Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's not Tuesday, it's Friday. Welcome to the
Giant BombCast Revengeance Podcast. I'm Jeff Grub from giant bomb
dot Com and I have a full crew with me,
starting with two more.
Speaker 2: Who's saying, Tam, how are you doing?
Speaker 3: How is Chelsea Handler? Is Chelsea Handler a good one?
Speaker 4: I remember recently she was speaking ten fifteen years ago.
Speaker 5: She definitely felt she was everywhere, but fell off hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, gotcha, Samantha, Oh damn, you gotta stop. How is
Samantha Bee Show? I never watched.
Speaker 4: Mike Drucker was executive producer on it, so I have
not seen it. But there had to be some funny stuff.
Speaker 1: A drugs had to be had to be something to it. Yeah,
Drucker does good stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh. We also have Nicki Grayson. Nicki Grayson, how's it going? Hello?
Speaker 5: Something I've learned in the last couple of minutes is
that my hair is still wet and it's kind of
dripping down my back in a way that's kind of unpleasant.
Speaker 4: Before a podcast, are you, like, you know, before Roman
Reigns comes out and he sprays his hair, you do that?
Speaker 5: Not not unlike that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: That is kind of what I did today.
Speaker 5: I did hop in this hour and mostly focus on
my hair, and then I did this a couple of
times to get it to go. And now see now
that shit all over my glasses.
Speaker 2: Giant bomb, that's exactly right. Friend of Denim, Dan Reiker,
Dan Kerd, how are you doing?
Speaker 4: I'm not an enemy of den Denhim. Okay, I'm doing great,
but I'm not an enemy of Denim. I don't think
I'm wearing No, actually, I'm wearing the like extreme stretchy
motion jeans.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I don't know if this is like actual Denim,
but it's like it's like what I think would wear,
you know, very stretchy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the motion engine. Yeah, they have the emotion engine,
and they get the motion engine, they put it in jeans,
exact very good stuff.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 4: Yes, if you break down a PS three like a
a vow, you get stretched jeans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you can reconsecute it into janes now. Yes.
Speaker 1: And then Nathan Grayson with this as well, special guest,
thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2: Nathan Grayson, you have a book I do. It's called
Stream Big, The Triumphs and Turmoils of Twitch and the
Stars Behind the screen and it will be out on
the eighteenth. You can pre order it now if you
really want to, or you can just wait and order it.
It's your call.
Speaker 5: A really right now?
Speaker 4: Is the on your wall?
Speaker 3: Nice?
Speaker 4: Look at that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And then I camera immediately goes out of focus. Fantastic,
there it is.
Speaker 3: That's okay.
Speaker 1: I was reading it last night. You had the publisher
sent me a copy. I appreciate that. Uh, it's what
the fuck?
Speaker 2: I know?
Speaker 1: Right, just specifically block you all out from getting the
copy too.
Speaker 2: Does anyone else want one? I might know. I get that.
Speaker 3: I read that.
Speaker 2: I felt really bad about that. That actually really hurt me, so.
Speaker 1: And then I said, you'd be quiet, let's be look
at my book. I'm trying to read here. It's like
really starts off. I like, oh, yeah, God, this is
such a dramatic, dramatic story of like all of this
a small community of people who are just doing a
thing they really liked, and then how it blew up
and of course, like all things, gets subsumed by a conglomerate,
and how it has to change to meet the needs
of the new master, and how the people who are
there from the beginning feel about that and how they
still just hire from the community. Like, there's so many
fascinating aspects. Uh, I guess what, Let's do the basic
questions first, like what prompted you to want to start
writing about this other than of course you've been following
this for a very long time, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's a big part of it.
And then the other part is that I think that
there are you know, there are a number of books
about like different platforms, different social media platforms. There are
books at this point about YouTube, about TikTok, you know,
about pretty much all the big ones, but they're very
focused on the platforms themselves. They're like, you know, a
history of this platform, a whatever, this platform. I wanted
to do something that was more creator focused, and so
from my book, the first chapter is kind of like
an overview of Twitch in its history, but even then
through the eyes of one creator, that being DJ Wheed,
who's a person who used to be a very early
live streaming creator went on to become one of the
first Twitch employees. And then every other chapter is about
just like a particular creator and their life and the
way that the platform has shaped them and the way
that they in turn have shaped the platform, and so
it's much more people focused, I think, than a lot
of these books tend to be. And I kind of
wanted to tell the story that way because I think
that the story of Twitch is very much one about
its creators. It wouldn't be what it is without creators.
So much of its early growth and development was centered
around the company hiring people from its own community and
like making decisions around what they wanted, and so much
of the controversy that has ensued since has been about
people saying, Hey, you guys have kind of lost your way.
You've stopped caring so much about creators. You've started doing
everything in service of profit and what Amazon wants from you,
and that's not going over as well. So I wanted
to sort of explore the material impacts of that on
the people who are on that platform.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's got to help that, like, you know,
by talking to the people who are part of the community.
A lot of them are big names, stars, people that
have a history that is somewhat known by their audience.
But maybe there's some aspects or some thoughts they they've
had that you can elucidate a little bit better. Were
there some things that surprised you to learn when you
were talking to these streamers and these creators.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of cases because also, like what
I ended up doing for this book is I for
every like big interview, for the ones that kind of
are the backbone of each chapter, I did them in person,
and usually like at that person's house or like in
a place that represented their place of work. Essentially, because
I think that when it comes to Twitch and other
platforms like it, you can have this misconception that you
understand or know everything about like your favorite creator. So
I mean you see them for like, you know, depending
on how much you watch, it could be up to
eight ten hours per day. A lot of people don't
watch that much. They probably tune in for a couple
hours here and there. But you know, doing that, you're like, Okay, well,
I see all the work they do, I know them,
and therefore I don't need to know anymore. But there's
a ton of invisible labor that goes into live streaming
and content creation. There's a lot of stuff that happens
in the background that you don't see when the cameras
are off, and I wanted to sort of be able
to capture some of that and show what that's like
and all of the different like other people that contribute
to that, not just the streamer. So I also ended
up talking to like people's friends and families and their
moderators and their editors and their staff and you know,
pretty much anyone that I could get in front of
a microphone. And then like, through that, I learned a
lot of surprising stuff, Like I mean, I uh, one
of the chapters is about Hassan Piker, who I'm sure
you all know and follow. When I was at his place,
his mom happened to be around, and so he was
kind of cage on the subject of swattings and things
of that nature. Right, But you know, Hassan has a
pretty well known house. It was the source of some
controversy a couple of years back because people were like
a leftist buying a house, that's impossible, And so he
wouldn't really talk about that. And so I was like, Hey,
Hassan's mom, will you talk about this? And she was like, oh, absolutely,
I'll tell you all suse the stories. And I was like, great,
Hassan's going to be mad about this, but it still
works for me. So when you're.
Speaker 1: Building like the structure of the book, and you like
begin to like have a piece together these the things
you're learning from these interviews. Do you begin building like
an overarching narrative of like here's the beginning of Twitch
and the people that were there at the beginning, and
here's how these things have changed and got complicated over
over time. Like how does that narrative reveal itself to you?
Speaker 2: I think it depends on the particular creator, because what
I tried to do is get a mix of people
who are like instrumental to Twitch's growth and you know,
sort of represented like landmark figures on the platform, and
then like you know, again one person who was kind
of who worked for the company and was part of it.
And then I also wanted like smaller creators too, so
people who have existed on it not necessarily seen instance success,
and in one particular instance, like you know, grinded really
hard for success, like kind of had this viral moment
and then tried to capitalize on that and like literally
broke her body in the process. I wanted to sort
of represent all of these different ways that being a
creator on a platform like Twitch, one that more than
anything wants your time can unfold, and so it was
really more just like I set down and I talked
to them, and then over the course of cause again,
like the initial interviews for each of these chapters were
like five hours long, so just you know, these things
would reveal themselves to me as we conversed. You know,
there'd be times where I was like talking to somebody
and thinking like, oh, there it is, like that's the
that's the opening scene of the book. That's the opening
scene of the chapter. I got it, and.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, I could totally see how that works out
that way. Sometimes when when you talk to these people
and when you begin like seeing the common themes, what
do you get the sense that people believe is the
future of Twitch from this point like going forward, like
how are people feeling about it now?
Speaker 2: I mean, I I don't think people are feeling super
great about Twitch at the moment for a few reasons.
One of them is that at this point Amazon really
wants Twitch to turn a profit. It remains unprofitable, and
so as a result, Twitch is taken to you know,
overloading the site with ads, which everybody has been able
to witness that you know, you'd be watching your favorite
streamer or like a GDQ run or something, and then
you get hit with a two minute ad block out
of nowhere and you're like that that that killed all
of my enjoyment of this. I'm just angry now.
Speaker 5: I actually think it's a good experience personally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like, thank you, Jeff Bezos. I love so
much Tina's pizza roles. I did not know about it.
Speaker 5: You're telling me that they're making another that's crazy.
Speaker 3: To find.
Speaker 2: That would be a great way for them to sell cars,
to be like, this is the final Honda. We're never
making another Honda, and then say, like, just kidding. But yeah,
So there's that, And there's also the fact that Amazon is,
i think with Twitch, trying to cut its way to
profitability too. So in the past couple of years they've
laid off almost a thousand people from a company that
previously had a little bit over two thousand, so that's
like almost half the company. And so as a result,
I think Twitch is kind of just in this holding
pattern and they've been releasing like little new features where
they can, but nothing that has genuinely changed the platform.
And quite some time they're also like really focused on
this one platform called or this one feature called guest
Star that no one really seems to care about or use.
It's just all this stuff where people look at Twitch
and they say, Okay, it's kind of languishing. It's in
a holding pattern. It doesn't seem like Amazon wants to
really grow or expand it anymore or help it find
new audiences, and so it's sort of like best case scenario,
it kind of stays here. Absolute worst case scenario. Amazon
eventually says, Okay, this is not working for us anymore.
Let's put this in what Amazon calls maintenance mode, where
they basically wind down a product and they stop updating it.
They just keep it sort of functional, but they don't
do anything with it anymore, the bare minimum essentially.
Speaker 3: Well, last time I last time I checked, they were
trying to pivot into like weird TikTok area with a
redesign of the app. Because I watch a lot of Twitch,
I try my best now to stay away from the
app because it is atrocious.
Speaker 2: Everyone hates the stories stories like functionality.
Speaker 3: Yeah that and also like they formatted the main page
to be like a swipe up to go through your
different and it's awful because it's all encapsulated and like
you open the app, if you press it will give
you a stream Like let's say I'm watching Giant Bomp,
It'll give you a streaming me. Then if I press
Giant Bomb, if I hit the stream bind, it opens
another instance of it. And you're like, yeah, this is
the dumbest thing, And it's it's the kind of thing
where I feel like if one person tested it, they
would know this is bad. So it just makes me
feel like no one there is paying any attention or
what's going on. It's like close to unusable on a
on a mobile phone. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, it's also that classic issue of you know, there's
still plenty of people at the company that care, but
a lot of the people that power don't really use
the platform I understand it or give a shit in
ways that would prevent something catastrophic like that from happening.
Speaker 1: They and then they hear something it'll be like TikTok
and they're like, well, that sounds good, so let's do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, that's also like an interesting situation because
there was clamor from the community for that kind of
a feature. There's this moment where when they were putting
all of the ads or like, you know, when they
were flooding the flooding Twitch with ads, people were like, well,
what you could do is create a stories like function
and put it in the app and then put ads
on that, because then you're not missing anything live necessarily,
you just put it over people's VODs and their clips
and so this is a version of that. But I
think it's much more front and center within the app
than people wanted it to be. And as as Tomorrow
was saying, like it takes over the entire interface that
you experienced by default, Like you just you're in this
like river of stories essentially, and yeah, it's just it's
not well done. It's one of many gaffs that they've
had in the past year or two. Yeah, it's it's.
Speaker 1: The story of everything right now, rightfications and then make
it worse to make more money. Yeah, we can make
We can make a little bit more money if we
make it a little bit worse.
Speaker 3: I got a question about I mean, like, how how
much of the future I guess you kind of answered
the question kind of, but how much of the kind
of roadmap for Twitch have you been able to glean
from these interviews? Because I know most recently, like they
had that that time where they were just throwing money
at various careers. Hasan's one of them. He openly talks
about having a very specific contract that he no longer has.
He Yeah, no longer has it, so there's no more
top of the ad breaks. It feels like that's part
of the kind of step away from trying to make
Twitch happen. Have you did you get any sense from
the creators of where Twitch is going or do you
have did you get any sense on how dedicated these
Twitch creators are going to be to the platform itself,
because some of them have now moved to multi streaming,
you know, but then some of them are like coming
back to Twitch, like I think Ludwig or someone like
that recently.
Speaker 2: Can returned to Twitch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like said he wouldn't stream elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So a couple of things happened here. One is
that a lot of those contracts that big streamers had,
because you know, to be clear for the audience, there's
a period of time where big name streamers, people like
Hasan or Pokemon which she was still Twitch exclusive, or
even let Wig ever have one he might have he
got a YouTube YouTube. Yeah, they had these multi million
dollar contracts that were you know, keeping them exclusive to
particular platforms. But that was kind of like the meta
in the like twenty twenty to twenty twenty two to
twenty twenty three era. And that's in part because YouTube
emerged as a competitor to Twitch. They were directly trying
to steal or not steal, but you know, cultivate an
audience like Twitches, and so they started pulling over creators
from Twitch by saying, hey, we'll give you millions of
dollars if you come over here, even though like our
audience for live streaming is not quite as big and
you might lose some of your audience in the transition,
will more than make up for that by giving you
all this money. And so a lot of creators did it,
and as a result twhich was like, well, we got
to do something now. And so Twitch already had like
some exclusivity contracts in place, but the amount that they
were paying for those went way up and it became
this bidding war. And because of the way that streaming works,
these platforms were not making that amount of money back
on those creators, Like ads and subscriptions were not making
millions of dollars, and so it was more about like
clout or prestige. It was to be able to say
we have these particular people, therefore you should be over
here watching our platform, not the other one. But then
everyone kind of collectively realized that they were overpaying for streamers,
and so as contracts expired in the past couple of years,
they just let them.
Speaker 1: Lapse or they just shut down their entire platform. It's
like no more Mixer.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, yeah, Mixer was I mean, that was just
a disaster because Microsoft owned that they theoretically had the
money to keep it going. They had made some big
deals people like Ninja and Shroud, and then not even
a year after they made those deals, which were set
for two years, they're like, never mind, we give up,
pull the play and they paid. They paid, They paid
the money.
Speaker 1: But it's like clearly they looked at the numbers very
quickly and were like, oh, we did an oopsie, man,
we did We didn't do this very good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. It's also just really hard to make money
on live streaming in general, because a platform like Twitch,
as it expands, as it gains more users, it also
becomes more expensive to run. Like this is one of
the things that calculator.
Speaker 1: There's a calculator, like the live streaming cost calculator. Is
that thing accurate? Like how many minutes for how many
people watch or whatever? I'd like you could do a
little calculation it says, oh, that stream cost Twitch forty dollars.
Speaker 2: For a couple hours. That's almost certainly Napkin math. I
doubt that it's like fully accurate, but it is generally correct. Yeah. Like,
as as a platform like Twitch grows, it becomes more
expensive to run, and as a result, a company like
Amazon has to find new ways to monetize it. Now
there's some other like you know, Amazon is also making
up the math as it goes. So like, is Twitch
profitable is it not? It depends on how you decide
where Twitch is making money. There's a lot of tech
Amazon uses that Twitch originally developed, and now Amazon charges
Twitch to use that tech internally. That's so that's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, what I My biggest worry is Amazon will
do what it did to Twitch to what it did
to Comixology, where they just like stripped it of any
sort of presence and and kind of like any independence
and comics Oology no longer exists. It's just the kind
of kindle. It's like folded into kindle, and it's one
of the worst reading experiences for digital comics that I've
ever seen. And my fear is, as much as I
think Twitch is not great to use right now, it's
going to be much worse when they just jam it
into like a Prime video or something like that. So
it's a big concern about that. One other question I had, Sorry,
go ahead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I was just going to say, Twitch is
also like where the community is right and so if
Amazon ever pulls the plug or degrades it so much
that people have nowhere to go or they end up leaving,
then that that thing that makes Twitch special, that reason
that like a lot of streamers have returned to Twitch,
for example, after being on YouTube and cultivating audience, is
there that goes away? And if that goes away, what
if anything takes its place?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm one other thing that I'm interested in. I
don't know if you explore it. I'll find out when
I read the book. But did you do you kind
of explore the impact that politics has on the growth
of t which and perhaps other platforms, because you know,
you have the likes of Aiden Ross, for example, being
a huge presence in the streaming space and then having
his right wing pivot and then going to you know,
a specific platform, and you know, currently the biggest I
believe political streamer is Asthma Gold, who you know, originally
started off as a water warcraft person and now has
interesting perspectives on life and that kind of like you
know that that the ebb and flow of it and
the success of generation Socrates.
Speaker 2: It's not what's not mince words asmen Gold called Palestinians
like a lesser people.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, that's not mince word. That dude is
a fucking gremlin.
Speaker 1: So he also he also gags when he drinks water,
you know, you know, not as bad but pretty bad.
Speaker 2: Still. Yeah, that's you know, I didn't think about.
Speaker 3: It any any kind of like that, that exploration of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So the last chapter in the book is
about Hassan, and it uses him as a kind of
a lens through which to view that section of the
livestreaming world and how it's grown and how it's become
its own sort of portion of twitch and even a
little bit like we were saying, what it means for
people to sort of cross pollinate into doing politics when
their original background is not being a political streamer, or
even like necessarily in the case of somebody like Aiden
Ross having much knowledge in that space, like Aiden Ross,
you know, we'll talk about politics when he's going down
some red pill rabbit hole. But it's not like he
studies this stuff. It's not like he's read history. What
was the There was a clip of him trying to
like sound out like a very call said it was
something pertaining to like politics, and I was like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to find it.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, But you know, nonetheless, this is a guy
fist he said fastest. Yeah, oh yeah, that's right. He
was trying to sound out fascist, which is perfect, by
the way, given that he, you know, months later, had
Donald Trump on his stream and conducted a long interview
with him that drew like almost five hundred thousand concurrent viewers,
a ridiculous number, as you yourselves know, as people who
stream those regularly.
Speaker 3: You know, I think it was it was an ultranationalist, okay, right, yeah,
I mean still an absolutely perfect word for him to
not be able to say.
Speaker 2: But yeah, like it's hard to measure the impact of
these things on like an election but you know, there
was disproportionate turnout of young men voting in favor of Trump.
You know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude
Aiden Ross's stream and others like it might have had
some impact on that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so there's I think, oh sorry, I just
think that there's like, there's such an interesting lack of
acknowledgment by institutionalized powers on how straight the fucking line is?
Are political movements being empowered by people who are watching
shit on Twitch dot tv And it's like and like
radicalized by Reddit and in the wake of gamer Gate,
like it is just it is simply a straight line
with no variants or like or or ups and downs,
ebbs and flows. It is literally a straight line. You
can track every single beat and be like oh yeah,
all of this, Yeah it makes yes, And it's like yeah,
absolutely fueled and empowered by by these platforms. Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Would say quick note, Aiden Ross is on kick not Twitch,
but it's a similar culture. Aiden Ross came from Twitch.
Originally he got banned for not preventing people from being
racist in his chat, and it's not surprising what he's
turned into with that history in mind.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's get people the details on the book again.
So it's out next week. They can pre order it
from where what should they know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can pre order it pretty much wherever books
are sold. There's like a main link though from Simon
Shooster is the publisher. If you just search like stream
Big Book, you can probably find that on Google. If
somebody can drop it into you that you'll maintain.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if you're a bomb chat, it's up at the
top and then I will head over to twitch chat
and pop it in there.
Speaker 3: I just pray. Is there a preferred place you would
want us to get it from in terms of like
cuts and that kind of stuff?
Speaker 2: Can I sorry, I gotta see if I can do this.
You can.
Speaker 1: Line it up perfectly and then you move it and
it's like it's still there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly. I should have done that sooner. But
is there a preferred place? No, just get it where
you get it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, if any viewers are If any viewers or listeners
are in New York, there's a launch party on Sunday
at Wonderville and Bushwick. So it's a two pm come through.
Speaker 1: Last real quick question, who optioned the book and when's
the movie.
Speaker 2: Come out nobody so far. Although when I first got
the deal, because I got the book deal forever ago,
and then the pandemic happened and I had to sort
of pause working on it for a minute because doing
stuff a person was functionally impossible, And so like the
day after I got the book deal in twenty nineteen,
some person emailed me and it was like, yeah, we
could turn this into a movie, and I was like,
a howe, and be hold your horses. The book is
not even close to that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so you we have the same last name. Does
that work?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, that's that's how that ever, always played somebody
with their last name.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, awesome, cool, Yeah, that's bind excellent, Sorry, Bud.
Speaker 1: All right, what we're gonna do is, Sean, I'm gonna
say we're gonna take a break right now. We'll come
back with more after this for the podcast version, and
then for the live version.
Speaker 2: We're gonna come right back. Okay.
Speaker 1: So let's uh, let's talk about split fiction. Let's see Nick,
Nikki and Tam you both were in LA recently earlier
this week.
Speaker 2: Was it to play split fiction or was it late
last week?
Speaker 5: Uh? It was fuck me running it was supposed to
be the hard question. It's nuts.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's understandable given the state of man.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Damn all right, tell me about split fiction. Just as
quick reminder, Joseph Faris Hayes Light is that the name
of their studio, their new game, People Made Brothers. People
that Made It Takes two. Game of the years, twenty
three million copies sold, very popular in China because apparently
divorce is popular in China. Now I think that's a
shoot popular. Yes, popular, Yes, divorce is hot. Yeah, they
are like into divorce in China right now. That one
of the helping that game out. Okay, so you guys,
you played it. What's one of the basics that people
should know? And how'd you find it?
Speaker 5: Do you remember it Takes two?
Speaker 2: Yes? Okay, okay, cool, thank you.
Speaker 3: It is pretty accurate that that kind of format is
is something that they like to stick close to. I think,
like perhaps Away is the biggest departure from it. But
in the same way that It Takes Two is a
a collection of really wildly varying ideas. Split fiction is
very similar and it still has a cohesive element to it.
And it was like top down broad kind of take
on it. It was a lot of fun. I had
a lot playing that game.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think something that like it's really it's I
was trying to figure out how to talk about this
when I was like in the shower today, I was
like trying to form my words. And it's in a
way that is not denigrating to the game at all.
It's like the last it's more of the last one,
and if you really liked the last one, you're gonna
really like this one. There are new different ideas. It
feels like they came up with a huge list of
ideas on ways to do two player co op experiences.
They put some of them in the last one, and
then the last one sold, you said, twenty three million copies.
So Joseph went to EA and said, you're gonna give
me triple the budget and they said absolutely, and then
it gave him however much money he wanted. And then
now the ideas are bigger and better. And I think
that the beautiful thing about the time that I spent
with Split Fiction was that none of it and it
takes to have this, I think to a different degree,
but really really felt this with Split fiction. It didn't
feel like any of the stuff that I was doing
felt throwaway. It all felt like a like team was
really like, Okay, we're making a pinball level where one
person is the ball and then the other person is
controlling the paddles. What if we made sure that every
single part of this experience felt good. It didn't feel
like any of it was like second thought or like
one person. Well, sometimes it did feel like one and
I had to play second fiddle. And I want to
talk to you about that, Tim, because I did feel
like there were some bits where I was like, I
wish I was I was being jammed right now and
I'm sure Jan Also.
Speaker 4: If you're the ball is helpless, right.
Speaker 3: Was the hardest? Yes?
Speaker 5: Really so yeah, the ball the ball physics didn't feel
very good, but like there was yeah, yeah, he's going
to be mad. There was like after touch on the
ball also, which like so the ball would go in
the air and then you would kind of be able
to move. It left burnout space a lot like burnout.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went to tig Woods.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Tim, I did you at any point feel like
you were wishing that you were being the role that
Lucy was? No, did Lucy feel like.
Speaker 3: I don't think so. I think the balance there is
good because there are times where one person, like for example,
in the pinball level, Lucy was the ball and I
was the flippers, and it can feel like the other
person is having more fun. But they, I think they
do a good job of inverting that as much as
they can, so there will be a level fairly soon
after where you'll be having the fun thing and the
other person is doing kind of like the support thing.
And that is to say neither time is like it
wasn't like Lucy was having all the fun and I
was just like, oh, it was like I kind of
want to beat the ball to try it out of
that kind of stuff. The ball, the big ball one
was rough because one the ball based on me watching Lucy,
who's good at games, and was like we were both
struggling through this. The ball felt a bit too heavy
and wasn't like jumping as high as you want it to.
And then the flippers, which is what I had, There
was like a delay to when you hit the bottom
and the flip actually happening, so we were constantly not
able to kind of synchronize properly. That's a very small
thing that they will hopefully iron out, but that it
was like whatever. Then you know, a few sections later,
I was in we were in this like motorbike section
in a futuristic like like a city where we're being
chased by like a helicopter with a gunner on it,
and we're both on the bike. I'm controlling the bike
and Lucy is trying to disarm a bomb by reading
through a and user license agreement and capture on a
mobile phone. It's like moving around chaotically, and it was
like we were both like like I was technically having
the fun there, but she was like in the next
to me, just screaming like I can't use this thing.
I can't do THET. I can't do THET. So like
it balances out, and then we're like we're two pigs
and my my traversal ability is the ability to far
and launch myself and she's a spring and it's like
there's always a good balance. It's not like if you
take control of meal, the other character is like done
and bored for the rest of it.
Speaker 5: Back and yeah, they're that back and forth between facility
of fun and then doing the fun. That relationship is
really good and then which makes the moments where you're
both in the same space as like, because the game
does create environments where it's like, oh, we're separated, and
then we're kind of back together doing the same thing,
where they're like, oh, we're both doing the same platforming
style situation. We're both doing the same There's another there's
a stage that we've played, there's I'll take a step
back in the way that this This demo was formatic
because we played a three hour chunk and they jumped
us around a bunch. It sometimes felt like we were
in a car that all of a sudden, sometimes the
handbrake would get pulled because we would finish the stage
and we'd be like, oh, I can't wait to see
what's going to happen, And they will put a big
black screen on the black screen, and then it would
have some white text on it that would be like,
now we're going to take you to the sci fi
time p s and then I would I kind of
was like, it would fucking bang if that was how
the game actually was, it would be awesome. If they
were like, we're sci fi time, no transitions, We couldn't
figure it out that is how it goes. But yeah,
there's I lost some thought the part, oh we're we
moved into the dragon zone? Did you did y'all get
that far in the demo? And that was really cool
because there were these two you're in the fantasy chunk.
The core conceit of the game, if you don't know,
is that these two people get book deals, what they
think are book deals. They go into this publishing company
that very obviously gang. I don't know who the fuck
these girlies are. Read the contract and look at the building,
publishing houses. There are so many steps on the path
to they got stuck inside the computer, which is what
happens to them. That I would have been like, No,
I'm okay, I think I'm good. I think I'm so
good on this one.
Speaker 3: Come back one of the immediately he is like what
the and the other one, I'm so excited to get
my book deal by having my ideas sucked out of
my brain. It's like, that's how it works.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's just how it works. So one of the
characters is a fantasy writer and then the other one
is a sci fi writer, and then you are moving
back and forth yourthhoe genres and you're moving back and
forth between their ideas. There is one part where you're
a dragon. You're both dragons, and there there was such
interesting back and forth there because I was kind of
under the impression that that ability set was going to
be the same for both dragons, but one of the
dragons couldn't fly and actually had a sonic the hedgehog
spin dash roll situation. Yeah, so you're like knocking this
ball around, trying to do like puzzles where you're moving
this ball through this stage, and then the other dragon
can spit acid to like blow up the ball and
fill up a cup that will move bits of the level.
So it's it really does subvert what you are under
like what your expectation is for that format. I was like, Oh,
we're going to be dragons. We're gonna be fighting other
little monsters because we're fucking dragons, and like no, no, no, no,
it's puzzles, And I was like, oh, okay, I like puzzle.
Speaker 3: That part was really cool because they kind of make
sure that you're having different paces in the type of
cooperation that you're doing. So in that dragon section, it's
very much like take your time, figure out how you
solve this puzzle for the longest time, I didn't know
my dragon could fly because I wasn't moving. When I
hit the fly button, I was just like fly, fly, Fly,
it wouldn't work. And unless it was like move you
then hit the fly all right, man. And then so
like that's a very kind of like at your own
pace and then like the final level of the demo
is very much not at your own pace cooperation. It's
like a side scrolling shooter, like a twin stick shooter,
but it's also got like that Ikaruga element where you
can only interact with your assigned color, but it means
that when it splits you up. It's like she was
she had like a wall of fire coming towards her,
and the kind of block in front of her was
my color. So I have to quickly divert my attention
from platforming to shoot her thing to help her out,
and back and forth, and it was like you had
to we had to fight bosses together, where I was like, oh,
I can't hit him, you need to hit him with
your color. So that was like intense cooperation. I think
they in the demo that we've played, they spread out
that kind of different pacing of cooperation really well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and oh sorry, go ahead, I was just going
to ask to you. Guys mentioned a very similar in
terms of the way it placed.
Speaker 2: It Takes Two.
Speaker 1: Uh, I think It Takes Two is a very sold game.
Obviously a lot of people really love it. Uh, where
where do you see If you do see refinements, where
are they? And do you get the sense maybe that
the PA scene might be a little bit tighter because
the one complaint I always hear but It Takes Too,
is it maybe dragged on a little bit?
Speaker 5: I think the thing that's so hard for this is
like we they it's very explicitly we're like we're bouncing
you around, so we don't know if any of it
oversays it's welcome because we were really never doing anything
for too long. Because I also felt the same with
It Takes Too. I was like, wow, I like I
get it gang like like I had a good time
and was having a good time, but like at this
point I'm kind of I'm over it. I'm here so
I can finish the game. I have no idea like
if they've gotten if they've trimmed it down that in that.
Speaker 1: Taking an editor's eye to yeah, we're gonna and also
we're not the way long. This game is out next month.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's next month, like on the third or sixth, seventh,
six really soon. The other thing I will say is
I think this one will have a longer or I
think I can see myself being invested in it longer
than it takes too. Because at some point with this
with it takes too, I was like, God, these fucking
people just shouldn't be together. Like the narrative of it
made me kind of quit on the me playing it
because I was like, I just these people just you're
hurting your child, like like I was like, this kind
of sucks. I didn't really want to participate in it anymore.
And because this story is not that, I think I
will be more willing to kind of be invested in it.
And I think that's just like a time play setting situation.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think that's that's the right kind of
angle on that one. They it's more of a case
of two people discovering commonalities and building a friendship than
it is like the degradation of a relationship in slow
drawn out you know, whimsic away.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is an easier it is a more complex story,
I guess, but it is an easier story to swallow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah uh.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite moments last year was at the
Game Awards where Joseph Ferris was on stage and he
pointed out that he does still have a wife because people.
Speaker 3: Just think of him as I mean, the two characters
are named after his daughters leave, so which is very cool.
I also would like to know Nikki about dried mango,
because you had an experience with dried mango.
Speaker 5: Dog hold on, crowd, I think I might hold on
fucking start.
Speaker 3: I think I have it. I don't want to put
this is just like a random stupid thing on the side.
But like they had snacks and ship this at this event,
and Nicky like tricked me into eating some dried mango,
which is genuinely the one.
Speaker 5: That's not what happened.
Speaker 3: You looked at me like mango, and I was like,
I love mango, and you were like, try this.
Speaker 5: And then I said, try this. It's really bad, and
it was already in my mouth at that point. It
was the wackiest dried mango I've ever had. It came
in as in a bag that looked like cheese. Its
like the color schemes exactly cheese. It so opened it
and then it was crunch and dry mango is fine
if it's like there are many textures that you can
try go at, but this was like it was crunchy
and as soon it tasted rancid to me, would you
just would you also describe this it this way? And
then the worst part is that it just sat in
your fucking molars like it took you to write today,
and all it did was like a third of it
went down your fucking gullet and then the rest of
it just sat in the.
Speaker 2: Fucking dance yourself and your teeth, like sit with it.
Speaker 3: It's a dry and mango that you would find in
like a Fallout vault, right yes, and like.
Speaker 5: It wouldn't have even hit That's how bad it was.
I still would have been pissed if it was Fallout.
If I was like, oh ship, yeah, dried mango. I
haven't had fruit ever, and then I've opened the package,
I'm still pissed. That's how bad it was.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 2: That's what we need, though, we need to be able
to taste the next Fallout game, and this one that's
everything that you encounter. Not only can you pick it
up and like put it in your inventory. You can
lick it first. It's got Todd taste technology.
Speaker 3: Alright, Todd is the most cursed thing I've ever had.
Speaker 4: They gave out Cola's at E three two thousand and six,
and they're pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I bought a new Co Cola when they were selling
them for Fallout four and I was like, this is soda.
Speaker 3: Yeah, huh.
Speaker 1: To Nikki before we move on to Avowed, my understanding
is that you and jam did some sort of gaming
performance that directed attracted an audience.
Speaker 2: Dude, a lot of attention. What happened?
Speaker 5: So we didn't realize. I think Jane and I were
and Jane has the all of the audio, so I
think maybe I think it would be fun once the
video game comes out if we just put out the
put the video out. Because Jane and I were just
streaming but for ourselves. But at some point someone like,
Jan did you tim you.
Speaker 3: Took this picture? Yeah? Because we could see Yeah, yeah,
and we we.
Speaker 5: I had we had. Jane and I were just playing
the game, talking to each other, and then apparently at
some point there were like six or seven people from
the Split Fiction team, every member watching. We're just seeing
behind usn't watching us play and we had literally no idea.
We were just like to play video game. So I
think they were having a good time watching us, which
is like, honestly, that's probably That's probably like thirty or
forty percent why they do these events. It's like, is
the game fun? Do people like it? So it was?
It was, It was fun, it was a cool event.
It is a weird little studio in Hollywood. They it
was nice in there. We had I had a slider
that was good.
Speaker 2: But was the tomato appropriately sized for it? No?
Speaker 3: It was not.
Speaker 5: The beam slider was bad.
Speaker 2: The chicken slider, sliders and video game events name a
more iconic. Do they love those guys? All right, this
game's out March sixth. We said on Everything Switch.
Speaker 4: PS five, I was just looking at that. It's definitely
PS five Steam an Xbox.
Speaker 5: Okay, I would assume that it is not coming to
the original Xbox or to the original Switch because it's
unreal five. But okay, yeah, I would bet that it
is coming to switch to as soon as they are
allowed to say that video games are coming to the
switch to.
Speaker 2: Right, that's not coming.
Speaker 5: That would be not not confirmed, but it would be
nuts if if it did, and it.
Speaker 3: Takes too was on Switch has that friend posting where
one of you the other one gets it.
Speaker 2: That's actually really handy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that like not many games do that, but this
one day it's like you the other person just fully
gets the game. It's not like, oh, the download play
you head on the three DS or whatever. It's like, no,
this is a full pass to actually owning the game.
Speaker 2: And it's also really smart because think about the number
of games that have sold them like word of mouth
and co op over the past handful of years, like
Lethal Company blew up because of that ship, and so
if you can bake that into the way that your
game is sold and marketed, then like you're vastly increasing
its chance is selling. Well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it also.
Speaker 3: Creates a yeah, I was gonna say, I talked to
Joseph Harris and I and that is something that we
talked about where it's kind of interesting way Hayes like
has developed their own kind of like many ecosystem where
they're the only ones that are really making these types
of split screen co op games and then so and
they're making good ones and then they have the friend
past thing where it's like, so if you play one
of these and you're like, oh, that was good. I
like more of that. Pretty much. The only thing that
you're going to get is one of their games, and
you can rob someone else into playing that again with
you by buying one copy, and then you play that
one and you're like, I won't mind another one, and
it's another one of their games. So it's like really
really smart.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that that knock on effect I think is really
big because it even if it isn't in that like
that loop, a person who has played off of the
free copy can then be like, I'm gonna buy it
and I'll play it with a different person as a
different as the other role that I didn't play. So
it's a it's a really good loop. Fulton chatter asking
if it has single player support, No, find a friend.
Speaker 3: I saw it than you. I didn't play a text
too because I don't what to play with.
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, any any final thoughts on split fiction spliction
as we call it infliction?
Speaker 2: All right, avowed Dan Riiker. I think you've probably played
the most out of all of.
Speaker 3: Us last night.
Speaker 4: I'm at like thirty six hours.
Speaker 1: Okay, why don't you kind of break down what this
game is for people that are that still don't know
and then kind of give your thoughts.
Speaker 4: Well, jeez, it's I saw the reveal of it, what
was it at Summer Games Fest last year, and it's like, okay,
sure that looks fine. Didn't really like you know, Clock
with me at all and not a big, you know,
RPG guy, but so yeah, I just downloaded and I
was like, I'll give it a shot, see what this
is about. And first night I downloaded, I think I
probably played six seven hours. I just immediately got into
it because, like, as much as I've enjoyed Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout,
the Bethesda framework.
Speaker 2: You don't dislike those games.
Speaker 4: You actually really like them, you know, I really I
but I feel, you know, I'm ready for the next
level of that, which kind of is what this feels like,
because the old bethesta ones always felt so wooden, even
like going to Starfield and everything, like, you know, it
just kind of felt woulden, not just the dialogue and
things like that. But you know, I'm a dewey video
game guy. I like the moment to moment. I like platformers,
I like action games, and it's like I think GB
you and I were talking about that first time that
you're basically your guy coming from this government force to
come into this island called the Living Lands, which is
just kind of this like No Man's land. A bunch
of people have just set up cities and things like that,
but it's just kind of doing its own thing over there.
And you crash on this island nearby and you start
fighting these lizards, and right away I was like, ooh
that felt good. Oh that felt like it really connected.
There's some good collision going on here. This is a
you know, first person melee combat is famously difficult to
make feel good, and that felt really great. And then
oh shit, I got a wand and I got this
grimoire and now all of a sudden, oh shit, I'm like,
you know, dual fisting this. I got this cool wand
with like infinite magic amos. It's like a stamina. And
in this Grim War where I can just hold LT
and pick one of four fun like fire and frost
and lightning effects and everything. So I was very quickly like,
oh shit, this feels really good, whereas like if it
felt like a traditional like Bethes the game, I might
have fallen off pretty quickly. And then I started playing
more and more, and the story started getting me more.
And you know, I'm not a story character narrative guy,
but I'm like, man, the whole idea of like, it's
not just the same fantasy tropes. It's not just you know,
dragons and castles. It's this whole dream scourge. It's it's
this thing like if you've seen the key arts, if
you've seen the box art and the title screen, it's
really cool. It's just like a skeleton with like trees
and flowers and shit grown all inside them. And that
is very much what's going on with this dream Scourge,
which is the main kind of story beat here, is like,
oh shit, this thing's kind of taking over this island,
and they've sent you in to kind of like you know,
look into it and send a message to the ambassador
and blah blah blah. But you know, the thing is,
there's a lot of choices that feel like they matter,
and you come in as kind of this like naive,
like I'm just working with the Adyrions, and you start
learning more about the Adirrians, and you learn more about
kind of the rebel faction here, and then there's like
these kind of religious zealots over here, and then it's
just like you get to make really interesting decisions about
like kind of which side you want to take. And
I'm you know, thirty six hours in, I'm in like
the third big area. Basically, it's not big, you know,
square open world the way that a lot of these
games are. It's more kind of zones where it's like,
here's like a big ish area here, do all your
stuff mopped up, and then a story thing will take
you to the second one, then on to the second one.
You can go back, but like you know, enemies stay dead.
There are some like story based events that change, you know,
the previous places you've been to. But yeah, I've always
been wary of like side quests in games like this
because you know, even like you know, Fallout and Skyrim
and stuff like that, there's just a lot of like,
oh there's bandits down by the river, go kill a
bunch of them minutes just like Okay, I did that
and got whatever. Like here is closer to a Witcher
type thing where it's like I want to do every
side thing because I don't know which one of these
is going to turn into a hour and a half long,
you know, trek through all these caves and this mystery
and choices and stuff, and it's everything's paid like there
haven't been side things where'm like, oh, I gotta do
another one of these things. You know, it's got bounties
and stuff like that that you see a lot, but
those are still fun too here.
Speaker 2: So fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 4: I think it's tremendous. I love the way it does
kind of that cotor style because I've always hate turn
based combat and this one. You can do the moment
to moment just you know, shooting and stabbing and stuff.
But then at any point you can hit LB on
plane on controller and you've got companions and you can
say like, okay, you I want you to do your
explosive thing to this group over here. You you do
a heel and then when I un pause, I'm going
to do this bull charge into this group here, and
it's like okay, unpaused, and you see all this stuff happened,
bodies flying everywhere, good rag dolling and all that. Just
immensely satisfying no matter how you play the combat. And
I've seen the complaints about the difficulty and the crafting
and the grind and honestly, like, I feel like most
of the negative sentiment I've seen has been because of that.
And I don't know if this is the game's fault
at not surfacing this more, because like I have not
found that to be a problem at all. I feel like,
on the normal difficulty, I've died exactly how much I
would want to die in a game like this where
it's like I stumble into the wrong camp or whatever,
I get my ass kicked, you know, I'll go level up,
get some gear better, and come back and win. Because
as far as like your health, I think making food
at there's camps that you can set up, and that's
where you kind of chat with your companions. You level
things up, just go to the pot the fire, and
make everything you can make. There's no reason to have
these individual components, these apples, these whatever, make all these
stews and beers and potions and things like that. And
then if you're having trouble with this combat encounter, go
in there and just drink a ton of shit and
it's like, all right, I'm dealing twenty percent more damage,
I'm taking twenty percent less damage. I'm you know, health
regenerating stuff. I've got tons of that, and then you've
got the essence potion stuff like that. For your magic,
you get like your own personal godlike powers where it's
just like basically a mana thing that you can do
to heal yourself and your companions, and your companions can
get powers too to heal you. So like I felt,
at any given time, it's like, oh shit, I'm out
of potions. Okay, well I'm going to have them heal me,
or I'm gonna use my god power and take your time, pause,
look around, heal when necessary. I did not find it
that difficult. And the crafting stuff, I think, Okay, this
is something I was thinking about a lot. I was
thinking back to when I played Red Dead two and Destranding,
and I hated it the first time around it, And
both those times were because I was rushing through it
and I was like, goddamn of this game keeps going.
I gotta get this beat before embargo because we're gonna
talk about on the podcast or I might be reviewing
this or something, and so I'm rushing from thing to think.
And I hated both those games, and then I came
back to both of them years later, taking my time
with no time restrictions, and I was like, oh, okay,
I think the rush pre release really impacted my enjoyment
of this. And I could see myself like if I
had to review this because it came in kind of hot.
The Coach came in barely, like within a week or so,
and I saw some reviews saying they beat it in
like thirty hours. It's like, Fuck, I'm thirty six and
I feel like I'm not even quite close to the end.
So it makes me wonder, you know, we're reviewers or
we're people trying to rush through this a bit and
not doing the side quest stuff. That if you're doing
side quest stuff and you're exploring, you're getting all that
fucking petrified wood and the leather and all the stuff
you need. And there's systems in place to where you
can take the smaller stuff and make the bigger crafting materials,
or you can break down the bigger ones to get
the lower ones you need. Like all the systems are
there in this game to make it a smooth experience.
But I don't know if A it was surfaced enough maybe,
or b if some people pre release were rushing through it.
Because I've I've had no problems with that.
Speaker 5: I also think that like a lot of people are,
and I'm that's why I'm so deeply curious to see
what the conversation with this game is post and actually
being out because you can if you have game Pass,
you can get it now and it's day one. It's
still yeah, yeah, it will come out for a sheet
on the eighteenth. But I think a lot of people
are used to games that do not have any kind
of friction in them at all, which is like, that's fine.
I think I personally, all of this stuff is so
deeply exciting to me because I am really tired of
playing games that are like we like not where Avowed
wants you to play it, obviously, but it also is
is like, you're supposed to engage with this thing. We
don't want your brain to turn off while you are
engaging with this thing. We want you to kind of
play it. I've been playing a lot of Citizens Leaper two,
which is like, is different, obviously, but it is also
a thing where I'm like, I'm really having to sit
down and kind of figure out I have to. My
brain is actively working all of the time when I'm
playing that game, reading that game, and this seems like, yeah,
there are ways that you can fuck yourself over, like deeply.
If you spend all of your currency or your resources
on shit that you actually don't need or want. Yeah, absolutely,
you're gonna be fucked moving.
Speaker 2: Forward to fix that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah, and anytime based some gold and kind
of reallocate all your all your uh, your ability points
and things like that, what are you gonna say, damn, Nikki.
Speaker 4: That reminds me. That's another tip. If people are struggling
with that, do not sell your stuff as you were getting.
You know, you'll get a bunch of O fine ax
or fine bow or you know, all these things. There's
a temptation to sell that stuff.
Speaker 2: Don't do that.
Speaker 4: Money comes fairly easily in this game through side quest,
and you can sell like there's loot. There's like emeralds
and topazes and things that are it tells you specifically
like this is for money, sell this at a vendor,
all the other stuff. Every time you get a weapon
you're not going to use, break it down. You just
look at it and the menu hold an X breaks
it down, gets your crafting materials. I think that's a
big part of the reason I have not been want
for crafting materials at all. So that's a big tip
if you' struggling.
Speaker 5: People can't read.
Speaker 4: I mean literally because because Tam, I can't do the
get good thing. Tam is mister frumpsoft. So this isn't
a skill issue. So I'm curious TAM's experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tam, but will give you the floor here in
a sex Yeah, We're very curious to hear your perspective
because it's a different perspective. I'll just say, like to
add on to what Dan said and kind of what
Nicky was saying, like dance describing like okay, yeah, taking
all these potions and and setting up so you know
how to use all your your companion's abilities and things
like that. It's like, okay, yeah, that stuff was working
for me. But I also found my own way of
dealing with problems of like I found I stumbled upon
a grimoire that had some cool stuff in it pretty early,
and so I was able to like get some magic
armor and a magic staff that can take on much
higher level enemies. So I just like mixed that into
the spells as I'm in combat, and that stuff wears
off after a minute or two, so it's like, Okay,
I got to back up, and that's when I send
my companions in to kind of keep stuff away from
me for a minute while I am recharging on cool down.
And so it's like, I it's just a role play.
It's the roleplay of combat of I've got these options
in front of me, I've explored them. This is what's
working for me. It's going to be different from what's
working for Dan. And that's some of the magic here
is that you can really express yourself through the combat,
and you want to because it's some much fun.
Speaker 2: It's also noteworthy and this is a really small thing,
but unlike a lot of fantasy role playing games, where
you know, you go and do the menu, you equip
and on equip your stuff, you have two load outs
in this game, and so at any moment you can
just tap why and switch to your other set of weapons,
and so you can like alternate and juggle between those
mid fight and like use all these different abilities that
those each grant.
Speaker 1: It adds a lot of variability too, and everything's fun
to use. The bow and arrow is fun, The daggers
are fun. The guns are fun to use. Though of course,
the magical wand it's a great time. Yes, magic is fantastic.
I just started to it was so impactful. I just
started it last night and I tried to do this
and I think it worked, but I don't know. So
I'm going to ask you guys.
Speaker 2: You can like you can electrify water, right and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah right now pistol electrifiers. So I just I'm constantly
shooting up puddles of war.
Speaker 4: Yeah, electrifiers.
Speaker 2: Day yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: You talk about Nathan uition the like switching between sets,
and it's not a thing where it's like, oh, it
also includes your armor. It's simple and that it's like,
all right, I got my wand in gramoire for range stuff,
and then if some skeletons getting up in my ass,
it's like I'll hit. Why all it switches is I
got a big fucking axe and you know, it's not
all my armor and everything.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of amazed that other fantasy games have not
really done that because it's such a simple thing from
like fresh pressent shooters, and so why not to say like, okay, yeah,
switch to your other weapons. It's like ingrained in us
as people who play video games.
Speaker 4: And it's fairly simple to, Like, you know, there are
times where it's just like, Okay, each world or each
area has like these six gold totem things you can
find that are very worth finding, and so a lot
of times I'm just running around trying to uncover the map,
and so it's like very easy to just like I'm
gonna put on a bunch of boots and stuff that
give me a speed bonus, and then I've got this
companion that has an ability that gives me a speed bonus,
and I've leveled that up for longer duration everything, and
I'll switch to the third person. I literally it looks
like a cartoon. Good are like purple light cut me out,
Hell yeah, And there's boots and stuff. It's like plus
thirty percent per horse speed. So I'm just dashing it
just like clambering up everything.
Speaker 1: Horse speed, which rules. And that stuff's also very good
in this game. I love, uh, you know, as great
as the combat is, the expiration really works where like
if I see something or on the mini map, I'll
see a little red dot of like, oh, there's an enemy,
but there's a door that's barred there. How can I
get in there? I bet I can, and I always
find a way by like just looking around. If there's
a ramp there, I'll jump up there, go around the
long way, and it's I love that.
Speaker 2: That is really good in this game. That is the
thing that has stricken me about the game in the
few hours that I played so far, is the world
feels so intentionally crafted, like compared to even other like
kind of open worldish games, Like you can feel a
human touch in like every corner of this thing, and
like there's so many little secrets and there's so many
little areas where like you're clearly meant to go in
and look at one thing and then realize, oh, there's
this other thing over here. Actually if I climb up
over here and climb here and do that. And like
my favorite example of this, it's that tower that you
find in the first like major port city that you
just like see off in the distance and it's covered
in like brambles and vines and everything, and you're like,
I'm gonna climb that, and yeah, but I just.
Speaker 4: Found the tallest tower I've seen yet in the game,
and I saw the very top there was like a
plank going off, and I was like, wait a minute,
And I got on a plank and I looked down
and there was a thing like a square of water there,
and like, I'm fucking jumping off this.
Speaker 2: At the very beginning, you can jump into the ocean
because I was like, I don't want to climb down this,
and it like has some little boards with a rope
hanging down it, which tells the story to itself like
somebody probably trying to climb down, and and so you're like, well,
I'm not gonna die. I'm the main character, and so
you just like sprint run off, and as you drop down,
your character literally literally screams.
Speaker 4: He goes and you see the feet like flailing, like, yeah,
it is funny, Like a lot of the writing has
been really solid. Some of the choices are very funny. Yeah,
it's great too, because like most encounters and stuff, it's like, Okay,
do I want to be a dick about this? Are
they being cool? Am I going to be cool? And
then there's usually like the attack thing at the bottom
you can do, and I feel like I've so rarely
done that. It's usually I can find a way to
kind of talk myself out of it even with that
like skill check type stuff. But then every once in
a while, there's like a group where it's like, man,
fuck you guys, Okay, I'm just gonna fucking kill all
of you. Dialogue and magic everywhere is just slaughter, and
it's like, oh man, that was fucked up.
Speaker 2: Like it feels great.
Speaker 1: I think that's like the Nathan you were saying, like
intentionality everywhere, there's also that like it goes. It's broad
in its intentionality, but it's also deep in that when
once you start going in these quests and you see
the various options that you can pick and the forks
in the road, there's a lot of stuff that feels
like we're going to put this in here, even though
we know a lot of people are not going to
see these things, and that's okay because having the option
and ignoring it does feel empowering to players still, and
we recognize that, and so we're going to make this
a deep personalized experience. And that also has really worked
for me throughout all these great conversations I'm having with
the NPCs.
Speaker 2: All Right, let's not everyone does like this game now.
Speaker 1: In tam I think where you set it up, you're
like cool on it to kind of like not really
find it a very engrossing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't. I don't necessarily disagree with a lot
of what was said there. I think the combat is
far and away the best part of it. I'm running
like a gun slash knife build where I shoot from
a distance and if anyone gets close, I have a
sword that every time I hit him it gives me
a halfback. So I'm basically unkillable cool. So it is
very very satisfying to play in a lot of ways.
I think that the economy of like upgrades and the
system I do have had, I have run up against
it a few times, and I think that it's definitely
resolved in large parts by doing everything. But the fact
that that's a basically in this necessity is something that
rubbed me the wrong way because a lot of the
side quests I found to be quite boring and like
narratively speaking, quite uninteresting. Most of the characters I've encountered
are very very forgettable and throw away, even your main party.
Like the first dude you meet, fish Man, whatever his
name is, I can't even remembers Garrett Garret. Like I
realized there was an issue there. When I meet him
and you speak to him, you have one conversation, He's like, oh,
hell yeah, I'll help you through everything. And I was like,
what you you barely know and he's like, oh yeah,
I'm coming with you. And I was like what, why? What?
What is the deal?
Speaker 2: Likestand he's a hot fish man who likes you.
Speaker 3: What more though, every time I see him, this is
an ugly ass character, really weird.
Speaker 2: He'ser you did not you did not take away the
intended message from Shape of Water.
Speaker 3: He looks he's got a shark peth and he looks
like he's made out of foil, And I'm just like, what,
It's such a weird looking character.
Speaker 2: His skin text shits are fucking amazing. What are you
talking about?
Speaker 3: Finding him weird?
Speaker 2: I mean, but even there, the amount of craftsmanship in
this game is crazy to me, Like it looks it's mesrizing,
And I.
Speaker 3: Think that's kind of a large part of why I'm
not vibing with it. I think it just hits for
some people and won't hit for other people. For me, Like,
the narrative is completely gibberish to me, Like, I don't
I'm not, I do not care. The main quest is
not helping me at all, and it's.
Speaker 1: Also we're pointing out this is a offshoot of the
Pillars of Eternity branch, so there's a lot of existing
and it has a that they are using this backdrop.
You can press F on keyboard when you're playing at
any time and they'll bring up if there's a blue word,
they'll give you some.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's.
Speaker 2: Very like a wall of options of like proper nouns
that you've heard in like three sentences and you're like,
I don't really want to.
Speaker 3: Go And that's the issue. One of the issues where
like I felt like I was a line would come up,
someone would say something, and then I was reading for
like ten minutes through like the sequence of terms, and
now I'm consuming the narrative in the weirdest way possible,
where I'm like hearing someone say something and then I'm
basically absorbing bullet points and then going back to it
and trying to connect why that's relevant. And then in
the next line there's a different set of proper nouns
where you're like, what the what is going on. It's
a very strange way to and like I know a
lot of people are like, oh, I love it. It's
really like dense and that kind of stuff. But it's like, yeah,
mass effect is very very dense, but the way it's
revealed to you, it's very contextual and like you're you're
part of the understanding and the discovery process of it,
where like when you learn something new, you learn it
because you're part of that and it's necessary to what
you're about to embark on, or it's good context with this,
it's just like here's something that exists in our world.
Here's everything you need to know, here's a Wikipedia entry
on it. And also you don't really it's not relevant
right now. It's like, Okay, why why did I need
to know any of that? So like it's it drowns
you in. There's a lot of like law, and I
think the pillars of eternity like foundation can really work
against it. And and that is an issue that I had.
And also like a lot of the characters I speak to,
I think I genuinely feel like some of them. They
come up on screen, I'm like, what the why do
you look like that? It's so ugly.
Speaker 4: Defend Yeah, I defend the companions the first three and
then I just got the fourth one. I was like, ah,
fuck this thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's secs where I've rung up to it and
I was like, are you a child or a short adult?
What are you going? What's going on? It's so weird,
So like that's that's a part of it. And then
like I do think that the fact that you have
to do everything is indicative of an economy that isn't
properly balanced, because the fact that you need to engage
in every single element of the side quest to kind
of more seamlessly or smoothly, or to have a better
experience in the main quest is not a good kind
of indication of balance because designers know that not everyone's
gonna want to do everything. But if the options to
ignore the things that you don't want are not available
or you're punished for it, I don't think that's a
good balance. Like I've been doing everything and even I
still will have like go into a battle where it's
like a cut to the end of it, and like
I've fought that battle and have won, but it's been
a grind. But the moment you go into a battle,
like your companions are like you need better armor, It's like,
how how am I going to get better armor?
Speaker 4: I've picked that a lot it like, even though I've
got good enough armor for this stuff, they yelled at
a lot. So that is kind of annoy fine.
Speaker 3: You know, it's also frustrating when you go into like
your inventory to upgrade something. You know, you have that
feeling where it's like I'm gonna uprade something. You go
in there, you're like, oh, yes, this is available for upgrade.
This game has the opposite effect where the amount of
times I go into an inventory or an upgrade menu
and so a lot all my stuff is not upgrading
is far more frequent than when I open it and
I'm like, oh, I've got this one thing to upgrade.
It's always you need this much, this of this thing,
just much of this thing, and you might find it
in the while, or you might not find it for
hours and hours and hours on end. And I'm just
like I'm doing fine, but and I'm getting through the game.
I'm just not having fun with it. I enjoy apart
from when I'm in combat and I'm like, you know,
doing the gunning and like stabbing and all that kind
of business. That's enjoyable. But at the moment I'm like
in the world and I have to go and speak
to a human learn about what they're talking about here
about some god that I don't really know about. And
also like the God keeps talking to me and I'm like,
I just what are you talking about? What are you
on about? And if it was like being cryptic and
then I was getting a revelation about something like small
and it was like building towards something, I'd be more
into it. But it's just like God appears and it's like, oh,
you haven't heard from us for hours. We have we'd
like to converse with you. And you're like why, why,
why do you need to talk to me? Why did
you make me come here? Like I've had question lines
where they're like, oh, come back, you need to talk
to me about moving my soul and I was like, okay,
I did it. I moved your soul into this giant
thing that someone was trying to use the like nukea civilization.
But there's no meaning, there's no meaningful, like nothing changed.
You were like okay, cool, we'll see you later. Like God,
it's like the annoying character in your ear that has
got nothing really to say but just wants you to
remind you that they're there. And there's like way too
much of that, and it does eventually that like Touched
by a God, thing does eventually build to some small moments,
but it's not significant enough for me. And also like
the way it manifests with their box art thing where
you're like flowery and stuff, Oh that looks good man,
Like every time I see it it cause it seems
I'm just like, ugh, that's good.
Speaker 2: But I also feel like it's not necessarily meant to
look good. And I kind of like that because also,
characters react to you, and I think that's like, what
what's with your face? Like, oh, yeah, that you often
get in video games usually, Yeah, in video games, people
treat your character as though they are like perfect, or
at the very least, like their appearance is immaterial, it
doesn't matter. I think it's more to actually get a reaction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's more entertaining if you turn that off,
because they still react to you as if your face
is fucked up, but you just look normal and they're like, oh,
what's wrong? Get a face and you're like, what normal?
Speaker 2: I'm a guy.
Speaker 3: I'm just a guy.
Speaker 2: It's like in a world where it's bad to look normal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do, genuinely think this is one of those
things where it's one of those like divisive games where
either it will click for you and you'll be like,
I'm into this, or you'll be like, I'm hitting just
enough like rough it just that I don't like it
for me. I'm just like I'm enjoying. I'm still playing
it because I want to see where it goes a
little bit. But I could drop it at any moment
and not feel like I'm missing out on anything but
the fact that it's on game Pass and if you
have game Pass, it's a no brain and give it
a few hours see how you feel. I don't hate it.
I think it's a decently well made game. I genuinely
do think if they rebalance the economy of like upgrades
and that kind of stuff, it'll be a considerably bad game.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think this is one that people will have a
better time with if they do do a dance and
they like kind of let themselves get into the ebb
and flow of of the way the game pushes against
you and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So like when you are running up against those rough.
Speaker 1: Edges, it's like that's actually the game pushing your back
and say go do something else for a little bit.
And if people feel like they can get into that,
I think they're going to have a really good time
with this game. If they're not in the mood for that,
I think they will bounce off. But I think over time,
the vast majority of the audience probably will be find
themselves to be like, no, I am ready to kind
of get myself over to what this game is trying
to do, and I think it's going to have a
kind of long legs and yeah, kind of a.
Speaker 2: Reassessment here pretty soon.
Speaker 3: I will say, for a lot of players that really
enjoy it, it's the best Bethesda game in a long time. No, No,
I mean I mean it's Obsidian. Obsidian have one basically
built a kind of legacy on making better versions of
what you know Bethesda does. And this is another in
that line where Starfield came out. Starfield very different game.
I played it and I was like, this is asked.
I don't want anything to do with it. And but
I still had the kind of itch for a Bethesda
style game, like I want it to feel like I'm
playing Skyrim Oblivion and something like that, and this does
scratch that itch doesn't work for me in the same way.
But I feel like a lot of people are going
to play it and be like, oh, this is this
is what I've been waiting for in the lead up
to like an Elder Scroll. So a lot of people.
If you're if you're into Bethesda games, definitely play this
because it probably will hit for you.
Speaker 2: Oh then again with that, with the caveat that, I
think Bethesda games tend to be like very wide open
and unfocused, and I think this world feels much more
crafted and much more like it wants you to do
certain things. It wants to nudge you along the siddle halfs.
But also it occurred to me, Obsidian does what Bethes
don't there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go. That's good.
Speaker 5: Put that on the back of the box.
Speaker 3: Just put that on the back of your new book.
Speaker 4: A quick anecdote of the ship that I love about
this game. I saw Chap mentioned like, oh, I just
saw that you can freeze water and walk on it.
I'm like, yes, you can. It teaches you that because
you can like knock down these like little freezeberries and
if it lands in water it makes a little ice platform.
Not just that I learned that. I was like, oh,
if that works hang on, I had a spell that
makes like an ice ring around me. It's like a
defensive frost shield thing. So I went out to like
a big lake and I did the frost shield thing,
which lasts for twenty thirty seconds, and I was able
to sprint across the lake as it froze underneath my feet.
Speaker 2: And it's yeah, yeah, that.
Speaker 1: Type of this is a video game, and it doesn't
have a lot of systems that that it's not like
ready to fully flesh out, Like there is no real
law system. Usually, Uh, everything that's in the world that's
sitting around, even if it's in other people's houses, you
could just pick it up.
Speaker 2: You're not, you're not.
Speaker 1: It doesn't qualify as stealing. And you get the sense
they're like, we could have done that, but we would
have had a half asset, so let's just not do
it at all. And I'm probably the right choice.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I miss some of that stuff, but I'm glad it's
not here and done in a way that is half asked. Yeah,
and and and then I just think overall that that
they really just focus on the stuff they.
Speaker 2: Wanted to do.
Speaker 3: You were going to say, Tam, how is your technical
performance because I've been playing on X up and down
and it's not very consistent. I've had areas where I
walk into and it's like, oh.
Speaker 1: This is an Unreal Engine five game. It is an
open world Unreal Engined five game. As always, those can
be pretty heavy in some areas. This is especially in
the city. With the fifty eight, I was getting like
thirty frames per seconds sometimes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm finding with the forty ninety, I have not
had issues I had on The one issue I had
was not a performance thing. It was like a bounty
thing where it's like you have to kill five of
these pretty tough enemies and I died several times, like
oh I finally did it, and only four of the
like trophies that you have to return spawn and so
it's like I picked up four of them and it
was like you still need to get one more, and
it was looking around, like what the fucks I did
have to roll back and save it were? That was
the one big issue that.
Speaker 6: Were not but that but not very buggy otherwise, especially
for an upsity, I think it kind of varies because
I know our review. I had a bunch of bugs,
like quest lines that would break and required him to
like restart and it's interesting because like nicely interesting, but
like they patched it like a few hours before the
reviewing bargo went up, so we had to like quickly
change our reviews because they fixed that stuff. But it's
still is very much like for me, I find it too.
I wanted to play on Xbox because Xbox I don't
play it enough, so I wanted to play a bunch
of that on and I've been having some no crashes. No,
I did have one crash. Actually it was just in
immensely It was like, I don't know what to do.
Speaker 5: The Xbox loves to crash though, like that that thing
to crash playing fucking eyedarb it is not difficult to
get the Xbox to turn off.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was the weirdest bull.
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 2: What is that for? I drew a red Box.
Speaker 4: The kids can't stop talking about.
Speaker 1: My children are obsessed with it for sure, and they
watch all their favorite Eyed creators.
Speaker 3: Shouldn't be watching.
Speaker 2: Uh last couple of things.
Speaker 1: But the I think to speak to the economy thing
that Tam was talking about, one quick fix just put
in a blood moon so that some of the in
world enemies could just respawd so you can go out
and get more resources when you want, just do that immediately.
Speaker 2: That I think this is going to solve a lot
of people's problems, uh with this game.
Speaker 1: And then so people in chat were just wondering, how
did everyone feel about Outer Worlds and how do you
compare it to this?
Speaker 2: I I liked Outer world a lot at first.
Speaker 1: I cooled on it over time because they just didn't
have the juice as it went on, and I think
this is a better game overall.
Speaker 4: I feel the exact same beat Outer Worlds enjoyed it,
but not nearly on the level I'm enjoying this.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Cool, all right, I think that's going to do it.
Let's see here the anything else from Giant Bomb. Yeah,
we are going to have upf here in a little bit. Nikki,
you want to play some rocket?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds like fun to me.
Speaker 3: Everyone going by sports this book?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and then once again Nathan's book available next.
It's called it is I'll wait, do you have a copy?
How we can both hold them up?
Speaker 6: It's it's over in the other room, so I don't
have again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's called stream Bag, The Triumphs and Turmoils of
Twitch and The Stars Behind the Screen by Nathan Grayson,
and it's out next week on February eighteenth. You can
pre order wherever books are sold. Also, I am the
co founder of a website called aftermath Dot site we
write about video game news and things of that nature.
We're worker owned, users are reader supported. Go check that out.
I think we do good work. And also if you
like Giant Bomb, they'll probably like what we do too.
Speaker 1: Yep, one absolutely great website, all right, for everyone from
Giant Bomb, for Nathan, thank you everybody for joining us.
We're gonna get out of here. Until next time, have
a good one, take care of yourself, and goodbye.