Speaker 1: Welcome back everyone to the Game Informer Show, a weekly
podcast covering the video game industry. Join us every Friday
for a discussion of the latest gaming news, reviews, and
exclusive reveals, alongside game and from her staff and special
guests from around the industry. I'm one of your hosts
today Alex van Aiken, and today I'm joined by Marcus Stewart.
How you doing, Marcus, I'm doing well.
Speaker 2: I just realized we were talking off camera about Man
at the Box by Alison Chains, and it just dawned
on me that we are all men in boxes right now.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes we are. It's uh we we can't escape this.
Speaker 2: This gnup if I?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah? Also joined by Kyle Hilliard, how are you?
Speaker 2: Hey?
Speaker 3: What's up? I thought spoon Man was an Allison Chains song.
Speaker 4: That sound is not bake music fan.
Speaker 3: I realized my mistake.
Speaker 1: Is what I know I have. I have never heard
of that song.
Speaker 3: So a friend about spoons, so I center that song
as a cool older oh perfect.
Speaker 2: Part, and he said, check out this Alis and Chains song.
Speaker 3: She said cool, and then.
Speaker 1: She We're joined by Brian Shay rounding this out. How
are you, Brian?
Speaker 4: I'm doing great? Every time we talk about like the
layout of the podcast. It reminds me of that viral
video where they had like the kind of Brady Bunch
layout of the celebrities singing we are the Champions, and
I sure clearly thought he was going to be in
the middle. So he's looking all around all angles.
Speaker 1: And remember COVID, Remember when they were like, imagine no
the people first week of COVID.
Speaker 4: God, that saved me.
Speaker 3: That saved me, That sent me.
Speaker 1: Into a spiral. I started eating toilet paper.
Speaker 2: It wasn't good.
Speaker 1: Let's get into the show proper. Of course, if you
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let's get into the show, guys. I think the big
the big talker this week is gonna be the Blood
of the Dawn Walker cover story. We're gonna get to that,
but we also have some reviews I want to get
through real quick. We've got the Forts of Horizon six review,
which we're about to jump into. We played Directive eighty twenty,
which is the latest game from super Massive UH. And
after after our cover story, we'll get into the Call
of the Elder God's review from Marcus, and then we've
actually got a bunch of listener questions back. We we
brought this segment back finally. I think it's one that
we've been wanting to bring back. And when we when
we were first revived and the podcast came back, we
just had a lot going on and we're like, let's
just stick to, like, you know, covering games. But I
think we've wanted to inject that sense of community we
used to have on the podcast, uh, from from before
we were shut down last year. Now that we're back
and we've we've got the band with we're like, okay,
let's start doing this again. So if you do want
to be a part of the podcast and submit your questions,
please send an email questions at game or podcast rather
podcast at gaminformer dot com uh and or if you're
in our discord, you can leave a comment in the
appropriate channel. But Brian, let's let's get into your review
of Forts Horizon six, the latest from Playground Games and
Xbox Game Studios. I played it as well. It feels
like more of the same, which is not a bad thing,
like that series has really been refined and polished to
the umpteenth degree. But I know there are some differences,
and you've played, I mean, you beat it, so I'm
gonna pass it over to you kind of give us
the overview and what's different about this Forts of Horizon game?
Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean, first and foremost, the big difference
is the setting, right, So Forts Horizon five was set
in Mexico. This is set in Japan. I think that
Mexico was maybe a bit more of a dynamic setting.
But that said, there are still a ton of amazing
biomes in across Japan. You know, Tokyo City is the
biggest city that Forts of Horizon has ever featured, and
it really is impressive. But you know, Alex, you and
I have been to Japan together actually, and we've seen
firsthand how massive that city is. It's impossible to capture
how how huge Tokyo is in a video games, so
it doesn't quite capture the all inspiring sprawl of Tokyo
in real life, but it would be almost impossible to.
But like that, that is one thing to keep in mind.
The other thing to keep in mind is that there's
no Osaka or Kyoto or any other cities in this game.
It is only Tokyo, which I was actually a little
bit surprised by. I thought we would get some other,
like kind of iconic parts of those other cities, but no,
Tokyo is like the only major city, and then outside
of that is just like kind of countryside small towns,
mountains up north, stuff like that. But you know, it
is beautiful. It's it's an incredible playground no pun intended,
given that the developer is playground games, but it you
know it, it really does capture the feeling of Japan,
and it captures kind of like the spirit of it,
and I love that there are ways to kind of
interact with the culture as well. It's not just the like, oh,
we're in Japan, let's just go race. And there is
a lot of that obviously, but there's there's a Horizon storyline,
and then there is a Discover Japan storyline. The Discovered
Japan storyline is a lot about interacting with the culture.
Like there are like guided tours where like your tour
guide will like teach you about either an element of
the culture or an element of like the car you're driving.
Like one of the earliest ones I did was like, Hey,
you're driving in an old Honda Civic. Here is the
history of this car, and like it's really cool that
they are like giving you information about like here's why
the Honda Civic rose to prominence and you're driving one
right now, So like it really gives you like a
sense of like, oh yeah, I'm like kind of experiencing
this like in a virtual sense. And I love that
about this game because it it does make the setting
feel distinct. And they did a lot of that in
Force the Horizon five as well. But obviously, like you know,
interacting with Japanese car culture and interacting with like Mexican
car culture is going to give you a completely different flavor.
There's also other things like you can take up jobs,
like if you want to get like extra money, you
can actually driver.
Speaker 1: Is this so much fun too? Yeah? I played it,
And so essentially you are you to make money?
Speaker 2: You are.
Speaker 1: They've the festival is partnered with local uh you know,
essentially like an uber eats kind of app uh, and
you then deliver foods. You go, you pick up the
food and then you deliver it to where it's going.
But along the way there are sort of like these
conditions you have to fill out, like which get ridiculous,
Like I did one where they wanted their food really
shaken up, so I had to drive into as many
obstacles as I could along the way.
Speaker 4: There's other verse is true as well, where it's like, oh,
you cannot hit anything because this like you don't want
to mess up this ramen that we're delivering, or like
you know, drift as much as possible, like they really
want you to deliver this in style or get here
as fast as possible because this food needs to be
eaten as hot as possible.
Speaker 1: And I like that one too. It's like you have
to if you are under ninety miles per hour for
more than thirty seconds, than you lose Oh, it's speed,
and then it sends you through the city where there's
like a bunch of turns and stuff. It's fun.
Speaker 4: That's a really cool request.
Speaker 2: If anyone listening is like a food delivery driver, let
us know how accurate somebody's uh, customer stimulations are if
you normally get these special requests, I would like to know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So yeah, like that's a really fun Like I kind
of look at that as like the side story is
the discovered Japan stuff, because that also has like kind
of like the unsanctioned races like head to head battles,
street races and stuff like that. Then you go over
to the festival side and that is like I would say,
the main story where you're in the Horizon festival. These
are sanctioned races, so it's like circuit races, dirt races,
which are kind of like rally cross, and then like
you know kind of sprints where you're going from point
A to point B against like a lineup of cars.
And it that also includes like a lot of like
the festival centric activities like going around and like smashing,
like the regional mascots that are scattered throughout those I
got so into like hunting, hunting those those regional mascots
down and like the bonus boards where a grant XP
they're just like hidden throughout the environment and you'll see
them on the map and it'll just be like, I'm
not that far from that. Let me go veer off
course from where I'm going to go track down this
this like you know, cartoony bowl of ramen or this
cartoony like Macha tea or whatever, like curry rice. So
all the regions have a different mascot that you track
down a bunch of them and run your car into them,
and that's how you collect them. And there's two hundred
of those scattered throughout.
Speaker 2: The world and they're okay with this.
Speaker 4: They are okay with this. Yes, that is the goal
of this.
Speaker 1: There is like a weird I wanted to get into it.
There is like a weird energy or or like juxtaposition
of we are going on. I played one of these
missions where it was like one of the tours you've
talked about discovered Japan, and we all had muscle cars
and we were driving through the Eto region and they
were talking about like all of these you know, this
one wasn't so most wasn't really focused on like these
sacred places or anything like that, Like you're not really
like driving through shrines or anything. But you're like they're
talking about like the beauty of the landscape and stuff.
And then you get a challenge halfway throw where it's like, Okay,
you have to score one hundred and fifty thousand point
style points within three minutes, and the easiest, one of
the easiest ways to do that just to smash through everything.
So there's like this weird energy where you're like, okay,
are we are we respecting this place that we're guests in,
or okay, you're giving me points to run through the
bamboo forest and tear down all of the bamboo. And
then it just feels like it's a weird like I
feel like they they could have easily added in okay,
hit one hundred and fifty thousd or maybe reduce it
hit one hundred thousand score without you know, destroying such
and such, and it's like, Okay, that means I have
to do my drifts do this while also kind of
respecting the landscape. But when they just say, hey, just
get this score and reach the end, it's like, well,
when I'm when I'm like, I'm trying personally to not
mess this place up, but I'm not really worried about
it when I'm smashing through the bamboo because I'm getting points.
It's just like a weird it's a weird uh kind
of thing you're looking for is contradiction.
Speaker 2: Hey, I was gonna say that has always been the
case for the Horizon series. Like I've always thought you
could these games could be a horror game if you
set them. But it was from the perspective of the locals,
and they're watching all these like super excited influencer driver
like people just take over their they're a country and
just smash cars into everything and they're like why do
why are you here? Like what is happening? Mascots?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's like like but the writing is very
much like look at this beautiful play. It's just like
this weird and very much I'm reminded like, oh, yeah,
I'm in a video game, which is I guess fine,
But I feel like they really are trying to like
immerse you in like the local culture, and and it's
it can feel like very surface level because of like
that that dissonance there. I almost wish like they would
make like the next game, they would dial up the destruction,
but like put it in like a fictional place and
like or America, because you know, we can take it.
We're used to it. But this kind of transition into
a different topic. But you know, this game represents like
the the sort of like years and years and years
of dialing in this format and this and working with
this engine, and it's so you know, I wouldn't say
it's perfect, Like I have my qualms with it, but
it's like, I don't know where you take it next
in its current form besides another place. And I think
that's what they've been doing. And that's like, yeah, that's
the answer. I would love to see the forts Are
Horizon or maybe it's a separate, you know, spin off.
You know, we've got to it this point we got
this is a spin off itself of FORTSA. I would
love to see this team introduce a destruction mechanic, like
I think it's just burnout style burnout style destruction, Like
I they've got the like whenever you smash into things,
you're already your vehicles taking damage. I would love to
see that expanded on and really kind of turned up
because I think it could. Really it's already an arcade racer.
It's they've already got the they've already got like the
shader tech to like you know when you when you
scratch your car, it shows up on the car. You know,
your car can get really messed up, but it's always
very Uh it feels weird when you crash into the
tree at ninety miles an hour and your car just
kind of hits it and stops and there's no The
problems that I.
Speaker 4: Know about that is the reason that Burnout never had
licensed cars is because these manufacturers desperately don't want to
see their cars in flaming piles.
Speaker 1: I would just tell them to suck it up. I
think that's a good typically answers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you do look like they're gonna have any cars
in your game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you can make it.
Speaker 1: What if?
Speaker 3: What if? Okay, so what if you took what if
you got out of the car and you were like
walked around and you were in like a fantasy setting,
like what do you do you think does that sound?
And the game could still start with an f like
we could maintain that and it could also be followed
by a vowel, and I think that would be okay.
Speaker 1: So for you're wanting to get out, you're running to
get out of the car and onto a skateboard.
Speaker 3: I was going with Fable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Fable got it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was crucial, the crucial piece of Richard. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So Fable is also coming from Playground Games, so they're
gonna have presumably two big releases in a very.
Speaker 2: Short stand here.
Speaker 1: Hell, I'll tell you the game is gorgeous. It's I mean,
you've seen more regions than I have, Brian, What what
are your favorite? Would have been your favorite areas to
explore in the game so far?
Speaker 4: I like up North because they have that like famous
snow road that I'm sure you've seen on like Instagram,
TikTok where it's like the walls of snow are like
forty high, Like that's super cool and like you can
jump over that and and do all that. Like there's
all kinds of like altitude changes up there. Driving in
snow feels different than like driving on dirt or driving
on like they do a great job with making the
surfaces feel different.
Speaker 2: The weather is the weather's like like the seasons or
the seasonal stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so like about two weeks into my
or about a week into my gameplay, like, it switched
from spring to summer.
Speaker 2: So that's pretty cool.
Speaker 4: I'm sure eventually it'll switch over to fall and then
eventually winter. But yeah, they are doing like the full
like seasonal cycle in terms of like actual in game seasons. Yeah,
I mean it's it's very much a continuation of what
we got in Forts the Horizon five. I think I
like it a little bit less. I think Mexico I
probably prefer that map just a little bit more. I
think there's a little bit more diversity of biome in that,
whereas like Japan has like some beaches, it has like
the snow up north, it has Tokyo City, which is amazing,
but outside of that, it's just mostly like green countryside,
which is fine. I like that a lot too. It's beautiful.
But you know, Mexico had like rainforests and deserts and
beaches and and cities as well, like all kinds of stuff.
Nothing on the scale of Tokyo City, but yeah, yeah,
it's Forts the Horizon five was my favorite racing game
of all time. This is deserving of being mentioned alongside that,
So I'm not complaining or bashing, And I gave you know,
Forts Horizon five a nine point five, which is tied
for my highest game and former review ever Forts Horizon
six slightly worse nine point twenty five. So it's it's
not like I'm saying either of these are bad games.
The contrary, they're both amazing games. But I think I
prefer the Mexico map just a little bit more. But
you know, everything else in this game feels just kind
of slightly more polished. It looks a little bit better
in terms of like graphical fidelity and resolution. Though I
haven't gone back and played it since any of like
the recent updates. I think they did put out like
a like a kind of like up like upres or
up resolution like update at some point for Forts Horizon five,
So maybe I should go back. But yeah, like I
thoroughly enjoyed all of my time in Forts of Horizon six,
and I plan on playing all weekend as well, Like
this is going to be like a game I continue
to play throughout the throughout the next coming months.
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, I never play games in my
living room ever, I'm always just here at my desk
playing and I've got all my stuff hooked up, but
I think I'm gonna be taking the Xbox downstairs, and
I just kind of want to have this game at
the ready when I'm just on the couch. I think
like racing games are perfect for that, and this one
has inspired me to do so, which I haven't done
in a while. So and also I think Kayla, my wife,
she she likes racing games, and so I think it'd
be like, oh, we can both kind of maybe spend
some time in the evenings because it's just so zen,
even if you're not doing a race, just driving.
Speaker 2: Around her Drive Guitar program.
Speaker 1: I know, right, yeah, I need to get her.
Speaker 4: That's something we haven't talked about that that the forts
of Horizon series does extremely like this extremely cool feature
called drive Guitar. It carries over to the regular forts
A series as well, where I if you've ever played
a forts A game, it logs how you drive in
those games. And then if like say Alex has never
played Forts of Horizon six and I've been playing it
we're friends on Xbox Live, I will see his driver
like his his like username appear above like a car
and I'm when I'm playing offline and it will behave
at like similar to how he behaves when he's playing
on his game, so.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, it will be very aggressive.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm pretty aggressive as well. And like our editor
in chief Matt Miller messaged me and he's like, your
drive autitar keeps like ramming into me around turns. I'm like,
that is exactly how I handle turns and Forts of
Horizon like I am.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have raced against you a couple of times.
Actually in the REV footage you can probably spot yourself,
but you were very agro and I was very agro,
so weird. I was just like constantly pushing you off
the edge of the road and it's just a chariot race.
Andwhile everyone else is like driving very nicely, like Jesse
Telly's driving past me like very on on his line.
Speaker 3: You know, stopping at stop lights.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like Driva tars quote is the only AI
model I want to train is a dry guitar.
Speaker 1: I agree, yeah, you can. You can have my data
for that nothing else.
Speaker 4: I also do want to shout out the radio stations.
That is something I've always loved in the Forts of
Horizons series.
Speaker 1: Streamer mode for captures. Oh yeah, experience it turn.
Speaker 4: The radio stations on now that you're done capturing Alex,
because I was constantly shazaming songs. I mean, it tells
you what the song title is when it starts. But
like you can flip through different genres. There's one that's
like all Japanese music, so like and even like the
DJ is Japanese, so like they're they're speaking in Japanese,
so it's it does feel authentic in that regard. I
found so many new like artists and so many new
songs and everything to add to playlists like shout out
to them, because they did that for five as well,
like and I mean other games in the series too,
but like five was when I was really like, oh man,
I love exploring these radio stags and like finding which
like genre because they're all different genres too, Like there's
one that's like kind of hard rock, there's one that's
like kind of alternative. One in this game, it's like
all like Japanese rock and jpop, and then like you know,
new wave stuff like just on down the line and
you can choose which one you want to listen to.
They all have like their own distinct DJs that we'll
talk to you and like even like react to things
that are going on in the festival that you've done,
where it's like when you complete the big set piece moments,
they'll be like, hey, like they just completed this. That's
really cool, Like that's really an incredible feat. Or like
if you find like a treasure car or like a
barn find, they will call out like, hey, there was
like a like imagine you're just driving around and there's
this porstcha just sitting in like this abandoned garage, Like
imagine how cool that would be. It's like, well, for
one person, they don't have to imagine because they just
found it. And it's like, oh, that's kind of neat
that they call out like kind of local news stories
going on with the festival, which is is pretty neat.
Speaker 1: That's cool. I do have one question before we move
on to the next game that we're gonna talk about today,
but it's a bit of a technical one. Can you
remind me when you are playing multiplayer races because I
was playing pre release and I saw like one dude
online shout out to shadow Fox. I think, but when
you are remind me, do you get a limited unlimited
rewinds in like a multiplayer race or do you get
no rewinds? How does that work?
Speaker 4: Do you get any rewinds? Because otherwise how would that work? Like?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was like if there was, surely it would
have to be like one because it would pull everyone back.
But yeah, that makes more sense that there's there's none.
Speaker 4: I mean, I again, my my multiplayer experience was fairly
limited as well because it was all pre release and
there's not a huge player base. Even as we were
recording this, it's before the early access period starts. But
I'm pretty sure you don't get rewinds, And if you do,
I guess, like the way it would work is like
everybody else keeps going. It doesn't pause time the way
it does in.
Speaker 1: Like offline play.
Speaker 4: That's something I do want to I want to shout
out the approachability mechanics that they have built in because
like you know, you can adjust how many assists you
want in this, Like you can be like, oh, I
want the rate, like the race line that tells you
like when you need to accelerate, when you need to break,
when you need to just like drift, like going into
a turn, Like you can have that like added, you
can have rewinds enabled and what they do, and you
can also adjust like the difficulty of the drive A
Tars you're facing, and based on the difficulty that you set.
They don't penalize you aside from like if you have
like all of them set and you have like the
drive A Tars on easy, it may give you less credits,
whereas if you turn all of them off and make
the difficulty higher, they will give you a higher multiplier
on the credits you get. So it's like it doesn't
throttle your story progress, it just makes it so you
can get a little bit less money, which means you
just can't buy as many cars. But like even doing
it on I mean I was doing race, Yeah you
can rerace, you can. I had it on I think
above average as my my drive guitar skill seting. And
then I had like everybody like all the other like
like assists, like like in terms of like the normal assists,
nothing like egregious. I had a lot of them enabled,
like the racing line and rewinds if it came to it,
but I tried not to use them as much as possible.
But like I was never really hurting for money, like
you're they're constantly doling out like like wheel spins, which
either give you like a cosmetic item, a lump sum
of credits, or new car.
Speaker 3: Like it was very rare that I was like.
Speaker 4: Oh man, I'm almost out of money like it right now.
I think I have like two million credits just sitting
around as I'm working like through these events that are
still scattered across the map.
Speaker 1: Love it? That's cool. Well, guys, let's move on, uh
to Directive eighty twenty. That is the uh, the new
game from super Massive. Kyle, you've been playing this? How
is it? Is it good?
Speaker 3: I don't like it? Alex?
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, why don't you like it?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 3: I gave it a five out of ten on our
review scale, And I mean the reason I don't like
it is because, like I just was not engaged with
the story or the characters. And that is like the
primary goal of these super Massive games, right, It's not
really about the gameplay. It's not really about I mean that,
it's not about the gameplay. It's about like, are you
interested in the fate of these characters and the choices
you make and what they do? Like where does that
lead you? And like I just like, was I just
was really like borderline like frustrated by the characterizations of people.
It just felt like it's it's a very much a
like a a riff on like the thing and alien
and stuff like that, and it just felt like it
just didn't feel unique or creative in that way. The
performances are pretty under whelming. There are times where like
it looks really good, like it's it's it's weird, but
it's like if you have a close up shot of
a character's face, the game looks great, but then when
you like zoom out, like I felt like it was
like like an outdated kind of performance capture where it's like,
you guys probably know what I'm talking about. There's this
era of performance capture where they were still sort of
like enamored with the technology and they were acting with
their arms a lot.
Speaker 2: You know the Sonic six PC.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it wasn't that it's not that bad.
I wouldn't throw it to Sonic O six but there's
just a sort of a a pepper ring of that
and like and then like just the the larger writing
was just is just rough. Man, it just like like
one like just as an example, like you know, characterization
is just delivered in really like overt sort of obvious ways,
like you know, you you wake up and like one
character goes up to the captain of the ship because
you're in like cryo sleep and you wake up and
you're like, hey, captain, I just I forgot Can you
tell me like how you feel about this mission and
it being potentially your retirement mission? And it's just so
transparent and like even early on there's like a character
who is like, you know how we got to go
fix the ship. But hold on a second, i gotta
watch this video that my wife and daughter sent me
from Earth telling me how proud they are of me.
We'll fix that thing that where you know that the
air is like leaking out of the ship. It was
just like a bunch of things like that where it
just felt like just lame and just so cliched and
like and it's like in terms of and and the
story also like they go through a lot of trouble
too and repeatedly to be like we're the best, like
we're saving Earth. We're like we're leaving Earth on this
four year mission to find a new planet because Earth
is like going to Hell, and like we went through
this amazing process where a bunch of geniuses no one
else on Earth can do this mission where the best
there is, and then where the elite. And then you
play the game and it's like there are choices outside
of your hands. Obviously like that you're not making literally
every choice, but so often I'm just like you guys,
you are not the smartest people on Earth. This is
like ridiculous, like this, you guys are so dumb, and
it's like in a horror game. Yeah, go ahead, Marcus, have.
Speaker 2: You have you have you considered that if these guys
are the best of the best, but Earth has collapsed
on itself, maybe that is an accurate representation of just yeah,
like I mean maybe maybe that explains a lot.
Speaker 3: Maybe, but yeah, I I could that could be and
maybe that's why. But that's why it's that's why it's
accurate for the future. But like, like you play something
like Until Dawn or like the other super Massive. When
I played was like a man of Dan. I played
a little No did I start the quary? I might
not have started. I don't remember. But like there is
fun in watching you know this, like what super Massive
sort of developed for themselves of like you watch people
in panic mode make bad decisions and sometimes you're like
brought into that to try to help them, and like
you fail a QTE or something right, and it's like
that's fun, Like it is fun to watch people in
panic make bad decisions. But like the whole setup here
of like these uh astronauts on the spaceship is like
we're the smartest, We're taking this very seriously, we're very thoughtful,
We've trained for this, and it just and when that,
like when they sort of fall into the super massive
style of like, well, something's going wrong and we don't
know what to do, it just it just feels lame.
It just feels dumb, and like it was to the
point where it was like frustrating. So I really, yeah,
I did not I did not like Directive eighty twenty.
And maybe I'm a sci fi snob, like you know,
maybe that's part of it. Is like I just want
to watch smart people make good decisions in space and
and like and react to things going wrong and like
and I just it just did not do it for me. Man,
Like I really was really bummed out by this. And
it's like I'm really I'm making an effort to play
all the astronauts are dealing with bad stuff happening in
space games this year, like like Mada and Sorrows and
DIRECTI Baty twenty and I've started a Fellion but I
haven't I haven't made a lot of progress yet. But yeah,
I just yeah, I really didn't like this game, man,
I was really bummed out by it. Did it really
underwhelmed me?
Speaker 1: You should you should install like a steam mod to
have all of them in Space Force uniforms, and then
maybe you would really become like sitcom. Well that's based
on the real Space Force though, oh I know, I
know that our government. Yeah yeah yeah. And if they're
all in space, they're in Space Force suits and they're
talking about how smart they are, we're the best of
the best, that might work, yeah yeah. And then then
it becomes a you know, sort of a parody or yeah,
it could be because.
Speaker 3: The homages are so transparent that they're like there was
like a mystery that they set up kind of early,
and like I'm like, okay, oh yeah, so that's what
it is, got it? And then but then the characters
don't clue themselves into it for like another four hours,
and it just it's like It's like it's like they're
like treating this thing as this mystery and I'm like, yeah, no,
I I know what's going on this. You guys have
made this very clear, like what is happening, Like I
don't know why this is a discussion, Like.
Speaker 2: We really hope you've never seen the thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean yeah, And I mean I think if
you ask super Massive they'd be like, yeah, no, we
love the thing, and that's what we were trying to do.
But it just it just doesn't right. There's a line
between like homage and like just feeling like they didn't
come up with any original ideas and it just I'm sorry,
but it just falls in the no ideas sort of
category for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The new uh, the gameplay stuff didn't do anything.
So that was one of the those things they were touting.
Were like when I played at SGF last year, they
were like, you know, it's it just controls like a
video game, which they kind of been veering more and
more towards that direction with every like dark cause this
technically a dark Pictures in game.
Speaker 3: Yeah it's not even title like it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, We're like, you know this, this plays more
like a video game now and this one when I
played it, they're like, oh, you can sneak around freely,
and there's like enemies you have to avoid, just like
a stealth game. Like none of that stuff hit no, No,
didn't hit. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean it's a lot of waiting for bad guys
to turn their backs and then you walk past them,
which is like not fun or scary or intense. Really,
it's just kind of like just waiting, and like the
puzzles are pretty underwhelming. It's like a lot of like, oh,
I need to turn this switch on so this door
will open, and I got to sneak around while, you know,
while I'm trying to figure that out. And yeah, just
another aspect of the game that was ultimately underwhelming. And
and also like you can basically undo any choice or
QTE you miss immediately, which means it's.
Speaker 2: Like like yeah, they like like a rewind thing or
something now, right.
Speaker 3: It just felt like nothing mattered because a.
Speaker 1: Couple like a couple of games ago, didn't they and
people don't like this like Correy they introduced it.
Speaker 3: I just know it just I just want to lock
into the story and let the things that happen happen, right,
it's like if if I lose somebody because I messed
up a QTE like and but if I can just
rewind that and get it right, then it's like then
I feel nothing ultimately, you know, It's like it's weird,
like knowing the permutations. Once I see the story to
its conclusion, let me hop back into the story and see, oh,
where could have this gone? Where could have this gone?
But like for that first playthrough to just be like, oh,
every mistake can be undone, it's like, well then I
don't care about anything, Like I'm not like why try.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's weird. I don't. I don't. I didn't play
to Qurey Alex. I don't know if it was in there.
But I played the casting of Frankstone and finish that,
and that didn't have a rewind. But they had a
feature where like they had some like a mode basically
where you could go back and chapter by chapter, a
moment by moment you could see every possible outcome of
a thing that you did, and then you could just
hop right back into that scene directly, so you won't
have to replay sections to get back to a decision
that you wanted to redo. Yeah, which I think is
what you would want, Like I see, like, Okay, I've
done everything, and then I can immediately go into this
other menu and then be like, oh, actually I want
to replay Chapter three, Part five again and just do
that over.
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 2: I do want that.
Speaker 3: I just don't want it there right away, like the
first character that dies, I don't want to see like
you want to do that just yeah, you can just
tap the touch pad on the PlayStation five controller and
it's at a certain point. I just had to commit,
like just personally and be like, well I want to
I'm going to make that experience for myself and just
ignore the temptation of fixing my mistakes, you know.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, I think I did look it up.
I think that rewind feature. I think I was thinking
of the news story that came out I think like
a year or a year and a half ago where
they were saying they were working on that. I think
this is actually the first one that has it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of sounds like it's a Life is
Strange game now, or at least the first one rewind
everything when you do something.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, basically, but yeah, I just yeah, I I
love you know, until Dawn It was like a very
memorable experience, like playing through with my wife, and like
those games, those games are cool, like in a group
setting and like it's fun in those like so especially
like the Slasher sort of like you know, can you survive?
Speaker 2: But like I just it just did not work for
me here. I just I just really and like I said,
maybe it's just like just a little bit of like
a sci fi snobbery of just like I know what
I want from sci fi and this isn't it. But
yeah I can't.
Speaker 3: Yeah five out of ten for me, didn't didn't love
directing Mayty twenty Yeah.
Speaker 1: Bummer, yeah, bummer. Well, we're gonna take a quick break
and then we're gonna come back and talk through our
Blood of the dawn Walker cover story with Brian. It's
gonna be great. I'm really looking forward to it, and
then we'll get into call the Elder Gods and some
listener questions. We'll be right back right after this. Look,
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is finally here, and welcome back everyone to the game
and former show. Brian, we're gonna toss it over to
you again. I want to know all about Blood of
the Dawn Walker. I know that this is, uh, the
former game director on the Witcher three is start at
a new studio. I know it.
Speaker 3: His brother as a book as well, right, Brian, Oh yeah,
he was one.
Speaker 4: He was like a secondary director on Cyberpunk. But like
he was like, from what I understand, one of like,
if not the main director of the Witcher three.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I know he started a new studio, Rebel Wolves.
I believe his brother is the creative director, art director,
creative director. Yeah, creative director. But this is like from
what I know outside looking in, this is sort of like, Okay,
what if we took everything we learned from the Witcher
three and make a new RPG that is with vampires.
That's that's my knowledge on the game, right, now, So
I'd love for you to kind of tell us more
about it, tell us what you learn on the cover story,
and please, guys, if you have any questions for him,
jump in.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, I mean it very much does feel that way.
I tried to go into this cover story actually like relatively,
Like where'd you go, Brian? I went to Warsaw Poland
there we go. So Eric Van Allen and I flew
out to Warsaw, Poland and it's a little bit of
a hike, but it was worth it. We got to
the studio. It's funny because Eric and I the night
before the like the trip into the studio, we were
just looking for like a quick dinner and we saw
there was like a pretty well rated pizza place, like
not too far from our hotel. So we went over,
got pizza, came back, and then when we rode in
the uber over to the studio the next morning, it
was the exact same building that the pizza place was in,
so it was like, oh, we were like probably probably
had one to and pizza. It was It's a one
stop shop, baby, So yeah, you know, I tried to
go in like without as much knowledge as possible for
this one because I wanted to like kind of experience
like the full like this is what we're doing with this,
and I knew it was going to be kind of
like an overview, so I wanted to kind of hear
it straight from them. And I'm kind of glad I
took that approach because I came away from this like
extremely impressed. Like so there was a longer demo that
happened that was not it was not necessarily like exclusive
to us. There were other journalists that had made the
trip as well, who which you know sometimes happens for
our cover stories, and you know they they were also
there for like a wider preview event, and you've probably
seen some of those previews if you're following this game
hit a couple of weeks ago and including on Game
Informer dot com, where we saw basically like a large
chunk of the prologue of this story, and its like
it tells the story of how like you know, you're
the protagonist's name is Cohen. You're up in the Carpathian
Mountains in the fourteenth fourteenth century Europe, which you know
Europe at that point is going through a lot of
a lot of hardships, we'll say a lot of crises.
The one that they choose to zero in in this
game is the plague the Black Death, So you know
that is spreading throughout Europe like wildfire, and it opens
up and you Cohen, are running through like kind of
the woods with your sister and the soldiers are chasing
after you, and they have instructions to like stop the
spread the plague by any means necessary, and that means,
you know, killing anybody who was infected. So they kill
your little sister and while she's like you know, barely
hanging on, these vampires show up and feed her their
blood to revive her, and then they slaughter the soldiers
and like, you know, months pass and you're like all right,
well that was weird, and you're having like this kind
of like idyllic like like mourning with your family, you know,
like you're chopping wood, and then suddenly your your sister
disappears and Cohen decides to like follow her and like see,
like all right, where's she goes? She just kind of
silently wandered off into the woods. And as you're going deeper,
you know, the imagery is getting weirder and weirder and
more grotesque. He coen starts having these like like visions
of vampires, and these soldiers come out of nowhere and
attack him, and they they end up stabbing him, and
the vampire or your sister then gives you her blood
and is able to you know, and then like he
wakes up in a cold sweat. Basically, right, he has
like during that that sequence where the sister feeds in blood,
he suddenly has these vampiric powers where he can like
slash enemies with his claws. He doesn't have to have
a sword anymore, and he has kind of like supernatural abilities.
Speaker 1: So the vampires weren't like feeding on like they're they
seem like altruistic, like they they saved her. There's there's a.
Speaker 2: Reason for all of this.
Speaker 4: So he wakes up in like a cold sweat, and
it seems like maybe it was a dream. But then
it starts like appearing that maybe that was just like
a dream of something that happened a long time ago.
Because like they're having like a like a contentious breakfast
in this family, Like they're all like trying to like
eat their breakfast, but like the mom, for whatever reason,
is like refusing to eat, and she won't. She won't
say why, she's just refusing to eat, and like they
try to force feed her nothing, and the dad looks
at Cohen and goes, you know what he'll do if
she is weak. And basically what has happened was this
group of like immortal vampires has taken control of this
small town up in the mountains, and basically they have
this deal with them where they have it seems like
it's every month they have a blood mass, and they
what they do is they bring everybody into the church.
The pastor or priest or whoever just basically praises them
as saviors, the vampires, and they cut their hands and
drain their blood into a bowl and as a as
a result, like basically that is for the humans to drink.
And what that does is that heals them. That gives
them like you know, kind of like you know, immunity
to diseases. It heals like physical ailments. But they also
have to cut their hands into a bowl so the
vampires can feed on their blood. And it's kind of
like this give and take, but it's not like fully
voluntary because it turns out that like that's why the
mom's refusing to eat anything, but we'll get back to
that in a little bit.
Speaker 2: So oh there.
Speaker 1: So basically like this this is cool.
Speaker 4: After the mom refuses to eat, the dad and like
you know, force feeding isn't working, the dad looks at
you and it's like, hey, you need to go to
the herbalist in town and like get some herbs that
will fortify her body because like this blood mass is
happening and we need to like make it so they
don't like spot that she's like refusing to eat for
this reason. So you're like, all right, cool, I'll go
do that. And then you're just let out into the
world and you know, as you're walking, there's like people
who come up to you and like beg you for help.
Like there was this woman that ran up and was
like please help me, Please help me, and like the
demo were was like, no, we're not going to help her. Instead,
like you know, you come up on this person who's like, hey,
my my pig wandered into the woods and I haven't
seen him since or haven't seen her since, and like
please help me, and you accept that quest, and then
you come up on another person's like hey, my brother
like went to go do this thing. Out in the
woods and he's been missing all day, like can you
go find him? Like just kind of typical video game
quest type of things, but they're not labeled in like
main quest or side quest. It's kind of like the
after talking to the developers, it's kind of set up
and positioned almost like Breath of the Wild style, where
it's like there are no things that are required of
you in this story aside from the main goal is
to storm the antagonist's castle and rescue your family, like
that is like basically the only main quest in the game.
So what they do is they don't call a main
quest or side quest. There are things that are more
important than others to the overarching story, but you can
ignore them if you want, kind of like in Breath
the Wild, you can ignore like all the Divine Beast quests. Like, yes,
it does help in the end if you've gone through
and done all the Divine Beasts and everything, but like
you don't have to. If you want to just go
straight to I Roll Castle and Breath the Wild, you
can do that, and it sounds like you can do
that in this game as well. So basically in this
playthrough of the prologue, the person doing the demo veered
off and just did like these two quests, right, like
the missing brother and the missing pig, because they're in
the same vicinity. So on the way to like looking
for the brother, you find like this kind of like
guy living out in the woods and like he's like
clearly something's up about him. So like you figure out
that like he has stolen the pig, and so you
do like a fistfight with him and you end up,
you know, you defeat him, but the pig gets gets
away and runs off, so like that you have to
keep chasing the pig. But then in the process of that,
you find the cave and you or you find like
the cart that the brother was was the missing brother
was like pushing through the woods and it's abandoned. So
what you can do is you can use like kind
of like a like a detective vision type of thing,
like or like what your sense if you want to
make the closer parallel where it's like you can see like, okay,
well are there footprints or anything nearby, and then you
try you track that to find that there is a
like a cave that he fell down into. And the
way this game operates is having certain conversations, spending time
with certain characters, or doing certain quests consumes a time slot.
Every day and every night has eight time slots, almost
like persona style, where it's like you have to like
choose what you're going to devote your time to, and
from what I understand, you can't do everything, so like
you have to be judicious with how you spend your time,
and the game itself plays out over the course of
thirty days and thirty nights. And so he goes down
into the cave and from what they and the brother's
still alive. But from what they tell me is if
you wait and you do this later in the day,
the brother might be dead. So like there are like
you should prioritize like more time sensitive sounding quest if
you want to complete them, and so you know, you
trace through it. There's like all these hints in this
cave down there of like there's like a like a
civilization that like is gone, and like there's like drawings
on the cave walls of like a guy like burning
everything in the room, including himself, to like prevent something
from happening. And then you come across a mini boss,
which is the first mini boss in the game, and
it's it's very traditional like this is a strong enemy
and you have to like you know, dodge, and the
combat in the game is very directional based, so it's
not only like timing your perry like you would see
in like a like a witcher, where you you actually
have to like not only time the parry, but also
choose what direction you want to deflect it. So if
the guy is coming overhead, you want to deflect it upwards.
If they're coming from like underneath, you want to deflect
it downwards, and same thing for like, yeah, I was
just gonna say sound it's more they basically were like
we we've seen like with some of these like especially
now they're more prevalent some of these combat systems where
it's just like kind of rhythmic timing with like when
they're swinging, you just you just push the perry button
and that's it. You start to kind of zone out
and like kind of like feel detached from it. Like
we want to make sure you're always like you know,
zeroed in and focused during a combat, because that's how
you would be in real life if you're fighting somebody
with a sword. You're not just like, oh, here comes
a fight or here comes a strike, let me press
the pery button. It's like no, you have to like
calculate every little part of that and stay focused and
like not like you know, kind of like go into
like you know, kind of the Tetris effect where you're
just like you know, zoomed in on that.
Speaker 1: So it was hands off, right.
Speaker 4: This was hands off. Correct, that's the unfortunate part of this.
But basically, you know, and then the mini boss also
has unblockable attacks, so like that's that's indicated by like
the like a red skull that pops up and is
like winding up for his attack.
Speaker 3: So you just have to like dodge out of the way.
So you do that, you can.
Speaker 4: You have the choice then after you exit the thing
of like all right, do I escort him back to
his brother or do I say, all right, I saved
you go back there and like you know, carry on.
And you know, they even were like they made a
joke like, oh, he'll probably be fine if we just
let him go back on his own. Probably, So like that,
I'm assuming there are times where like if you don't
choose to escort them, they will be they'll they'll die
on the way back or something. So you continue, you
find the pig, you bring it back to the guy,
and then it turns out that he's like, oh, well,
actually the reason I wanted this pig so bad is
I was I was gonna butcher, butcher, butcher her for dinner.
And it's like you can choose if you want to
like save the pig or help him butcher the pig,
or just be like all right, yeah, you do you like,
and like if you help him, he actually will give
you meat to bring back to your family. So it's
like there's all these different choices that and like how
they spider web out. So because of this, you did
not like go to the herbalist and help your mom,
and then you didn't help that woman who was begging
you for help before. So when night comes around that night,
it's the blood mass. So you know, looking at the
cut scene that's playing out, everybody's sitting in like this church,
and the woman who was begging you for help earlier
is not in the cut scene, and somebody mentions like, oh, yeah,
she was accused of murder, so we killed her. So
you basically that was like a if you play that quest,
they told me that was like a false accusation towards her,
and you could help clear her name and she would
be alive in this cut scene as a result. And similarly,
in the cut scene that they're playing, you did not
go to the herbalist to like give get these herbs
for your mom to make her like fortify her body.
That like disguises the fact she hasn't been hasn't been eating.
So when the vampires taste her blood, they realize that
she hasn't been eating and like that's in defiance of
what they've ordered her to do, so they kill her.
And oh, so like you can actually like it seems
like you can affect the story and how the events
play out pretty substantially. And meanwhile, the brother that you
rescued is there and the cut scene and so is
like the butcher that you helped out. So there's like
all these different ways that you can influence this, and
it also plays out over the course of that day
night cycle. Right, So it turns out that you know,
Cohen has been I'm not gonna spoil every single story beat.
If you want to read more in depth, you can
read the cover story. But Cohen has been infected by
the vampire like not virus, but like he's been he's
been turned into a vampire. Yeah, I guess curse is
the best way. He's afflicted by vampirism, and so basically,
but like as a kid, he used to work in
the silver mines and as a result, he inhaled a
lot of silver dust, and so he has silver dust
in his bloodstream. And because even though he was turned
into a vampire, the silver dust actually prevented him from
turning full into a vampire. So he is a don walker,
hence the name the Blood of Dawn Walker. He is
a you know, a human by day and a vampire
by night. So in the daytime, you know, you're fighting
with a sword and you can actually in combat. By
the way, I forgot to mention this, you can do
omnidirectional blocks. It just takes more stamina to like block
from all directions. So if you really want to do that,
you can do omni directional blocking. But yeah, you also
have to be more mindful of your stamina if you
want to do that. And then when he's so when
he's a human, he fights with the sword, he can
fist fight. When he's a vampire, you know, he has fangs,
he has claws, so he doesn't necessarily need a sword,
but you can use a sword if you want, but
you know, he can fight with his claws. You can
also feed on enemies and that will restore some of
your health. And then there's also like traversal supernatural traversal
and combat abilities that you unlock as you go. Oh, so,
like the first one we get is you can basically
like if you see a ledge off in the distance,
you can teleport to that ledge. And then there's another
one where like if you see like a certain type
of material up on the wall, you can like kind
of walk up or climb up that wall. And then
there's another one called claw ride where if there's like
if you're up on a steep cliff, you can actually
like dig your claws in and like kind of like
ride the wall down so you don't like fall down
right like so you can like descend faster. And there's
other ones that mattioush who is the creative director, is
the brother of the founder of the studio. He was like, yeah,
my favorite is this one that we actually saw in
the opening cut scene where you know, the the vampire
slaughtered the soldiers that were killing your sister where you
I'm assuming it uses like a lot of like whatever
resource they have, but like you can like super focus
on this one guy, like one enemy and basically make
their blood I guess like explode, so like they just
like like explode in a bloody cloud.
Speaker 2: Like Avatar.
Speaker 4: It seems like that is one of the more powerful
like combat abilities that you can unlock. But like there's
all these different ways. But then there's also this really
cool mechanics. So based on what time of day you
were playing, you know, you're gonna be either a vampire
or a human, which means certain quests are available to you,
certain quests are not available to you. People will react
differently to you, quests can play out differently. But also
as a vampire, you have a blood hunger. And they
were like, yeah, that is because I was I was
getting into like kind of their philosophy of designing, like
what things about vampires they carried into this, what things
they didn't and what they did was they were like, well,
the thing that was like the most like we need
to have this element in is their hunger and thirst
for blood. And they were like, that is like a
defining characteristic of vampires. If you don't have that and
like you don't have this urge to like kill in
order to survive and drink blood, you like you're just
a superhero at that point. There's no like give and take.
So they wanted to keep that. So like we saw
this where like you know, he's having a conversation with
an NPC and there's all these dialogue choices, and like
the hungrier for blood Cohen was getting, the more those
dialogue choices were like replaced with like give in to
your hunger, and like if you do that, you know
you'll kill the guy that you're talking to. And if
you go long enough without feeding, you can actually what
will happen is like you'll lose control and the next
NPC you see you will just automatically kill to feed
and that I'm.
Speaker 2: Gonna accidentally kill so many people.
Speaker 4: Well that's what they said, is like that actually like
gives you incentive because if like, because all of it
is basically optional, you can actually kill like really important
characters to like the overall story through this, And I
saw it happen one time, but it's like the scripted
one that that was like the tutorial of it where
it's like you're just like this guy's like, oh hey,
like what's going on in there? And then you just
like like grab him and feed and so like you
can actually do that where like they're like you can
kill like a consequential character as a result of that,
so like you will want to remain well fed. But
like I love that idea, And like they were talking
about how like that idea they drew like inspiration from
like early CRPGs and and like where it's like, yeah,
you could just go any direction you want, and they
specifically reference like fall Out one and two where it
was like, you know, you can just emerge from the
vault and do whatever you want, and like if you
want to just like go somewhere you're not supposed to yet,
you can do that, and they wanted to kind of
reference that. And there will be elements like that where
you can wander wherever you want once you're out of
the prologue. And what that will do is like, yeah,
there are there is Like the way they describe the
level scaling for me, because it's so open ended, is
like certain areas will have a base of like once
they reach this, like like they'll have a base bottom,
like a basement level right where it's like, all right, well,
this is like level fourteen or whatever, and like if
you're level eight and you go in there, you're probably
gonna get messed up. But like everywhere else, like once
you reach level fourteen, those ones that have like level
eight as their basement will be level fourteen with you,
so they kind of scale with you. But there are
areas where it's like you should probably go level up
more at before you do this. So God, based on
like all of that, you know, it's gonna be really
interesting to see how you like choose what to spend
your time on, what choices you make, what characters you
decide to help, and like that. The prologue demo kind
of ended with like your your father being kidnapped and
like your entire family aside from your mom obviously because
she was killed in that earlier cut scene, but I'm
assuming if you help her out, like she will be
there and she'll be one of the people kidnapped as well.
So it's like it's very cool the way they're doing this,
and like they're really putting the hands of the character
in the hands of the players. Team is Brian I
don't know how big it is in terms of like,
like the map is pretty sizable. We do if you
actually have an issue a copy of Game Informer this
coming month, you will get the full map printed in
the inside cover of this issue. And I mean, I
guess I'll flash it out real quick here, but you know,
it's a pretty sizable map, and it's different, different biomes
and everything in different areas you can explore, and like
the castle is kind of like the centerpiece and that
is where the final showdown will happen.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't seem overwhelming though, which is nice.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, it's not huge. I have some a
question about the castle. You mentioned that the game takes
place over thirty days and thirty nights. Is that like
a hard time limit, Like what happens if you don't
storm the castle before that time expires? Or is it
like once you get to the last day that is
stormed to castle day, no matter how ready you are.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think you can neglect it. But like
I'm they didn't specifically say this, but the way that
I picture in my head is like they're going to
kill them at the next blood mass, which is why
it takes thirty days and thirty nights, so like they
will be sacrificed. So if you don't, like they'll just
kill your entire family, which defeats the entire purpose of
like the overarching narrative of the game. So because like
we asked them, is there a way to get a
bad ending? They would, oh, yeah, oh absolutely there is.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: So I was wonder if you would be funneled into like,
all right, it's time to go save your family. But
you can totally not do that if you wanted to.
Speaker 4: I would assume we didn't. Obviously, they're not going to
tell me a whole lot about like those endings. But
they did say that there is a bad ending, and
I'm assuming that you attain that by either killing everybody
yourself or just neglecting to save your family by the time,
like the time limit that they give you.
Speaker 2: That'sentially it's like it's like breath of a while, but
a time when.
Speaker 4: It yeah, thirty days. You know, I'm assuming it's going
to be pretty substantial. I think they told me, God,
what is the They did give me a conversion on
my cover story. I asked them, like, hey, how long
is this game? And like much usually they're like, oh,
we don't want to say anything quite yet, but like
this time they actually did give me like oh, well,
like you know, internal testing is telling us this, so
talk amongst yourselves so I can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well I was gonna meet.
Speaker 2: Like it's one of the skates where it feels like
everyone will have if you if you played the game
from starting to finish, you'll probably roughly have the same
amount of playtime because you're on a you're on a schedule,
like you're on a thirty day calendar, so it's like
you're gonna spend this many hours in the game no
matter what, because things are chugging along no matter what
you do.
Speaker 1: I have to say after this conversation, this has like
shot up my my list, yeah, which which is not
typical for me necessarily with cover stories. Like you know,
I'm not just saying that.
Speaker 3: It's sounds really just the sort of flexibility of the
narrative and like just that that Witcher three sort of
lineage of like it sounds it feels like reading Bent
and Bryan's cover story and talk to him now that
it's like they took that and it's not at the
scale of Witcher three which is like not a bad thing,
like because Witcher three gets out of hand at a
certain point, frankly, you know, and it's like to sort
of have those hopefully, you know, those lessons they learned from,
like how to tell a gray story right with like
choices that like make a difference. It seems like they're
really leaning into that in a big way, which is
cool and it sounds it sounds exciting. Also sounds like
it's like a lot of times being a vampire in
media usually focus on all the cool stuff and not
so much in the drawbacks, like the idea of like
you can involuntary feed on someone because you just hadn't
in a long time, Like I think that's super cool.
Speaker 2: Again, it is like, yeah, like that's probably out. I
would worry like, oh I just haven't killed and satity
blood in a while. I guess I'm just gonna accidentally
or in a rage, just kill the person in front
of me.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I got the the quote that from Conrad Tamaskovich,
who is the founder and game director. He said that
when they started work on it, they were aiming for
forty hours. He said, like play tests, Like people are
you know testing it, right, now because the game's coming
out in September. He said the average for a playthrough
is about fifty hours at this moment, so like it's
a long game, but not overwhelming. It's not going to
be like, all right, I need to put, you know,
my entire life on hold while I play through this game.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also interesting. It seems like I was watching
the trailer just now, and it seems like the vampires
are from all different kind of places.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, so that the main I think his name
is brentsis Is he's like the main vampire and he
is a former Roman legioneer, so he has like all
these like strategic background and like like like insight into
how to like fight and everything.
Speaker 2: So he's been a lot for a long time. Then
if he's Roman.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so like that's the thing is like that that
was one of the reasons they wanted to go with
vampires is because they wanted to tell stories across different
time periods as well, So like they didn't just want
it to be like, all right, we're going to make
this that it's going to be this character that felt
like that it just follows him for three three games
or whatever, because he was like, yeah, you know, we
did that with the Witcher and we started getting burnt
out on that time period and that setting, so like
we wanted to tell a story where yeah, we could
follow the same character if we wanted to, but also
like it would be it would enable us to tell
a story in a different time period if we decided
to do that, and they did. They did say that
this dawn Walker series is going to be a saga,
so they plan on doing more with this story after
this game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the sequels in the twenty twenties maybe.
Speaker 4: But also in addition to that, you know, we we
got pulled away from this like broader event for an
exclusive hands off demo and it was given to us
by Conrad Tamaskovich, who was the again the game director
and founder of studio and the CEO of the studio,
And this was what happened if you decided to follow
that quest line to help your mother. And we didn't
get to see the end result of it, but it
did give me insight into a few other things. So
you go, you show up to the herbalist and like,
you know, she's not there, and you look down by
the river and she's like washing a sigil that's on
her arm. She's like washing it in the river water.
And then she's like, oh, let me come help you.
And she's like you're asking her for like that, we
need to fortify my mom, like she's not been eating
the blood masses tonight. And they're like, oh, okay, yeah,
but it's gonna be rare ingredients. It's gonna cost more
than usual. So it's like you have a pre existing
relationship with this woman and then like this giant storm
swoops in and it turns out that she's also your
Latin in structure instructor, so you're like you're doing like
this Latin lesson with her, and then like a tree
like there's like a little bit of like chemistry between
the two characters, you see, and you're like huh oh yeah,
like there you can tell that, Like I think it's unreal. Five,
So like it's very like high fidelity and like the
every little like facial like animation like hints at some
sort of like something between these characters. And then like
a like the storm that swept in like knocks over
a tree and it crashes into like her like kind
of like greenhouse, like her her shack where she grows
all of her herbs and you run out to help her.
Speaker 3: It's like, I don't get it.
Speaker 2: So all my plants are destroyed by a bigger plant, but.
Speaker 4: Like she slips and falls on her way out to
grabbing it and like cuts herself. So like after you
save the plants, like you bring her back and like
you know, you help like dress her wound and everything.
And there is like definitely like something going on between
these characters. Like Cohen's getting more and more flirtatious with
her and she's like not exactly holding back and like
nothing happens in scene, but like he like he delivers
like a line on the way out that's like kind
of flirtatious. And it was very much hinting at like
romance options in this game, and they're not specifically going
into romance, but like you can, like you can definitely
tell that there will be romance options, and they did
confirm as much that there will be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna, well, this is a different character.
Speaker 4: This is the herbalist, this is the rbalst.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, this is the verbalist. Yeah, but she's younger.
I guess now. I was gonna say, like he's flirting
with her after she just lost like her life's work. Well,
I mean she he helped her save it. It just
broke through the roof and grabbed all of them and
put them in a safe spot.
Speaker 3: It's fine.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, I was just gonna maybe I
don't know if she wants to right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So yeah, like they basically were like, yeah, there's
there's like kind of like a reputation system, there's a
relationship system. This was talking to Matteosa ta Moscovich. She
was Conrad's brother and also the creative director. He was like, yeah,
like there's like we have all these systems that track
how every character like thinks of Cohen as well as
like how people think of him in general. So like
if you're like killing people left and right, like people
might be more afraid of you. If you're like, you know,
helping everybody out, they might be more welcoming of you.
And then like obviously, like dialogue choices that you make
with people will also influence your personal relationship with that character.
So it's not just the quests that are influenced by this,
like the choices you make, it's also the relationships and
reactions that you will get from characters that will influence
it as well. Wow, well this is one of those
ones where it's like I came out of that demo
and I was like, oh, yeah, this is a super
cool game and easily one of my most anticipated games
for the rest of twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it so, yeah, it sounds I'm really excited
to play this. Well cool, Brian, thanks for thanks for
even into that. Of course, people can once again, I'll
plug the magazine. You can pick up a copy of
Game and Former magazine. Head over to Gaminformer dot com
slash subscribe to get axces to this cover story. You
can read more how many pages of.
Speaker 4: The cover story, Brian, This is a sixteen pager.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a lot of details for you to go read.
So sign up now if you're if you're watching this podcast,
you can you can still subscribe. You've probably got I
can actually pull up the deadline, so I know people
like to like to know that, but I'll keep talking.
Mind I look that up. But if you are not
a subscriber, you can go and find us at your
news stand. Like I said, if you're in the US,
it's you know, Barnes and Noble books a million that
sort of thing, game stop and places like Indigo chapters
in Canada. Okay, I've pulled up the issue. This is
three seventy eight, right, Brian, I believe so, yes, yes,
You've got until May twenty seventh to order the issue
on our website. And if you're looking to buy it
on new stands, just individually, those will hit in the
like June eighth or ninth.
Speaker 4: They should be hitting the beginning then, so, like you know,
you will vary by location, Like I've gone to a
Barnes and Noble to look for a specific issue and
they'll have last months. And I'll go to the one
like a few like you know, a few towns down
and they'll have the new issue. So it's going to
be very dependent upon the location.
Speaker 2: So just keep that in mind.
Speaker 4: Don't don't show up on June ninth and be like
what the heck, guys, like, where's my magazine? Because like
it just like subscribers get their issues at different times
throughout the month based on region, so to do stores.
Just keep that in mind.
Speaker 1: Well, cool, guys, Let's let's move on one last game
before we before we get to listener questions. Marcus you
have been playing Call of the Elder Gods, which is
the sequel to what Call of the Sea. We've done
some exclusive NGT stuff on this new gameplay today for
those who are unaware. It's one of our video video series.
But yeah, i'd love to hear like how the game
ended up, how it shaped up, what your final thoughts
were on the game.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I liked it, and I really liked Call It
to See. I reviewed that for us, and that was
over five years ago. Now I keep I don't know
why the gap of time. You it was twenty twenty,
like late twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: If I remember, welckly, but that's what started working here.
Speaker 2: It was one of my I think it was like
the third review I wrote for GI. But that game
was setting as just a quick recap. It was set
in the nineteen thirties. He played as this woman, Nora Everhard,
who had this kind of like weird mysterious disease that
her husband, to try to help cure it, traveled to
this specific island to try to find a cure and
instead found just this like Lovecraftian whore that kind of
kept him stranded there for months. So then as his
wife who was like if I Rembercerca was like a scholar.
She goes to the island to try to find him
in bring him home, and gets wrapped up in this
grander supernatural mystery that either ends with her death or
or or not we heard that where she either leaves
the island or she kind of goes with the weird
supernatural force that is sort of behind that game. All
this to say is that this sequel is set twenty
years later, where now you are uh Nora has depending
on how you into a game, she has passed on,
but she is the narrator of this adventure and instead
you're controlling two protagonists, one of which is her husband,
who's Professor Harry Everhart. Who ever since the events of
the first game, it's been having these weird visions of
just this black ooze that was kind of central to
call the sea. It's basically this it's like tied to
two elder gods. If you're a Lovecraft fan, this is
all stuff that kind of like checking the boxes of love.
Speaker 1: Crafts that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're like, if you touch exactly, if you touch
this black ooze, it just drives you insane immediately, and
then eventually kills you. So you're controlling he's having these
weird visions of this ooz. He keeps hearing his wife's voice.
He doesn't know why. And then the other protagonist is
this university student name Evangeline, who is an engineer, and
she has been having these weird visions of herself in
this weird ancient city and interacting with these weird race
like almost like otherworldly like alien race perhaps, and she
doesn't know what these what these visions mean. And so
the two kind of like come together because they're familiar
with each other, and they kind of are like, hey,
we're having similar experiences here. Maybe we can kind of
compare notes and try to get to the bottom of this.
On top of the fact that there is this sort
of like sinister secret society that is after this artifact
that the professor has for their own kind of gain.
So you're you're on like kind of like a globe
trotting journey to try to chase these guys to stop
them from getting their hands on this black ooze while
also trying to figure out what is going on between
the two of you. All to dead. I really liked
the game. I thought I'm a little less hot on
it than I was calling to see. And I think
a lot of that is, like they're very similar games
first person uh eventurep yeah, kind of puzzle box or
just like like puzzle box slash kind of like clue collecting,
like you're a lot of the game is going into
environments and just finding clues and recording them in a journal,
and then using those clues to solve a big central
puzzle that moves you to the next area.
Speaker 1: Got it.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: The puzzle in this game I think are quite good.
They're all really unique from each other. There's not really
any repeats, and then the few mechanics that do repeat
kind of build on each other thematically. Throughout the game,
there's like stuff where like, oh, you're you, you find
like this ancient kind of like we'll call them aliens
for the sake of, you know, categorizing them as something.
But these creatures, like you find like a form of
music that they use, or at least to humans, it
sounds like music, and they have like these notes, and
so you have to like decipher how these notes function
and then figure out how to play this kind of
like piano like device to open a door or there's
like like sequences where and maybe one of the biggest
differences between the two games is that since there's two characters,
you're switching between them, and there's puzzles where you have
to switch between the two to kind of like tag
team a solution, such as like one where Evangeline needs
to get through a series of rooms, so you have
to control Harry, who's like controlling the doors of these rooms, like, Okay,
I need to open this door so that Evangeline could
move through, But there's also this weird creature in here
that's gonna kill her if they're in the same room.
So you're trying to figure out strategically how to get
Evangeline across while also kind of like separating her from
the creature like stuff like that, and it's all really fun.
I wish there was a bit more of the kind
of like tag team puzzles, just because like the ones
that they ever good, and I think, like I said,
it's kind of the the big difference between Us and
Call of the Sea is that you have two characters
to play with, so I kind of wish I would
almost think there could be an argument that maybe every
puzzle should have just been both of them involved with it,
just to kind of play off the dual protagonist thing.
But like I said, what they what's there is good
and it's it's it's weird. Like in the six years
between this and Called to See, there's been so many
really good puzzle games, whether it stuff like Laurli and
the Laser Eyes or Blue Preads that for me, the
bar for like a really good, like kind of narrative
focused puzzle game is probably the highest has ever been, honestly,
and so this game just by that visue, like, it's
still quite enjoyable. And I think if you enjoy puzzle
games or and also if you're into lovecraft stuff, like
this is a totally fun game. But I do think
it's like just a couple runs down the ladder from
where the bar has now been raised. Since Calling Sea
came out, Like when Call ofc came out, I gave
that an eight to five, and this game, I'm giving
an eight just because it's like, oh yeah, Like it's
just like I'm just not as impressed with their style
of puzzles, even though they are quite enjoyable, just with
what's become out before. And there's also just other little
annoyances that kind of reared their heads. Like one of
the things that bothered me was the journal taking stuff.
So this is one of those games where you're finding
clues all the time, and if you miss one clue,
you're probably not going to solve something. And it can
be very easy to miss something just because of like
sometimes clues are either smaller or just like you just
miss things, you know, like they're not like they don't
go out of the way to highlight things, like you
really need to walk up to something and see if
you can interact with it or not. But when something
is recorded in a journal, it's usually written in character
as in like whether it's Evangeline or Harry, like this
is how they would phrase something based on the note.
And it's one of those situations where some of the
descriptions or like the task ahead, it's not communicated as
clearly as I would have liked it to be, where
like they're labeling like this is what this does, and
there's just enough sort of like room for interpretation, whereas
like I don't totally think I understand how like I
see I think I see what you're saying, but I
feel like i've there's like three ways I can interpret this,
and they're all kind of confusing, and because the game
kind of doesn't really funnel clues to you kind of
one at a time. It's like, here's all the information
spread out in front of you that you can collect.
It's a lot to kind of like sift through once
you're ready to sit down and tackle the problem at hand,
because it's like, Okay, I have no context for like
the ten things I just found. I'm getting some contents,
I'm reading stuff, but it's still just like, how am
I even supposed to begin to put these together? And
when the notes are kind of written in a way
that's sort of just like, I don't know. Maybe I
think think I know what this character means when they
say that a socket can be plugged into this cable,
but it might not be valid. I don't know if
I like, am I reading this too literally? Or is
it the game? Yeah? Thankfully there's a yeah. And that's
one of the hard things that we're reviewing a puzzle game,
right is trying to determine like is it the gamers
at me? Am I dumb? Or is the is the
game falling short in some way? And to that end,
there is a hint system that I really like. You
can it's no penalty whatsoever. They make it upfront, like
you can use the hints and it's not going to
disable achievements or anything. This is just we just don't
want you to get stuck. And it has like slides basically,
or like the more you kind of dive into the
rabbit hole, the more explicit the hints become, where at
first is like little nudges and then it ends, but like,
here's just the solution.
Speaker 4: So it's kind of like the voluntary version of a
Treus or Sully in like a God of Or or
Uncharted game where they're like, hey, what about those pillars
over there, and then suddenly it's like, hey, rotate the
pillars to match the painting and exactly. This sounds entirely
voluntary exactly, which is nice.
Speaker 2: And I like that it's like no penalty, like it's
not going to be like, oh, I guess you're not
going to get a cheapest now because you need to help.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's great, especially for me because I'm very stubborn when
it comes to puzzle games, Like I it physically pains
me to use a hint system like it really wounds
my ego.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but fair enough.
Speaker 2: But there were a couple instances where it's like I
just I feel like I'm just not getting what they're
trying to tell me here. And then I would read
the description and the hint and it would say the
same thing, but just in a more straightforward fashion, and
it was almost annoying, where like there was no new
information that you're actually giving me here, but you've just
written this better, and I wish this was just the
way it was written in the journal.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, fair enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh, And there's like enough times where that happens
where it just kind of it just started becoming a
bit irksome. But ultimately, like I said, the puzzles themselves
are like really creatively designed, like a lot of stuff
that I can't really say I've seen too much of
and other puzzle games nice, and like the overarching story
is it didn't like knock my socks off, and like
the characters and especially the villains aren't the most memorable
in the world. But it's like I totally it is
like the definition of like it is a broadly fine
and like like just boiler played entertaining little mystery that
has like some decent little unexpected twists and again like
the cosmic horror angle is always like a fun little
like wrinkle to throw into it, because yeahs into some
weird stuff.
Speaker 1: What what I'm sorry if you said this and I
missed it. What what did you review this? Score wise?
Speaker 2: I give it an eight? Like I think it's fun. Yeah,
like I do think it soundsy about like yeah, like
if you like this, like, if you like puzzle games,
especially if you like the first game, you should check
this out. But I if you don't need to play
the first game to play this, like, you know, it's
not you know, they don't go out of their way
to try to beat you over the head with too
many references for there are some, but it feels like
you could just come into this one fresh and not
be lost. But yeah, it's it's fine, respectable little game.
Speaker 1: I liked it nice. Well, let's get into our final segment,
which is listener questions. We pulled these from our discord.
I thank you everyone for submitting questions. It's very much appreciated.
We're excited to get into these. I haven't seen these
yet real.
Speaker 4: Quick out of curiosity since it's changed a couple of
times over the course of our existence and our relationship
with Discord. How do people join the game and former
community Discord.
Speaker 1: That's a very good question, Brian. It used to be
that you would subscribe to our Twitch page and that
would get you in. We are still working on an
official way to get your back in again. So that's
why you want to question. Yeah, so that's why. Yeah,
that's why. If you want to be involved, you, like
I said at the top of the show, email us
podcast at game Informer dot com. We will see your
questions there while we figure out how we're gonna because
we just don't want to open the discord up to
the masses and invite trolls and that kind of thing, Like,
we want to make sure it's a protected space for
for our fans, it's a safe place to kind of
get to know people and that kind of thing. And
so we're just figuring out the logistics of opening that
back up again. But for the purposes of the listener questions,
email us podcast at game Informer dot com.
Speaker 2: You should get Charles to make us a jiggle for
listener questions.
Speaker 1: By the way, we should we should write that down, Marcus,
can you write that down for me. Yeah, uhh, yeah,
it's done. Yes, yes, Matt Storm, right then, friend of
the show, Matt Storm, former editor of this podcast. Hopefully
you'll see them again on this On this podcast as
a guest, Matt says, what is your most listened to
video game soundtrack? Mine is probably Super Oh no, it's
actually probably Grindstone. Probably Grindstone.
Speaker 2: We're not counting. We're not counting listening to the soundtrack
while playing the game. This is just like all all
like on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Or just the Yeah, I think I think that. Knowing Matt,
I think that's the spirit of the question. But I
would say Grindstone, composed by Sam Webster, who is a
really cool dude. I actually interviewed him for a documentary
project that has not been published yet on my personal
channel vport that I'm need to get to and edit.
But he's a really cool guy. He makes incredible music.
He mentions in my unpublished interview with him about like
being inspired by m F Doom and stuff like that
early on and how that kind of led to his
very sample heavy video game beat making. So that's probably mine.
What about you, guys?
Speaker 3: I have? Mine are probably like the original Danny Baranowski,
Super Meat Boys soundtrack, The Anamanagucci Scott Pilgrim Versus the World,
the game soundtrack, and then the other one that always
comes up for me that I listen to a lot
is Sword and Sorcery. You guys know that game?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, yes, that that was going to be my
answer before I changed it to Grindstone. Before that was
my most listened to.
Speaker 3: Who's the composer? I feel like you know probably right now?
Speaker 1: Oh, Jim Gothree, Yeah, Jim go three.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And you know what, the funny thing about that one is,
I've never actually like played the game for more than
like twenty minutes. I don't particularly like the game, but
the soundtrack I freaking love.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. I'm gonna let you guys keep talking. Feel
free to get to the next question there. I want
to show some stuff that's in my closet, so you
guys keep talking. It applies to the next question too,
if you decide to go to that one. Ok.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Soundtracks video game soundtracks that you've listened to the most
out of the game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is hard because I don't I do listen
to video game music outside of the games. But not
nearly as much as probably you guys do. And usually
it's like individual tracks and not the entire soundtrack. Sure,
so by default it might be either the Sonic the
Hedgehold two soundtrack, just because I think that's it's arguably
my favorite soundtrack of all time, like every every track
in that every level like song is like an absolute
banger in that game, and I would still argue it's
probably still the best Sonic soundtrack. And then other than that,
maybe the Mega man X four soundtrack. Four Yes I
was a Blizzer Magallo Yeah no, no, no, the Ice
Boss and four is frost Wallrush right right, yes, yes, yes,
it has a really good and like really you know,
part of the pund chill theme. Like it's like if
you just want to relax, you put on the frost
Waller's theme, particularly the second very because every theme, because
the way the levels are, there's like two versions of
each level, and so they each have like two variations
of the same theme, and like I think it's the
second version of Frost war Was theme that's like the
more just like oh wow, it's like a winter wonderland.
I just want to chill out and go ice skating.
Speaker 4: It's like, did you call this out on one of
my podcasts, the frost Waller's themes. This sounds very familiar
the way you're describing it.
Speaker 2: I might I really like the frost Waller's theme.
Speaker 4: Right, would not stop talking about the frost Waller's theme.
Speaker 2: I mean, everyone else has a great theme in two,
Like uh, they're like like cyber Peacock has a pretty
badass theme in that game.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that soundtrack is fantastic. I was just sort
of like charmed by you saying four specifically. I love
every Mega maat X soundtrack, but like one is the
one that I listened to the most.
Speaker 2: But yeah, fours four was the Megan Man X scene
I played the most, Like I had it for PS
one as a kid, and I was obsessed with it,
Like I thought it was the coolest Mega Man game.
Speaker 3: And I animated scenes.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Bana cut scenes really like that anime opening
with like zero and X. So I was like, this
is incredible. This is the power of the PlayStation even Yeah,
I love.
Speaker 4: Real quick. My mine are I don't know if this
is an order or just random order, but my top
three would be Persona five, Final Fantasy X and Sonic
three and Knuckles.
Speaker 1: I for the next question, which kind of extends on
Matt's Duke, Faison writes and says, do you own any
game soundtrack on physical media format? Digital doesn't count?
Speaker 2: I definitely don't. I have so many.
Speaker 3: Final boy, RIGHTA, I just remember my collection.
Speaker 1: Out, so I've got I'm gonna switch cameras to this
real quick. I've got a short hike.
Speaker 4: I've actually well listened to Still in the Plastic.
Speaker 1: That's because I have two. Uh yeah, I love a
short you know, it's funny. I I actually only recently
got a record player. I had been collecting vinyl for
years for video game soundtracks. So the new one day,
I was gonna spend the money and get a nice one.
And then for my birthday, my wife Kayla bought me
one a really nice one Monument Valley. Uh, let's so
listen to these days. I don't know why about this one.
I haven't even opened it. It's the Halo Infinite Ut
all right, what else we got here? I'm just going
through my I'm not showing that one. That's not a game,
and I don't particularly care for it anymore. Oh, this
one is just for collecting purposes. But Viva Pinata.
Speaker 2: The TV show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hadn't opened one of these. I had an
open Sword and Sorcery, but I gave it to a friend.
It was actually the limited edition version that I gave
to a friend for an accomplishment he had done. But
so I just picked up another one for for my purposes.
Shout out to the homie signals from the Outer wilds.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, very cool. Good banjo up in there. I'm
sure I.
Speaker 4: Will say my probably my prized vinyl collection, my prize
game soundtrack vinyl edition was. I was in Tower Records
in Shibuya. Oh the below soundtrack, Well you Talk, and
the you know, they have a whole video game section
in Tower Records, and I found a limited edition Japanese
only release of the Super Mario World soundtrack on vinyl.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 4: And it was like, you know, even with the incredibly
generous like currency conversion rate from yen to US dollars
back this was August of last year, I think, so
it was before you know, the dollar kind of you know,
got a little weaker. It was still like one hundred
twenty dollars. And I was like, well, it's not that
many songs on here, but so worth it again another
one of my favorite game soundtracks. But yeah, that was
one that I was pretty I do have a lot
of like I have like the box sets of Persona three, four,
and five, and those are pretty awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Mine, mine is cheating because the only one I
the only vinyl I have was given to me by
the people that made this game, just as a little like, hey,
thanks for covering us, but I have the Outer Worlds
too soundtrack, Like hell yeah, they sent they sent me
a vinyl, like I think right after the game came out,
because I did the cover story for that game a
few months prior, so I was like, oh, okay, yeah,
so yeah, but I'm cool like you guys, basically because
I can I have.
Speaker 4: I will say that that that has happened a couple
of times for me as well. One of the coolest
things that happened was because I wrote the Final Fantasy
seven Rebirth cover story. Naoki Hamaguchi, the director of that.
I just got a random message out of nowhere from
Square n XPRS like hey, can you send your address?
Hamagu Son is asking, and I'm like, uh, yeah, sure,
and I.
Speaker 2: Guess like he's coming over.
Speaker 4: He personally packaged up and shipped me a copy of
the final Fantasy seven Rebirth soundtrack and he signed it,
which was very nice of him.
Speaker 3: That's awesome, that's cool.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Luke Skywalker. They asked, Yeah, in
honor of Diablo four secret Cow level being found, what
are some of your favorite secret or hidden levels in games?
I was actually just talking about this the other day
with some friends. I'm plane, they're playing decided to go
back to Wow Classic uh and in iron Ford, which
is the dwarf in Capital City, they were like, in
this big throne room, uh, and it's like very empty.
There's a lot of like it's really just like some
guards and like the throne and they're like, why is
this room so empty? And then I was like, actually, uh,
And there were you can clip through at least back
in the day, you could clip through the walls and
there was an entire underground city that had been designed
but never used in the game called Old Iron Forge,
and you could like walk down into it and it's
essentially like almost it reminds me of like, uh, the Root,
like the of Moria when they're like running down the
big giant steps going under like while they're being chased
baldly ballrog and uh yeah, reminds me of that, But
that's probably that's the thing that comes to mind for
me the most. But what about you guys favorite secret
or hidden levels and games. I guess mine isn't necessarily
a level, it's unused assets, but I think it counts.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean Marcus bring up Mega Man X four.
It's not a level though, but like I get unlocking
the street Fighter attacks in Mega Man x one and two. Yeah,
or it was like was like one of the last
instances for me of like pre Internet, like that's not
really a thing. Then to find out like yeah, no,
it is a thing, and it's like a huge pain
to unlock. It's really complicated. And then in Mega Man
X two it's weird. It has a bunch of Wayne's
World references, like when you find the what's the uppercut
that you could do with Street Fighter that Ken does? Sure, yeah,
sure you can, and it's like that you find it
and there's like the dialogue is all Wayne's World references.
It's just like it's so weird. But that that then
X can do like a Hadukin and the Kyle.
Speaker 2: I'm surprised you didn't bring up the Metal Gear Solid
three nightmare sequence.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, that's that's a
more recent one. Yeah you can. It's if you can
have a nightmare and make Metal your Solid three and
Metal your Solid three Delta. That takes you to an
entirely different game, which is wild. It's kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hack and Slasher kind of game.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we showed it off in a new game play today.
I think we did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we did. We did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you go find that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say, you brought up the Albow.
It's funny. I've never I've never experienced this secret level
myself when I ate the game, but I've seen videos
and I love the orition of it. But uh and
Diabolo three whimsy Shire, which is the are guess familiar
with this? Yeah, so whimsy Shire is the secret like
area that it just looks it's just rainbows, like it
just looks like a My Little Pony level and it's
just got like sunshine and like all it's just nothing
but happiness, and it just looks completely unlike anything else
in the game. And the reason this level exists is
because it it was made to address the fan criticism
when Diabolo three was first shown that it was too colorful,
and if you remember that controversy, like there's too much
color and Diabolo three it looks too cartoony, and so
Blizzard was like, okay, So they just it was like
they made a level based on like the exaggerated reaction
that some fans were throwing at them. And I just
love the level of like I don't know if you
want to call it pettiness or just like tongue and
cheeking it, but I just I've always been tickled by
that level just because of the story behind it, and
it's fun to look up videos and images of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking up it looks ridiculous. I love it.
Speaker 4: For me, it's probably I mean, not a whole lot
comes to mind, but I do like the story of
the Chris Houlihan room and a link to the past
where it's like he was a contest winner that like
got a designated room in the game, and then it
turned out to be completely inaccessible because they just decided
to remove it in development, and then they ended up
making it a fail safe where for whatever reason, the
game can't determine where to place link. He just spawns
in the Chris Houlihan room and there's like a sign
that says, hey, my name's Chris Houlihan. This is my
top secret room. Keep it between us please, And like
that is like it's just such a random thing that
like is like basically like if the game is about
to crash, it will spawn link into this this room
of this contest winner.
Speaker 2: He still is, he still with us. We should get
him on the podcast see what he's up to.
Speaker 3: I'm sure, sir, I think I like I've read him
talking about it.
Speaker 1: Maybe prodible rights in what does each person's niche franchise
where that person would fight to get the assignment for
a review or preview? Man, I don't know. If it's
a niche, but a New Dishonored game, I would I
would do things too, although reviewing a game is like
you got the whole like deadline and stuff like it's.
Speaker 3: It can be a curse kind of. Yeah. Yeah, I
like to a lot, but like I'm obsessed with play
Dead and like you know, gend design and stuff, like
I want.
Speaker 1: To know what you're doing you know, and gen Design
is a really good one.
Speaker 2: Yeahs out there for me too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know, Like yeah, I mean we we
It's it's interesting because like I don't like games will
come out that I'm really excited for. And Brian, sometimes
you'll message me and be like, hey, I'm actually gonna
not have you on this review. Maybe someone else takes it,
and I'm always kind of like that's fine. I'm like, well,
like I take no offense, Like I if it's a
game I really love and I'm excited about, I will
play it on my own. I think, take it out
of the review.
Speaker 1: The what is it? Their new studio, the new game
from Rafael coll Antonio, who who opened up former former Dishonored.
Uh what uh director wolf I Studios. They're working on
a new immersive sim and I would oh, he was
the founder of Arcane. Why did I say the game
director was the founder? Anyways, that's probably my.
Speaker 2: Yeah, mine's probably like it's to say niche because the
ones I'm thinking of are like well known franchises, I guess,
but like, yeah, Ratching, Rationing Clank has always been one
of my all time favorite series. I played every game
in that series and a beating him. Prince of Persia
would be up there to God of War. God, there's
I'm sure there's like less obvious things I could say
that I'm trying to trying to I'm able to think of,
but I'm just thinking of. You know, what's the opposite
of this question, interestingly is from Software. Well, like I
love everything they do, but I'm terrified to review in case.
I like, it's like the scary It is like the
weirdest feeling of like, hell yeah new from software, and
if Brian assigns me to review is like, oh God.
Like when I had to review Shadow of the Ur Tree,
he was like the weirdest dichotomy of like yes, but
then oh god, oh god, how much time do I have? Okay,
can I get through this?
Speaker 1: For me?
Speaker 4: I mean it's might be. I mean, these aren't really
niche franchises because they're a Nintendo, but like they're they're
kind of treated like niche franchises, especially one of them,
Splatoon and star Fox, even though I am pretty sure
I'm not going to be reviewing star Fox because there's
other stuff that is gonna require.
Speaker 2: Because I'm going to take out the time, I'm the
Star Fox guy in no Abertay.
Speaker 4: Yes, clearly, but no, there's there's some other stuff coming
out around that time that I will unfortunately be my
attention will be focused on. But yeah, that's one that
I'm super excited for and I'd love to review or preview,
but we'll love to see how it plays out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, everyone go watch our Star Fucks Super replay.
Speaker 3: It was fun.
Speaker 2: It was super fun.
Speaker 1: Uh, Grofels writes in Existentialism of Gaming Industry. I think
we are all and should feel nervous with the game
industry based on annual layoffs since twenty twenty two and
a set industry standard for many pursuing companies to maintain
dev's is a gig industry worker. So how do you
reconcile these issues with the industry while trying to maintain
optimism with future game releases? Okay? So yeah, like everything's bleak.
Speaker 4: You figure it out, let me know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: Answer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of I think, like we when
we record these shows and stuff, we want to be
entertaining and and uh, you know, kind of on for
people a bit, and not that we're not our genuine selves,
but you know, you want to. You don't want to
be doom and glum all the time. But I think
probably behind the scenes, there's a lot more of that
than maybe I don't know. For me, there is uh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot of uh for me at least.
And this extends beyond this specific I guess plight with
just like life in general. Like a big thing I
keep in mind is trying to control the controllable, and
I there's like things are like a lot of that
stuff is things that are is ultimately out of my control.
And that's not to say I don't feel like crappy
about it, of course I do. But I think when
I to stop myself from like spiraling, because I think
you have a habit of trying to be like you
feel like you have to do something or you have
to put all that weight on your shoulders, and it's
there's like if you try to like get power or
regain power over to some of that stuff, is like, Okay, well,
what can I do to control the situation, if at all?
And the answer is like I can't. I can't control
what a company does to their employees. I can only
react to it. And then it's kind of like, well,
what is my reaction going to be, whether it's I
don't know, if I can help, you know, raise awareness
for the people that just lost their jobs to try
to find new jobs, or you know, just shout out
the creator's works or whatever it is like like stuff
like that. I don't know. Maybe only for me, I
find like a little bit of solace and like I
can help in like that ultimately kind of small way.
But yeah, there's like I know that can kind of
sound like I don't know, maybe giving it to like
the futility of it all. But I think but also
it is like the it is the reality, right, It's
like I literally I cannot do anything about this. Not again.
You should always maintain empathy and and and feel something
when something like that happens. I think you lose if
you don't feel anything, that's probably or it is a
problem at least I.
Speaker 3: Think it is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I control is that feeling a great way
to put it. It's almost that feeling of like when
they're like everybody should be recycling and using paper straws,
and then you see like, oh, this company emitted this
much carbon dioxide in the past week, and it's like
completely new gates any effort that you could have done
by like an exponential amount, and it's like, yeah, like
we can still do stuff on our personal level, but
like like you know, trying to recommend games that people
may not have heard of, or trying to you know,
on our professional basis, we are all about like game
discovery and trying to like push people towards the good stuff,
and you know, that's ultimately all we can do. It's like,
you know, we we we we're members of the media.
We're not like, you know, saviors of the industry or
anything like that. So it's like all we can really
do is like the core function of our job, which
is you know, recommending good games and steering people towards
those games, and yeah, reporting the news and stuff like
that to the best of our ability. You know, we're
also a very small team, so it's always going to
come down to like what we have space for. We
wish we could review twice, thrice, four times the number
of games that we could, and I know that the
pr people in our inboxes wish we could as well,
But you know that's not the reality. The situation as
it stands right now, there's a lot of game is
coming out, and that that's part of the problem, quite frankly,
is there's a lot of games coming out, and there's
a lot of people who have less money than they
typically do right now because of whether they're in this
industry or elsewhere. You know, the job market is really tough,
the economy is really tough. Everything is very expensive right now.
So it it's it's kind of an uphill Sisyphian battle,
but like, you know, we we do what we can
in that regard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it Sian battle, by the way.
Speaker 1: Next question, Legend of Gamer one or two asks My
question is in gaming related necessarily, but more of a
check in with how crazy life seems to be for
everyone everywhere. How are y'all doing? Mental health and taking
time for ourselves is so important and often overlooked. I'm
just hoping everyone is okay.
Speaker 3: That was less of a question. Long pause, Let me
attack this person now. That is that is wonderful. That
is very sweet, and yeah, I mean, I think we're
all trying to draw lines around work in life and
it's hard in this job, and I don't know if
I'm doing the best at it, but you know, I'm trying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could I could go a lot of things
I just said about you just kind of control the controllable,
and for me, practicing gratitude makes a big difference, Like
just focus on what you have and hold on to
it as best you can because it can always be worse,
and just you know, when you kind of ground yourself
like that, at least it helps make the the the
existential crisis of it all less of a I don't know,
less suffocating totally.
Speaker 1: I think I'm thanks for checking in on us.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I appreciate that. Bob.
Speaker 3: One more?
Speaker 1: Huh?
Speaker 2: We got two more?
Speaker 3: Two more?
Speaker 1: Two quick ones, Bob Mule. What's your favorite game that
no one talks about?
Speaker 3: My favorite game that no one talks about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got one. I think I've referenced that maybe
wants in a Blue Move, But uh, John d Arc
for the PlayStation Portable PSP, The game Rules. No one
ever talks about this game. I guess it's Yeah, it's
about it's a it's Body Level five back when he
used to make games all the time, and it's a
turneday strategy game and it's basically an anime version of
the Joan of Arc story. Like you play as Joan
of Arc, but if you combined it with like Power
Rangers or like maybe more accurately and even more obscure
Property Mystic Mystic Knights of tiernanogue, where Joan has the
ability to like turn into like a super night like
she's like normal Joan, but then in the battle she
can go like full like night like power Armor mode.
And it's got like anime cutscenes and it's a really
good game, and I really loved it at the time.
No one ever talks about this game. It's never been
anything yeah PSP Yeah, it's I still have my copy
of it. It's never been poured it to anything. Surprisingly,
and yeah, I think more people should play that game.
But that's actually but also that's kind of hard to do.
You got to get a PSB my.
Speaker 3: I have one that I think about. I I I've
done a bajillion hours of podcasting and game coverage throughout
my entire life, but I don't know that I've ever
really talked about the Legend of Kirandia, which was like
a point and click adventure game. There were like three
of them, and it's like everyone else was playing like
Monkey Island, you know, or something like that like, uh
or the Losers, the losers, and then the one that
I just happened to have, because that's how it was
back then, I'm sure for all of us, where just
games just kind of ended up in your house for
some reason. Was the Legend of Kirandia, which my brother
and I played a lot, like a fantasy point and
click adventure game. You know that wasn't King's Quest basically. Yeah, yeah,
never hear anyone talk about the Legend of Kyirandia, but
there were three entries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never heard of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my I mean, I'll go a different route with
this because I played a lot of like mainstream games
as a kid, Like it was like Mario and Donkey
Kong Country and Street Fighter and Sonic. For me, I'll
go with a recent game which just got a sequel announced. Actually,
that's a Dead Zone rogue. That game is so much fun.
It's super super solid first person shooter roguelike. Highly recommend.
It just came on switch to, which is why it
got on my radar because at GDC it was it
was at one of like those Nintendo Indie World directs,
like in early March, I think, and I was like
it looks really like a generic sci fi first person shooter,
and then when I played it, I was like, Oh,
I get it, like just going room by room clearing
out all that stuff. Like. I wrote a review for
Game Informer because I love the game so much. Even
though it came out in twenty twenty five, it came
to switch to in twenty twenty six, and I gave
it a nine out of ten, so it's a it's
a very good game.
Speaker 1: I think mine is going to be. I was initially
gonna say Hrk's Adventures.
Speaker 3: Dreamcast or PlayStation Wow, but I think.
Speaker 1: I'm actually gonna pick a recent game that's an early
access right now. I think it's peak players. Was only
ever like fourteen hundred all time peak, but it's still going.
It's still got like usually like fifty fifty to sixty
people play it a day. They're still doing updates on it.
It's still an early access coming out. It's called Intruder.
It's a stealth multiplayer simulator from super Boss Games. It's
supposed to be like the They call it like the
Ultimate spis Orus Guards simulator. So if you are a
fan of the old splinter Cell multiplayer games, Spisorus Merks
or if you are you know you like things like
Dead by Daylight, like asynchronous or not asynchronous, asymmetrical multiplayer
where you know, you know, each team have different capabilities.
You should go play this game, please, because I want
more people to play it, because I want more people
to play it with. But yeah, you are. It's it's
currently an early access. It's been an early access since
twenty nineteen. They've continued to continually work on it. They
still I mean, their most recent update they posted an
update literally last week, two weeks ago, and before that
they did an April update where they put out a
new gadget in the game. But it's really really fun,
really really cool. I think it's like, if you are
looking for that kind of experience, this is the one
to get in on, This is the one to support.
Speaker 3: It's really good.
Speaker 1: Intruder Intruder. Yeah, so you're looking for a multiplayer asymmetrical
Spies Verse Guards, It's really really good and you should.
You should download it and play it. Hell, let me know,
I want to play this so bad people that Like
if people reach out to me and they're like, hey,
I got Intruder, let's do like's set up like a
community game night. I would love to do that. So yeah,
just just the heads up, but yeah, intruder, that's the game.
Thanks Bob for the question. Everyone should go listen to
ninety nine questions Jay Herb Hello, familiar familiar face. You are.
Last question of the day. What's your favorite game of
twenty twenty six so far and what's your most anticipated
to come? I think for me, I'll just answer really quick. Uh,
my favorite game of the year so far if we're
counting early access stuff, would probably be Slay This Spire too.
If we're not, then it would be Pocopia. I really
love Pocopia. I put a lot of hours into it.
I think it's really excellent and my most anticipated to come. Honestly, Uh,
Blood of the Blood of do Walker's pretty up there
after hearing what Brian talked about today. But uh uh
I'm really interested to see what's coming with with Thick
of Thick as Thieves. Uh the warre Inspector, the new
game from warre Inspector's studio, and it's been in some
weird like they made some pretty big pivots. It was
gonna be a pvpve uh. Stealth Thieves versus thieves game
where you're like doing heists and stuff, and now they've
changed it, uh to be single player slash co op driven,
and the introductory campaign is actually coming out this month,
I think, like maybe next week, and uh, I'm really
interested these warre Inspector of course notable for for many
games des X all sorts of like thief stealth games
and immersive sims from back in the day, and this
is supposed to be kind of in that that sort
of similar thread.
Speaker 4: But I'll go next, so I'll say my my favorite
game so far this year is probably Fords the Horizon
six Pocopia is right on its tale. And then number
I mean most anticipated is honestly probably Wolverine. Oh yeah,
yeah a Marvel guy love Insomniac, So yeah, that's what
I grew up reading. Grew up reading Wolverine, So that's
definitely on my list for to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, mine's I'm i I'm kind of it depends on
the day, but it's it's Sorrows versus Pragmata For me,
I really loved both of those games. And then I mean,
and then for me, I mean, it's kind of the
obvious one, but GT six I want to play that.
Speaker 1: Oh god, yeah, what am I saying?
Speaker 3: Like, that's the one that it's like, if I could,
you know, you lay out the rest of the if
you put all the upcoming games of the year in
front of me, like, I'm gonna grab GTA six and like,
because i want to see what that thing is. You know,
I'm excited.
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right. I'm just still skeptical that that's coming
out this year, but we'll see.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, even if it comes out this year,
I'm taking Wolverine.
Speaker 3: Sorry, that's Brian. That's good, I know.
Speaker 4: But like every time I say that, people are like, oh,
but you're forgetting GTA six conducted.
Speaker 2: No I'm not.
Speaker 4: No, I'm not. I'm excited for GTA six, don't get
me wrong, but like, Insomniac's superhero games are so in
my wheelhouse, it's insane.
Speaker 1: Fair enough, Yeah, same.
Speaker 2: Mind. I'm kind of in a three way tie. I
know that sucks, but it's seeing Pacopeia, Resident Eval and
Neo three. Actually oh really, of course, this is my
my reminder, like halfway to end of your discussions that
you guys should really play Neo three because it's awesome.
And then I guess most anticipated. I mean it's probably
GTA six and it's like I'm a gt fan, a
game will probably be fun. But I'm kind of like
echoing what Charles Hardist said, where like I'm like half
anticipating that game the same way you anticipate a presidential
election or like you know, like this is just a
big deal, Like it's just this is going. I just
I'm as much excited and interested to see the cultural
impact that this game has more so than like is
it a good video game?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just I really am optimistic about an adult
romance in a video like I I you know what
I mean, Like we'll see, like maybe maybe the ball
gets dropped. But I mean like Red Dead Redemption two
like really approached sort of realistic relationships with people, and
but romance was sort of a not really like a
focus for Red Dead Redemption to it was there, but like,
I just I want to play like an adult video
game that like looks at a relationship between two people
and like the game like I I'm really hopeful for that,
and you know, like it could be who knows, maybe
it's not great, but like I'm that's that's one of
the reasons I'm excited for G six.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to your point about Red Dead that's the other
big reason I forgot about. It's like, this is their
first game since Red Dead two, which I think is
by far their best written game, and it's one of
my favorite games of all time. So it's like, Okay,
you have shown me that you can write at this level.
I want to see you bring that into a g
t A now contemporary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm I'm hopeful.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 4: To be clear, I am very excited for Grand Theft
Auto six.
Speaker 2: No, you're you.
Speaker 1: You seem like you're you seem like you might be
having some PTSD from certain events.
Speaker 2: Well, the three of you.
Speaker 4: Grand Theft Auto six is a game I'm looking forward to,
and I love c t A five, and I love
R d R two and one.
Speaker 1: And looking as if you were the subject of a
certain subreddit. Yeah, well, Tennis, I could possibly comment yes,
fair enough, fair enough, but no, I.
Speaker 4: Am excited for that, and I think that that that's
probably it's in my top three for the rest of
the year for sure.
Speaker 1: Fair enough. Yeah uh well, thanks everyone for listening to
the podcast this week. Thanks for for recounting your cover
story for US Brian, of course, I'll say it again.
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That would be awesome. That's gonna do it for the week. Everyone,
We'll see you next week. Hope you have a great week. Goodbye,