on other places like Instagram, and you can follow
Speaker 1: me at It's van Aken. You'll find me on all
Speaker 1: the places that you can find me with that name.
Speaker 1: If you can't find me there, it's because I chose
Speaker 1: not to be there. Yeah, yeah, free. Will be sure
Speaker 1: to share the show with a friend if you don't mind,
Speaker 1: and of course pick up a game Informer magazine subscription.
Speaker 1: We just announced that Dragon Quest seven Reimagined is our
Speaker 1: next cover story, and it's fans are good. It was
Speaker 1: fucking cool. Yeah. Wes and I were walking around Japan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know why. Yeah, yeah, I've learned Wes is
Speaker 1: really good at them, and I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to be considerate in public places in Tokyo, where
Speaker 1: like Americans are very annoying in places like that, and
Speaker 1: I'm just like cracking up because Wes is whispering sayous
Speaker 1: way and it's just than me.
Speaker 4: That's why they love us tourists over there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, all right, We'll enjoy the interview everybody, and
Speaker 1: thank you Samantha Bayart for joining the show as well.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll see you next week. Enjoy the interview.
Speaker 2: Bye bye, Welcome back to the Game of Former show.
Speaker 2: I am your host right now, Charles Hart, and I'm
Speaker 2: joined by the one, the only, Samantha bay Art. How
Speaker 2: is it going, Samantha, I'm good.
Speaker 8: How are you?
Speaker 6: I'm great.
Speaker 2: Well, our audience is probably familiar with you, but I
Speaker 2: thought it'd be fun to do a little trivia icebreaker
Speaker 2: where I'm gonna set up some questions. They'll get a
Speaker 2: minute to answer in their heads, and then you'll tell
Speaker 2: me what the actual answer is, assuming you remember the role.
Speaker 8: So you say the best of my ability.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, in this little segment I've been Soft launching
Speaker 2: called g I auDA No, okay great. Uh so this
Speaker 2: breakthrough role also earned them a Breakthrough BAFT Award in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three.
Speaker 6: What game was that, four Samantha.
Speaker 8: It wasn't an award, It's like an honorary thing. I
Speaker 8: want to be very clear.
Speaker 2: That's fair. That's fair, that's fair.
Speaker 8: It was for a game called The Excavation of Hobbes.
Speaker 2: Barrow Beautiful Smith is also the and correct me if
Speaker 2: I'm wrong on any of these. By the way, this
Speaker 2: is all Internet source stuff. You're that you're the first hands.
Speaker 8: Yes, Google A.
Speaker 2: Smytha is the voice of a player character in a
Speaker 2: from Soft game. Which one is it? I'll give you
Speaker 2: a hint. It is not secure. Nothing not. I don't
Speaker 2: think anyone's going to guess it was just like.
Speaker 8: I don't think I'm going to guess it either. I
Speaker 8: have no idea.
Speaker 6: Oh, Demon Souls is that from Soft?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've got on my CV, I've got Sony and
Speaker 5: Blue Point.
Speaker 8: I guess it's a remaster.
Speaker 5: So it was localization, all right, So I didn't get
Speaker 5: from software on my contract sorry.
Speaker 2: So far, of the of the five questions, I, as
Speaker 2: the trivia writer, have gotten two of them wrong. Let's
Speaker 2: see if I can go five for five.
Speaker 8: But you can write this wrong. I believe in you, Charles.
Speaker 2: Well, we'll see. Gina Lestrade a scrappy street orphan is
Speaker 2: another Cemantha Barrick performance. Which visual courtroom no Which courtroom
Speaker 2: visual novel? Does she appear in?
Speaker 6: Me?
Speaker 2: And I messed up my own question. Dang it again?
Speaker 8: Do it again?
Speaker 6: Say what it is.
Speaker 2: I'll give up on that one. The next one would
Speaker 2: be good.
Speaker 8: That is the Attorney Chronicles, Yes, which I went, He's guilty,
Speaker 8: you ana, And that was kind of it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I was going to add.
Speaker 8: Something to people, so I'll take it.
Speaker 2: Have you played the game I have?
Speaker 8: But I haven't got to my bit yet?
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, yeah, which makes sense, super.
Speaker 5: Chill, and I need to have the time to just
Speaker 5: sit and read a lot. But yeah, it's really entertaining.
Speaker 5: It's not normally sort of game I play, so I
Speaker 5: actually really enjoyed what I've played so far.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: Question four. They are also appear as in Absalom, which
Speaker 2: is a beat them up roguelike that came out recently.
Speaker 6: What characters do they play there?
Speaker 5: TikTok TikTok, TikTok in absolom, I play cider. Cider wonderful
Speaker 5: has a telescopic arm, and that is one of the
Speaker 5: best things ever.
Speaker 2: Cider is like, well, we'll talk, we'll talk about before
Speaker 2: I got a And then finally, which beloved Samantha Barrett
Speaker 2: character got them nominated for a Bathta and later appeared
Speaker 2: in a game in former packing poster.
Speaker 5: Samantha, I assume that's Karlac. Oh good, I got that right.
Speaker 5: I haven't seen the poster before. Now, very cool.
Speaker 2: I think it's a It might also be on the
Speaker 2: inside spread of that issue. I'd have to double check.
Speaker 6: We're very excited about that.
Speaker 2: So okay, thank you, thank you for thank you for
Speaker 2: joining Bingham Sitting through that.
Speaker 8: That was I remember some of these roles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently it's g I I Charles ont to
Speaker 2: know better.
Speaker 8: Uh, it's great. I was being picky, thank you.
Speaker 2: Oh no, you should and you should be picky. You
Speaker 2: should be picky because then someone someone takes a random
Speaker 2: podcast clip and they're like, well this.
Speaker 5: Is that's actually very true, that's fair them after apparently
Speaker 5: for that's that didn't happen.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, just like chilling, what games, if anything
Speaker 2: have you been playing lately?
Speaker 6: Is anything?
Speaker 8: Absolutely?
Speaker 5: Because I like to see what the work, how the
Speaker 5: work I've done fits into the larger efforts of everybody
Speaker 5: that's contributed. So absolute, good fun, very addictive because you know,
Speaker 5: it's like that Roaguelike Arcade kind of beat them up
Speaker 5: thing going on and fading Echo as well, has just
Speaker 5: come out of alpha play testing.
Speaker 8: We'll talk about that, don't you worry.
Speaker 5: But they've got no nd A policy so I can
Speaker 5: talk about In fact, it's the little character here she
Speaker 5: turns into water now and it's a little fiery character
Speaker 5: and a watery character.
Speaker 8: So that's fun. I'm going to work on the other
Speaker 8: two elements in time. It's a whole thing.
Speaker 5: It's like a concept album. Yeah, really cool French studio
Speaker 5: called New Tales, and we're hoping it'll be out early
Speaker 5: next year. It should be out before GTA six, otherwise
Speaker 5: we're going to be in trouble, so let's hope. But
Speaker 5: we've also got Laura Bailey and Matt Mercer in it
Speaker 5: is supporting Roles and Jasmine bulla if you know your
Speaker 5: TTRPGs is writing it and acting in it too, So
Speaker 5: it's based on a TTRPG actually before it was a
Speaker 5: video game. So unpublished so far, but I guess if
Speaker 5: it does well, we'll actually get to see it because
Speaker 5: apparently in this game you can see about five percent
Speaker 5: of echo.
Speaker 8: There's much more to be discovered.
Speaker 2: Well that's so exciting. Well, now I'm excited about this game.
Speaker 2: I don't even know about how how long have you
Speaker 2: been working on that project? Like how long?
Speaker 8: I know.
Speaker 2: It's a weird thing when you work on a game,
Speaker 2: because you'll like record your stuff and then some amount
Speaker 2: of time might pass and then there'll be.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what actors love to do is count it from
Speaker 5: the day they signed the contract, and then it sounds
Speaker 5: like they work solidly for years on it, and that's
Speaker 5: not the truth, right, it will be unless like it's
Speaker 5: it will be quite obvious if they have, but it's unusual.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you're right. It is a sort of on and
Speaker 8: off thing.
Speaker 5: So I think it was about six months ago we
Speaker 5: signed contracts, but he only started doing the recordings like
Speaker 5: last month because we wanted to get them out for
Speaker 5: this play test. And I've got a couple more sessions
Speaker 5: coming up as well, So yeah, I did two sessions.
Speaker 5: Essentially is the answer a bit a session being four
Speaker 5: hours long, so you can have lots of fun trying
Speaker 5: to work out lengths of time on things.
Speaker 8: I don't like this whole.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I spent two years on the project because it
Speaker 5: insinuates that you were on some sort of salary. I
Speaker 5: wish that was a thing we got in games.
Speaker 6: But it's not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what kind of role does your character play in
Speaker 2: this game?
Speaker 5: So she's the main player character. It's action adventure, very
Speaker 5: bright anime style. They're calling it a desert pun and
Speaker 5: she lives in a place that's very short on resources,
Speaker 5: and very quickly it becomes multiverse, and every different universe
Speaker 5: looks completely different.
Speaker 8: So as she steps in, everything changes around her. She changes.
Speaker 5: She can change into water, and what's lovely about the
Speaker 5: gameplay is it's elemental and it's really fluid and responsive.
Speaker 8: So if the water.
Speaker 5: Blob comes into contact with lava, then she turns into
Speaker 5: steam if she come and she can use that to
Speaker 5: petrify enemies and you know, weaken them with different substances.
Speaker 5: So she might run into what we call waste in
Speaker 5: the game, she can jump higher and it's puzzle solving
Speaker 5: as well. It's really pretty, it's really dynamic and fun.
Speaker 5: Trailers pretty informative, and the what's their Instagram handle is
Speaker 5: Fading Echo Game and they post loads of behind the
Speaker 5: scenes staff as I have been.
Speaker 8: As well as well as gameplay and all that. You
Speaker 8: can check it out.
Speaker 2: It's really cool, awesome with this character compared to like,
Speaker 2: there's always the thing I'm curious about actors. Do you
Speaker 2: feel like you have there's a type of character or
Speaker 2: a personality or something about it where you're like, that's
Speaker 2: a character I want to play, or do you like
Speaker 2: doing a lot of very different stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've been saying to folks that I'm in my
Speaker 5: nineteen nineties Gary Oldman era, which is a very cool
Speaker 5: era to be.
Speaker 8: It's my favorite Gary Oldman era.
Speaker 5: It's kind of why I got into acting, because he
Speaker 5: just got to do everything back then and that's what
Speaker 5: he got to transform as a more character actor.
Speaker 8: But he was playing leading roles.
Speaker 5: And that's kind of what's happening because if I were
Speaker 5: to be typecast, like if you look at my whole
Speaker 5: career theater and audio as.
Speaker 8: Well, it would not be Karlak, right, that'd be the
Speaker 8: last thing.
Speaker 5: So that's quite interesting when that does happen, people think
Speaker 5: that's what I want to play, but maybe badasses, you know.
Speaker 5: I grew up on Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley and
Speaker 5: Shep you know, and those are those sort of roles,
Speaker 5: and particularly in video games, because the main player characters
Speaker 5: are going to be action based most of the time,
Speaker 5: not always, but most of the time, then it lends
Speaker 5: itself to that.
Speaker 8: So it's it's an arena.
Speaker 5: I really enjoy it the sort of roles I've appreciated
Speaker 5: growing up and as an adult as well, and it's
Speaker 5: just a joy to play them.
Speaker 8: But they're all very different from each other. Yeah, that's
Speaker 8: for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well I want to talk about Absolom
Speaker 2: real quick. I've also been playing it obviously, like a lot.
Speaker 2: I've been playing it with I was playing it and
Speaker 2: I liked it. I said this just before this's on
Speaker 2: podcast listeners to to those, but I was playing it.
Speaker 2: I liked it, and then I played it with my brother.
Speaker 2: We did like co Op for the first time, and
Speaker 2: I loved it. I was like, oh, this is like
Speaker 2: it like scratched an itch and my brother. He's two
Speaker 2: years younger than me. I live in Ohio. He just
Speaker 2: moved to New York, so I like don't get to
Speaker 2: see him very often. But it's like it was a
Speaker 2: nice thing of like we see each other and we're like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is our this is our jam, this is our
Speaker 2: type of thing. So I'm excited to see him for
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving and play more. When you record a game like this,
Speaker 2: it has like an interesting kind of narrative structure. It's
Speaker 2: kind of it reacts to what you choose, and it's
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of games do that, but when
Speaker 2: you're recording this, like, do you remember how long the
Speaker 2: sessions took? Was it hard to keep track of because
Speaker 2: they're very very segmented chunks as opposed to like doing
Speaker 2: like a long cut scene at multiple times.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I think all in all it was two sessions,
Speaker 5: and I think it was under a.
Speaker 8: Te Wow fast, what we do?
Speaker 5: You know, I've been saying to folks like, if you
Speaker 5: can you understand what session musician does, right, They train
Speaker 5: outside of the studio, They do all their work outside
Speaker 5: the studio, coming and they knock it out in two takes.
Speaker 8: That is exactly what we do.
Speaker 5: And particularly if mo caaps involved, it becomes a lot
Speaker 5: longer of a process because that's a different beast. But
Speaker 5: for voice only and particularly for you know, a game
Speaker 5: that's going to be mainly barks. Let's be honest, this
Speaker 5: has more narrative than I'm used to do in that genre,
Speaker 5: which is really cool because I think people enjoy it
Speaker 5: and that's become a thing. I think the borders gate
Speaker 5: they might have something to do with that as well.
Speaker 5: Then Claire obscure and people just really want that storyline.
Speaker 5: So it's probably a longer amount of time I spent
Speaker 5: on it than I would have done a few years ago,
Speaker 5: if that makes sense.
Speaker 8: It might have been just one session a few.
Speaker 5: Years ago, so you know, I make an effort to
Speaker 5: try and remember because I have to recall six months
Speaker 5: later a year later for interviews.
Speaker 8: But otherwise it's in one ear out the other.
Speaker 5: But luckily most of the time, by the time you're
Speaker 5: coming in, they've got the animation down, which obviously helps
Speaker 5: with the characterization of vocalizations, so I could see how
Speaker 5: cool Cider was, and you know, with either hitting people
Speaker 5: or being hit or you know, then we've got like
Speaker 5: their general attitude and they're very you know, laid back
Speaker 5: and sarcastic and all the cool stuff you get in
Speaker 5: trouble with in real life. Yeah, I just I thought
Speaker 5: they were fantastic. And then yeah, Carl, I love Carl.
Speaker 5: I met the act who plays Carl, Trev Fleming, not
Speaker 5: so long ago, lovely northern Irish guy, and I haven't
Speaker 5: met the other two actors yet, but that's the nature
Speaker 5: of it. It may well be like bumped into each
Speaker 5: other and not realized it. It's probably one of those.
Speaker 5: But yeah, really cool and one of those. You know,
Speaker 5: I've got a lot of things going on so and
Speaker 5: projects I can't talk about right now, but you know,
Speaker 5: you knock these indies out and then one of them
Speaker 5: just lands like absolutely, you know, just overnight there was
Speaker 5: some interest in me talking about that. So that's been
Speaker 5: awesome because I'm obviously proud of all the work I do.
Speaker 5: I think it's all very well written. So it's just
Speaker 5: really cool when something of a genre that you're not
Speaker 5: expected to be and maybe pops up.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just talked to some of the actors that
Speaker 2: were in Dispatch last week and I was asking them.
Speaker 2: I was like, you finally every hands on the game's
Speaker 2: belongs time recording it. Are you like looking for paths
Speaker 2: to see like certain lines that you said, and they
Speaker 2: were like, no, shade of the writing, it's really good.
Speaker 2: I don't remember saying any of this because they're so
Speaker 2: long ago.
Speaker 8: Yeah, because we'll say it twice in the room and
Speaker 8: then it's done. Yeah, you don't learn it.
Speaker 5: If you're lucky, you get the whole script beforehand, but
Speaker 5: it will be out of order, and it's only when
Speaker 5: you're in the room with the team that you can
Speaker 5: ascertain context and motivation and that's what will stick that
Speaker 5: would stick it in your brain. But again, you're just
Speaker 5: doing it very quickly in the studio, so totally understand
Speaker 5: when actives don't remember what they've said.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, when you're when you're playing it, well, first
Speaker 2: of all, are you playing as Cider? Are you playing
Speaker 2: as your own?
Speaker 5: I've played the demo so far, so I have. Yeah,
Speaker 5: of course, I mean that's the first thing I did.
Speaker 5: I do okay, I did okay, But of course you've
Speaker 5: got a fine sider. So I was playing with Carl
Speaker 5: and I was like, bye, I'm here now.
Speaker 8: It's all good. I like it. I like a little
Speaker 8: fast skippy character.
Speaker 5: Actually, so I please, I would love to play yeah
Speaker 5: with someone else playing Carl because I think they compliment
Speaker 5: each other really well.
Speaker 8: So should just picking people up chucking.
Speaker 2: That was That was me and my brother.
Speaker 6: That was our combo.
Speaker 2: Very good, sweet.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you as you're playing it, is it jogging any
Speaker 2: memory for you of like, oh I remember saying It's.
Speaker 5: Not there's nothing that's come up. Did I say that
Speaker 5: or anything like that? Because that happens in Border's Gate.
Speaker 5: Sometimes people are still discovering lines that, you know, maybe
Speaker 5: on slightly unpopular pars like an Evil Karlac, Like I
Speaker 5: can't remember a lot of that because people choose not
Speaker 5: to play a lot like that.
Speaker 8: But I think something like this that was done in
Speaker 8: two sessions.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's not gonna maybe a year or two down
Speaker 5: the line when it's really gone.
Speaker 6: Well, that's exciting, it's great.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I guess the other thing, so you you're
Speaker 2: you're playing as yourself and that's not weird. You're like,
Speaker 2: I want to do that.
Speaker 8: That's the only way I'll play a video.
Speaker 5: The first time I did that was because I did
Speaker 5: localization on Demon Souls.
Speaker 8: I'm the main character in a video.
Speaker 5: Game. So that was that was something else, but of course,
Speaker 5: it being a soul's game, it was incredibly punishing. I
Speaker 5: think I did the first area just as a point
Speaker 5: of pride. Yeah, I decided to move on with my life.
Speaker 5: But no, that was it was it was, It was wild.
Speaker 5: It's a lot easier than watching myself on film, that's
Speaker 5: for sure. This is okay, another layer detached. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: could just about bear to listen to myself.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 5: It's taken decades, but watching myself is still a hurdle
Speaker 5: for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not the podcast editor, and I'm really happy.
Speaker 2: I'm really happy that I don't have to do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, that's what not editing my in show as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely okay, And then I do want to talk
Speaker 2: about Karlac a little bit and you so this is
Speaker 2: actually a thing you mentioned, like the evil path of Carlac.
Speaker 2: This is my big this is my big theory specific
Speaker 2: to video acing question that I have. So, Carlac is
Speaker 2: a character, but when you have someone that is influenced
Speaker 2: by so many choices for her story, uh, there's like
Speaker 2: a bunch of different like infinite versions of Karlac basically
Speaker 2: that can exist in Balderskate. I just wanted to ask
Speaker 2: you about your You had a version of Karlac in
Speaker 2: your head before people saw her, like when you were
Speaker 2: performing as her. But then also anyone that plays the
Speaker 2: game has a version of Karlac that they play through.
Speaker 2: And then there's also like a third version that is
Speaker 2: like the fandom kind of aggregated version of Karlac that
Speaker 2: we're like, this is the kind of like Sarah Carlac.
Speaker 2: Do you have a version in your head that's like
Speaker 2: if I think of Carlac as a character, this is
Speaker 2: kind of how she is, and this is how she'd
Speaker 2: behave in These are her traits or are you like
Speaker 2: carlak is is the matrix? Is all of these things
Speaker 2: at once?
Speaker 5: How do you think of karlak Is absolutely the matrix
Speaker 5: the way I see it is again, it's like doing
Speaker 5: a new piece of writing for theater in that when
Speaker 5: it's still being set, you have infinite possibilities and something
Speaker 5: that came out of rehearsal may end in may end
Speaker 5: up in the play, and you know, every night technically
Speaker 5: is the same, but your partner is always going to
Speaker 5: do something slightly different that then you have to respond.
Speaker 8: To and truthfully, so it's that sort of it's that layer.
Speaker 5: But then you've got the live D and D games
Speaker 5: that we played with Wizards of the Coast.
Speaker 8: There is a version of Karlak that I play that.
Speaker 5: Is for sure opportunistic, wants a pint, wants to smash things,
Speaker 5: just pure barbar like Viking barbarian kind of thing going on.
Speaker 5: That's the idea behind it. And that's like just the
Speaker 5: most you know, a joyful idiot. That's the most fun
Speaker 5: way to play her. She's not, I guess she can
Speaker 5: be very moralistic in the game dependent, you know, early on, Yeah,
Speaker 5: I think if if you're a dark urge and you
Speaker 5: romance her, there's a bit later on where you can
Speaker 5: really like tell her what you've done. And earlier on
Speaker 5: in the game she'd leave, she'd be like, I didn't
Speaker 5: sign up for this, this is evil, But like later
Speaker 5: on she goes full on ride or die.
Speaker 2: She's like, we've all.
Speaker 8: Done things we regret. It's fine, don't worry. It really
Speaker 8: is something else.
Speaker 5: And that's in every that is in everyone's darker romance
Speaker 5: Carlac playthrough. So I think, you know, I'm obsessed with cults.
Speaker 5: I'm really interested because it's the idea that in the
Speaker 5: way that people are about true crime, because I think
Speaker 5: people have says the true crime are like, oh, this
Speaker 5: is how I behave, this is how I wouldn't get murdered.
Speaker 5: So I think my obsession is like, this is how
Speaker 5: I wouldn't get indoctrinated. And I think that's very much
Speaker 5: Strue Baldos gay as if you had the wrong influences
Speaker 5: around you, maybe you'd make different choices, or if you
Speaker 5: never had the opportunity to redeem yourself, maybe you'd make
Speaker 5: other choices. So that's how I justify the matrix version
Speaker 5: of It's very high stakes. They could die them or
Speaker 5: they got tadpoles in their heads, so it's all very
Speaker 5: you know, it could go either way, I feel, So
Speaker 5: that's how I justify it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, No, I love that.
Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense. I I I'm not
Speaker 2: an actor, so a lot of a lot of my
Speaker 2: questions for actors are either I feel like you you
Speaker 2: had a full understanding of that, and I'm still trying
Speaker 2: to wrap my head around playing like nine characters all
Speaker 2: the same, not nine, but just a bunch of versions
Speaker 2: of them, which I appreciate.
Speaker 6: I think that's cool.
Speaker 2: Do you as an actor, I think is it safe
Speaker 2: to say Karlak is like your most famous character that
Speaker 2: you've played.
Speaker 8: Absolutely?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would assume. Do you have instances where I
Speaker 2: don't know parasocial is the right word, but where people
Speaker 2: people come to you and they expect Carlac and you're like,
Speaker 2: I'm a separate person from that.
Speaker 5: Mainly streaming, if I appear on the string Lak, it's not.
Speaker 8: Sorry. My lot a pretty cool about it, at least
Speaker 8: to my face. Maybe that's what it is. To my face.
Speaker 8: Most people are cool, and you've got to remember that.
Speaker 5: To the wider world out there, I am anonymous, which
Speaker 5: is wonderful.
Speaker 8: In the con spaces, they're going to know me.
Speaker 5: And I had the loveliest time walking around Pax East
Speaker 5: earlier this year because people.
Speaker 8: Would go are you and Okay, yeah, yeah, do you
Speaker 8: want a selfie?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: And then they move on and it's great, and that's
Speaker 5: really nice. They just leave me to it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: I'm just walking around in my thing, playing my games,
Speaker 5: and I feel part of the community that I've I've
Speaker 5: always wanted to be part of because I've always played games,
Speaker 5: but I could never afford to go to expos, certainly
Speaker 5: not ones in other countries, so it's real life. I'm
Speaker 5: doing a lot of catching up at the moment with that,
Speaker 5: and people are really cool and they have welcomed me
Speaker 5: into that community, so I'm very grateful for that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, that's wonderful.
Speaker 2: And I've also I've seen some of your actual place stuff,
Speaker 2: which I also think is very fine in.
Speaker 8: Those kind of Carlac places Karlak.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I did that as a memory job because in
Speaker 5: my head it's all very fragmented, as you can imagine,
Speaker 5: and then to actually see it in some sort of order,
Speaker 5: it sort of helped me remember what I actually did
Speaker 5: on the game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, I do want to double
Speaker 2: back to fitting Echo because I'm just curious about this
Speaker 2: project as the concept. How did you initially get acquainted
Speaker 2: with it?
Speaker 6: Who approached you first?
Speaker 5: They just emailed my agent with an offer, which doesn't happen.
Speaker 5: Would you like to play lead role in this cool
Speaker 5: indie game that looks like this. It's got some actors
Speaker 5: from a critical role in it, you know, if you're interested.
Speaker 5: And I was waiting for someone to say psych it's
Speaker 5: a joke.
Speaker 8: Of course, we're not kidding. So yeah, it was a
Speaker 8: straight up.
Speaker 5: Offer to my agent, and then the creative directors, Sylvan
Speaker 5: and Manu from from Newtails, took us out for lunch
Speaker 5: and pitched and it was like Bybo was there and
Speaker 5: he said, do you want to be the lead role
Speaker 5: in an indie game? And New Tales are former Blizzard devs.
Speaker 5: They're based out in Leon, so I know they can
Speaker 5: make a game, and they seem to have this very
Speaker 5: open door policy. It's very transparent, there's no nda. I
Speaker 5: can talk anything you want to know. I can talk
Speaker 5: about I just personally would avoid spoilers as a storyteller,
Speaker 5: just not going to tell you like that. But a
Speaker 5: lot of what I know is now public information because
Speaker 5: you know they've they've put that right out there. Yeah,
Speaker 5: they're just they're just really lovely people and they've you know,
Speaker 5: they showed me your own roadmap. If it does well,
Speaker 5: what's what we're going to do next in that? And
Speaker 5: I'm not used to that.
Speaker 8: I got.
Speaker 5: I got a one hour briefing before we went into
Speaker 5: the studio, which is just as well because again, if
Speaker 5: you're just seeing little peep Pole at the word of
Speaker 5: the World of Echo, I kind of need to know
Speaker 5: most of it before I go in otherwise I'm going
Speaker 5: to spend time and money in the studio asking about it.
Speaker 5: But that is that is the reality for nineteen nine
Speaker 5: percent of games, particularly as you start heading into Triple A's,
Speaker 5: they give you less and less information, which is a
Speaker 5: shame because we can't do our best work when we
Speaker 5: don't know what genre is that really helps, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 5: So I've really the part of the reason I'm talking
Speaker 5: about the first for that's what I want more of
Speaker 5: in the industry. But second of all, Yeah, if there's
Speaker 5: someone on the edge of like asking a boss, can
Speaker 5: we just be a bit more open about this, then yes, please.
Speaker 5: All I really said is what's out there, who's involved
Speaker 5: in what it looks like in the genre and all
Speaker 5: of that, and that's it really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's fresh in your mind right now too,
Speaker 2: because you're like mid st Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think we did a live stream yesterday with the
Speaker 5: Irish Video Game Orchestra I've presented with before and they
Speaker 5: had a little playthrough and we talked through it and
Speaker 5: some of the Fading Echo team turned up to have
Speaker 5: a chat. And I mean, again, I don't know that
Speaker 5: I had a chat with Anna Sorrento, who's the head
Speaker 5: of animation, showing me this character long before I went in,
Speaker 5: so you know, the idea of how I was going
Speaker 5: to voice her is just percolating through my brain for
Speaker 5: a couple of weeks before we actually record it. So again,
Speaker 5: when I go in the studio, I've got all these
Speaker 5: strong choices that have been made, and we save a
Speaker 5: lot of time and we can have more fun experimenting
Speaker 5: than just finding that character.
Speaker 6: Yeah, wonderful, awesome.
Speaker 2: Uh well, I think that's a more or less wrap
Speaker 2: up what I had planned. Was there anything else you
Speaker 2: want to talk about? Anything recent you're excited about. This
Speaker 2: could be some of your planing, some you're watching some
Speaker 2: on the horizon.
Speaker 5: So there's a demo for a game called War of
Speaker 5: the Western Deep. It's a point and click adventure game.
Speaker 5: It's stunning. Imagine Don Bluth traveled back from the nineteen
Speaker 5: eighties and made a video game.
Speaker 8: It's hand animated.
Speaker 5: I played, The main character is stun it honestly like,
Speaker 5: have check it out later.
Speaker 8: The it's like whoa yeah demo, whoa yeah yeah.
Speaker 5: And there's a lot more to be recorded. But because
Speaker 5: it's hand animated, it's going to take some times. We're
Speaker 5: thinking twenty seven if I'm still alive.
Speaker 2: That's a real yeah, it's a real.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I'm just I can't think past this one. So yeah,
Speaker 5: that's something else, so that's playable. And then there's my
Speaker 5: own series that takes a Village, which should be coming
Speaker 5: to you November through December.
Speaker 8: So we've got our first few guests on that.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you know it, but it's a
Speaker 5: lie what used to be a live twitch chat show.
Speaker 5: And the reason I put it that it's not a
Speaker 5: podcast because it's not audio only, but the whole point
Speaker 5: is to shine a spotlight on people who make our games.
Speaker 5: So obviously there's going to be a lot of actors
Speaker 5: because I know the actors, but we've also got other
Speaker 5: roles like producers, directors, lead artists, composers, all these people
Speaker 5: that you don't normally see apart.
Speaker 8: From their name in the credits.
Speaker 5: I mean, for some of them, really prolific people, is
Speaker 5: their first interview in their career. That's all on YouTube
Speaker 5: if you want to take if you want to check
Speaker 5: it out, And there's a second series coming with some
Speaker 5: production values, not just me crying in my room because
Speaker 5: I'm operating everything myself, which was you know, you know good.
Speaker 5: It's good to have ambition, but it wasn't the easiest time.
Speaker 5: So that's now been done in the studio. We still
Speaker 5: take audience questions, but it's not live. But I'm really
Speaker 5: looking forward to that coming out because we've got some caukers.
Speaker 2: Sorry what was that last word.
Speaker 8: Caukers, Absolute caukers of guests.
Speaker 5: So we've got Abby Baker Sealine and if you know him,
Speaker 5: but he was tell Ye studio head and played to.
Speaker 8: The main role in that.
Speaker 5: And by accident I managed to get to other people
Speaker 5: who'd worked and it's a Corey Brothers and who wrote on.
Speaker 8: It and JJ Merrill in the Village.
Speaker 5: So their long form interviews at about an hour long,
Speaker 5: in which you get to know about the whole careers
Speaker 5: as well as some of the game starle how they
Speaker 5: came to be in games, and then a bit more
Speaker 5: on the career, and then we have some real deep
Speaker 5: cut questions from the audience because they'll know them in
Speaker 5: a different way than I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome. I yeah, I know you're pitching to
Speaker 2: the audience. You've saw you sold me personally completely I'm like, wow,
Speaker 2: this is so cool.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's great, and it's it's got themes of
Speaker 5: you know, coadvocacy and community collaboration, all the good stuff
Speaker 5: which you can take into your own industries. The messages
Speaker 5: have the real people around you. You're going to need
Speaker 5: them as much as it is about like this industry
Speaker 5: can be hostile on the on the business side, on
Speaker 5: the money side, in terms of the devs, the creatives
Speaker 5: you make it it's it's.
Speaker 8: Really lovely space to be in.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's a celebration of that as well as
Speaker 5: the individual Yes.
Speaker 2: Great, Well, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 6: And I'll say it.
Speaker 2: Right to the outro, Thanks so much for tuning into
Speaker 2: this episode of the Game Informer Show. As always, can
Speaker 2: go to Gaminformer dot com slash subscribe to subscribe to
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