Speaker 1: Hey, everybody.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Game and Former Show, a weekly podcast
Speaker 2: covering the video game industry. Join us each and every
Speaker 2: week for a discussion of the latest gaming news, reviews,
Speaker 2: and exclusive reviews with Game and Former staff and special
Speaker 2: guests from around the industry. I am your host, Marcus Stewart.
Speaker 2: I am joined by Charles Hart. Hi.
Speaker 1: Ho, Charles the Heart here.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's Kermit the Heart. What was that noise?
Speaker 1: That was?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: That was when just when I laugh, I just kind
Speaker 1: of make that sound. It's like a it's kind of
Speaker 1: like I'm choking a little bit.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, Well, that's good to know someone I hopefully
Speaker 2: is in better shape. Eric van Allen, Hello.
Speaker 3: I didn't know we were supposed to be doing voices today. Brother,
Speaker 3: I can't. I can't do a bane on command. I
Speaker 3: gotta like work my way into it.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 4: At first, some reason, I was really certain you were
Speaker 4: Magneto from the X Men.
Speaker 3: There's a small difference between them. It's just one is
Speaker 3: like to me, my X Men, and then the one
Speaker 3: is three or my x Man.
Speaker 2: It's not a Sean conneriness to it. And that I
Speaker 2: was trying to figure out which Muppet you were doing,
Speaker 2: like which muppet sounds like Sean Connery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's a crazy take on miss Picky.
Speaker 3: That's like a delta of like Sean Connery, Magneto and Baane,
Speaker 3: you know, and you just kind of like pivot around.
Speaker 2: That sounds like every I can't even say high schoolers
Speaker 2: because Sean Connery really ages a lot of people, but
Speaker 2: that sounds like a Venn diagram of what like someone
Speaker 2: of a certain age considers like pinnacle coolness is like
Speaker 2: the intersection of those three names.
Speaker 3: You gotta put like Sonic the Hedgehog on there somewhere too,
Speaker 3: because there are there are a lot of people who
Speaker 3: they even shadow the Hedgehog shadow. That's the coolest thing
Speaker 3: I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: That's the person that has a boon a Boondock Saints
Speaker 2: poster hanging in nerve room. Back when that was like
Speaker 2: the definitive like I'm cool and I love cinema and
Speaker 2: no disrespecting boot doos ants. I think it's a good movie.
Speaker 2: But there was an and I say this to someone,
Speaker 2: I had a poster that was like the era of
Speaker 2: like I'm showing how cool I am because I like
Speaker 2: the Boondocks Saints, I had a Fight Club poster in
Speaker 2: my college dorm room.
Speaker 1: What I want to make a joke come out. I
Speaker 1: never had a poster. But that's also in that.
Speaker 3: You gotta what you call it, the most flanderized version
Speaker 3: of yourself for sure.
Speaker 2: Well everyone, we hope everyone is living their best life
Speaker 2: as well. We're gonna we got a bunch of games
Speaker 2: talk about. We're gonna be talking about Fire Emblem, Fortunes,
Speaker 2: Weave sixteen sixty six Amsterdam Marvel Tocon Fighting Souls, as
Speaker 2: well as a one point zero launch of Fields of
Speaker 2: Mystery up. But before we do that, you know, the
Speaker 2: best way to support Game Informer is by getting yourself
Speaker 2: a Game Informer magazine subscription. That's right holding up the
Speaker 2: magazines here if you're watching the video version. We've got
Speaker 2: our current cover story on only Musha Way of the Sword.
Speaker 2: But hey, Eric van Allen going way back, holding up
Speaker 2: the Assassin's Creed Revelations.
Speaker 1: Issuzy pull.
Speaker 3: My new bit is reaching behind me for just random
Speaker 3: issues of Game Informer and seeing what I find. And
Speaker 3: it's been pretty fun so far.
Speaker 2: I was like, he's holding up the issue he was
Speaker 2: reading when he had the fight Club poster hanging up.
Speaker 3: In his dim I'm not kidding the timeline my matchup.
Speaker 2: But yes, go to Game Informer dot com slash subscribe.
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Speaker 2: slash subscribe. What is that, Eric, Nintendo moving into HD
Speaker 2: big news. Yeah, they're finally doing it. That was the
Speaker 2: big feature in the Revelations issue was talking about Nintendo's moving.
Speaker 3: That was like, I'm not kidding you. I think that's
Speaker 3: the first article in the magazine past Like the toc
Speaker 3: is Nintendo moves into HD like this is huge news.
Speaker 2: Well, you know what else is huge news is Fire
Speaker 2: Emblem fortunes Weave. We had a Nintendo direct recently sort
Speaker 2: of laying out uh, kind of its big sort of
Speaker 2: gameplay and narrative layout, breaking down to game systems, talking
Speaker 2: about the apparently the real plot of this game, just
Speaker 2: the game where you're controlling four different kind of champions
Speaker 2: and as sort of like Roman gladiator esque competition called
Speaker 2: the Heroic Games, I believe, and uh, sort of like
Speaker 2: in reality being this kind of like future character who
Speaker 2: is like manipulating the events of this tournament in the
Speaker 2: future to kind of help prevent and incoming apocalypse of sorts.
Speaker 2: But uh, Eric, you've been checking this game out, you
Speaker 2: know more about it than probably any of us here.
Speaker 2: How what do you think of Fire Emblem and what
Speaker 2: can you share with us so far about it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's Fire Emblem. I'll tell you that up front.
Speaker 3: It is as somebody who's played a lot of these
Speaker 3: games coming into this. I started with Fire Emblum on
Speaker 3: Game Boy Advance, you know, the first one that came
Speaker 3: over to the US, and I've loved the series ever since.
Speaker 3: And I was going into Fortunes. We've kind of wondering, Okay,
Speaker 3: what is the what's the setup, How's it gonna work.
Speaker 3: Is this going to be more of a three houses
Speaker 3: type game. Is this going to be more of a
Speaker 3: traditional fire emblem. Is it going to maybe find the
Speaker 3: middle ground like Fates and Engaged kind of did. And
Speaker 3: the answer is is just a lot. It's a really
Speaker 3: really big game in ways that I can't even start
Speaker 3: to tell you about because of the restrictions of our
Speaker 3: preview window Embarco, but Firemlin Fortunes weave like they showed
Speaker 3: in the direct the setup is that you are going
Speaker 3: back to change the causality, change the events that would
Speaker 3: happen in order to build up your forces against this
Speaker 3: great evil. And that is kind of your framing device
Speaker 3: for how you end up working with these four lords
Speaker 3: who we know are Kai, Theodora, Dietrich, and Letta, and
Speaker 3: they all kind of have different approaches reasons why they're
Speaker 3: in the heroic games. And the cool thing is playing
Speaker 3: through this stuff. You do play as the lords. You're
Speaker 3: playing through their stories through their eyes with the future
Speaker 3: timey stuff kind of used as a framing device for
Speaker 3: you to jump between them or to offer insight, offer foresight.
Speaker 3: There's there's kind of ways that your character ends up
Speaker 3: giving them help in some ways. Usually it's through this
Speaker 3: kind of mechanic in the game called the Pale Ravens Perch,
Speaker 3: where you go and talk to this this bird who
Speaker 3: gives you foresights about an incoming battle that kind of
Speaker 3: gives you a hint towards what the end of chapter
Speaker 3: battle will look like so you can build up your forces,
Speaker 3: but the actual playing of firem unfortunes weave. So I
Speaker 3: picked Kai because he.
Speaker 2: Seemed like like is either like happy go like the
Speaker 2: kind of like plucky kid.
Speaker 3: Yes, he's he's the plucky kid. He's very gone from
Speaker 3: from Hunter ex Hunter coded like he is he's there
Speaker 3: to have an adventure, And I was like, cool, this
Speaker 3: seems like a really good protagonist type character to start with,
Speaker 3: versus Dietrich is basically just Ala card from Theodora. Is
Speaker 3: this like war warrior, queen conqueror hype? I don't know
Speaker 3: a ton about her. She seems really interesting. I'm mentioned
Speaker 3: she's wonder woman.
Speaker 2: If we're gonna keep assigning other characters to these people,
Speaker 2: is she is she like Amazon.
Speaker 3: Like like Dom wonder Woman. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because.
Speaker 1: She's got a little bit of just wonder Woman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Eric, there's a little bit of Ivy from Soul
Speaker 3: Caliber in there. She has this really cool like not
Speaker 3: bionic arm, but like just arm that that where her
Speaker 3: powers kind of flow from, because all the four lords
Speaker 3: have these blaze arts that are their superpowers that kind
Speaker 3: of give them their edge over all the other units.
Speaker 3: And Kais is from a like a pearl in his hand, Dietrix.
Speaker 3: I actually don't know where Dietrix comes from because I
Speaker 3: haven't like played as him yet. There's probably information out
Speaker 3: there speculation as to where it comes from. But Theodora
Speaker 3: has the the arm like this this giant arm that
Speaker 3: she can use to like throw rocks and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And then Leta has the uh I forgot the name
Speaker 3: of the universe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's almost, but it's like, yeah, the Spanish Spanish.
Speaker 1: Loot type thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's It's got kind of like a Flambanco tune
Speaker 3: to it, and she'll like strum it and then it
Speaker 3: can kind of do different things depending on what she
Speaker 3: opts to do. I think in the direct they showed
Speaker 3: uh summoning the beasts and stuff.
Speaker 1: Like that.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen the totality of what that is yet,
Speaker 3: and I'm being very coy because I've really just stayed
Speaker 3: focused in on playing Kai's Path because the way the
Speaker 3: game takes it is you can jump between paths if
Speaker 3: you want to, or you can focus in on one path,
Speaker 3: and it just kind of gives you an option to
Speaker 3: do what you want to do. And I can't talk
Speaker 3: about the overall structure of the game too much, but
Speaker 3: I like that in this game, you know, Three Houses,
Speaker 3: I really loved for the way it made you make
Speaker 3: a choice and said, you've got to make a choice,
Speaker 3: live with the consequences. Who are you willing to put
Speaker 3: your weight behind and fight for ultimately? And I thought
Speaker 3: that was a really really cool thing and let to
Speaker 3: some really differing routes with differing outcomes that had a
Speaker 3: lot of emotional impact. I know that there are also
Speaker 3: probably a lot of people who played Three Houses and
Speaker 3: were aching for some sort of golden route, some sort
Speaker 3: of way to see everything and do everything and have
Speaker 3: everybody on your side, et cetera. I'm not sure if
Speaker 3: that exists in Fortune's Weave. But the nice thing about
Speaker 3: Fortune's Weave is that if you hop into a lord's
Speaker 3: story and you get three chapters in and you're like,
Speaker 3: I don't really know if I'm vibing with this or
Speaker 3: I actually kind of want to go see what's going
Speaker 3: on with this other character, or maybe it ran into
Speaker 3: that character once I got to Dagson, which is the
Speaker 3: main city where the heroic games are taking place. Which,
Speaker 3: by the way, the hero games, like you said, gladiatorial
Speaker 3: combat where the winner gets their wish granted. It's very
Speaker 3: holy Grail war coded.
Speaker 2: Twisted metal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, twisted metal. Yeah, my favorite face day night's
Speaker 3: been off twisted metal and yeah, everybody's fighting for their
Speaker 3: dream to be fulfilled, their wish to be had. I
Speaker 3: only know what two of those are. I know what
Speaker 3: kaises which Kai? Yeah, I can talk about this. Kai
Speaker 3: wants to get his dad out of prison. His dad
Speaker 3: has been imprisoned for capital r reasons that happened in
Speaker 3: the story, uh, and he wants to get his dad out,
Speaker 3: So he's fighting in the games for that, alongside his
Speaker 3: childhood friends Tiala and Peter. Peter, by the way, one
Speaker 3: of my favorite characters, just because everybody else has fantasy names.
Speaker 3: It is like a fantasy warrior and then there's little
Speaker 3: Peter with his bo just trying to not die is
Speaker 3: just like Brad and Beast and reincarnation of like yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: It's like the Adventures of Elliott. Like it's just like
Speaker 4: that's just a name. What the heck?
Speaker 3: I love the vibe of just a dude in the
Speaker 3: coliseum who's just like, I'm just trying not to die.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't really know what I'm doing here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Peter, don't want to ask.
Speaker 4: Referring to the characters as lords, yes, are they lords
Speaker 4: like they become lords or are they all going into it?
Speaker 1: They're like lords of some area already.
Speaker 3: I might even not be using the technical term for
Speaker 3: it in game. Lords is kind of a colloquial term
Speaker 3: that gets used in the Fire Emblem community for these
Speaker 3: are the like if you play firemlanm the Sacred Stones,
Speaker 3: f Raim and Erica are the lords of that game,
Speaker 3: or like Lynn is a Lord of the original or
Speaker 3: fire Emblum seven but Fire Emblem on the GBA that
Speaker 3: sort of the ike is a lord. It's just kind
Speaker 3: of a designation of this is a main character sometimes
Speaker 3: of some kind. They might have the Lord class, although
Speaker 3: I have not seen a lord class, but that it's
Speaker 3: kind of just a helpful designation to say, like, these
Speaker 3: are the focal viewpoint characters.
Speaker 1: So that's when I use that, that's i I refer
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 2: I think in the Nintendo direct they call them champions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that'd be another way to put it. Because the
Speaker 3: way it works is you enter the Heroic Games and
Speaker 3: you make a clan as like a team, and they
Speaker 3: all have names, and you compete in these matches. The
Speaker 3: early matches are basically just qualifier matches where they have
Speaker 3: you kind of working with or against other teams to
Speaker 3: determine like who is the strongest and all that, and
Speaker 3: so you get to kind of see all the different
Speaker 3: characters and meet them and stuff like that, so you
Speaker 3: get an idea of what they're doing before you go
Speaker 3: into that. So with Kai, we form the clan of
Speaker 3: Ribera Wins, and it was made up of like Kai
Speaker 3: and his two childhood friends. But then as the game
Speaker 3: goes on, you can recruit more characters through you build
Speaker 3: up renown, which is kind of a meter that's like
Speaker 3: as you do quests, as you achieve things, even as
Speaker 3: you do stuff in the game that's considered like building
Speaker 3: your prestige, building your perception amongst those and DAGs in
Speaker 3: and around the games. It'll build your renown and then
Speaker 3: you hit certain renown markers that will open up more
Speaker 3: activities for you. It's kind of the gate for some
Speaker 3: of the more complicated and involved mechanics in the management
Speaker 3: side of the game, and then also opens up recruitment
Speaker 3: for other characters alongside support, which you can do support stuff.
Speaker 3: You can talk to character characters, you can give them gifts,
Speaker 3: you can eat meals with them, you can do things
Speaker 3: like that to kind of build up your support and
Speaker 3: rapport with characters, eventually getting support conversations, which are classic
Speaker 3: fire emblem two characters talking, story builds up between them,
Speaker 3: see how their friendship grows. Each character kind of has
Speaker 3: different levels of supports. I have some characters that have
Speaker 3: tons of supports that I can unlock. It looks like
Speaker 3: some characters that only have like two or three.
Speaker 4: I was like, I don't know if they have supports.
Speaker 4: You mean like they have options of people they can
Speaker 4: talk to.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It's it's interesting because that is depending on what FIREMM
Speaker 3: you play. There are a lot of characters who it's
Speaker 3: like this character can have supports with tons of characters,
Speaker 3: and this other character only has like a few And
Speaker 3: that's a pretty common thing, especially depending on whether the
Speaker 3: characters are really story critical or if they're just kind
Speaker 3: of an optional character you could get. I still don't
Speaker 3: have a sense of how important some of these characters
Speaker 3: I get are throughout the story, because some of them
Speaker 3: are definitely core to the story, work alongside the lords
Speaker 3: or champions and work with them, and it seemed kind
Speaker 3: of core to who they are. Other characters kind of
Speaker 3: just seem to be drifting through. You know, here's here's
Speaker 3: this guy who's a gladiator and he's just going to
Speaker 3: help out because you need somebody who can swing swords
Speaker 3: and you can recruit him if you need that. Or
Speaker 3: there's another character that was like I was going into
Speaker 3: a chapter where I was like, I could really use
Speaker 3: an archer. I don't really have a lot of Peter,
Speaker 3: who's kind of my main archer, but I could use
Speaker 3: a secondary archer, you know, if I run into a
Speaker 3: situation where I need range or to deal with flyers
Speaker 3: or something. And character opened up, it was like, hey,
Speaker 3: you can go recruit this character if you want. They're
Speaker 3: an archer and I was like, cool, awesome, thanksgame, and
Speaker 3: Anna a longtime Firemolm series stay shows up to kind
Speaker 3: of give you some direction on that and gives you
Speaker 3: this kind of board for every cow. We're getting into
Speaker 3: a lot. Okay, so this is a really big game.
Speaker 3: Between matches, between like chapter matches and stuff, there is
Speaker 3: free time where you can spend your time however you want.
Speaker 3: You have a certain amount of turns and each turn
Speaker 3: is like a segment of a day, and you have
Speaker 3: a certain amount of time between your matches where you
Speaker 3: can go train. You can go talk to characters, like
Speaker 3: I said, give them gifts, eat meals with them, try
Speaker 3: to recruit them, things like that. You can also just
Speaker 3: go explore the world map outside Dagson and go running
Speaker 3: around and farm resources, travel through dungeons. They brought back
Speaker 3: the dungeon mechanic from Fire Embalm Echo Shadows of Valencia.
Speaker 3: So you have kind of a small party and it
Speaker 3: almost it will remind a lot of.
Speaker 1: People of metaphor.
Speaker 3: They will see this and they will be like that
Speaker 3: looks like metaphor, and like, yeah, it kinda is like
Speaker 3: metaphor in some ways. Where you're in these very scaled
Speaker 3: back JRPG style party battles against other people in the dungeon,
Speaker 3: and it plays more like a traditional party RPG than
Speaker 3: a tactical RPG. But then you also have tactical RPG
Speaker 3: battles on the map as well. You have quests you
Speaker 3: can undertake for renown and rewards and things like that.
Speaker 3: There are other towns you can go to to visit
Speaker 3: to get items. You can find merchants on the map
Speaker 3: that will give you rare things. Some merchants only operate
Speaker 3: on a barter system, so you have to trade them
Speaker 3: certain rare items to get certain rare items in return.
Speaker 3: There's so much in this game that I think the
Speaker 3: really interesting thing for me is that you kind of
Speaker 3: have to juggle a lot of different systems early on,
Speaker 3: and it starts to make sense the deeper in you get.
Speaker 3: But I think the first few chapters where they start
Speaker 3: dumping all this stuff on you is a little overwhelming.
Speaker 1: At first.
Speaker 3: I was returning to the tutorials a lot. I was
Speaker 3: having to look at the menus to be like, Okay,
Speaker 3: if I need to do this thing, or I need
Speaker 3: to find this thing, or I need to look for this,
Speaker 3: how do I find that? And there are a lot
Speaker 3: of quality of life things that have been baked in
Speaker 3: to help with that, but you do have to kind
Speaker 3: of go find them. My hottest tip is that when
Speaker 3: you're looking at the city map and you tab over,
Speaker 3: you can see a list of all the characters that
Speaker 3: you have met already, and not only will it let
Speaker 3: you fast travel to where they are to go talk
Speaker 3: to them, but it will list their requirements for recruiting.
Speaker 3: So if they need like support level two and renowned
Speaker 3: level six or something like that, it will tell you
Speaker 3: that on there, so you don't have to make a
Speaker 3: spreadsheet like I did tracking all of that. It is
Speaker 3: in the game already that you madadsheet.
Speaker 1: I my you know's you though? Yeah? Yeah it.
Speaker 3: It did feel kind of cool to make because I
Speaker 3: just had this big thing and then I could sort
Speaker 3: it because the nice part was I could sort it
Speaker 3: and then I could be like, Okay, well I'm at
Speaker 3: renowned level three, but now I know that when I
Speaker 3: get to Renowned level four, these are the characters that
Speaker 3: will open up and I need to be at this
Speaker 3: support level with them, so I need to start working
Speaker 3: on their supports now.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I love a good spreadshet You don't you
Speaker 1: know you're pretty Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's there's a lot of people out there who
Speaker 3: might be listening to this and being like, Eric's a
Speaker 3: crazy person, and then like four people who are like
Speaker 3: that that makes brain gobert. And let me tell you this,
Speaker 3: This will make your brain go bert.
Speaker 4: But you don't have to. There's people like me that
Speaker 4: are like, oh my gosh, I don't want to go spread.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was that was the part of the direct
Speaker 2: when I showed people how to open up microsoftic cell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it comes with a free Microsoft extent.
Speaker 3: You imagine the Sakarai presents where he teaches you how
Speaker 3: Google sheet works. That's what I'm talking about. But I'm
Speaker 3: enjoying it. It's it's really really good. I think it's
Speaker 3: good Firemlum. I think the the largest hurdle to overcome
Speaker 3: so far for for your traditional firemlum fans, because there
Speaker 3: is always kind of different parties in schools of thought
Speaker 3: about a fire emline game and how it should be,
Speaker 3: is that there are kind of the traditionalists who love
Speaker 3: those sorts of fire emblem of of your who want
Speaker 3: a more campaign driven, uh you know, durability driven challenge
Speaker 3: to get ready for this actually because I knew I
Speaker 3: was likely to cover this game in some way, I've
Speaker 3: been playing the old fire Emblum's on game Boy Advance
Speaker 3: just to kind of recenter myself and get back to, Okay,
Speaker 3: you know, where where did my history with this series start?
Speaker 3: And also remember kind of how Firemlum has changed over
Speaker 3: the years, because even from Firemblum seven on the GBA
Speaker 3: to FIREMLM Awakening, there's a pretty big difference in changing
Speaker 3: mechanics and things like that. So the interesting thing has
Speaker 3: been that it's cool to see the ways in which
Speaker 3: fortunes we've kind of ducks around certain trends and and
Speaker 3: things that have been true in FIREMBLM for a while,
Speaker 3: like there's there's not really a weapon wheel. There's and
Speaker 3: that's not new for fire Emblum. They've they've been toying
Speaker 3: with the idea of getting rid of that or just
Speaker 3: moving it more into the background with each new entry.
Speaker 3: But there are ways in which using certain weapons or
Speaker 3: how they can turn tune that from certain classes having
Speaker 3: access to certain weapons, or what those certain weapon classes
Speaker 3: can do that others can't. For example, like lances often
Speaker 3: have a higher priority against mounted units. In general, they're
Speaker 3: better against mounted units, and so you know that even
Speaker 3: though lances aren't going to be within a traditional triangle,
Speaker 3: you know that if you're going into a map with
Speaker 3: cavalry probably want lances.
Speaker 1: It's still cool to see that.
Speaker 3: And there's even some you know, combat arts are here,
Speaker 3: so there's a lot of playing with durability in that
Speaker 3: way where you can spend that durability to amplify your attacks.
Speaker 3: But then if you run out of durability on the weapon,
Speaker 3: it becomes a lesser version of itself. It doesn't break,
Speaker 3: you still have access to it, it's just a worse
Speaker 3: version of it. And there's been some really smart overall,
Speaker 3: just kind of like congealing of the different fire emlms here.
Speaker 3: In a lot of ways, this feels like a combination
Speaker 3: of a lot of fire emblems over the years of
Speaker 3: having all these different mechanics, all the the resource management
Speaker 3: and out of battle stuff that you saw in Three
Speaker 3: Houses School arc in having the maps, which the maps
Speaker 3: are kind of a I've had a few maps that
Speaker 3: are really really like and are standouts to me. They
Speaker 3: mostly happen within the coliseum, which should not surprise you,
Speaker 3: whereas the maps you kind of get into on the
Speaker 3: fringes on the outside of the city. You see a
Speaker 3: lot of them. They're very small, very fast battles. They
Speaker 3: almost remind me of playing Firemlam Heroes in a way.
Speaker 3: If you ever played that one. Oh yeah, that's the
Speaker 3: Mussile game, right, No, No, that's Fireball Games. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: Firemlam Heroes. The mobile game which was Fireblum scaled down
Speaker 3: to just four on four I think that was what
Speaker 3: it was when I was playing it, and just very
Speaker 3: small maps and very quick battles. Some of the fights
Speaker 3: on the outskirts of Dackson, where you're fighting on different
Speaker 3: maps against you know, Brandon like bandit encampments or wild
Speaker 3: animals or something like that, they kind of move faster
Speaker 3: and they go faster because you don't want those to
Speaker 3: be the long drawn out epic battles. You want those
Speaker 3: to be the story battles, right, And so I like it.
Speaker 3: I think it has found a really good balance of
Speaker 3: how to handle all that stuff, and the theming of
Speaker 3: the game is one that I really really have to emphasize.
Speaker 1: They nailed.
Speaker 3: This is such a good world. I mean, it's cool
Speaker 3: that we're going back to I forget what the overall
Speaker 3: world is called but three Houses virus. Yeah, because because
Speaker 3: fire molm traditionally don't get at me fire more heads
Speaker 3: if I'm wrong about this. But most gains, with the
Speaker 3: exception of say like path of Radiance into Radian Dawn
Speaker 3: and stuff like that, are kind of their own entries.
Speaker 3: But we are back in the world of Three Houses.
Speaker 3: So Fodling was the continent to the north, Dagda is
Speaker 3: kind of the larger area to the south, and we've
Speaker 3: actually in Three Houses. We saw characters from this region
Speaker 3: in that area. Now we're kind of down there, we
Speaker 3: do see characters from Fodland. No, not specific characters. I'm saying,
Speaker 3: like people from Fodland.
Speaker 2: People are like, hey, I'm from here.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, Like oh I I was in
Speaker 3: a town and they they were selling Fodland tea that
Speaker 3: they had imported from.
Speaker 2: It to T shirts like Photland yeah yeah yeah, like
Speaker 2: like I heart New York shirts.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I went to Gerrik Mack Monastery and all
Speaker 3: I got was this lousy T shirt.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's really good.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's cool to see that because you get
Speaker 3: a sense of a larger world. But also, I mean
Speaker 3: just the music you can hear. I think one of
Speaker 3: the smartest things they did for promoting this game was
Speaker 3: to put some of the soundtrack on Nintendo Music, uh
Speaker 3: that you could listen to early bangers banger tracks in
Speaker 3: this game, like like non Alarmo, you can't listen to
Speaker 3: fire moment when you wake up.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe they'll add that, but I think
Speaker 3: the theming of this game of taking this sort of
Speaker 3: it's it's Rome with some Spanish influence and even some
Speaker 3: North African influence and kind of that whole part of
Speaker 3: our world. Yeah yeah, yeah, like like there's kind of
Speaker 3: like a strip of land if you think about it
Speaker 3: like that in that area that all of it is
Speaker 3: combined together into this one locale and you have a
Speaker 3: lot of influences there throughout and you can even see
Speaker 3: it as you move around the world map and you
Speaker 3: see those different places and how they resemble that both
Speaker 3: in culinary, in sound, in just everything, and it's really
Speaker 3: really cool. I think it really works, and it just
Speaker 3: adds that moment if you get into a fight in
Speaker 3: the coliseum and the guitars start kicking up and there's
Speaker 3: kind of just like a pace to it it like
Speaker 3: it weirdly brings me back to like the Ridley Scott
Speaker 3: Gladiator because there's even a dude that goes out into
Speaker 3: the arena. Is like back in the year so and so,
Speaker 3: the great battle was held between this general and another.
Speaker 3: Today we recreate this with our competitors and it's like
Speaker 3: it it gets your blood going. You're like, yes, dude,
Speaker 3: this is awesome.
Speaker 4: Do you think Marcus is gonna like this as a
Speaker 4: like wrestling fan. Does it evoke any of that sort
Speaker 4: of energy at all?
Speaker 1: I don't know if it has wrestling in I guess.
Speaker 2: It's like the spectacle of wrestling because it's so adjacent
Speaker 2: to I mean, if you really want to trace the
Speaker 2: lineage of wrestling, I mean like wrestling back in like
Speaker 2: ancient Greece and Rome and stuff.
Speaker 3: Then it really comes down to do you think it's
Speaker 3: cool when this there's like this crew of ragtag heroes
Speaker 3: trying to make it, trying to survive and then roaring out.
Speaker 3: There's like some chariots that come out and you're like
Speaker 3: and it's all dangerous and you're like, how do we
Speaker 3: deal with these things? And you're having like band together
Speaker 3: it Like I was thinking about the Ridley Scott Gladiator
Speaker 3: movie constantly while.
Speaker 2: Playing scanned sequel. I'm sure, right, there's a sequel. I've
Speaker 2: never I never I never watched the sequel. I was
Speaker 2: like kind of interested in it, and then it just
Speaker 2: fell off my radar, so I never got Okay, I
Speaker 2: think it'd be good research for this game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're so right.
Speaker 3: I gotta watch the second Gladiator as well. Yeah, Fireing
Speaker 3: Blum Fortunes Weave. I think the slice that we've seen
Speaker 3: so far has been pretty pretty cool. As a Firemlue fan,
Speaker 3: I'm pretty excited for this one. Yeah, it's Fire Amblem.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, game comes out very soon. It's like next
Speaker 2: it's a September release, right, one of the fifty.
Speaker 3: You're saying very soon, we're still like a month out,
Speaker 3: which in game release calendar time is still eons away
Speaker 3: because there's so many I think of it in terms
Speaker 3: of how many games between then and now, and there's
Speaker 3: there's many mini games between then and now, so we
Speaker 3: do have some time, but.
Speaker 4: It feels about about five weeks from the day this episod.
Speaker 1: So it comes out okay.
Speaker 2: Like sometimes with game releases, it either is far away,
Speaker 2: but then sometimes it feels like it's tomorrow, because sometimes
Speaker 2: it just releases just creep up on you. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: having fun.
Speaker 3: It's it's always there, you know, there's always new games
Speaker 3: coming out, in new things that we're seeing speaking of yes, Marcus.
Speaker 2: And by the way, yeah, and by the way, off
Speaker 2: the top of you might have if you can hear
Speaker 2: rain and thunder. That is on my end because I
Speaker 2: live in Florida and it's the summertime and we get
Speaker 2: a lot of that during this time. But I like
Speaker 2: to think it adds like a nice maybe like a
Speaker 2: cozy atmosphere if you like that. But also I think
Speaker 2: it's great table setting because thematically it fits the next
Speaker 2: game about to talk about just sixteen sixty six Amsterdam,
Speaker 2: which I got to go see. I got to travel
Speaker 2: all the way to Amsterdam itself to go play an
Speaker 2: hour of this game, which on paper sounds insane to
Speaker 2: go to travel that far to play an hour of
Speaker 2: a video game. But that that's out. Is this business
Speaker 2: be sometimes? But yeah, if you've heard of this game,
Speaker 2: it's been around for a long long time, And honestly
Speaker 2: so I wrote through the new story when they re
Speaker 2: revealed this game during some Summer games fest and in it,
Speaker 2: I phrased it as if it was like a new
Speaker 2: reveal because I had forgotten that this had been floating
Speaker 2: around since like the early twenty tens. But in a way,
Speaker 2: it still works the way I framed it, because I
Speaker 2: think this is still it the first time it's ever
Speaker 2: had like a formal reveal, Like I think it had
Speaker 2: just been known by name as a thing that was
Speaker 2: kind of maybe happening in the background, but never had
Speaker 2: like it never progressed far enough to get like a
Speaker 2: full proper reveal back in the day. I guess, like
Speaker 2: short recap. This is the next game by Panash Digital Games,
Speaker 2: which is the studio led by Patrese de Sila, who
Speaker 2: you might know that name as he's kind of credited
Speaker 2: as one of the principal creators of the Assassin's Creed series.
Speaker 2: Formally at ubisof he was the director of Assassin's Creed
Speaker 2: one and two and was one of the lead writers
Speaker 2: on Assassin's Creed Brotherhood when he left Ubisoft under less
Speaker 2: than great terms, and this game was sort of something
Speaker 2: he conceived while he was at Ubisoft, Like he's told
Speaker 2: this story before where he took a family vacation to Amsterdam,
Speaker 2: came across a building that had a marker that said
Speaker 2: Anno sixteen sixty six, and sort of like the spark
Speaker 2: of an idea of setting the game or making a
Speaker 2: game set in the seventeenth century in the city was
Speaker 2: something that he had been wanting to play with. And
Speaker 2: we actually, you know, Patrice was on this trip and
Speaker 2: part of the preview beat was that we took like
Speaker 2: a two hour city tour where we just walked around
Speaker 2: with him and a local historian and he's just kind
Speaker 2: of like they're pointing out buildings, and some of the
Speaker 2: buildings are in the game, and then some just sort
Speaker 2: of like took some thematic inspiration. But he took us
Speaker 2: to the Anno building and he talked about how originally
Speaker 2: he was like, oh, it'd be cool to make an
Speaker 2: Assassin's Creed game in Amsterdam, which makes sense because he
Speaker 2: was still at UBI Soft. Just because of the architecture
Speaker 2: and you know, like it's if you've ever seen or
Speaker 2: been to Amsterdam, like it is nothing but just like
Speaker 2: rose and Rose and Rose of like built like very
Speaker 2: narrow but tall buildings. A lot of them have very
Speaker 2: like crooked facades kind of like in some cases intentionally.
Speaker 2: In other cases, it's because Amsterdam is built on basically
Speaker 2: swamp land, Like there's a lot of river ways, Like
Speaker 2: it's very much like I think the nickname has it's
Speaker 2: the Venice of the North End because of that building
Speaker 2: started to sag under the saturated earth until they were
Speaker 2: reinforced with more modern means over the years. So it's
Speaker 2: just got like a it's got a funky look to
Speaker 2: it that kind of makes it ideal for like setting
Speaker 2: up cool sort of like open world sandbox to like
Speaker 2: run around in h He never got to do that
Speaker 2: with Ubisoft because he left went to go to TCHQ
Speaker 2: in Montreal and where he kind of started working on
Speaker 2: the game. Then THHQ went out of business and then
Speaker 2: funny enough, Ubisoft bought THHK Montreal, So I mean he
Speaker 2: was brought back into Ubisau, but then he was immediately
Speaker 2: terminated when he came back, and there was a whole
Speaker 2: legal battle that kind of spun off from this because
Speaker 2: they terminated him. But the IP and depending on who
Speaker 2: you listen to on both sides, Patrese kind of ash
Speaker 2: said that, hey, they basically tried to steal my idea
Speaker 2: and didn't want me there. Would be off, kind of
Speaker 2: said the opposite, and he kicked off like a year's
Speaker 2: long legal battle that Patrese won and got the rights
Speaker 2: back to the game. And fast forward many years later,
Speaker 2: he's been working on it since twenty twenty and now
Speaker 2: it's about to launch in early access August twenty fifth.
Speaker 2: So yeah, a lot of a lot of turmoil surrounding
Speaker 2: this game, and after playing it for an hour, I'm
Speaker 2: I'm like cautiously hopeful that'll be worth it. The synopsis
Speaker 2: is that it's actually set it's set in sixteen sixty six,
Speaker 2: but it's actually taking place over the course of three periods,
Speaker 2: which is it's pretty appropriate coming from the guy that
Speaker 2: made Assassin's Creed the sixteen sixty six Like main Eras
Speaker 2: has he controlling a witch named Noah who is kind
Speaker 2: of a newiated into her well say coven. I think
Speaker 2: they're they're called the Zandaris, and she has the role
Speaker 2: of a collector, which is like a very specific but
Speaker 2: important role in the faction, where she is tasked with
Speaker 2: hunting down these entities called originals, which are these beings
Speaker 2: that a long long time ago in the game's lore,
Speaker 2: the Zanders had given specific humans this ancient magic called
Speaker 2: nucks with the idea of like, hey, this is really
Speaker 2: gonna help humanity. We're gonna only pick the people that
Speaker 2: we think are most worthy to have this, but it
Speaker 2: basically gives them these powers, and I guess also allows
Speaker 2: them to kind of live almost forever, it seems like.
Speaker 2: But then I wound up backfiring because the longer that
Speaker 2: these people had the nucks, it began to corrupt some
Speaker 2: of them to where they just became more or less
Speaker 2: monsters than are now like threats to humanity and so
Speaker 2: and I guess also they've just spread throughout history. We
Speaker 2: are you gonna say, Charles.
Speaker 4: Well, when you say monsters, are we talking like they're
Speaker 4: doing really bad things? Are you talking like they literally
Speaker 4: transform into like a monster.
Speaker 3: Or physical monsters or like, uh, not performative monsters, but
Speaker 3: like action based monsters, a bit of both.
Speaker 2: Like there's one point of demo where you do confront
Speaker 2: an original and granted this guy is actually like cool
Speaker 2: with you, like he's he's like nice and has worked
Speaker 2: with the Zaan Dares, but you also need to collect
Speaker 2: his power. So when you when you do that, it
Speaker 2: like manifests this like weird shadow creature that you have
Speaker 2: to fight God. So yeah, I guess it's it's kind
Speaker 2: of both. And so this kind of kicked off like
Speaker 2: a generation's long cycle of like, Okay, we need to
Speaker 2: take back the power that we've given these originals. We
Speaker 2: need to train someone specialized in doing that, because the
Speaker 2: problem is that the originals just look like people and
Speaker 2: they just blended into society over the century. So we
Speaker 2: need to figure out how to find them and then
Speaker 2: confront them and then basically kill them more less and
Speaker 2: get their power back. And the way to do that
Speaker 2: is that you need like their original name, because some
Speaker 2: of them been alive so long that they've just you know,
Speaker 2: just assumed different identities.
Speaker 1: They have changed names. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like a seal that they have that's tied
Speaker 2: to them Genie to find and then you just need
Speaker 2: to get like a visual like identity of them, like
Speaker 2: what does this person look like? So you are going
Speaker 2: around as this switch and like a like an open world,
Speaker 2: but it's not like a big open world because Panash
Speaker 2: is not a huge team. I think there's roughly about
Speaker 2: seventy people there. So, like Patrice described it as like
Speaker 2: Amsterdam itself, it is like a sandbox, but it's more
Speaker 2: dense than it is wide. For example, Like one of
Speaker 2: the cool things about the game is that he he
Speaker 2: and a team are making sure that every single building
Speaker 2: can be explored inside like the interiors. You can just
Speaker 2: walk into any building, and because of just the way
Speaker 2: Amsterdam's laid out, there's like multiple floors that you can explore,
Speaker 2: and that kind of like level design choice will play
Speaker 2: into a feature I'll discuss later. But Noah has a
Speaker 2: partner who is a cat. And the thing about this cat,
Speaker 2: who kind of becomes basically her familiar of sorts, is
Speaker 2: that it has the consciousness of a man from nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine who is named Aaron, and sort of like
Speaker 2: on New Year's Even nineteen ninety nine, he and his
Speaker 2: partner go to Amsterdam to celebrate the New Year's It
Speaker 2: turns out his partner is actually a modern day zam Daris,
Speaker 2: and he kind of like unwilling or unwittingly, engages on
Speaker 2: like a sex ritual with her that sends his consciousness
Speaker 2: back to sixteen sixty six inside of a cat on
Speaker 2: the night that Noah is initiated as a collector, and
Speaker 2: so as part of the initiation like, hey, you need
Speaker 2: to pick a cat, which is actually like a gameplay choice,
Speaker 2: like there's multiple different cats you can choose from, and
Speaker 2: each cat has like different gameplay sort of like differences
Speaker 2: that weren't unlocked in the bill that I played, but
Speaker 2: Patri said in the in the early access build, the
Speaker 2: cats will have like a difference between them. But you know,
Speaker 2: he gets transported there, he has no idea where he is.
Speaker 2: Noah knows this, like there's a point where he she
Speaker 2: encounters his like true self in this kind of voice,
Speaker 2: so she knows that he's from the future. So he's
Speaker 2: very like understandably freaking out and confused about what is
Speaker 2: happening and why he's in like three hundred years in
Speaker 2: the past. But it kind of forms is like kind
Speaker 2: of fun dynamic between the two because you know, Noah's
Speaker 2: very stoic and kind of steadfast, and he's just like
Speaker 2: he's just like a dude, Like when I like the
Speaker 2: future to be like, what is happening here? This is crazy?
Speaker 2: Magic is real. I've in sixteen sixty six here, You're
Speaker 2: a witch. This is wild. And then there's a third
Speaker 2: time period that, uh, did either of you guys play
Speaker 2: the free prologue that they put out on Steam. Okay,
Speaker 2: I asked, because this prologue is set in the third period,
Speaker 2: which is seemingly like the present day, like the twenty
Speaker 2: twenties where you play it as this woman named Cleo
Speaker 2: who visits this library because he got a letter from
Speaker 2: her dad basically tasking her with finding some information from
Speaker 2: a guy that she knows, like tied to like this
Speaker 2: magical book. But it turns out that her father is Arin,
Speaker 2: So future Aarin has left a message basically serving as
Speaker 2: the narration for what happens during his adventure as a
Speaker 2: cat in sixteen sixty six.
Speaker 1: You're rubbing your eyes, Charles.
Speaker 4: Is he in the future? Is he like back?
Speaker 1: It is anymore? Like, we don't know.
Speaker 2: I think we might assume he's not a cat anymore
Speaker 2: because he wrote this, But I don't know magic who knows,
Speaker 2: But they just because they treat him like he's either
Speaker 2: missing or dead in the future.
Speaker 4: Well, I was just gonna say, like, if he got
Speaker 4: his consciousness sent back to be a cat, I guess
Speaker 4: the part of the equation I'm missing is he could
Speaker 4: have written it before he was sent No, that wouldn't
Speaker 4: make sense.
Speaker 2: He definitely wrote as well after because he addressed it
Speaker 2: to his daughter. He's like, hey, this is something you
Speaker 2: need to know. Here's what happened to me this one
Speaker 2: time where I became a cat and got sent to
Speaker 2: the past. But I need you to find some things
Speaker 2: in the future because Cleo, just if you line up
Speaker 2: the information, it seems like she was conceived during the
Speaker 2: sex ritual that sends to the past.
Speaker 3: That's where my question was that that was the sticking
Speaker 3: point for.
Speaker 4: Crazy, that the line she was conceived during the sex
Speaker 4: swittual made me an, Eric.
Speaker 1: Go, these things happen, you know.
Speaker 4: This is also like very funny, like from from an
Speaker 4: original Assassine s creed guy, like he couldn't have the animis,
Speaker 4: so there's a really convoluted magical thing of It's like, well,
Speaker 4: it's the present, but it's also the past and it's
Speaker 4: also more in the present. And don't think about it.
Speaker 4: We don't have the animus, but we have cats and magic, and.
Speaker 2: It makes more sense than the animates because the animis
Speaker 2: was like a borderline magical machine, just like this is
Speaker 2: exactly this is just magic at least just straight up magic.
Speaker 4: A h here, there's less explaining that has to happen.
Speaker 4: If you just say it's magic, it's like, okay, that's fine.
Speaker 4: If you say it's technology, then you're like, how.
Speaker 1: Did you get all that tech? What does it do? Exactly?
Speaker 2: Like sequencing DNA makes me like basically relive someone's memories.
Speaker 2: Is that how it works? That?
Speaker 3: I mean, that is okay. I'm not going to get
Speaker 3: into semantics, but I'm like that at least like has
Speaker 3: quasi believability, whereas magic is just like I don't know
Speaker 3: man magic, and then everybody's just like cool.
Speaker 4: I think I don't have to try to understand the magic,
Speaker 4: whereas you would have to understand that.
Speaker 1: I mean not that you even have to understand.
Speaker 3: You accept that we have thrown the bounds of reality
Speaker 3: and we are completely entering made up time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: It's like the animals, they try to have their best
Speaker 2: to explain it, which only makes you scrutinize it more.
Speaker 3: Again, we still just end up doing magic. By Assassin's
Speaker 3: career is they're just like, yeah, we just do magic now,
Speaker 3: and it's like yeah, fine, but so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's like three different eras. But the main
Speaker 2: story is like the sixteen sixty sixth story so I
Speaker 2: played like an hour. Like the section I played for
Speaker 2: the preview was like immediately after the prologue ends, where
Speaker 2: you are Noah, like you're you're doing your witch witch rual.
Speaker 2: It gets jumped by a bunch of militia who are
Speaker 2: witch hunters, and you get to try out some of
Speaker 2: the combat, which is very if you've seen the trailers,
Speaker 2: kind of like very melee action coded, like, uh, she
Speaker 2: has a staff that you're swinging around. It's like basic combos, uh,
Speaker 2: three hits, like dropped some It looks nice. It felt
Speaker 2: really a bit weightless in kind of this early build,
Speaker 2: but it like looked cool. And then you also have
Speaker 2: a magic spells that you can use, Like the only
Speaker 2: spell that I had available during this demo was like
Speaker 2: I could target certain ops just like crates and whatever
Speaker 2: and just make them explode, which were just like instantly
Speaker 2: kill anyone that was nearby or at least heavily damage him.
Speaker 2: If it was like a stronger enemy type, you're finding
Speaker 2: like waves of enemies, which it was like a bit
Speaker 2: dated sort of like it reminded me a lot of
Speaker 2: the old Assassin's creeds where you would just kind of
Speaker 2: have like enemies circling you, and they would like one
Speaker 2: or two at a time would kind of take turns attacking.
Speaker 2: So I'm hoping that gets changed a bit to maybe
Speaker 2: feel a little bit more interesting and dynamic. But if
Speaker 2: anything else, it felt like kind of nostalgic in a
Speaker 2: weird way of like this is what games used to be,
Speaker 2: and like managing mobs used to be, Like.
Speaker 1: Is there a counter button?
Speaker 2: Uh, there's a dodge. There's not a counter, but you
Speaker 2: can do like a kind of like a perfect dodge
Speaker 2: thing at the last minute that kind of like warps
Speaker 2: her like behind her behind a which not which time,
Speaker 2: It doesn't show, it doesn't slow time. It's just sort
Speaker 2: of like she just very quickly like just whists behind
Speaker 2: them like she she she does like a very supernatural
Speaker 2: sort of like side step, like she's not like rolling
Speaker 2: or anything like that. Does that make sense? But we
Speaker 2: had a separate hands off demo with Patrice where he
Speaker 2: was showing us more of the game and some of
Speaker 2: the powers that he had in his build. Was like
Speaker 2: she could petrify enemies, like turn them a stone temporarily.
Speaker 2: She had one where she like summoned these weird like
Speaker 2: tendrils from the ground and it just lifted enemies in
Speaker 2: the area. Then you could just like wail on them
Speaker 2: while they were suspended. So there's other things you can
Speaker 2: play around with. And then when you get into the
Speaker 2: into like the city proper, it opens up this other
Speaker 2: part of the game that is like investigating the Originals.
Speaker 2: And so this is like maybe the most interesting part
Speaker 2: of the game to me because it's very open ended
Speaker 2: in terms of how you go about with your investigation. So,
Speaker 2: like I mentioned Foard, there's three things you need to
Speaker 2: find from the originals to point them out, and how
Speaker 2: you do that is a lot of like exploring buildings
Speaker 2: and talking to people in the street and just trying
Speaker 2: to find clues. So as Noah, you can switch between
Speaker 2: her witch and her like civilian form, which is important
Speaker 2: because citizens won't interact with you if you're a witch
Speaker 2: or they'll be scared of you. And there's like an
Speaker 2: awareness sort of like meter that builds up like kind
Speaker 2: of like if you want to be reductive. It's almost
Speaker 2: like a GTA star system, where like the more sort
Speaker 2: of like questionable things you do, the more kind of
Speaker 2: like of the wrong attention you start to attract. And
Speaker 2: then if you fill up the meter, the militia comes
Speaker 2: after you, and then you either have to fight your
Speaker 2: way out or go like retreat to like a safe house.
Speaker 2: But then he showed us a thing where like, oh,
Speaker 2: if you get in a fight with the militia to
Speaker 2: kill you, they'll take you to jail, and then you're
Speaker 2: like sitting in jail in almost like in a middle
Speaker 2: gear fashion. You have to break out of jail, so
Speaker 2: get Yeah, he said, He's like candidly, he's like we're
Speaker 2: still working on the jail part of the game, like
Speaker 2: because we're trying to figure out like, well, there'll be
Speaker 2: like a penalty.
Speaker 1: For like multiple incarcerations.
Speaker 2: Like if I just get arrested three times straight, should
Speaker 2: something happen or like yeah, yeah, like well I will
Speaker 2: that be like a hard game over at that point
Speaker 2: or like you know that that part of the game
Speaker 2: is still very much tentative. But you can also switch
Speaker 2: between Aaron. You can switch to him anytime because he's
Speaker 2: a cat, he's smaller. He can get into spaces that
Speaker 2: Noah can't, Like to get into this one building to
Speaker 2: find an original I had to use Aaron to do
Speaker 2: some like platform and that very much reminded me of
Speaker 2: stray and how like kind of like deliberate but graceful
Speaker 2: it is, and find like an open window, slink in,
Speaker 2: go to the front door, open it up, and then
Speaker 2: let Noah in and have her takeover. Aaron also has
Speaker 2: the ability to possess people, which is pretty cool. So
Speaker 2: there's like the in game Lores that apparently people that
Speaker 2: are afraid of cats are vulnerable to possession. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It's like Charles will never be borne. He's a cat guy,
Speaker 2: so you'll never have this happen to you.
Speaker 4: But Aaron lives with a cat named after a ghost.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I'm like double protected. So you guys are
Speaker 2: basically witches. Actually not a thing about it, bulocks, but yeah,
Speaker 2: oh that's true, I guess. So. So yeah, so if
Speaker 2: you find a citizen that's afraid of you, there's like
Speaker 2: a whole mini game where you like hiss at them
Speaker 2: and then you jump on their face and literally scratch
Speaker 2: their face.
Speaker 1: Yees.
Speaker 2: And that's like an important part of the rich because
Speaker 2: even Noah apparently like she has a scratch in her
Speaker 2: face from a cat, and like, I guess, cat scratching
Speaker 2: you in the face is basically like the way you
Speaker 2: kind of like interapact with them or to have like
Speaker 2: a magical cat interact with you in some way, Like
Speaker 2: I think it's kind of how Aaron became her familiar
Speaker 2: in the first place. So there's a lot of like
Speaker 2: face scratching going on in this game. But yeah, there's
Speaker 2: one point where this is when Patrice was playing, he
Speaker 2: like possessed a woman because we needed to get into
Speaker 2: a building that was like it seems like there's like
Speaker 2: a party going on in there, but are like, Okay,
Speaker 2: Noah can't get in because she's not invited to this.
Speaker 2: So Aaron, you go in there, that's one of the
Speaker 2: people in there is like a housekeeper.
Speaker 1: Then let Noah in.
Speaker 2: And then because the housekeeper let Noah in, everyone's cool
Speaker 2: with things like oh, I guess she was invited, and
Speaker 2: like you can even take well, it's more just like
Speaker 2: she's not supposed to be here because this isn't her
Speaker 2: house or she's not invited to whatever this event is.
Speaker 2: But you know, like hey, if I.
Speaker 3: See yeah, it's like yeah, okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2: It's like if someone in the party lets someone else in,
Speaker 2: everyone else in the party is going to assume that
Speaker 2: they're supposed to be here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, I get for a second, I thought you
Speaker 3: meant that, like the character couldn't enter the building unless
Speaker 3: they were invited in, And I was like, that's a
Speaker 3: vampire rule, not a which rule.
Speaker 2: I think that's just a rule. I think that's just
Speaker 2: how society works there. No but but so yeah, and
Speaker 2: there's in terms of the investigations, Patrice was saying that
Speaker 2: you can kind of in terms of like the information,
Speaker 2: you can gather them in any order. It just depends
Speaker 2: like you can be loud or you can be stealthy.
Speaker 2: In fact, he even said that you can play most
Speaker 2: of his game outside of like the original the confrontation
Speaker 2: with the Originals. You can play it pretty non violently.
Speaker 2: It's just like, okay, and then when you do find
Speaker 2: an original and you kind of have all the information
Speaker 2: you need, it triggers this boss fight, of which I
Speaker 2: only got to see one against the sort of like
Speaker 2: book Maker, who was actually like cool with Noah and
Speaker 2: sort of like willingly gives his power to hurt as
Speaker 2: like a debt to Noah's mother, but sort of like
Speaker 2: the entity that I guess makes up the core of
Speaker 2: the original is sort of like this almost like rabid beast,
Speaker 2: so like even though his like physical shell dies, now
Speaker 2: you have like just the raw power that is just
Speaker 2: kind of belevolent. And then I got into a boss
Speaker 2: fight with that that was pretty pretty basic, honestly, Like
Speaker 2: it was it felt very much like the first boss
Speaker 2: in a video game, just to get you used to
Speaker 2: the idea. Like it was just kind of like rampaging around.
Speaker 2: It kind of just looked like a weird shadow creature,
Speaker 2: so it was like a good exercise in dodging and
Speaker 2: knowing how to. They had crates and like junk set
Speaker 2: up around the arenas. It's like, oh, I can target
Speaker 2: those and blow those up when the monster gets near,
Speaker 2: that'll be that'll do some damage. It's like fine, Like
Speaker 2: it's it's not like the combat seems like like totally serviceable.
Speaker 2: But the stuff that I'm most interested in that I
Speaker 2: did not get to play myself is more of the
Speaker 2: investigation stuff, just because I like being able to take
Speaker 2: in the city. I think the city itself looks really
Speaker 2: nice so far, like just how they've kind of not
Speaker 2: only captured it from like a realistic standpoint, but they
Speaker 2: also have added sort of like a like something about
Speaker 2: the graphical filter they're using. They're they're trying to make
Speaker 2: it look like a old Dutch paintings. There's one painter
Speaker 2: and particulate that they cited.
Speaker 1: Rand. I mean they did cite rem Brandt, but this
Speaker 1: is off the top of my head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did go to Rembrandt's house while I was
Speaker 2: in there, but I was not invite you in or Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: he did not. I don't think he's invited anyone in
Speaker 2: a very long time.
Speaker 3: That's the secret. Yeah, I want to say Vermire.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. Uh, Like apparently there's something about the way
Speaker 2: that the art direction that it's got a bit of
Speaker 2: a almost like a paintull equality that maybe you you
Speaker 2: really you don't see immediately in screenshot, but in motion
Speaker 2: you kind of get a sense of it. But apparently
Speaker 2: that was like a very big artistic influence for the
Speaker 2: presentation of this game.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like my my overall impressions, like the game's cool, and
Speaker 2: the setup and premise is wild in a way that
Speaker 2: I'm interested in. Uh, but you know, this is not unsurprising.
Speaker 2: It was rough, like you know, there was no way around,
Speaker 2: Like it was really rough in the state that it
Speaker 2: was in, but it was like a like I said,
Speaker 2: like an in development build of a game that is
Speaker 2: launching into early access. So I guess that's not crazy surprising.
Speaker 2: I just hope that at least when it launched an
Speaker 2: early access, that it's a bit cleaner and more stable
Speaker 2: than what I played. But I think Patrice said in
Speaker 2: the early access build it's supposed to have like the
Speaker 2: game's first few chapters what she kind of described as
Speaker 2: like a substantial like chunk of the game, and that
Speaker 2: overall he expects the game to be an early access
Speaker 2: for at least the year, assuming that things go well
Speaker 2: and based on whatever feedback they get. But he said
Speaker 2: that pretty much the only thing that they're going to
Speaker 2: be working on is like expanding the gameplay and like
Speaker 2: finalizing a dialogue. But apparently the story's written and it's
Speaker 2: like mapped out, like they know where they're going with
Speaker 2: this and whatnot, Like the rules of the world haven't
Speaker 2: been established in a lot of good stuff. One thing
Speaker 2: I will note real quick is that there was one
Speaker 2: section at the end where I did jump back to
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine where just through story Shenanigans, you play
Speaker 2: as Aaron after the ritual, but then Noah comes with you,
Speaker 2: but she's the cat now, so it's like again the
Speaker 2: roles were reversed. We're like, no, what's exploring nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: nine as a cat because there's some stuff you have
Speaker 2: to do in nineteen ninety nine with Aaron And yeah,
Speaker 2: Eric's face is Yeah. Time traveling via cat consciousness is
Speaker 2: like a big I was.
Speaker 3: So sure that I had like the timeline laid out
Speaker 3: of my head. I was like really, it was like
Speaker 3: you're watching Memento and you're like, yeah, I know how
Speaker 3: this movie works, and then you get to one part
Speaker 3: and you're like wait a minute, oh no, and you're
Speaker 3: just no, there's a new wrinkle.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know how often this will happen or
Speaker 2: if it was just the one time thing this.
Speaker 1: They're swapping cats too.
Speaker 2: They're swapping cats. I guess it would be a different
Speaker 2: cat to be crazy. If this is the same like
Speaker 2: three hundred year old cat that she's in'thappening.
Speaker 1: I mean they're tied.
Speaker 5: It's already where that's where we draw. Yeah, magic exctly,
Speaker 5: that's what magic's for. You just explained away like I
Speaker 5: don't know, man, It's a magical cat, magical immortal cat,
Speaker 5: But there was one I didn't mention this in my
Speaker 5: preview just because it was I didn't have like it
Speaker 5: wasn't like a huge game play in theclation, but it
Speaker 5: was just kind of a weird moment where this is
Speaker 5: where they kind of like properly teach you how to
Speaker 5: possess people because you need to go. You need to
Speaker 5: make your way down to the hotel courtyard to find
Speaker 5: an object, and there's like certain areas you can't access
Speaker 5: because you're it's for employees only. Also, Aaron's like in
Speaker 5: his underwear the entire time because he had just had
Speaker 5: sex and he just did a change because the situation
Speaker 5: is dire. Times of the essence, he just has to go,
Speaker 5: which he remarks about. But like as soon as the
Speaker 5: segment starts, they start playing free Bird, okay, like like
Speaker 5: straight the Lice, like the license song their starts playing,
Speaker 5: and this entire segment where you have to make your
Speaker 5: way down multiple floors and kind of like stealth your
Speaker 5: way across like like curious onlookers the other hotel residents
Speaker 5: that are seeing like a man in his underwear just
Speaker 5: randomly walking around and then you're switching to Noah to
Speaker 5: get ahead and like a lot doors for airon to continue.
Speaker 5: Free Bird is playing the entire time that this.
Speaker 3: Is happening first half of Freebird or second half of Freebird.
Speaker 2: It's the start of the song. I think it does
Speaker 2: finish a song because I this was a long section,
Speaker 2: and obviously it's a long song, but I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: I heard like almost the entire song by the time
Speaker 2: I wrapped it up.
Speaker 3: Because I was going to say, playing a stealth section,
Speaker 3: I would think that the second half of Freebird would
Speaker 3: not match the energy of that dynamic. You know, I
Speaker 3: can't imagine trying to like sneak through an area in
Speaker 3: the backgrounds, Like It's like that would not tonally contrast
Speaker 3: maybe the first part. That's still a weird choice.
Speaker 2: I would argue, no, it based on the just to
Speaker 2: get the premise. It's just like what what like I
Speaker 2: did a double take, was like is that what I
Speaker 2: think it is? The opening notes of We.
Speaker 1: Couldn't get Layla.
Speaker 3: We couldn't get like like the second half of Layla
Speaker 3: or anything like that. We had to go with first
Speaker 3: half of free Bird.
Speaker 2: I don't know what's the like most occult band that
Speaker 2: would fit like a witchcraft game I mean, yeah, like
Speaker 2: a Stevie Nick's Stevie Nick song on there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know, get ghost to do a song. I
Speaker 2: get a ghost song in there, but yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 2: that's sixteen sixty after sam it seems cool. Coustously optimistic.
Speaker 2: I hope it gets cleaned up soon. But I like
Speaker 2: the premise. I like the world. I think it's I
Speaker 2: think there's something there, but it'll be curious to see
Speaker 2: how it just comes together over time in early access
Speaker 2: all right?
Speaker 4: That was that was Yeah, it was to see some
Speaker 4: footage of this game, because at the time of recording
Speaker 4: we haven't and it just sounds so so wild.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, do you guys think you were
Speaker 2: jumping into the early access bill checking out.
Speaker 4: Or honestly, like, do you want to I'm interested in
Speaker 4: the game and concept your description of it, I'm not
Speaker 4: sure you liked it all that much. Like you you
Speaker 4: said you're cautiously optimistic. It just sounds like a lot
Speaker 4: of the stuff was very basic. The interest is more
Speaker 4: in the world and the framing of the game than
Speaker 4: like the game itself. But the time travel Shenanigans is like,
Speaker 4: I mean, I just got to figure out what the
Speaker 4: heck is going on there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're I think you're mostly right, Charles, Like,
Speaker 2: it's like did I in terms of like being on
Speaker 2: the sticks playing the game. I wish I liked it more,
Speaker 2: but a lot of it had to do it polish
Speaker 2: more than anything, sure cause, like the combat looks cool,
Speaker 2: it just didn't feel great yet hopefully it gets there.
Speaker 2: And the investigation stuff I didn't get to do at all,
Speaker 2: but watching Patrice play it, it's like, that's cool. I
Speaker 2: would like to mess around with that to see how
Speaker 2: deep thatst system goes. Oh god, I forgot to mention
Speaker 2: one last thing about the investigations. It's got like a
Speaker 2: roguelike thing to it, which is something that they had
Speaker 2: not talked about until this point. Like when you take
Speaker 2: a contract to go after an original, you get like
Speaker 2: a choice of one of three randomized powers that you
Speaker 2: can pick or like stat buffs, and then I guess
Speaker 2: throughout the mission you can find more abilities. But basically
Speaker 2: every mission you'll have like a different suite of abilities
Speaker 2: that is like like kind of like roguelike in nature,
Speaker 2: and I believe when you die you lose some of them.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that was another thing that I did not
Speaker 2: get to play, but Patrice was showing off and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, interesting, it seems like the roguelike stuff,
Speaker 2: Like this isn't a run based game over all on
Speaker 2: what people to think that the entire game is a roguelike.
Speaker 2: It just seems to be these contracts to go after
Speaker 2: the originals.
Speaker 3: I I want to say this gently while holding of
Speaker 3: whoever is listening, that this feels like a Supreme Pizza
Speaker 3: of gameplay ideas where we just kind of put whatever
Speaker 3: on there. Sounded good, and that makes me really curious
Speaker 3: about what the final game is gonna look like because
Speaker 3: there's just everyone you're like, oh, I think, I yeah,
Speaker 3: that sounds like a game I've I've played or would play.
Speaker 3: And then you're like, oh, and it does this, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, what, It's like a.
Speaker 2: Supreme pizza, but like like a smaller medium at like
Speaker 2: in terms of like maximum size.
Speaker 3: This is like those party supreme pizza.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like this isn't like a Crimson Desert situation where
Speaker 2: it's like, here's like an absurdly large pizza that has
Speaker 2: every possible topping. It's like kitchen, It's like a reasonable
Speaker 2: size pizza, but it's like dense with toppings.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, more topping than cheese.
Speaker 1: Sure, that might work.
Speaker 2: I like cheese, but you know a flavorful bite. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, cheese and pepperoni cup. Oh but you
Speaker 2: added this like less common ingredient with like the like, oh,
Speaker 2: I didn't expect.
Speaker 1: That banana pepper in there. I was gonna say, but.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say hotney of like hot. You're like, oh,
Speaker 2: hot honey. Interesting that I could be good.
Speaker 4: Hot honeys of more reliable edition. Hot honey is the roguelikeney.
Speaker 3: Specially, hot honey is the Pick three rogue light thing
Speaker 3: because it's like, yeah, it's tasty, but like everybody's doing
Speaker 3: it now, so it's kind of losing it's allure a
Speaker 3: little bit. You know, it used to be like hot honey,
Speaker 3: and now you're like hot honey again, Like yeah, take
Speaker 3: it back to red pepper chili flakes. You know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying, Mmm, hot honey is better.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmmmmm.
Speaker 3: Okay, well well that's a different podcast.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's sixteen six six afternoon. You can go
Speaker 2: to vamformer dot com right now. You can read my
Speaker 2: written thoughts over there. But yes, we're gonna take a
Speaker 2: quick ad break, but when we come back, we're gonna
Speaker 2: talk about some marvel tokon fighting souls and fields of
Speaker 2: mystery will be right back.
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Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Game and Former show
Speaker 2: and Eric, you have become an Avenger or an.
Speaker 3: X Man, not quite all. X x Man is more
Speaker 3: of my speed.
Speaker 2: I would say, which team, whatever team you've joined in
Speaker 2: Marvel Token and Fighting Souls.
Speaker 4: Can actually Marcus you and I let's do a game
Speaker 4: we try to guess Eric's like character that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so I do have a four I have
Speaker 3: a locked in for Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, So well real quick, if you don't know
Speaker 2: what this is, this is the four on four tag
Speaker 2: team fighting game by Arc system Works. So you might
Speaker 2: know as the team behind Guilty Gear, Blaze Blue, dragon
Speaker 2: Ball Fighters.
Speaker 1: That is important, which, yeah, all.
Speaker 2: Great fighting game series, but I especially am a fan
Speaker 2: of dragon Ball Fighters for the DNA of this game,
Speaker 2: especially like Dragon Ball Fighters for sure. Yeah, you have
Speaker 2: a team of Marvel characters all duking it out, and
Speaker 2: so since you have a team of four, we're gonna
Speaker 2: guess the team that, uh, Eric's going with I'm gonna say,
Speaker 2: there's definitely an X man in there, like an X
Speaker 2: main character. I'm gonna guess because who's it. Who's in
Speaker 2: the case, Wolverine, Storm.
Speaker 1: Can I manage? Run down the roster?
Speaker 3: Run down the roster because it is it's not a
Speaker 3: large loss roster, but it is like a decently roster.
Speaker 4: So we've got Miss Marvel, spider Man, Penny Parker, star Lord,
Speaker 4: Black Panther, Just Shurry, Hulk, Captain America, iron Man, Carnage,
Speaker 4: Green Goblin, Doctor Doom, Magneto, Blade, ghost Rider, Deadpool, low Key, Danger, Storm, Magic, Wolverine.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna go Danger. I'm gonna say,
Speaker 2: you got a little weird dangers on my team. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Wait, Eric, don't don't confirm it yet.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, Okay, I want.
Speaker 1: To and I want to guess. Okay, so I want
Speaker 1: to compare it.
Speaker 2: I'm musa say Danger. I'm gonna say, because I know
Speaker 2: you're a big Marvel's capcom fan, I'm going I want
Speaker 2: to say either Doctor Drum or Magneto. I'm gonna say
Speaker 2: Magneto because he's he's pretty, he's you know, he's a
Speaker 2: mainstay in NBC say Danger, Magneto, I'm gonna spider manns
Speaker 2: He's classic and then m I'm trying to think of
Speaker 2: it like someone like super left Field. Like I feel
Speaker 2: like you're going to pick someone maybe that hasn't been
Speaker 2: in any like NBC, just to maybe try them. So
Speaker 2: like that would be like Miss Marvel or ghost Writer?
Speaker 2: Who else has it never been? Magic's never been in
Speaker 2: m VC. I'm would say, you know, I'm gonna say,
Speaker 2: Miss Marvel, why not? So what is that? Danger, Miss Marvel,
Speaker 2: Spider Man, and and Magneto was my team.
Speaker 3: Right, I'm reading this down Danger, Miss Marvel, Magneto, and
Speaker 3: who was the last one was a spider Man, Spidery.
Speaker 1: My guest is.
Speaker 4: Danger, Doom, Magic.
Speaker 1: Ghost Rider.
Speaker 3: Charles was the closest by getting two of them right,
Speaker 3: and granted one of those I gave to you, Doom.
Speaker 3: Doom is on the team. Uh, Doom was.
Speaker 4: Most confident about. For what it's worth, I probably wouldn't
Speaker 4: have guessed Danger.
Speaker 3: So we're watching because because I was streaming or or
Speaker 3: I was on Jesse's Uh Jesse Vittelli friend of the
Speaker 3: show who was on last week was was laid off
Speaker 3: between us recording the episode and publishing the episode from
Speaker 3: his gig, but in response did a sabbath on over
Speaker 3: the weekend up through this week in which he managed
Speaker 3: to a career through a thousand subscribers over the course
Speaker 3: of like five days of streaming, which actually put him
Speaker 3: in the top one thousand for active subs in Twitch,
Speaker 3: which is just wild shout outs to Jesse.
Speaker 1: We love Jesse.
Speaker 3: We're gonna try and probably get him on the show
Speaker 3: a little bit more often because he's just a good time,
Speaker 3: good person to have around. But also he did some
Speaker 3: really really fun stuff on there. So I was over
Speaker 3: there for a little bit streaming with him playing some
Speaker 3: token but.
Speaker 1: My team.
Speaker 3: On Point Blade, which I did not see coming. But
Speaker 3: Blade is a little bit like almost Vergil from MVC
Speaker 3: three style. I really he's just got some good neutrals.
Speaker 3: I really like his options. I think when I look
Speaker 3: for a point character in a game like this, I
Speaker 3: kind of want somebody who's going to be able to
Speaker 3: play the neutral game very well. And I think with him,
Speaker 3: I found like a really a character whose neutral game
Speaker 3: I vibe with. He's got a lot of good sized
Speaker 3: swings throw out, he's got some ranged attacks, He's got
Speaker 3: this really cool ability where he throws a steak and
Speaker 3: can follow up and like zip to the opponent attack
Speaker 3: with it, which leads to some cool trap moments and
Speaker 3: stuff like that where you can kind of follow up
Speaker 3: on attacks that people think you can't follow up on
Speaker 3: and things like that. So I really really like Blade
Speaker 3: for that. I also my next on the lineup is
Speaker 3: danger because it does matter what order you put them in,
Speaker 3: and this is maybe one of the weirder stranger things
Speaker 3: about Marvel to Con is that, so you think of
Speaker 3: Marvel versus Capcom or Dragon Ball Fighters, and you have
Speaker 3: a team of three, each with their own life bar.
Speaker 3: You can call in assists or you can tag out
Speaker 3: to them. You also have the ability to do follow
Speaker 3: up supers and things like that, so if you do
Speaker 3: a level one super, you can then follow it up
Speaker 3: with another character's level one super and that'll also tag
Speaker 3: you out, so they come in and be the point character.
Speaker 3: So you always have a point character who's out and
Speaker 3: fighting on the screen al a street fighter, and then
Speaker 3: two people kind of in the background who can help
Speaker 3: the varying degrees on timers. Marvel TOKN does all that,
Speaker 3: but they give you four people on a team, a
Speaker 3: singular life bar for the entire team, and you start
Speaker 3: the match with only two of your characters, your point
Speaker 3: character and your first assist available, And there's also some weird,
Speaker 3: funky mechanics. I'm still kind of getting my head around
Speaker 3: where depending on how your characters are arranged in the roster,
Speaker 3: they will have different assists that they throw out when
Speaker 3: they come out and help you, And this changes depending
Speaker 3: on who you have swapped to as your point character
Speaker 3: as well. So I've been doing a lot of changing
Speaker 3: around of my team to figure out how I want
Speaker 3: that to sort of line up and play out and
Speaker 3: who should be where.
Speaker 1: So I was seeing is.
Speaker 2: The type of the differences between the assists? Is it
Speaker 2: similar to like how you can choose different types of
Speaker 2: assists than Marvel's capcom like this exists more defensive, this
Speaker 2: is when it's more offensive.
Speaker 3: Yes, So, I think the best example I can give
Speaker 3: is Danger, who is currently my second slot character. Her
Speaker 3: second slot assist is she bounces out. For those who
Speaker 3: don't know, Danger is basically just like what if the
Speaker 3: Danger Room was an anime robot girl like to be
Speaker 3: from near and that's that's Danger. Uh, so Danger jumps
Speaker 3: out the dango. Finally, I've always said this the most
Speaker 3: dangerous game. Uh, Danger like hops out and like shoots
Speaker 3: a laser blast, and that's just that's a classic you know,
Speaker 3: tag fighter assist. She's going to put some long range
Speaker 3: pressure out. I do like Doom's laser a little bit
Speaker 3: more so. I did have him in that second slot
Speaker 3: for a while, but I've I've been going back and
Speaker 3: forth on that, but that's ranged.
Speaker 1: One is the first.
Speaker 3: Yeah, usually some sort of range thing, which I like
Speaker 3: having in that first lot. Also, Spider Man do his
Speaker 3: web ball. He just like like I think he shoots
Speaker 3: out three or whatever. I'ven't played against a lot of
Speaker 3: Spider Man players, so I don't know Spider Man as well,
Speaker 3: but he just kind of.
Speaker 2: Like these people not seeing brand New Day.
Speaker 1: I assume he'd be the number one guy.
Speaker 3: He's he's actually I know, he's supposed to be pretty
Speaker 3: strong in terms of just his ability to do some
Speaker 3: some catch and and some catchup and we'll get to
Speaker 3: that in a moment, but he so so Danger is
Speaker 3: my second Doom is my third doom Is is like
Speaker 3: Zone God. He he wants to put out all kinds
Speaker 3: of projectiles and different things on the screen. They're just
Speaker 3: difficult for you to deal with, and he's going to
Speaker 3: pressure you like crazy. So he has a laser that is,
Speaker 3: for my money, the best projectile in the game. He
Speaker 3: has a laser he can call down from above that
Speaker 3: kind of is on a delay and then just drops
Speaker 3: a laser from wherever the character is standing. When it
Speaker 3: finally the delay is up. Uh, and he's just got
Speaker 3: a lot of great pressure. I love his uh, he
Speaker 3: puts out. If you've played Street Fighter, he's got the
Speaker 3: urin shield, the slow advancing like mirror shield that you
Speaker 3: get used to combo people with. He's got that, and
Speaker 3: it can also do the You can put it so
Speaker 3: it forms in front of him and moves forward, or
Speaker 3: you can make it so it forms behind them and
Speaker 3: dvances toward you, which I love doing because that's real.
Speaker 3: That's it's so good. If you can't sell I, I
Speaker 3: want to induce anxiety in my opponents. I want my
Speaker 3: characters to just be unrelenting pressure to where they don't
Speaker 3: know what to do because so much is happening on
Speaker 3: the screen and they think my combo is over, but
Speaker 3: I've actually just hidden the fact that I called an assistant,
Speaker 3: backed up, let them swing, and then went in for
Speaker 3: the upper cut.
Speaker 1: Like I love pressure. It's so good.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited to see doom zone people and Avengers zoomsday.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, the Doones go crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just the Avengers charging him. He just shoots a
Speaker 2: laser to keep them back. They're just really annoyed.
Speaker 1: Like he just uses this same mirror shield over and
Speaker 1: over and over.
Speaker 3: That's how we stop Thor in the trailer, my fourth character,
Speaker 3: who I bounced around a lot of characters in the
Speaker 3: slot because I think those first three crystallized pretty fast
Speaker 3: for me. This one's a bit of a surprise and
Speaker 3: might be a bit strange considering the makeup of the
Speaker 3: rest of my team, but I kind of like this
Speaker 3: character as sort of a curveball I throw in there
Speaker 3: right at the end. Is Black Panther is Shuri. Oh nice, Okay.
Speaker 3: She is a rush down, super high combo potential. Character
Speaker 3: has the ability to cancel out of a lot of
Speaker 3: moves and do some really nasty mix up stuff in
Speaker 3: close range, which I think if I've spent kind of
Speaker 3: the first two rounds of a game playing a zone
Speaker 3: game with you and playing pressure and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: When Shury comes in and suddenly all I'm like up
Speaker 3: in your face and throwing a bunch of stuff like
Speaker 3: right in front of you, it really throws people on
Speaker 3: their back foot. They think they know what game I'm
Speaker 3: going to play, and then they're like, oh, wait, what
Speaker 3: is this?
Speaker 1: What is this?
Speaker 3: Also, her assists are really really good. I really like them.
Speaker 3: They're they're the kind of assists that I like in
Speaker 3: a Marvel game. There's one where she hops out and
Speaker 3: kind of throws two spears under her and then throws
Speaker 3: two spears out like the side of her. That just
Speaker 3: does great coverage on the ground for when you're trying
Speaker 3: to like advance forward or knock out somebody else's assist.
Speaker 3: And this is the thing that tag games just require
Speaker 3: so much mental ram Yes, they really really do, because
Speaker 3: you have to consider.
Speaker 2: Because you have so many people now like, how's that
Speaker 2: kind of how does that adjusted your play style? Because
Speaker 2: you're so that's three.
Speaker 4: Sixteen matchups in any given fight.
Speaker 3: And the nice the nice part is making it so
Speaker 3: it's a singular health bar, so you only have to
Speaker 3: chew through one health bar per round, even though like
Speaker 3: matches still go long We've been playing first to three
Speaker 3: mostly in our sets online, and it still feels like
Speaker 3: those sets go on pretty long because it's also internally
Speaker 3: first to three. So we would play, say you go
Speaker 3: like three wins to two, that's that's like the first round,
Speaker 3: and then you go to like five of that, You've
Speaker 3: played a lot of games in that time, You've played
Speaker 3: a lot of rounds. There's just a lot of game
Speaker 3: to happen there. So I do think this will be
Speaker 3: in the FGC side, in the competitive side, it will
Speaker 3: be a game where you're probably going to see fewer
Speaker 3: sets until you get to like finals and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: But it does just make it a mentally taxing game.
Speaker 3: It makes it a you have to think about all
Speaker 3: these different characters, what they can do, what those assists
Speaker 3: look like. And granted, the thing about tag games is
Speaker 3: you learn a lot to then unlearn a lot of
Speaker 3: it because you start thinking, you said earlier, okay, well
Speaker 3: that's a projectaly assist. You learn Okay, well, if I
Speaker 3: see like Doom Danger Blade stuff like that, I know
Speaker 3: kind of how their assists are going to work and
Speaker 3: what they're capable of doing at any given time. You
Speaker 3: can play with those expectations a bit on your end.
Speaker 3: Blade especially has some some fun changeups if you change
Speaker 3: what slot he's in, same with Danger, but for the
Speaker 3: most part, you're like, if I see them in that
Speaker 3: second slot, I know it's a projectile that they're going
Speaker 3: to throw out at me. And most assists do kind
Speaker 3: of fit in to some broad categories of your providing
Speaker 3: cover for yourself. You're extending a combo, maybe you have
Speaker 3: something that's in anti air or is meant to kind
Speaker 3: of knock things off the screen. So if somebody's jumping
Speaker 3: at you, or somebody's calling an assist to advance on you,
Speaker 3: you can call this assist out to kind of provide
Speaker 3: that cover and knock them back a little bit. It's
Speaker 3: just figuring out kind of where all those things fall
Speaker 3: into those buckets, so you can then reduce the mental
Speaker 3: ramload back down to the like what are my options
Speaker 3: right now and how do I execute? And that's the
Speaker 3: hardest part. It's the hardest part of every fighting game,
Speaker 3: is your knowledge funnel goes out really far and then
Speaker 3: has to funnel back in, and most people drop out
Speaker 3: at the widest part of the funnel right where it's
Speaker 3: like I am so overwhelmed by the amount of information
Speaker 3: that exists when really it's about it's like driving a car.
Speaker 3: You know, you have to start to move things to
Speaker 3: the back of your mind and be like, this is
Speaker 3: muscle memory. This is I'm just instinctively checking my mirrors
Speaker 3: and my rear view and stuff like that. I don't
Speaker 3: have to tell myself remember to do this, remember.
Speaker 1: To do that, do this, so you just do it naturally.
Speaker 2: Do you feel like this game is because there's so
Speaker 2: many characters on screen and it's you know, tag fighters
Speaker 2: are inherently just chaotic. Do you find it difficult or
Speaker 2: maybe early on, to like visually parse what was happening,
Speaker 2: Like it just seems like so much is happening at
Speaker 2: all times, Like do you ever get lost in the
Speaker 2: chaos of like which character am I? Or where even
Speaker 2: am I? Right now? Am I being illy juggled because
Speaker 2: like four people are coming at me.
Speaker 3: I think the one of the funniest things that happens
Speaker 3: in this game is when both players panic call all
Speaker 3: of their assists at the same time and there's just
Speaker 3: an audible like We'll be on discord and I'll just
Speaker 3: laugh and we'll both be like I have no idea
Speaker 3: what just happened. I have no idea who I'm playing
Speaker 3: as right now, and there's there's definitely a little bit
Speaker 3: of that. But for all the ways in which I
Speaker 3: do think this game can be very overwhelming, it's also
Speaker 3: surprisingly new player friendly, I think, because again, a singular
Speaker 3: health bar means you're not thinking about Kay, I need
Speaker 3: to rotate this character out because they've taken a lot
Speaker 3: of great day image and I want to recover that,
Speaker 3: so I need to move around and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: You don't have to worry about some of the higher
Speaker 3: level Marvel versus Capcom three stuff of X factors and
Speaker 3: things like that. You can kind of just play the
Speaker 3: game that's in front of you. And there's a lot
Speaker 3: of mechanical things that Arxis is implemented, like auto combos
Speaker 3: and even some of the defensive and offensive mechanics. You
Speaker 3: have a I forgot what their proper names are, but
Speaker 3: it's like an Avengers Assemble attack, which is this kind
Speaker 3: of like Armored jump forward, which is if you've played
Speaker 3: Persona for Arena, there was a similar move in it
Speaker 3: where you just kind of like do a hot forward
Speaker 3: and if you connect with it, it just starts a
Speaker 3: like tag attack where your character jumps in and then
Speaker 3: another character jumps in, and you can kind of just
Speaker 3: do a one two punch, and that's just kind of
Speaker 3: an offensive move forward that isn't always the most effective
Speaker 3: thing to do.
Speaker 1: But can be effective.
Speaker 3: What's very effective is the Avengers counter, which is the
Speaker 3: opposite direction of that input, where you kind of do
Speaker 3: a backstep and they'll have kind of a an orange
Speaker 3: shade over them, and if your opponent swings into that,
Speaker 3: it's effectively a pairry and you get like kind of
Speaker 3: a follow up attack on it and then reset neutral.
Speaker 3: And that one I've found a little bit harder to
Speaker 3: gauge because it kind of feels very very forgiving. The
Speaker 3: trade off is that there's there is no way to
Speaker 3: break a combo once you're in it. Once you are
Speaker 3: in the combo in this game, there is not like,
Speaker 3: you know, a burst or anything like that that is
Speaker 3: your your get out of jail free card. Once you
Speaker 3: are getting juggled, you better hope somebody drops a combo
Speaker 3: or leaves a window wide enough for you to do
Speaker 3: the air recovery and land and start blocking again, because
Speaker 3: otherwise you are in the combo is that frustrating.
Speaker 2: I feel like a little bit I have no defense
Speaker 2: for that whatsoever.
Speaker 1: That's been one of the more.
Speaker 3: Like high level criticisms I've seen of this game. I mean,
Speaker 3: there are other critics that Arcist has been addressing, mainly
Speaker 3: the performance on PC, which I've been playing on, and
Speaker 3: I can attest it was really rough early on, and
Speaker 3: they have taken measures to fix it, but it is
Speaker 3: still a work in progress, although much better than it
Speaker 3: was before. But I think from a I wouldn't call
Speaker 3: myself a high level player. I wouldn't call myself a
Speaker 3: low level player. I'm just kind of somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 3: It is a little yeah, yeah, yeah. Somebody who plays
Speaker 3: fighting games has you know, gone one in two and
Speaker 3: a few tournaments and can kind of somewhat converse in
Speaker 3: this language. Is that I do think it's a little
Speaker 3: frustrating that I don't have a get out of jail
Speaker 3: free card because I've been used to having that in
Speaker 3: other games. But at the same time, it does mean
Speaker 3: I'm having to rethink my approach and that I have
Speaker 3: to play knowing that I don't have like a gimme
Speaker 3: to get out of some pressure. If I you know
Speaker 3: if I need it, and that does change the way
Speaker 3: I play. I do think it forces a more thoughtful
Speaker 3: approach compared to how fast this game can feel sometimes
Speaker 3: where high level play. I mentioned chasing and stuff like
Speaker 3: that earlier. There's so many movement options. There's so much
Speaker 3: movement tech already in this game for characters to just
Speaker 3: zip around the screen and put out projectiles and really
Speaker 3: just I mean it is a tag tag. Fighters love abundance.
Speaker 3: They love over the top exaggerated action. I did a
Speaker 3: story years ago about Marvel versus Capcom two and how
Speaker 3: that kind of changed the fighting game landscape because of
Speaker 3: you just had these matches where it was just everything
Speaker 3: on screen all at once.
Speaker 2: It's spectacle. It's fun to watch even when you're not playing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's it is I think to con does
Speaker 3: check that box of it is a spectacle fighter. It
Speaker 3: is entertaining to watch. You can do some things where
Speaker 3: I had one combo in the corner where I I
Speaker 3: apologize to my opponent. It made combo because I was
Speaker 3: just hitting everything and I was discovering new lines as
Speaker 3: I was doing it, and I just found some nasty
Speaker 3: ways to keep the pressure up and just keep them
Speaker 3: stuck on the wall and all that, and I was like,
Speaker 3: I am so sorry, but I am just absolutely styling
Speaker 3: on you right now and it feels awesome and that
Speaker 3: sometimes look, sometimes you are the hammer and sometimes you
Speaker 3: are the nail, and that is the way of this
Speaker 3: game and this type of fighter. But I think given
Speaker 3: all that, it is one of the more approachable versions
Speaker 3: of this that we've seen since at least Dragon Ball Fighters,
Speaker 3: which and people really like it for that.
Speaker 2: You've been playing it too, and I kind of want
Speaker 2: to pass it to you as how do you feel
Speaker 2: about the approachability because you're not like a big fighting
Speaker 2: game guy. I think you've said before, like you'll play that.
Speaker 1: I love to watch a fighting game.
Speaker 4: I just have never been able to get into one
Speaker 4: enough that I ever felt like I really knew what
Speaker 4: I was doing, and I feel like I didn't have.
Speaker 1: What I needed was like a college.
Speaker 4: Dorm with four people where we all were really into
Speaker 4: a game for like a year, right, Like I I'm
Speaker 4: up to that with like Smash Bros. Like I can
Speaker 4: play Smash Bros With people, but like other like more
Speaker 4: traditional fighting gips, I've ever been into this one.
Speaker 1: I just was enjoying.
Speaker 4: Uh, there's there's a lot of like auto combo strings
Speaker 4: where you can kind of feel like you know what
Speaker 4: you're doing on like some basic levels without having to
Speaker 4: like memorize and.
Speaker 1: Execute in the same way.
Speaker 4: I think there's still advantages for if you do like
Speaker 4: the classic inputs. I think it does a little bit
Speaker 4: more damage or just like better at times usually, But
Speaker 4: as someone who doesn't really know what I'm doing, it's
Speaker 4: nice to be able to just jump in and kind
Speaker 4: of like fill around. And also, I was just playing
Speaker 4: through the story a little bit, which has alway it's honestly,
Speaker 4: I'm not that far in. I just started playing the
Speaker 4: there's like different teams of the characters. They split the
Speaker 4: cast of twenty into five teams of four, so it's
Speaker 4: playing as the fighting Avengers, which is Captain America, Black Panther, Hulk,
Speaker 4: and Iron Man. And there's these like bigger anime style
Speaker 4: cut scenes, and then there's these comic book cut scenes
Speaker 4: where it's like just slightly animated comic book frames and
Speaker 4: then just kind of telling the story. And the whole
Speaker 4: plot is that the Champion has come to Earth and
Speaker 4: he will only fight the best, and so he's got
Speaker 4: a big tournament.
Speaker 1: Going on, and you guys almost champion each other.
Speaker 2: Character.
Speaker 1: He's a new original character, I think.
Speaker 2: Okay, like the Beyonder or something like they were doing like.
Speaker 1: A Super Wars thing. It is.
Speaker 3: I have seen nobody run this character. By the way,
Speaker 3: I have seen nobody this character. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 3: think it's a story mode un lock or something. I
Speaker 3: have heard tell of one of my friends matching up
Speaker 3: against somebody running Champion online and otherwise, like I've heard
Speaker 3: of nobody blaying. It's this character I don't even seen.
Speaker 4: Because it's like you'll you'll see him in like the
Speaker 4: key art, like he's in the background. It is one
Speaker 4: of those things where it's like the game is built
Speaker 4: around being these recognizable characters everyone spent decades of their
Speaker 4: life loving and becoming attached to, and then they're also
Speaker 4: like and there's the big bad guy.
Speaker 2: It's like that fighting game, what was it, Marvel Nemesis.
Speaker 2: Do you guys remember that game where it was like
Speaker 2: half the roster was half Marvel characters and then the
Speaker 2: other half of a roster were these original characters called
Speaker 2: like the Imperfects, And it was just like I'm playing
Speaker 2: that and being like, why would I ever pick any
Speaker 2: of these?
Speaker 3: I just want to be my dudes, I will say
Speaker 3: to Marvel. To CON's credit, I think this is a
Speaker 3: really good selection of my characters.
Speaker 2: I think it's one of the most inspired. So, like,
Speaker 2: there's characters in here I've been wanting in an NVC
Speaker 2: game for a long time, like Carnage, Green Goblin.
Speaker 1: Blade Goblin's so fun.
Speaker 2: I love his design too, he just looks cool.
Speaker 1: Is Loki new to this sort of realm too? Am
Speaker 1: I correct? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's never been in a Magic game. Magic's also
Speaker 3: a great pick. I mean Magic almost feels like like
Speaker 3: there's some cool nods in this game. Obviously, Deadpool is
Speaker 3: nothing but references to other fighting games, both internally at
Speaker 3: Arc system Works and also uh broader games. He has
Speaker 3: the Yoshimitsu self stab and stuff like that. Uh, there's
Speaker 3: just like, yeah, he he is literally just fighting game
Speaker 3: memes the character, which I normally am like Deadpool, like,
Speaker 3: come on, have we not already run this into the
Speaker 3: ground with this character? Like yeah, but but they found
Speaker 3: a way to make him really fun and interesting and
Speaker 3: speak to the game that he's in, and Magic and
Speaker 3: Blade and ghost Rider being in there is like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we also agree that Midnight Suns was a really cool
Speaker 3: game that more people should play, and we're gonna shout
Speaker 3: that out. I really really love the lineup with this game.
Speaker 4: When I went to I was talking to the guys
Speaker 4: that did Cosmic Invasion, Marvel Cosmic Invasion. They were talking
Speaker 4: about the like roster that they chose for that game,
Speaker 4: and just like the process of picking them and just
Speaker 4: how Marvel is like when they're like guiding people to choose,
Speaker 4: like the rosters that they're doing, they're very much They're
Speaker 4: not like you can't have these characters, but they're like
Speaker 4: go ahead, take like take Spider Man if you want
Speaker 4: to take Iron Man, but we just want that you
Speaker 4: also make room for like those kind of weird polls,
Speaker 4: like they want to make sure that it feels different enough,
Speaker 4: and like people are gonna be introduced to Danger for example,
Speaker 4: because they come because they're like cool.
Speaker 1: I like the Hulk. I want to play a game
Speaker 1: with the Hulk, and then they get interested.
Speaker 2: Like don't just pick the guys like you have a rich,
Speaker 2: a rich roster of characters, like you can literally you
Speaker 2: can dig deeper if you want.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even the first DLC character they've announced is Phoenix Cyclops.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's such a cool pivot because like Cyclops. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's a Marvel Tag fighter. Cyclops should be
Speaker 3: in that game. There's there's no reason not to. But
Speaker 3: then they said, okay, but what if Phoenix Cyclops And
Speaker 3: I'm okay, all right.
Speaker 2: From one specific story arc or that, like my Avengers
Speaker 2: versus X Men, it's like the only time that's really
Speaker 2: been a thing that I can remember. I remember saying now,
Speaker 2: I was like, that's such a specific pool that I
Speaker 2: really really love.
Speaker 4: The thing I want to say also about the story
Speaker 4: mode is that Thor is not on this lineup, but
Speaker 4: he is like in this world they like the the
Speaker 4: Avenger story starts with Captain America is going to like
Speaker 4: a big opening of like the Avengers Park and there's
Speaker 4: a statue in the park of Ironman, Captain America, and
Speaker 4: Thoor and everyone's like, yep, those are the Avengers, those
Speaker 4: are the three Avengers, and Captain America's like, poor Hulk. Yeah, well,
Speaker 4: Captain America is like, the plot is they have to
Speaker 4: go get Hulk, but they he's so scary. They lied
Speaker 4: and they were like, oh, No, he wasn't a part
Speaker 4: of this. He was just kind of around, but he's
Speaker 4: not going to be your permanent protector, so they kind
Speaker 4: of like shunned him off to the Savage Lands.
Speaker 1: But they keep.
Speaker 4: Referencing the fact that like four has left, like he's
Speaker 4: gone missing, and I assume he'll be a DLC character,
Speaker 4: but he also might.
Speaker 1: Just not be a DLC character.
Speaker 4: But I think the main thing I like is that
Speaker 4: they're not just because someone's not on the roster doesn't
Speaker 4: mean they're not reference.
Speaker 1: They're not like.
Speaker 4: Still key parts of the universe because also.
Speaker 1: Loki's here, so.
Speaker 2: The stages have a lot of references. Remember looking at
Speaker 2: trailers and seeing like, okay, there's like five different references
Speaker 2: to like different other characters that may or may not
Speaker 2: be in the game.
Speaker 1: There ain't seen.
Speaker 2: You go ahead.
Speaker 4: I was saying, I ain't never seen a thing that
Speaker 4: has Dazzler in it. But she's not in every video
Speaker 4: game I've ever seen, and she is a billboyd in
Speaker 4: this game.
Speaker 2: You gotta play x many arcade game. That's like the
Speaker 2: only game you could play is Dazzler.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say, there's a there's an Xavier
Speaker 3: academy level that just has tons of X men in
Speaker 3: the background and the stage, and every time we play
Speaker 3: on it, I'm just like, please, come on, put put
Speaker 3: some of them in the game. Come on, like just
Speaker 3: I would love to see, like Sielock could get such
Speaker 3: a cool treatment here, Iceman could get such a cool
Speaker 3: treatment here. But I also want them to just keep
Speaker 3: up this energy of like, you know, doing the cool thing,
Speaker 3: but maybe swerving in a way that we don't normally expect.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people would have expected Venom,
Speaker 3: for example, Instead we got Carnage, which is really cool
Speaker 3: option yeah, because Carnage is gnarly in this game. I mean,
Speaker 3: he just looks cool. He's got such a cool style
Speaker 3: style to him.
Speaker 4: He got he got really pronounced hip bones.
Speaker 3: He's like the he's like the what are the liquors from?
Speaker 3: From Resident Evil?
Speaker 2: Like he's kind of like he kind of built like
Speaker 2: one of those, yeah, like liquor. I mean that Cletus
Speaker 2: Can said he known for two things, one being a
Speaker 2: horrible serial killer too gatam hips.
Speaker 4: God damn he got damn liquor hips.
Speaker 3: I don't know I had to say that in that voice.
Speaker 1: But and at this time, he's gonna.
Speaker 4: Bleep me out and people could be like, what what
Speaker 4: could he have possibly said.
Speaker 1: That I did.
Speaker 3: I had to believe I had to bleep Wes On
Speaker 3: the last episod he said something we could Yeah. I
Speaker 3: was like, we cannot air that.
Speaker 2: It's really good, it's only we will never tell. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But yeah, marvelto Gone Fighting Souls. It is out now.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited. Like I've been out of town on
Speaker 2: a work trip, and honestly, one of the hardest things
Speaker 2: about being away was getting code and not being able
Speaker 2: to download it. Like I was like, I have to
Speaker 2: wait for days. It's installed now I'm gonna try to
Speaker 2: fire it up tonight. But I've been so excited for
Speaker 2: this game. It's it's a good time.
Speaker 3: It's really fun and honestly, like I again, I think
Speaker 3: it's very approachable, which is the right thing for them
Speaker 3: to do, was to make this game that has kind
Speaker 3: of a low floor but a high ceiling, and it
Speaker 3: feels like they have they have nailed that.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: The last game that we'll talk about today is a
Speaker 2: Fields of Mystery, which has gone one point.
Speaker 1: Oh uh.
Speaker 2: It is a cozy sort of like a farm sim
Speaker 2: life sim uh that we've uh. I think we've all
Speaker 2: had kind of had our eye on. I actually have
Speaker 2: not played it in early access. I've kind of took
Speaker 2: I took the approach of like, I'll wait for this
Speaker 2: to go one point. Oh, but it looks it looks
Speaker 2: really cool. Charles, you've checked it out. How is it
Speaker 2: shaped up now that it is out in full.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm in the same boat as you. I had
Speaker 4: not played this game, even though I was excited for it.
Speaker 4: I will start by disclosing that the Prfist game is
Speaker 4: handled by Sarah Putzorski, who's one of the mid mexicalhorts.
Speaker 4: And I'm over at Mimax sometimes and I know sarah've
Speaker 4: played D and D with hers. She's cool size it's
Speaker 4: a potential conflict of interest.
Speaker 2: Shout out to Sarah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just want to address that top.
Speaker 4: I like this game though it's it's not not an
Speaker 4: unpopular opinion. It's sold a million copies in the first
Speaker 4: like six hours, like being out. Yeah, it's doing doing
Speaker 4: quite well.
Speaker 1: And it is basically Stardoo Valley.
Speaker 4: It feels very much and I assume what it is
Speaker 4: is a bunch of indie developers saying we liked Stardoo Valley,
Speaker 4: but there's some things about it we would do a
Speaker 4: little bit different. So we're gonna do our own take
Speaker 4: on it. And it's not an exact one to one,
Speaker 4: but it's close enough that if you've played Starduo Valley,
Speaker 4: it's it's all gonna feel very, very familiar to you
Speaker 4: in terms of like just the structure, the days, the
Speaker 4: way everything is worked. Even a lot of the like
Speaker 4: animations and sprites are vaguely similar. Hey, Charles, you want
Speaker 4: to know my deep secret.
Speaker 1: Have you not played Starduo Valley.
Speaker 2: I've never played Starting Velle. Oh wow, it's one of
Speaker 2: my biggest gaps in terms of, like, I guess the
Speaker 2: last decade of gaming. I've put it off so many times,
Speaker 2: mainly because it kept switching to more appealing platforms or like,
Speaker 2: oh it's only on PC, and like, I mean that's okay,
Speaker 2: I bet I'll play because everyone says it's amazing. Then
Speaker 2: it came to PlayStation, I was like, okay, that'll be
Speaker 2: the one play. Then it came to Switch, I.
Speaker 1: Was like that's perfect handheld.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, And it's been on my switch wishless for
Speaker 2: years and I still have never gotten to it.
Speaker 1: That's wild.
Speaker 2: So this will be like my first exposure I guess
Speaker 2: to that a Stardo esque game.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that genuinely had not occurred to me was someone
Speaker 4: who was interested in Fields of Mysteri but had.
Speaker 1: Not played Stardoo Valley, which I've played. Fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you played like a Harvest Moon before. If you
Speaker 3: played like a something where you kind of manage a farm.
Speaker 1: You reviewed Harvest Stella.
Speaker 2: That's.
Speaker 3: I just do that and then coming back and you're like,
Speaker 3: that's like an RPG with light farming elements, where like
Speaker 3: Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley are farming games with light
Speaker 3: RPG elements. Yeah, like Iron Factory is somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never played Harvest Moon or those like. I
Speaker 2: got into like life semi stuff and like my he's
Speaker 2: like in a like And even then, I don't go
Speaker 2: out of my way to play every single one of
Speaker 2: these ones because there's just so many of them, and
Speaker 2: they tend to all require a huge time investment, where
Speaker 2: like I don't I don't want to play, Like, I
Speaker 2: don't even want to play. Multiple of these are the
Speaker 2: same times. They all kind of hit the same They
Speaker 2: scratched the same niche. At least for me, it's like,
Speaker 2: give me one good one to sink my teeth into.
Speaker 2: So I play, like I don't know if animal crossing counts,
Speaker 2: but like it's in the vein right.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, it's kind of.
Speaker 4: Like there's a way that you get sucked into a
Speaker 4: game like Fields of Mystra or Starry Valley that doesn't
Speaker 4: happen with animal crossing because the real time clock, right.
Speaker 3: So so the they wants you to log off, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: they turn off your system.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the base premise of this game is it is
Speaker 4: a takes place in a sort of kingdom.
Speaker 1: Where like magic is presence.
Speaker 4: So it's kind of a it's a light fantasy world.
Speaker 4: And uh, there's a town and it's not doing great,
Speaker 4: but they think maybe we can get an adventure in
Speaker 4: to come fix up the farm that's on the south
Speaker 4: of the town and then kind of help out around town.
Speaker 4: They're basically giving you the farm in exchange for you
Speaker 4: becoming like the town's main helper guy. So you come in,
Speaker 4: you have your house, and then you have like this
Speaker 4: land that's all your farmland, and you can chop down
Speaker 4: the trees, break up the rocks, plants some plants, plant them,
Speaker 4: grow them, sell them, et cetera, et cetera. And then
Speaker 4: there's also lots of villagers to talk to you can
Speaker 4: romance them, and then all sorts of systems.
Speaker 1: From these sorts of similar games.
Speaker 4: So something that's not in Sardi Valley is there's a museum.
Speaker 4: So every crop you grow, every bug and fish you catch,
Speaker 4: that sort of thing, you can bring it.
Speaker 1: Over the museum, get it logged.
Speaker 4: You're trying to get money. But there's also renown, which
Speaker 4: that was a fire embloom word and I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: it'll come back. Is that like upgrade your town which
Speaker 4: lets you unlock more stuff. So last I played, I
Speaker 4: just unlocked the minds, but I haven't gone there yet.
Speaker 4: I'm also five or six hours, not even I'm probably
Speaker 4: probably five hours in, and I'm on like week one
Speaker 4: of the game, and it's just the sort of game
Speaker 4: where five hours is like a good amount, but one
Speaker 4: week of.
Speaker 1: Game is like nothing.
Speaker 3: Basically, early game in these games is usually a lot
Speaker 3: of walking around, meeting people, talking to people. It's usually
Speaker 3: a little bit slower at the start because you are
Speaker 3: just getting acquainted with everything right, and then by the
Speaker 3: time you're in week four or whatever, you're just in
Speaker 3: the mindset of like I need to do this, I
Speaker 3: need to wake up and do this and do this.
Speaker 3: Does it have like stamina meters and things like that,
Speaker 3: kind of like your your traditional trappings of what forms
Speaker 3: a day in a game like this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so there is like a clock, so you day
Speaker 4: can run out just like time wise, but there's also
Speaker 4: stamina meter. So there's only so much like labor you
Speaker 4: can do in a day, Like you can only chop
Speaker 4: down so many trees and break so many rocks. You
Speaker 4: can cook, so like if you cook food, you can
Speaker 4: get stuff that can replenish your stamina. There's like a
Speaker 4: whole wide like cooking menu.
Speaker 2: Name me a dish that you're made. I'm curious about.
Speaker 4: That sliced turnips. I got that recipe because I grew turnips.
Speaker 4: Their recipe is one turnip.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: Do you even cook this or do you just slice
Speaker 2: it into meath?
Speaker 4: You gotta take it to a cooking station, which in
Speaker 4: this case, I guess it means just the cutting.
Speaker 3: Board just kind of blanchet or like put some salt
Speaker 3: on there, like.
Speaker 4: It might not be cooking. I got a recipe for
Speaker 4: baked potato. Also, you got these recipes also over time,
Speaker 4: so it's not like you can just It's not like Minecraft,
Speaker 4: where it's like if you know how the pieces work,
Speaker 4: you can do that. These are like once you sell
Speaker 4: your first potato, they're like, by the way, you can
Speaker 4: bake these and.
Speaker 3: You're like, I never even thought of that.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Also to say, I do really like it, and
Speaker 4: I do really like the ways that you can tell
Speaker 4: they played Starduo Valley and they were like, I wish
Speaker 4: it was this way. So like in Stardoo Valley, famously,
Speaker 4: if you want to buy stuff, you gotta go to
Speaker 4: the shop, and the shop is closed on Wednesdays, and
Speaker 4: it also only opens at a certain time and it
Speaker 4: closes at a certain time. And in this game, I'm
Speaker 4: ninety five percent sure as long as you go up
Speaker 4: to like the menu ordering board at a shop, you
Speaker 4: can just like leave the money there and take something.
Speaker 1: They're just like, yeah, you're good for it.
Speaker 4: Like the town just operates on a level of trust
Speaker 4: where you don't have to like wait for the clock
Speaker 4: to do that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: I aspire to live in a city where that such
Speaker 2: an honor system the.
Speaker 1: Dream right there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and I'm I'm still very early on. But
Speaker 4: I like the characters a lot. I like the art
Speaker 4: a lot.
Speaker 1: I really like the music.
Speaker 4: The sound palette kind of reminds me of the song
Speaker 4: that keeps playing remunds me of Twin Leaf Town from
Speaker 4: Pokemon Diamond and Pearl that has like a similar flute.
Speaker 1: Synth sound in it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't have I don't have all that much
Speaker 4: to say except that it's it's about what I expected,
Speaker 4: which is to say, Starduo Valley with some new added stuff.
Speaker 4: It kind of feels like a sequel in a lot
Speaker 4: of ways, where you're they're taking a lot of stuff,
Speaker 4: they're not even being that crazy about adding things. The
Speaker 4: other thing I really like that I'll mention to clothes
Speaker 4: with is there's so much customizability that's just kind of
Speaker 4: freely available. So once you unlock a clothing item, it's
Speaker 4: just always in the menu. You can just swap out
Speaker 4: what your appearance looks like at any moment. You can
Speaker 4: change your name, your pronouns, your skin color, your outfit.
Speaker 4: You can pre save appearances if you want to do that.
Speaker 4: I just got a pet and I didn't have to
Speaker 4: unlock the pet. It was just like a familiar A
Speaker 4: familiar pet came to Well, it's a cat now, but
Speaker 4: I can just go on the menu and swap it
Speaker 4: over to a dog if I feel like I want
Speaker 4: it to be a dog.
Speaker 1: So it's it's just like a thing of.
Speaker 2: Does it happen the consciousness of a man from nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine?
Speaker 1: Yes, you got to make him what's his name? Aaron?
Speaker 3: Aaron, Aaron the cat.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then the other big thing that's in this game
Speaker 4: that I haven't gotten to yet, and I'm not getting
Speaker 4: the vibe. I'm gonna get to it soon. But there
Speaker 4: is like magic in this game, so you can cast
Speaker 4: spells that will help you crops go faster, and you'll
Speaker 4: you'll do different things.
Speaker 3: But it does have a vaguely magic vibe to it.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that is some of the more
Speaker 3: pixel yards or just kind of the bright you know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of characters that are very brightly colored
Speaker 3: and stuff, and I looked at that, I was like,
Speaker 3: it seems very fantasy. So I do love the art
Speaker 3: just being a total like late eighties early nineties anime throwback,
Speaker 3: like some very RNMA inspired early Sailor Moon even like
Speaker 3: hard cap or soccer type stuff. I feel like, between
Speaker 3: this and Orbitals and some other stuff, we're having like
Speaker 3: a real renaissance of this art style, and I'm all
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 2: It seems like totally really good the way game developers
Speaker 2: like went back and had their like, man, we've want
Speaker 2: to make sixteen bit eight big gangs. That's what we
Speaker 2: grew up with. It seems like now like, yeah, I
Speaker 2: just want like that same time period, but just for
Speaker 2: anime aesthetics for my game. Yeah, I want eight nineties anime.
Speaker 3: I want a game that looks like Lapoot the Castle
Speaker 3: in the Sky or Capital in the Sky.
Speaker 2: I think it's Castle in the Sky the Gibi.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: I will say that that's one thing that the character
Speaker 4: porches in this game miles better than the ones in
Speaker 4: Stardu Valley, which are like fine, it's just like little heads,
Speaker 4: and this one it is like that full anime art style,
Speaker 4: which I really like.
Speaker 1: That's good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we should do. I was thinking about this when
Speaker 2: I was playing The Mermaid Mask, which I finished, by
Speaker 2: the way, during my trip.
Speaker 4: We've all finished it, right, did you finish it, Eric.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I finished it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, oh yeah, look at us. It's a really
Speaker 2: good game. Look at us, smarty pants a game. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I was gonna say, like, that's like in the IF.
Speaker 2: I almost want to pitch a category for best character
Speaker 2: portraits for Gody, just to give this game, to give
Speaker 2: Murray mac to Shadows. I love the character portraits so
Speaker 2: much in Mermay Matt, So I'm wondering, like, oh, do
Speaker 2: I need to look at Fields of Mystery now? Like
Speaker 2: is it? Could that be in the running too? Basically
Speaker 2: I do like that.
Speaker 3: As a as a running because I will say Fire
Speaker 3: Moment has got some good character portraits too. Oh sure,
Speaker 3: we didn't talk about none with gun Oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: gun none. We got to leave some things as surprise
Speaker 3: for the folks at home.
Speaker 1: You know that.
Speaker 2: Everyone's seen that screenshat. That's like the It may as
Speaker 2: well be the cover art of the game at this point. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my my fire emblem don't want none if she
Speaker 4: ain't got gun hunt hunt. Yeah, yeah, there we go
Speaker 4: there that whoever give used the game, that can be
Speaker 4: the title.
Speaker 1: I'll let you'll let you have them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, alrighty, Fields of Mystery I like I mentioned out
Speaker 2: now on PC only in one point. Oh, I'm again.
Speaker 2: It's I have a pile of games. I need the
Speaker 2: gap between this and Token and also Big Walk. I
Speaker 2: still haven't h fired.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Big Walk is so good.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be playing with my brother. I'm very excited.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm playing with my girlfriend and I'm excited.
Speaker 3: I've entered the phase where I can't replay Big Walk.
Speaker 3: I might try and hop in with some people to
Speaker 3: clear up some of their puzzles and help them out
Speaker 3: and stuff, but you know, you can't ever really recapture
Speaker 3: the first play through magic.
Speaker 1: And so I've just been.
Speaker 3: Watching other people play through it and on on streams
Speaker 3: and on YouTube and stuff, and just to get a
Speaker 3: little bit of the good feeling.
Speaker 1: And it does hit.
Speaker 2: It's it's very good. You should become to let me
Speaker 2: solo her of Big Walk a Big Walk. And I
Speaker 2: have other people that.
Speaker 3: Just ruining the game, where people I love that there's ruining.
Speaker 3: There's some tech out there. So there's speed running tech
Speaker 3: that people already discovered where if you have the big
Speaker 3: uh there, they kind of look like a yoga ball
Speaker 3: that you go like cuckoo and it like lights up.
Speaker 3: People have found a way to basically do a very
Speaker 3: similar thing to what you would do in a Half
Speaker 3: Life speed run where you just kind of drop the object,
Speaker 3: hop on top of it and pick it back up
Speaker 3: and then do that over and over again to just
Speaker 3: elevate yourself into the sky, uh and fly essentially. And
Speaker 3: so it would be cool to just show up as like,
Speaker 3: let me solo, let me solo walk, I walk alone,
Speaker 3: and just pick up an orb and just take off
Speaker 3: into the sky and finish the game.
Speaker 2: Can you wear a pot on your head in this game?
Speaker 1: No comment? I don't. I don't wanna.
Speaker 3: I don't wanna spoil something there there there is a there's.
Speaker 1: One of those. It's one of those.
Speaker 3: It's one of those something on your head is potentially spoil. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: there's a there's a pot on your head adjacent mechanic.
Speaker 2: Let's say, yeah, a pothead mechanic. Some might say, uh,
Speaker 2: well yeah everyone. That'll wrap it up for this week's
Speaker 2: game and former show. Thank you so much once again.
Speaker 2: Game atformer dot com slash subscribe get yourself a magazine subscription.
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Speaker 2: social media. You can follow me at Marcus Stewart seven
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Speaker 2: Oh thanks for watching everyone, and we will see you
Speaker 2: guys next week. Have a good one bye,