#167: Sleepless in Burbank

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If you want to learn how to support our show, go to patreon.com slash laststandmedia. Greetings and salutations. Welcome back to Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast. This is episode number 167.

My name is Colin Moriarty. I'm joined again by my sons, Chris Raygun. Chris, now, it's a little weird because you're in Maddie's space. So it's like you're an Android, maybe you're a computer programmer.

You're like that sexy, what was that, the Toshiba or Samsung check everyone was interested in this Passover? Sam, the Samsung girl. Yeah, she was too. Yeah, she was too.

But yeah, I mean, I'm in Maddie's space because obviously, like, I've moved, but my stuff hasn't arrived yet, which would be fine if I didn't pack up my mic like an idiot. I have, like, literally everything else except the mic. So I was like, you know, and Maddie and I live pretty close, so it worked out, you know? Yeah, I was going to say, so we'll get into this more deeply in a minute, but was it true that you guys discovered that you went to the same high school?

Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that sad? You went to the same time.

He was two years under me, so there would be no real reason for us to have interacted. But I found him in our yearbook, and it was pretty funny. That's hysterical. I think that's awesome.

Small world. I love that kind of stuff. When that happens, well, first, good to see you. Welcome.

And of course, my other son, Dustin Furman, executive producer of Last Day Media. How was your life? How are you feeling? I'm feeling great.

I'm feeling rested and recovered. We had a couple of nights there with very little sleep and a lot of talking. We just did our live show in Western Pennsylvania. It was awesome.

I'm curious to see what you guys think of it, but maybe we'll do like a post-mortem. I don't know. We have to do one internally, but I thought it would be fun to do it with everyone, or some people do it publicly and get people's feedback. Because I've been already corresponding with dozens of people on Patreon privately about their feedback.

But I thought the show was extraordinary. And I let Dustin and Ben know. I just let Ben know yesterday. Although I'm going to write everyone letters and stuff.

I'm going to send them to like that. But I'm real proud of everyone. I feel like it all went off without a hitch. Whether it was the organization, whether it was the content, whether it was everyone getting there, and the planning and all that, it was awesome.

And of course, everyone was so nice. Hundreds of people came out to hang out with us, of course, the first night for the show. And then the second day, it probably had more people to meet us at the park. And we basically just set up some tables.

Everyone kind of came down. We signed. We spent five hours at the meet and greet, spending as much time as everyone wanted to with us. I didn't rush anyone along or anything like that.

So it was an incredible day. Chris, what did you think about our experience at our first? What will definitely be more live shows? Yeah, no, it was so cool.

Like, I've had, you know, I probably not as much experience as you have with like kind of funding like IGN and all that stuff. But like, I've gone to VConn. I've met fans and stuff like that. And it's always cool to like speak to people who like watch you and like, you know, have their own feedback to give you.

But it's a different thing when people like buy a ticket to see you. You know, that's such a different vibe. And I feel like, I feel like it went great. Like I had so much fun.

I'm really psyched to do like more of these, you know, it was like really invigorating. I agree. I felt a lot of good energy. It's kind of sad, but I guess I'll just verbalize it.

I think after what, so I always had this thing in my life where I've never really felt like I belonged with anything, right? I don't know why that is. I think it's just because I bounced around a lot, especially when my parents had the worst. You know, I lived on Long Island until fourth grade.

I lived in New England for five years. I mean, I'm sure I go home to Long Island, but I've been in New England. Then I came home to Long Island again. Then I lived in Boston for five years.

Then I lived in San Francisco. Then I lived in LA. Now I'm in Virginia. I just never really felt like I had a, you know, when you meet people, like this is my, these are my people for 30 years.

This is my squad. And I felt like, especially after what happened at IGN, kind of funny with me, when I basically just lost everyone for no reason. I was like, well, I can't really put myself out there again. I can't, I felt like I actually belonged to something.

And then it was taken away from me. And this was the first day where I was, or the first time where I was like, you know what, I am part of something new and maybe expose myself, make myself a little more vulnerable to that notion. And so that was a really eye-opening thing, not only with the crowd, of course, but with all of us being together for the first time. Jagen was there, Maddie and Cog, the three of us, Micah.

So that was a really fun thing for me. Of course, to watch Dustin and Ben execute on it so well, I thought was really quite extraordinary. Well, Dustin, what was your takeaway being that it was in your hometown? Yeah, it went off so incredibly well.

It was, I was telling people that it was like, it was awesome on many levels. Like, obviously, we were so happy that everyone came out. Everyone was there, had a fantastic time. There was no major issues, which is just, you know, awesome.

We made, everything came together. But I feel like one of the biggest impacts that it's going to have is on us as a team. And I was talking to you, Chris, and I liked what you said, because you're like, this is really good for morale. Not that we're like soldiers, like fighting a war.

And it's not that morale was low. Yeah. But I feel like everyone has, I don't want to speak for everybody, at least for me and some of the people I talk to, we have a new, renewed perspective on the company, on each other. And I feel like it's going to show in the content going forward.

Yeah. Yeah, very well said. And yeah, I had a really great time. It was humbling.

Like when I came out to that thunderous applause, it was like, I was like, wow, I forgot about this. You almost forget that. I mean, you know inherently, you forget that there are people that really like you on the other side. And in some way, I try to encapsulate it in my own mind by saying like, there are people I would go out of my way to go see like this.

So it's not that extraordinary. And it would be random folks that I would go see. It wouldn't be like big stars, which we aren't, of course. So we're glad everyone had fun.

I have a couple of inquiries here I thought were funny. Joseph Lestino wrote in and said, let's get down to business with the most important question related to last week's live show. Was your Winnie the Pooh ass big swinging dick and balls all over Dustin's childhood room in Sonic's face? So he's referencing a Twitter post I put up of which I saw Dustin's house in what I presume is Dustin's childhood bedroom.

It is. And hanging on like a plant hook on the ceiling was just a Sonic face. And so I took a video of it, like, you know, zooming in on it. And I was watching.

Now I have to admit that I actually didn't go Winnie the Pooh in the bed. I don't know why. Probably because I was so drunk when I went to bed. I think at least two of the times that I just, that I just kind of, you know, phased out.

But it was interesting being in your room. I won't tell you what else went out in that room. Oh boy. But you know, some other things went out in that room.

Bless you. Thanks. So no, I didn't have my Winnie the Pooh, Xi Jinping thing going on with my big dick hanging out. But Brandon wrote in this, hey boys, funny story for you guys.

I met and took a picture with all of you at the meet and greet on Sunday. It was a great time. However, upon looking at the pictures later that day, I noticed that my fly was very clearly and openly down in each and every picture. I'd like to think you all knew and just didn't tell me.

Regardless, it was great meeting you all and I hope you take comfort knowing my exposed craft will forever be a part of LSM Lord. It definitely will be. I didn't notice that. I would have said something to you if I did.

I pretty chronically checked my fly because that feeling you get one in a thousand checks where it's actually down and then you quickly like zip it up. I feel like it's another one of those things. I always say it's your turn to be that guy, whether you're tripping on the street or like you know, fumbling around. I feel like the fly down is another one of those things.

Sometimes it's your turn. Yeah. Sometimes flies can be down. I didn't notice this young man's fly.

I mean, you could crop the pictures, make them waste up. But I feel like now that he's wrote into the show, it is part of LSM Lord. So he's got to own it at this point. I agree.

Yeah. I mean, there was no way. I feel like even if like 20% of the people there had their flies down, I still don't think I would have noticed because there's so much going on at these types of things that you're definitely not honing on everybody's crotch. You know, it's like one of the last things we're doing.

Yeah. And you know, scoping out dudes cocks at this event. Not at that event. I'm sorry.

Not at that event. No, not at this particular juncture. But yeah, I've always been horrified. See, what I'm really horrified of is, and I'll just be frank with you, I'm horrified of the zipper being down and the dick popping out.

It's like, that's possible. It definitely can happen. You're wearing boxes sometimes, so why wouldn't those two things combine? That's like one in like whatever you like.

That's like one in 500 million. Like I can't even imagine. I can't even imagine that that's happened at least once this year, to be honest. That's such an insane amount of like, the amount of things that have to go wrong for that to happen.

Not intentionally, you know? Like it's insane. How many people do you think have their zipper down and don't know it right now? It's got to be tens of thousands probably, right?

Yeah. But no more than a hundred thousand, I don't think. Yeah, I agree. Some people probably have their flies down and are also like going commando at the same time.

You have to imagine there's a few thousand of them. They just remove the barrier completely. That's just barbarism though. Like I can't, we can't, I can't abide by that.

No, it's dangerous. And I also, I feel like that would let you know quicker if your fly was down because you feel the breeze, you feel some sort of air coming on in. But thanks for writing it, Brandon. Sorry that you were nearly exposed.

But thank you again for everyone coming out. We'll put that up soon on YouTube. In the coming weeks, we had a professionally shot and all that. And so that'll be a lot of fun.

And of course, Sacred Symbols Plus continues on. We just did an episode, actually, Dustin, you want to talk a little bit about this interesting episode you did with Jimmy Champagne. Yeah. So my friend Jimmy from PS Ready, which is a great channel you guys should check out, we talked about a video he did with his colleague, Austin Evans, about the new PS5 having a different heatsink.

A lot of pretty interesting reactions to this video, some people, or this episode and the video. Some people not so down with it. But here's what I would say. I mean, the whole episode overall is about the state of PS5 hardware.

And I think some people miss that. So I would recommend checking it out. And I think I still stand by everything we said in the video. There's like this whole controversy now about like, well, actually, the new PS5 schooling is better.

And it just all seems to be quite a mess. But it was a fun episode to do. I recommend checking it out. And checking out our friend Jimmy.

He was hanging out this weekend with us. Flew in from California to hang out. So that was cool. Yeah, cool.

I met him years ago at IGN for the first time. He's a nice guy. And yeah, I was really glad to have that kind of hardware-centric episode. Again, just similar to what we did with Tom at Moore's Laws recently.

Just because I can't personally speak to that stuff. And it's still very relevant to the audience. And I think this weekend I'll be doing, or I guess maybe right after this publishes, like a kind of an examination of the first party. We're going to talk more about what's going on with the new acquisition.

I assume maybe we'll even have more acquisitions to talk about after the event. So there's a lot going on there. And by the way, I should let everyone know. Sports on Patreon.com slash last day media.

Last day media.shop for merch, et cetera. You know the drill. But we're kind of putting two episodes together here. So we're going to record the episode as for a while, a little while, as if the Sony event ever happened.

Right? We'll get through what we're playing. Then when we get to the news, we're going to cut in with everything from the event. And then we'll cut back to what we had already recorded, which we're about to in a little while, which is the rest of the news.

This is going to be a big episode, I think, unless they don't show anything at the PlayStation event at all, if any note. I doubt that that will be the case. So much to discuss. But let's get into it in earnest.

I want to start with this. Tales of Arise comes out. Actually, yeah, by the time everyone hears this. I'm very excited.

Play it. Bandai Namco. I thought this was not fascinating, guys. This is another one of the examples of PS5 just making games smaller, and what we were talking about and some confusion about Call of Duty and why that game is just getting more and more bloated regardless of the console.

But Tales of Arise is 57 gigs on PS4 and 37 on PS5. So you're getting into pretty substantial cuts. Chris, what do you think about this as the footprint of these games maybe gets smaller? It's totally unexpected.

It's expected to have continued for a while. Yeah, I mean, we saw this kind of with Spider-Man Miles, like when that was out. Because I remember installing, like, the PS4 version accidentally. And it was, like, it was, I think, like, maybe it wasn't this drastic.

It was, like, maybe, like, 10 or, like, maybe, like, 13 gigs smaller. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. So I don't think I ever doubted that, like, the PS5 is making games smaller. It's interesting that that's even possible.

You know, it seems completely contradictory, but it does work, and we're seeing more evidence than that. That's good. I just hope that, you know, I hope that Infinity Ward, whatever the fuck, they figure out what the hell they're doing over at Activision to make these games, like, a little bit smaller. Because they just seem to just be ignoring the technology at a certain point.

You know, like, just everybody else is making their games smaller. Just do it. I think it's clearly possible. I totally concur.

Although I believe what they're saying about Call of Duty and why the file sizes are so big because people didn't know running about that. It is strange, and I was really happy to see this. It's not only for people with bandwidth, but just for the quick access to the game and hard drive space, which is more limited. Dustin, what did you make of this?

I gotta go get this door real quick so you can talk longer. Sure, yeah. This is awesome. I mean, this is just the evidence of the SSD, which isn't, like, I think, a PS5 specific thing.

I think the Xbox can also do this. It just comes down to the fact that on PS4 or Xbox One, you have the hard drive. And so in order to increase load times, you have multiple... Some data will be repeated and be closer to the data it needs at the time on the actual physical disk of the hard drive.

You have an SSD that's not necessary. You can cut down on those. And then for something like this, you see, like, a major, major difference. So it's a nice change.

Yeah, it's cool. I can imagine, like, to a lane, it must be, like, really confusing, though. You know, like, you have this, like, hey, here's a better game that runs... Here's the same game that runs better, that runs at a higher resolution, and it's less space.

Somehow, like, it seems kind of, like, that seems like magic to somebody who doesn't really know that much. It even, like, seems kind of confusing, or it seemed confusing to me before I started looking into, like, what SSDs were, really. Because I just kind of seemed like, oh, I'm just better hard drives, whatever. Right.

Yeah, it's nice. Hopefully this continues in the future. We see not all games doing this yet, but it's nice that more and more are using less space. Yeah.

That was a great conversation, boys. Yeah. All right, I want to also point this out. Focus Home Interactive, so we've talked a little bit about them.

This isn't huge news, but they're a French publisher and funder of games. They own a few studios, too. Deck 13, et cetera. But they've changed their name to Focus Entertainment.

And so we'll, I'm sure, be talking about them much more moving forward, but just know that they're not called Focus Home Interactive anymore. You would know them more recently for, I guess their most recent game was probably that Aliens Fireteam game. Is that the recent one? Yeah, that was Cold Iron made that, but Focus with the publisher.

They did that game, Necromunda, Hired Gunn, which I think is a Warhammer game. I actually bought it, and then just never played it. And they did a Playteam, which we talked about. They're obviously going to be doing Requiem.

Also that New World game, Insurgency, Sam Storm, Hood, Outlaws, and Legends, et cetera. So I just wanted to let everyone know that that name has changed. You won't be seeing it anymore. Again, Focus Home Interactive is now Focus Entertainment.

And I thought this was cool. I don't know if anyone saw this. It wasn't going reported in a lot of places, which I was a little frustrated by. Like, I'm curious what people want to talk about on PlayStation shows and PlayStation websites.

But Square Enix released this shockingly candid post-mortem on Babylon's Fall. And you guys can go check it out at hanging-garden.babylonsfall.com. It's called the Closed Beta Test Phase 1 Report. Dustin, did you see this?

I was kind of interested in it because they say a lot of, they give a lot of information like the positives and the negatives. For instance, they say there were no installation errors, right? So you're like, oh, okay, cool. So this is just going to be one of those things.

But then they get really deep into it. Like, they have like these bar graphs for waiting times requests. And then they have like these very specific things where they have like these overall claims. So a claim could be the pace of the game is slow and the action didn't feel very exciting.

And then there's Kenji Saito, who's the director of the game, goes in and gives all of this information about what their intent was and how they're fixing it and what they're going to keep. It's pretty fascinating. Actually, if you're really interested in the nuts and bolts of game dev, which we are on the show, of course, you should definitely check this out. What do you think of this, Dustin?

Did you read through it? Yeah, I did look through this. And it's already interesting to see like some of the suspicions, at least I had about the trailer already being addressed. In particular, one that's under, you mentioned the, they straight up were like, the main comment was the pace of the game is slow and the action didn't feel exciting.

Which like, that's a platinum, this is a platinum game. That should be the opposite of what you want to hear. But on top of that, the one feedback they got, the brushwork filter or the oil paint style filter is making visibility bad. Which maybe they soften that up because I feel like it kind of just makes the entire game look bad.

At least what we saw from that trailer. So they basically said they're going to try to like dial it in more. And so it's nice to see, you know, they got a lot. I don't know if they've got a lot right now.

riding on this but it is an important game for platinum right now as they are newly like really striving for full independence at the same time as this is like this is their next thing with with square annex i bet they're looking for this to be kind of cash cow so they gotta get it right i agree at the end you'll note if you guys are interested in playing where babylon's fall that the second technical test is actually beginning in earnest depending on where you are uh for most of the north america and europe that'll be between september 11th and september 13th so maybe by the time you hear this and then they'll actually have phase three and that'll be in november and they definitely and thankfully use the term please look forward to it which i appreciate that chris what do you make about i was actually specifically wanted to know because you guys have so much experience in games as a service more persistent games have you ever seen a breakdown like this of a game that's not a post-mortem but rather a game in development where they admit that the fundamentals of the game are fucked uh not quite not really not in my experience uh it was surprisingly candid i do appreciate that and i like when developers are just like oh but i was like hey this is like you know this is a game where in progress we're working on it and the whole point of technical test is receive feedback so the final product would be better and i would prefer this to like oh thanks for signing up to our like uh demo uh we'll see you on release and nothing will change except the servers might get a little slightly better you know like this is uh really cool i think it's like really cool to do this and it kind of inherently makes me a little bit more curious about the game like more likely to check it out because if i know that the devs are actually taking you know feedback seriously that makes me a little bit more you know open to checking it out like inherently also i'm just it's interesting that the word technical test is being used a lot like i feel like the halo one was the first time that i heard that really like as like a marketing term but it seems to be everywhere now and that seems to be the difference i feel like it's interesting i feel like technical test is what beta used to be and beta is what demo used to be yeah we're like you know betas used to get this information all the time you know and even with the halo one it's just like hey this is all this stuff that's wrong we're changing the metals we're changing this we're changing that it's like oh cool you know where's the beta is like cool it's over we'll see you on release and it's like all right it's interesting it is interesting how that term of art as it were has snuck in as the term beta has been degraded because we talk about that pretty often on the show and you're right betas are just meaningless i mean remember i was just critiquing turtle rock very well respected studio but turtle rock went gold during the beta for back for blood it doesn't make any sense yeah that doesn't i've never even heard of such a thing what the hell you talk about that's that's like one step below delaying your game that went gold which is what happened with c product it's because it's not a beta it's a demo it's just straight up what it is and it's like all right well i guess they don't call it that because they have to straddle the line saying like well if it's broken it's a beta and we're still gonna get the satisfaction of a demo without calling it that so in an environment like in an environment where like everything can be patched in advance like you kind of want to keep people on the line of like hey it's a beta don't worry things can change if you don't like this demo this isn't what the game is don't worry everything you didn't like about it is not there believe me don't worry right you're absolutely right which is why i felt like for the more because more savvy gamers more connected gamers the ones that usually play these early tests yeah and so i thought it was peculiar and i don't know if you agree with this but i thought it was peculiar that they announced it during the beta simply as a marketing error like you would have thought that someone would be like there's no reason for us to say we've gone gold right now there's literally nothing we have to game by telling what the game is done yeah so why don't we just wait until we're done with the beta and then we can tell them what this is just another example i think of one hand not knowing what the other is doing and also it seems like the game's golden you know publisher being you know but then you have to even wonder what the hell going gold means now because maybe that term has changed also you know because it kind of has it just means fit for manufacture now i mean that's basically it doesn't mean that the game's done i agree actually let me take this next one over you sure right away because it's related too and it has to do with marvel avengers i didn't want to skip this as well they put up a big year one kind of i don't know overview of the game and it's in the on their blog avengers.swear.swear.games.com it's called marvel avengers war table weekly number 53 and they basically give well first of all these perks are done because the year thing is done as well but they give a roadmap to future content including exclusive spider-man content for playstation gamers which were promised a while ago people have been curious about that it seems like when they announced this i saw some people bubbling back up that are on my twitter feed like franmire bella for instance and they're still feeling this game i feel like it still has some group of people playing it maybe maybe voraciously what's your read on this year one and their move into kind of a seasonal sport yeah i don't i've been trying to figure out what the read is on this game so i do see a few people prominently on twitter talking about this game the only stat that i came to the top of my mind just to look right now is the like you're able to see the steam charts of how many people are playing and the last few weeks it's still been under 5,000 people per day i'm curious on what the comparison is they got a decent bump when the i think it was the black panther content dropped they had 10,000 on let's see that would be july 26th and now they're kind of back down under 2,000 players per day on steam i'm guessing the overall audience for this game though is on console but this has been an interesting case where this game did not launch super well it wasn't like an anthem level catastrophe but i think that we talked about how strong the marvel brand is and how much it carried this game and i think that that is still what's continuing to carry it because people love these characters so much that when they see a roadmap they know oh i want to hop in like when spider-man comes out that'll be a big boost and then people will forget about it for a few weeks so it's a service game that people keep coming back but i don't see people playing this game like they're playing destiny 2 where they're playing it for a few hours a week they're coming in when there's new content and then they dip but i don't know i'd be curious that's something we should ask the audience about people that are fans of this game like what's their relationship with it like as a live service yeah that's a great point i also want to just note that i feel like the game was victimized by timing too i just feel like it didn't come out at the right time i don't think i can read it differently i guess but i don't think it was supposed to come out maybe in a couple years before that originally in the pre-production phase and it would just sink better with the specific areas of the mcu that they were exploring at the time there was just more avengers which is more on the tongue i mean on the you know like as opposed to the way it is now where you know mcu's still huge now we're getting the granular shit that might be leveraged in future games so we'll see what happens i'm wondering uh chris do you want to get back into the avengers or ever get into the avengers with this new content look i just i can't like look i like marvel well enough like and these are characters i do i like marvel characters i do i like to be superhero all the shit i think it's cool but i'm also i always think i'm just like spent on it like i'm going to go to the theaters for this new spider-man movie no doubt because i just love spider-man and maybe i'll check out the avengers when spider-man comes but even that i'm not super sure because ultimately as a game it just doesn't speak to me like i already have a live service game that you know i enjoy playing regardless of whether or not there's new content that's destiny too like and i don't really need another one like i've already got a george we don't need this like not me anyway and i'm glad that people were playing it uh that they you know that it's looking a little bit more optimistic than you know anthem you know god knows but ultimately i don't know the style i don't know i'm just i'm just so thoroughly uninterested in it and maybe it is superhero fatigue but i think it is ultimately just like it's not my kind of game all right just a few more things stardew valley want to give a shout out 15 million copies sold that really awesome to see and really amazing i'm so curious about concerned ape's financial situation i know that's a weird thing to say but i wonder when he started bringing other people in and what the the divvying of the business is up and stuff like he made it by himself released it by himself but the ports were responding some of the people did the ports and some of the publishing and marketing PR that usually comes with points attached so i'm just curious who the winners are with stardew valley's meteorite rise but this is a game that's always on my mind like it's on my feet permanently i just don't get very far before i reset it and i'm not something's wrong about doing it right and i think it's just one of those games you're just supposed i mean obviously you're supposed to play it and i can't let go of playing the right way so it's been really frustrating because you have experience with stardew i have no experience with stardew i never this is like it's just one of those games that seems like uh it's relaxing and like you know oh you get to make a little farm and grow some little crops and uh i don't yeah i don't play games for that reason i play games to stress myself out and get competitive and angry so you know well stardew can be pretty stressful chris because you can go into there's like a cave system where you go further and further in to find these resources and you have a meter like a time of day and if you get too tired you just pass out like wherever you are and uh so there can be moments where you gotta get out of the cave you know at the last minute so it's actually yeah so it might be too stressful at the point for me it was but i don't know i've always been curious about it because it's a game it's one of those games that i was like when it first came out i was expecting it to like not really stick around but it just sort of it clearly has you know and i'm just really not necessarily into these like kind of farming kind of like sim type games but it's been around for long enough that i feel kind of compelled to try it out if for no other reason than to just kind of understand what's happening with it because it's very clearly an important game especially in the indie space it's like definitely like one of the one of the most impressive like independent showings in the last like i feel like 20 years including like minecraft and stuff like that so yeah it's interesting too that it really is just a harvest moon game with a lot of bells and whistles and it's so funny when a game comes along that's already kind of existed and then it just makes people pay attention to it in a really unique way i think when the game came out on pc in 2016 it came later that year vita in 2018 but when it came i remember that year 2016 it just had a lot of good like a lot of good tailwind with the media and youtubers and stuff it was a very perfect storm i think the game is just going to perpetually sell copies i think it's just going to persist forever so congratulations to concerned ape of course a couple other things here i wanted to just point out call the vanguard's beta so the details for this have been revealed on playstation blog it's um first on playstation so the game launches november 5th weekend one is happening imminently so if you're hearing this on patreon you can participate and then playstation open beta access begins september 16th and runs through monday september 20th and that's for all playstation players the one previous weekend is for people who pre-order the game and uh playstation plus is apparently not required to participate in the beta which is cool if you're not a ps plus user for some reason chris are you interested in call of duty vanguard will you participate in this quote-unquote beta or are you gonna wait till it comes up yeah i'll probably check out the beta purely because i really don't have i don't really have an intention of buying another call of duty game like i feel like i buy a new call of duty game every like seven years just to see like how much it's changed and the answer all the time is very little so um i don't know i can't say i'm curious enough about it to buy it but i'm curious about it to like check out a free video you know like a free video game sure why not you'll get a little taste on what's going on this world war ii combat dustin i imagine you're not gonna mess around with this i will play the the beta again like chris is saying if it's free and available i mean why not but i'm in the same camp as a lot of other people that i'm much more intrigued by the new battlefield this year so but it's nice to just get a little taste about see what's going on uh call of duty sure and finally before we get into what we're playing i wanted to bring this up specifically for chris although we can all give some insight into it there's a career listing a job listing on bungie's website and it says the following quote reporting to the destiny universe executive director you'll drive projects that extend the destiny franchise into new categories including tv films books comics and audio formats and this is as senior executive of development for film tv and transmedia quote as a storyteller and guardian of the destiny ip will identify slash guide collaborate provide feedback to third parties and partners enabling them to tell additional myths in the destiny universe that delay our fans while capturing the hearts and minds of new audiences so chris it sounds like they're at least going to actively investigate expanding destiny which i think is really smart and this whole transmedia idea which something is something that sean laden is really interested in as well and something that the likes of remedy are really into and a few others i feel like this is just the obvious thing to do and destiny i think is completely right for this if you can make a game like the callisto protocol off of pubg certainly you can make a fucking full-fledged tv show off of destiny so does this percolate anything inside you at all i think this is super exciting like i've been kind of wanting this for a while because the early days of destiny were very frustrating because a lot of the story was packed away in these like weird cards these grimoire cards you had to read on bungee's website like they weren't even like you weren't even accessible in the game like a codec or anything and a lot of those stories were really good like sincerely like really really impressive like sci-fi high concept fantasy stuff it's like this is this would be awesome to see like realized in some way even if it was like some kind of cg kind of show almost like um was it advent children type deal where it's like animated but in the style of the game or like i don't know how feasible live action would be for destiny it seems like it would be mostly effects anyway so you might as well just make it cg but you know it is a really cool universe and it's a universe that has a lot of lore and a lot of like really interesting concepts and like just uh i feel like it's rife for this kind of thing and it's cool they're finally doing it finally my long con will pay off of being able to you know i went to film school and i get to work at bungee i was gonna say this seems like a great position for you although i was reading the required seriously because it requires because the required skills are not things that you have necessarily but some of them are like passion for destiny ideally having spent hundreds of hours playing destiny the game exploring this world but then of course a job like this can ask for anything they want they're gonna get it so it's like credited on multiple series and films with experience in animation scripted television development current programming and stuff like experience adapting and extending it ip to new mediums relationships with broadcast cable streaming and publisher all right they're gonna get some crazy people involved in this but yeah i hope it works out because i think i think it could be really really cool i think i think so too chris is uh i'm sorry does this do anything for uh for you or no sounds like chris wants a destiny anime uh if i'm being honest but you know that would be cool actually yeah i think honestly like it like a like a destiny show animated in the style of like castle mania would be sick oh man didn't they do that with halo it's like halo legends yeah yeah they did like this weird like anime anthology like different like different styles it was kind of cool like it was really really neat dude and destiny would be man i mean you could do a long form thing when you follow select characters but destiny's 2 lore is made up of so many characters and um enemies and stuff like that an anthology show like that man i brought that up as a joke but now i'm actually very into this idea of like you could do like one an episode on osiris or something like that you could do an episode on uh the witch kings like that or the witch queen whatever a lot of possibilities there i'm into the idea okay by the way i mean castlevania which was brought up it's just one of those ideals about well how do you expand the universe that's why i'm so intrigued by star wars visions to me i'm like this is perfect this is exactly yeah what you need is an accompaniment something truly different that can bring people into your universe all right let's get into what we're playing chris we'll kick it over to you instead of playing psychonauts 2 talk about it yeah so admittedly i haven't played much of it i'm in like the first two hours i played a little bit i played a little bit on the flight over to new york and then obviously we went to the live show so i haven't had much time with it but the time that i've had with it so far in the first two hours has been thoroughly thoroughly entertaining like really really good really fun really like simple really endearing like it is a a joy to play through like i'm super happy every time i get to like every time i decide like oh i'm gonna sit down and play psychonauts 2 and i got like a smile on my face it really is a thoroughly enjoyable experience i can't speak so much to like the in-depth like gameplay and like skills because i'm so early on i haven't unlocked much of it the controls really well it looks really good um aesthetically it's like a really really stylish game and it really it's just super satisfying to play um i'll have more to say about it when i can spend a little bit more time and dive a little bit deeper into it but for right now first impressions are like really solid like this is a surprising outcome for this game and maybe not to a lot of people because a lot of people are psychonauts but you know i never got super into the first one it's a game that's kind of been in development hell kind of sort of for a while it was announced like a long time ago so whether or not this game was going to ship in like a you know solid state is you know was kind of up in the end for a lot of people who weren't you know super involved but I'm really happy to report that it's just like super good. Yeah I've heard great things about it. A little sour on it though because to be honest because right before I was going to come out I went to go look at a trailer and I'm like oh I'll go to their Twitter feed and I'm blocked. Double Fine has blocked me on Twitter which I find preposterous.

Simply because I know Tim personally and I have been in a very friendly relations with him for many years. I haven't seen him in some time but I had no issues with him knew a lot of people that worked there and used to go to that studio. I've probably been to that studio more than most other studios I've ever been to. So I was like who the fuck?

But then I found out it's like some Kotaku person that is their social media person now and just locked me on there so I'm not going to play a game. So there you go. That's my protest. But I'm glad you're enjoying it.

Hearing great things. It's gotten a great score and will probably be the last time we see Double Fine on PlayStation. So soak it in everyone. Dustin you're splitting time.

Pardon the fun between two very different games. Splitgate and 12 minutes. You can take them in any order you desire. Yeah so very little time to play over the past week but I did finish.

Yeah I should know. We've had very little minutes. Everyone. Yeah.

I did finish 12 minutes. Chris talked about it not last episode but the episode before and I think I mostly agree with him. Chris couldn't get through it because of frustration. I was suffering through it at points just because so the basic pitch is a game that's like Groundhog Day.

You take what you learn every loop and your character remembers that and so you can use that to your advantage to find out more things in the loops following it. No spoilers of course. So the problem though is that you'll get an idea to do something and then either A it doesn't work or B you fuck it up and then you've got to do the same thing over again and it almost like this game I feel like needs a fast forward button or something because it's like okay I've heard this conversation you have at the very beginning with your wife the exact same conversation. You can kind of skip it but other times you need to exhaust the same conversation again in order to bring the new information that you got in a different loop.

So this game does have a very crazy ending. It's a very intriguing story. I only recommend it if you are okay with some frustrations. It's not super long though.

I'm guessing this will come to PlayStation. Usually these Anapurna joints have like a or even Devolver. These indie games have like a one-year thing for Xbox so that'll come eventually. Splitgate though you can play right now on PlayStation 5.

I played on both PS5 and a bit on PC. I like this game. It was a really fun time when I was playing it. I don't think it has legs for me.

A lot of people are comparing this game to Halo. I actually feel like I get it's like Halo in its arena right but the moment-to-moment gameplay is much faster and reminds me more of like a Call of Duty like your time to kill is much lower than Halo game. Yeah. And it also is missing like this game doesn't have grenades.

It has grenades to take out other opponents portals but it's missing like it has chaos from its firefights but it's missing like a chaos from its sandbox that is going to keep me from coming back. I really enjoyed the few hours I played if you got some buddies together. The real sandbox element is its portals where you can like you know put a portal above somebody and shoot a rocket launcher through it and it'll go and kill them. That's awesome but I'm curious about what the legs will be for this game once Halo comes out.

The PS5 players maybe will hold it down since they won't have access to Infinite but it's cool. Here's what I will say. The first time I played this game when it first hit beta I didn't really like it and I wasn't impressed and this was the first time in over a year and it is way way better to the point where I was coming back to it. So who knows this game's not officially done yet so I will continue to check the progress of it because it keeps seemingly getting better.

Yeah I was looking here too. Splitgate. What's interesting about Splitgate is that it was given trophies even though it's not done. Oh yeah.

So this is interesting because I thought I was clicking around trying to find it which I thought was kind of cool and the trophies are fucking weird because there are ones where it's there's like win 50 matches and then there's one win 1047 matches. Oh that's the name of the studio is 1047. Yeah. So that's so many matches.

It's like oh my god you guys are annoying. Deal 500,000 damage to enemies. Yeah. Because there are trophies I'm just looking at the trophy rarity so on PlayStation on PSN profiles.

The complete match 92% win 1047 matches 0.04%. Deal 500,000 damage to enemies 0.71%. Also worth noting Tales of Arise comes out real soon. Actually right now by the time you get this probably.

Really excited to play that. And also Life is Strange comes out as well. No silver trophies in that game. All bronzes and golds interestingly.

All right for me just two things to talk about real quick. Metal Gear Solid 2 still kind of slowly working my way through it. I really love this game. I forgot how fun it is.

I almost don't want to play it. You know I'm so happy when it takes over and some weird shit on the codec happens or fat man skates by on his rollerblades or whatever. So I'm really enjoying that and we'll talk about that on my brother. And then like I said last week I'm playing the several year old release now Chasm Metroidvania randomly generated.

It's good. Not much more to say that we've been so busy and I'm kind of sad because Tales is coming out. Deathloop will be out next week. Oh wow.

And there's just so much shit to play and I was just dicking around for a while when there was nothing to play. How foolish. How foolish indeed of me to do that. We'll have much more to say about what we're playing next week when we have more time to chill.

And now it's time to get to the news. So at this point we're going to cut. We're going to go into what we record right after the PlayStation event. We'll do all the news there and then we're going to cut back to what we're about to record for the rest of the show.

So things might be out of order based on importance but my suspicion is that everything that they talk about at the show will be of some import. We'll go and we'll see you right now and we'll see you later as well. Okay so here we are. I was looking at the wrong place.

I looked up and I was like my camera wasn't there. I was like over here and I was like huh? You have to look at the wrong camera. But there's no wrong camera.

There's only one camera. Alright so here we are. We're back. We're recording this after we record the rest of the episode.

So as I said we're segueing into this. We're going to do all the news out of the showcase and then we'll get to the rest of the news which we've already recorded. Questions, concerns, thoughts, ideas, etc. And so on.

Before we get into it though, Chris what did you think about the PlayStation Showcase over 40 minutes? Our first real showcase since the console launched and it's been about 15 months since we've gotten anything like this. Yeah. So I'm wondering what you thought of the overall performance.

Yes I think overall it was pretty cool. Like there are little things about this showcase though that I feel they caught a lot of suspicion in me. I don't want to get too specific about them until we get to them. But overall I think there's a lot of cool stuff to look forward to now.

Definitely a lot of surprises and you know a little bit of caginess on some dates which is you know the main thing where I was like wow I can't believe that doesn't have a date yet. But aside from that I think you know strong opening, strong ending. The middle was where it kind of was like I kind of felt myself like kind of meandering a little bit. But it's good to have like a lot of stuff to talk about finally after God knows how long of silence.

Definitely. What do you think Nelson? Pretty solid. Just like what Chris said.

There's like every conference is going to have a few things they're like okay we'll get through this you know. I do have to laugh which we'll talk about it but some of these games I'm like I knew Deathloop was going to be there and I was still I don't want to say disappointed. I'm very excited to play Deathloop but I barely want to look at the screen because I've seen it so many times. But overall pretty good.

I like especially after Xbox's like what two hour trebuchet debut or whatever at GameStop. A nice tight 40 minutes was nice for sure. Yeah definitely. And I would say elongated.

They were pretty tight on the time. It was a little longer than 40 minutes but that opening video which they're actually promoting on the PlayStation blog. What are they calling it here? The city where play has no limits.

And it's I actually I was telling Micah we were watching together I'm like I don't like this stuff so much anymore but it was awesome at IGN because we used to do what we call rewind theaters on them and they would get like millions of views because we would zoom in and there's a lot of cool easter eggs. I saw a bunch of them just in passing but I would like to go back and scroll through and see just how deep they go and if there are any hints in there about future games they like to be a little weird like that sometimes but so that was kind of neat. Lasted a little long. I was actually upset because I'm like Jesus Christ 40 minutes you just ate 10% of it.

Yeah yeah. This play had no limits. But they went a little long so at the end I can't really hold into that but let's get into the games here. Instead of rewriting everything like I usually do since for the sake of time and because we don't really need to do it here I just wrote everything down in order.

Let me see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 games for us to talk about. We'll take them in order. So let's start with Knights of the Old Republic remake from Aspire. Now our very own Mr.

MattyPlays leaked this a long time ago and told you that a KOTOR remake from Aspire was coming so 100% props to him for reporting this. So interesting stuff about this though. I had to read a little bit more about it just to investigate. This is kind of like a second party game but not really.

PlayStation you'll know that it's at Sony Interactive Entertainment at the beginning. Not PlayStation Studios. Remember they said they were not going to do that whole thing anymore. So that tells me first of all this was a deal that was in place for a while.

But I was reading a little bit more about it and just going on the PlayStation blog this is a PS5 console exclusive at launch. So I don't know if that means they're going to bring it backwards to the PS4 but more likely it'll come to Xbox. And I feel like this is a game that even if Sony had a financial reason to keep it on PS5 would be a game I think you would get to the Xbox to kind of play nice. Especially because where did it begin with on Xbox.

I think that's where it makes sense. But knowing that we knew that this game was coming at some point I certainly didn't expect to see it here. I'm wondering Chris what you thought of seeing KOTOR and I don't know if you guys caught the... They had a little bit of an interview with someone from Aspire the director afterwards.

And so much clarity there as well. Although not too much. What did you make of all that? Yeah I was not expecting to see that here.

I was definitely expecting to see that at some point. But definitely not a PlayStation show. Only because like KOTOR is like an Xbox thing. So you know just to see that.

And to see it existing like for real was really cool. Because KOTOR is a game that I've actually played through kind of recently. I haven't finished it. Because I have reached like some game breaking bug.

It's a pretty haphazardly put together thing. But it is really cool. And it's really cool to see that I was streaming the showcase with Matty and he flipped out so hard that the audio broke for the next two games. But yeah it's a really good reaction.

But you know we don't really have a time frame for this one right? If I'm not mistaken? No they said that they wouldn't have anything to say for a while. I would even say 2024 possibly.

If this thing is like... Next of the Republic is a complicated interwoven game. It's part of why the gameplay of it is so stiff and janky. It's like the rest of it is so like complicated and intertwined.

So I would imagine to get it up to snuff with modern fidelity would take a while. Even if it is just a remake of something that we've played before. Even if they might have some kind of rubric to go by in a way that they didn't have when they were making the game in the first place. But it's a really strong start because it's surprising.

And even if there's not a lot of information about it. And even if I think that developer interview was a little kind of nothing. It's just like what kind of remake is this? Are we just going to get updated graphics and like higher resolution modes?

It's like we know it's from the ground up. He's a funny guy. But this is just no offense. But the exact reason why I just don't necessarily recommend the PlayStation podcast.

Because it's like they can't say anything truly interesting about any of the games or ask any of the questions. It's too early to say anything interesting about it. But it's a really strong start I thought. I agree.

And this game has a special place with me, KOTOR. Just because it was the reason I bought my Xbox in 2003. And I remember very clearly getting my Xbox at Nobody Beats the Wiz. And then KOTOR was one of the very first games I ever got online.

I bought online. And I remember getting it like waiting for the UPS man to come. It was kind of during the time when there wasn't like live updates online. There was probably some way to track it back.

We didn't know when they were going to come. So I would get up early in the morning and wait. And so yeah. A lot of great memories of KOTOR.

For PlayStation, I think, is the big takeaway. Is that PlayStation has been coming in, getting these exclusives. But not necessarily like, you know, we've talked about the difference between Xbox's strategy and PlayStation's strategy. In that they are able to just go in and make the smart partnerships.

Where it makes sense. And the fact that this is not just a game that so, so many people love. But a Star Wars game also. I mean, they've locked in timed exclusives on Star Wars and Final Fantasy.

And that's huge. It's one of those things where we've talked about this. Where it's like an annoying type of partnership. Because it just is like, yeah, we're paying so you don't have it.

But as we've said, they are also very effective. When you start to stack these games up. On the platform. And this is absolutely huge.

In fact, I think there will be people that played KOTOR years ago. And stopped playing video games. And are like, yeah, I want to play that when it comes out. Like, it's that big of a game.

Yeah, I can see that. It's also, I think, coming to PC. I think. I think.

Right, yeah. It will. Because they say that it's console exclusive to PS5. Yeah, yeah.

And it will migrate. And that's the thing, too. I don't think it does have that kind of like, you're taking this away feel. Because it is eventually going to come to other platforms.

It is going to be on PC. So a lot of players are going to be able to experience it. And it's something that Sony desperately needs, I think, in the form of an RPG. Like, a proper RPG.

That's something that, you know, I saw a lot of people in the chat when I was streaming with Maddie. They were like, you know, how could Xbox let this happen? And it's like, to me, the answer is very simple. It's like, Xbox doesn't need RPGs right now.

Like, they've got Bethesda. And they have all these, like, different RPGs. Like, they don't need this as much as Sony does. And I think it's a really smart get from Sony.

Even if it is, like, temporary. I don't know how long it will be. Like, a year or something. But that's a good year to have, like, KOTOR on your console.

And not on the other person's box. Flexible. And this was kind of introduced, in my opinion, as a potential second-party game, one degree removed from, like, Quantic Dream or something. Quantic Dream obviously has a game on PC.

They actually self-ported some of that stuff themselves. So we'll see how this all evolves. But I'm excited. No date yet.

As we said, they're loath to put a date on it, which indicates definitely not next year. But 2023, I would say the earliest. All right. Next up, the second game they showed was Project Eve.

We've actually seen this game before. But it was announced in 2019. And I actually think they showed it again in 2020. This is from a South Korean studio called Shift Up.

And I don't know. I think this game actually looks pretty cool. Although maybe a little generic as well. I wasn't, like, I wasn't blown away by it at all.

What did you think, Chris? Yeah, it was a little fan-service-y. You know, these skin-tight anime ladies. It's like, ah, cool, yeah.

I don't got a problem. A lot of ass for Thursday afternoon. Yeah, it was definitely, like, a lot. I was, like, kind of being nostalgic almost.

I was like, ah, I remember this. Nostalgia for the ass. Like, just when that was, like, such a common thing. Like, in, like, the video game.

Like, lollipop shit. You know what I mean? Like, just these, like, weird era. But it did look, it reminded me of, like, Bandetta.

Like, it looked like a Platinum game. That's what I said out loud when I was like, it's Bandetta. Yeah, I said it too on the screen. Like, Maddie was like, this looks like a Platinum game.

And it looks like it could be a lot of fun. Our audio went out after Maddie, like, fucking river stomped the wire after he freaked out about KOTOR. So I didn't hear a lot of that presentation. But from visuals alone, it looked like it could be pretty fun.

Yeah, it's, and I know that this would speak to you, too, Dustin. I mean, this is getting into pretty Japanese territory. What's cool about it is that it's not Japanese. I don't know how much of their team is Japanese or whatever, but that's a Korean team.

So I like the little bit of cross-cultural flavor. So that's kind of neat. I don't know exactly how that's going to play in, but to Chris's point, I mean, because just the aesthetic is very Platinum, very Bandetta, and... I felt like putting this game early and giving this game a little bit of shine when Sony doesn't say much very often is also a little sign that like, hey, we still like these games and these Japanese, these action, these perverted in some way kind of games, if you want to look at it that way.

And I was reading their PlayStation blog post, it's unclear to me if this game, like where this game is going to land. Because Kim Wong-Tae, who's the director of the game, says, I'm so delighted to properly unveil you the very first console title that shipped up this currently developing project EVE. And then he says, today we are finally able to reveal a new closer look at the PlayStation 5 game. So I don't know if this is like them being vague, a language divide, because that reads in American English as it's a PlayStation 5 game, the PlayStation 5 game.

So I don't know, again, I hate this kind of shit when you're not clear about all that, but what do you think about this? I think it looks awesome, especially in a time where, I mean, later in the show, we're going to be talking about Platinum and their new project. This is like exactly the type of thing that I would want to see from them. So yeah, I think this looks like super awesome.

I love the, there's a shot in the trailer where she's like a space station, and then there's this like disgusting eyeball monster stuck to it. A lot of really cool imagery as well. Like it's weird because I can see what you're saying, Colin, that some aspects seem kind of generic, but I feel like it makes up for it with some of the more off the wall stuff in this trailer. So I'm excited.

This looks great. Yeah. And apparently it's also coming to PS4. Remember this was a, this was supposed to be a PS5 focused event, but the game will also come to PS4 apparently next year.

And I'm reading on IGN that it was initially announced for Xbox One on PC. So we will see if anything like that has changed. The third game up is another game that we've had announced, although I think the date is new. Tiny Teens Wonderlands will come to PS5 and PS4 March 25th.

This is a cute and fun, I think, Borderlands sort of spin off. Although watching the trailer, I was a little lost on like what the whole angle is. What, what is this? I didn't really, I didn't really quite understand like it's, it's elevator pitchers reason for existing and just seeing a little slice of it.

And I really love Borderlands. So I'm sure I'll check it out, but let's go to you first. What did you make of Tiny Teens Wonderlands from Gearbox? For some reason in my mind, I didn't know this was, I knew it was a Borderlands spinoff game.

Obviously I knew that, but I did not know it was just like, Hey, this is a first person shooter, just like Borderlands and the same humor. Like, I don't know. If you, if you enjoy it, if you're into it, I'm sure the gameplay is really fun, but I just don't find the game funny at all. Like there's like some joking trailer where you're like, there's no after credits here.

It's not a superhero movie. Like, uh, like, I don't know. I'm never, uh, not never, but Borderlands isn't exactly my thing anymore, but I like the baby metal soundtrack in the, and it was very fun. So it's a good trailer for sure.

Yeah. It's, it's got a real frenetic feel. I couldn't quite nail it down myself and I'm usually not as perplexed as I was after a trailer. Like I was especially with so much gameplay and I agree the gameplay looks fun, but the funny thing is that I don't play Borderlands for the humor.

I actually just love the way it plays. I love the way it feels and looks. I like the cel shading and all that too, but Chris, do you have anything to say about Tiny Teens Wonderlands? And by the way, it's Wonderlands plural.

I know a lot of people are confused about that. Yeah. I mean, I, uh, I kind of agree with, I kind of agree with what you guys are saying where it's like, I don't really know why this has to exist in the way that it is. I don't understand.

Like it just seems like Borderlands with fantasy. And it's like, that seems like what the elevator pitch is. And it's like, all right, but this could have just been, you know, another Borderlands. It didn't need to be like Tiny Teens Wonderlands.

Like it didn't need to be that, but it was a good trailer. It looks like more Borderlands for people who like Borderlands. I, uh, I'm kind of mixed on Borderlands. Sometimes I like it a lot.

And then sometimes I just sort of never want to see it again. It's a very perplexing, you know, game series for me in general. Cause I love Borderlands 2. I think Borderlands 2 is like really a superb video game, but I don't know.

3 kind of like won me and then lost me and then won me like periodically. And like, I don't know. It was cool. I'm sure people are going to like it.

I think it's a good release window for a game like that. And, uh, I don't know. I feel like I just want to see more of it. Like just kind of get like, I want to know what 10 minutes in that game looks like, you know, from start to finish.

I'm sure it's not that different from Borderlands, but I just want to know like how impactful fantasy as a setting actually is on the formula or if it's just kind of like, you know, glorified set dressing, which it likely is. Next up, number four was Forspoken, which we've seen before. This is an interesting game because it's from Luminous, which is the Square's own studio that made Final Fantasy 15. And it's also notable because Gary Wader wrote this game, which I don't know that a lot of people know, but, um, you know, the writer of Rogue One and a lot of other stuff wrote Forspoken.

And we have a kind of a more stringent window for the game, which is spring 2022. And we already knew that it's a PlayStation 5 time exclusive, I think, for two years. So this game, I don't know, the beginning of it, when it was in modern day, I didn't really like that because I knew Forspoken was kind of like a fantasy game, but when it was in modern day, I was like, oh, it's cool. And then when it went to the gray bleak, whatever, I was like, oh God, I just, for some reason, uh, Final Fantasy 14 guys instead.

But it'll be interesting to see what these guys can do when they're untethered from Final Fantasy and can feel like they can work outside of it. And we're going to find out soon. I mean, it'll be out within six months or so. Chris, did Forspoken do anything for you?

Yeah, yeah. So, man, uh, I was always kind of looking forward to Forspoken. This is like a game that kind of grabbed me when we first saw it. Because all we heard, all we saw and heard really from that game was gameplay.

You know, we saw like, you know, I think, right? You saw people like the main character like flying around. Yeah, it seemed like there was interspersed, yeah. Yeah, and it looked really cool.

And I was like, that looks really awesome. And then what we got today was more of that, except now with the tone of the writing. And I, uh, I'm not a fan of the writing that I heard in this trailer. It was just like this type of like Marvel movie.

Like, it was like, did I just make shit move with my freaking mind? It's like, did that just happen? Did I do that? It's like, I don't know.

Like, just like, oh, man. Like, I was really hoping for a little bit more of like, not like a serious tone, but just like something that wasn't so, I feel like irreverence is really wearing on me. Like, I get it. Nothing serious.

Everyone's having fun. Cool. But I feel like it's such a juxtaposition with like the art style of the game and like, just like the way it looks. Like to hear that kind of flippant dialogue.

It works in Borderlands, even as obnoxious as Borderlands can get, because it complements the style like visually. But this to me felt like, it also felt like I was listening to a different trailer's audio over the video from another trailer. And it was just like, ah, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about it.

Like, I think it's going to play really well. I think the combat was really cool. I think it looks fast and fluid and beautiful, but maybe I'll like change the language to something because like, I really, I'm not on board with whatever style I went narratively or character wise here. What's the deal?