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What's up guys? Welcome to the first ever episode 226 of the Kind of Funny Games cast as always. I'm getting you shown by one of the coolest videos in video games. Hello.
Hello. And making a return after what feels like forever. Yeah. Oh, right.
What's good, guys? What's good? Thanks. You can find her on What's Good Games.
You already knew that. YouTube.com slash What's Good Games. And then over here, FM3 himself, the best pair in the business. Oh, he's looking extra shiny today.
That was good. That was good. Fran, where do people find you? You can catch me on Twitch.tv slash FM3 underscore Monday I'll get three characters or on the Epic Store at my creator code simply for AMIRAVAL.
And thank you for supporting me and helping me do this. I love it. I love it so much. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every week right here on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games.
We get together top-up video games, all things we love about them. There's a lot to talk about today because we just got back from E3. This is the first time we've all been together to talk about E3 and our E3 adventures. We always did our solo films and now the event is amazing.
This is definitely that. It's like Infinity War today. Patreon supporters at the Silver Membership or above get to watch the show live as we record it. You can get the show three days early and get the full exclusive free and post shows.
Today's thrilling content in the pre-show. Fran was talking about how much you does push-ups in the morning? No. Well, technically, the answer was zero, but still.
Anyway. You have to check that out. There was a lot of trouble conversation. We ran at the gamut there.
Shout out to our Patreon producers for this month, Daniel Massey and James Hastings. Making all of this magic happen. If you don't want to do any of that, it's fine. You can watch the show on Mondays on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games or Roostertee.com or just search for Kind of Funny Games cast on your favorite podcast service.
We're sponsored by Zeb and Upstart, but we will talk about that later. Let's just get right into it. Last week, two weeks ago, actually, we were right here at this table. We did some E3 predictions.
Andy! It's time for you to come sit here on the shock mic. I mean, there's a lot of different scoring scores out there right now. You know what I mean?
No, there's one where I'm second place, which I appreciate. Oh, the whole of them are. There's a couple where I'm third, but... No, maybe not this one.
Can you bring it up, please? Can we just go through the whole thing? But, C underscore non on Reddit made this. And the final scores, I'm the winner with 3.9.
Then Fran with 2.1. Then Greg with 1.8. Andy with 1.3. And then Barrett, which is .3.
So what are those other things? Out of 10? Yes, this is what happens when I'm not on the prediction show. 3.9 is the best you can do.
Well, remember the thing is that you can get the partial points, which is where it's getting so bad. It's like out of a million or whatever, in terms of what we're going to bring it down to. But we're bringing it down. The key things I like is that he added all of this editorialization.
Most comments slash additions to other predictions for me, which I definitely buy. That makes a lot of sense. Fran with the most ridiculed correct prediction. Woo!
I thought you were crazy! Oh my God. When Alvin was just like, Fran gets the point. What?
That was a huge one. Got a lot of it. Greg with the most accurate with his comments slash additions to other predictions. Fixing everybody else's predictions.
And then ending with the worst prediction ever. I mean, that's the opinions. Perfectly dark. So Andrea, so I predicted that Doug Bowser would announce perfect dark.
And, you know, usually we always wear a shirt. And I said, he'd be wearing a perfectly dark shirt. Which, like, come on. That's a pun.
That's a pun. That's a pun. That's a pun. That's a pun.
Yeah, of course. Give your shit to KFM. With the best dream come true moment with the bikini bottom remastered prediction. Oh my God.
So great. You gotta love it. You gotta love it. I think that was the most ridiculed correct prediction, actually.
Well, yeah, I'm sorry. I mean, it was only you two. I was flabbergasted. I was, dude.
Hey, I will never forget that moment. We were here at 6 damn AM for the Pokemon directs. We did that thing. And then Kevin left.
Everyone left. It was just me and Barrett here. And I look at my Twitter as I'm making the thumbnail for the Pokemon thing. And I see SpongeBob come up.
And I'm like, oh no. Barrett, Barrett, get in here right now. And he came in. And I started recording.
And then he saw it. At any other time, we would have not got that reaction video. I came into the back room. And then Tim stops me coming into the back room.
I was like, what's happening? And I knew something was like announced or something because you're being weird. And the first thing that popped in my head was Batman. Yeah, like he totally expected it to be Batman or Harry Potter.
And it was fucking SpongeBob. Which was still just as hype for me. And it was fucking awesome. You got to love it.
But Greg, what other predictions, points have you seen? Honestly, there's someone else that did tweet one where I was at number two. And I was hoping you'd pull that. And I didn't want to tell you that.
It sounded like, you know, I wanted you to find a light on your own. Because I didn't want to look like I'm trying to stop the battle box here. You know what I'm saying? I saw one where I was in the last one.
I was like, I don't know how these things work. Can you scroll down? You actually read scores yet, did you, Tim? I read the scores.
Oh, you did? Yeah. Yeah, let's see what this one does. Yeah, I found the one that I think you're talking about right here from BJ Bernardo.
And all he said was, fourth place Andy, third place Fran, second place Greg, first place Tim. And it's that thing where I've just always heard that BJ Bernardo gets it right. I mean, I'm not saying that this is fake news. We got tweeted one like three days ago where I was beating Fran.
And I saw that and I was like, I don't think that's true, but I'll go with it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how it works. Whatever you guys tell me, I'll believe. I don't think there's a way it works.
Can we just listen through it together? Yeah, that was right. You can. You can go to youtube.com slash kind of what he's on stage and go for it.
That's what they did. I'll take second place though, Tim. Yeah, I like it. This is really good with the notes and the dishes in the comments and the results in the Yeah.
Let me ask you this. Who thought Bethesda was going to take a shot at Anthem? Me. That was my last question.
Seriously? Well, it was with the Fallout 76 thing. I thought they'd make some little snag comment about it. No.
Bethesda is better than that. They did. It was in the vein of Fallout 76, right? And they did self-deprecate about it.
I was right on that. It was the anthem thing I tossed in there. I think it's flavor and didn't get it. Yeah, in our predictions with our Magic 8 Ball Show, we had guessed that Pete Hines would say we fucked up on stage, like verbatim, and then he didn't.
That was a big, big one. He tapped his leg for us though. He did. I don't even know what my point of his leg was.
Did you see it? No. Annually, we call him every pre-show. Like 10 minutes before they go live, we call Pete Hines and the answer every time.
And we give him a pep talk and then it was, cool. And we were just wondering if when you go out tonight, you can tap your leg for us. He's like, I'll try. I don't know, guys.
Sure enough, he went up and he went. He went up and he texted me, tap the leg. That's awesome. How did your predictions go?
Our predictions went pretty good. We're going to go over all the scores tonight on tonight's episode that we're recording. But ours is just more for funsies because we ask questions to Magic 8 Ball. So it's not like we can make specific predictions like you guys do.
It's more for the funny stuff as we say it was good. So you had the A-ball answer. We had the A-ball answer. We didn't ask that question because we assumed that there would not be.
Not this early. But a friend though. Surprise! My biggest surprise of missing games, I couldn't believe Nintendo didn't say a word about Bane at 3.
I think it's because of Astral Chain. I think if it's coming so soon, they want to push the Platinum stuff to be a little bit more away from each other. But it's been so long since we've heard about Bane at 3. Similar theory.
Because where the heck? What is Retro Studios doing other than working on Metroid Prime now? They've put up that new thing today. They've got us.
I've got a theory that whatever the Star Fox Grand Prix thing is probably actually done. And they're holding it for the same types of reasons. We're going to push out and pace out later because we need to fill gaps. We'll see, man.
It is definitely possible. Retro, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see anything from them. I think at this point, I think it's a safer bet to say that they were working on something. Yeah, I think I'm sure it's the next thing we see from them.
Unfortunately. Because I thought we would see something soon. I would rather see something soon. But Prime 4 is not for a millennia.
Oh, yeah. Exactly. We will end. We will end.
We will end. Speaking of E3. Thanks, Andy. That's all you do for.
Fine, good job. What's your thing? It's going to look perfectly dark. Should I play that game?
Should I play that game? E3. Let's start with you. What was your game of the show?
E3 2019. I'm struggling with this one a little bit, but. Actually, what do you say? Because what we did.
We did the Kind of Funny Approved, where we gave three different games. Four different games? Four different games are Kind of Funny Approved Faces. And then we had the overall Kind of Funny Game Show Award.
So I want to know what are your. Let's go three. Fran Approved. And then your Fran Game Show.
Fran Approved is like, I liked it. I like what I see it. It's your top things. It doesn't even be ranks.
Just top things. Yeah, even the word top, I'm going to use this. Because I actually didn't see a ton of hands-on. And I saw all the press conferences.
I don't know if you were judging stuff for the press conferences, too. There's a lot out there. Our qualifications are, can we give our face award to someone physically? Okay, yeah.
So based on that, Frank, it's just top of my head stuff that stuck out. Ooh, yeah, I really liked Watch Dogs. Oh, yeah. Cyberpunk.
And, well, Final Fantasy VII Remake, obviously. But it was hot, because I also checked out Borderlands. Was it a new demo? I really like Luigi.
What else? Yeah, they added a new ball. I thought so. It was in Easy Allies.
I think they saw it at Xbox, their stage, where it was the demo we played at the event. And I was wondering if on the floor there was a new game. So I know I cheated that. But actually, I just put in the honorable mention of Luigi was a really good showing.
And I played Zelda, Pokemon, and that. We'll get all the Nintendo stuff later. I'm not asking you for everything you played, Fran. Right after, baby.
Right after. And he lost. And he lost. Snow Mike made the right call.
Yeah. We needed a tiebreaker for our game of the show, because I chose Final Fantasy. He chose Cyberpunk. Oh, nice.
And then we had debates on the show. Snow Mike ended up going Cyberpunk. What's up? I was just wondering if we're talking about those games on the show.
Oh, yeah. We're talking about all of them, man. Andrea. Andrea approved.
Three games. And then what is the Andrea game of the show? So this is, um, I've been making this list, because obviously we're both part of DCA. That's kind of funny.
What's good? Are you guys, does it count? Is it all games we saw, or does it have to have been playable? We just do all games we saw.
We don't do the playable stuff like the Kiki's do. Okay. For, okay, so for top three, oh wait, three games I liked, and then I'll leave my game show. Okay.
I have to say, Cyberpunk 2077 for sure. I was glad I got to see it this year. The demo looks awesome. I am excited to play, and I really like what they showed us in the behind-closed-doors demo, and how, you know, it kind of like really, the layers of world building that they're doing in that game are really impressive, especially since it's all original stuff.
They're not working off of like an existing intellectual property, a book series, I think. Maybe? No? No.
I don't think so. I think it's all like CDPR original stuff, right? I'm not wrong? So I think that's really impressive, and so the tech that they showed looks really cool.
I was a little disappointed. It's the second year, and we didn't get even like a small build to try out and see what the gameplay feels like, so I'm a little concerned about that. Yeah. But knowing their history and everything they did with The Witcher, I think they set themselves up for some success, hopefully.
So that's one for sure. I also was really impressed with Watch Dogs Legion and everything they showed. I was incredibly skeptical before they showed gameplay, before they gave hands-on, and then afterwards I was like, okay, I'm going down this path. I love the idea of like there's these three archetype classes, and there's all these different NPCs that fit into them, and you're kind of like building a squad that has a mix and match of all these different kind of RPG mechanics.
There's a lot of perks. There's a lot of perks. There's a lot of perks. Exactly.
You can kind of tailor it to your personal play style. Like, do you want to go all drone commanders, or do you want to do people who all have stealth? Or? Oh, ladies.
Just a little ladies. The slowest squad in Watch Dogs Legion. So I thought that that was a really impressive showing, for sure. And then also Final Fantasy VII Remake.
I had no interest in this game before seeing the combat demo. And this is me as somebody who's never been a Final Fantasy player. I was fortunate to play Final Fantasy IX on PS4 because Alexa Ray was like, you said I did say I would do it, so I did it with her. And then I quit after like 15 hours.
Did you play Final Fantasy VII or just watched the demo? I've never played. No, this is not his new one. No, Britt got hands-on, though, and I watched a bunch of people play it, but I personally did not get on the sticks to play.
So I love this right now, where we're at, because you named Cyberpunk and Final Fantasy and you're approved. So what does that make your game of the show? The Outer Worlds is my game of the show. Nice.
I can't wait. Tell me more. So I was incredibly impressed by everything I saw. So I've seen this game a couple of times now.
Greg and I had the opportunity to see it at Judges Week, which was a different demo than the one that I saw at E3, which I like to see a little bit of a different side. We have to see more of the narrative consequences and choices that are going to be offered, whereas the demo we saw previously was a little bit more combat-focused and siltry-focused. What I really love about this is that they're taking everything that Obsidian knows about making RPGs, the basis for why people love what they did with Fallout New Vegas, and then just like polishing their shit out of it. So that they're not necessarily reinventing the wheel.
Like, you're seeing what CDPR is doing with Cyberpunk, and they're really kind of pushing the envelope for things that they've done in their gameplay techniques before. What I love about what Obsidian is doing with The Outer Worlds is they're like, we are going to give you gameplay that we know you want and that you love, and we're going to give it to you, like, super polished, in a reasonable amount of time to play an open-world sci-fi RPG. Yeah, they talked about this one, right? It's like 20, 30 hours.
No, they said it was more like 50, 60 hours. Maybe the Golden Path or whatever is like 20, 30 hours, but like, what if you do side content? I mean, if you're an open-world RPG, who's doing Golden Path anyway, really? But what I like about it is that it's not something I have to go in playing to spend 100, 200, 300 plus hours doing.
You've never seen the end of it. Right. I like that they made it more of a bespoke experience versus this procedurally generated never-ending thing. Which is like, that's cool if that's what you're looking for, but that's not necessarily what I'm looking for as a gamer.
So I was really impressed by it. I thought the gameplay looked great. I love that, you know, it's that feeling that you get from any game that brings in narrative consequences with your choices about really having to make that morally gray decision about like, oh gosh, is this the decision I want to make? And knowing that you're going to be missing out on something if you make one decision or another.
But another game, I don't think, can we make it five instead of four? Go for it. Well, the one that kind of rounds up my top five of E3 is Dying Light 2, which was a big surprise for me because I was not expecting to be impressed by what I saw there. Not because Techline doesn't know how to make games, because clearly they do, but because the idea of a zombie game just doesn't really blow my skirt up.
I'm like, eh, I'm okay. And like, quite frankly, the day night cycle stuff that they did in Dying Light, the original Dying Light was cool, but it was too intense for me as a player playing at night with all these really crazy monsters chasing you all the time. And so I haven't seen the night cycle stuff in Dying Light 2 because they haven't showed it yet. But the BCD demo that we got in E3 was really impressive from an open world traversal perspective.
Yeah, the parkour was awesome. What they did to upgrade the parkour in this game was really impressive from the demo that they showed. And they also are bringing in these kind of big narrative choices that will affect your gameplay. I think he said something like, there are like 40 plus different endings that you can get.
Maybe that's a different game. I thought it was maybe teens for this one. But essentially, like the idea that if you make one decision, it could open up this whole new section of the map and bring in these new infected that you have to fight. But if you make the other decision, maybe you never see that part of the map ever in your playthrough.
Like, that kind of stuff I think is really interesting from a narrative perspective, though. Awesome. Yeah. I was at 15 years later.
There's only a number I have here. I don't have anything about the ending. I think I asked the co-creative director when I was talking to him on the Facebook stage about it. And I think with that game, they said that there's no way to really computate a number because of the sheer amount of choices that they have within the narrative of the game.
Well, I mean, that's the thing with that behind Closer's Emma, right, where when, you know, they made the choice to turn on the water pumps, right, that then gave you a giant new open world area to play in. And they're like, any questions? Like, yeah. So, like, you're talking about choices.
Like, if I did a choice where I don't turn on the water pumps, does that part of the world, in all those quests, they submerge? He's like, yes. I'm like, oh, okay. You know, you expect it to be some story decision that you make, but if you don't make it, well, then somebody else does somebody else that does it anyway.
Because obviously, they spent a lot of time and money to make all that. Like, building that part of the world. And they're like, no, it's not there in this place. I'm like, all right, cool.
That's crazy. Last Gamescast, when we did it with Easy Allies, we were talking a little bit about my impressions of Ghost Recon Breakpoints. Yeah. Friend, you got to play it.
What are your thoughts? I feel like the game's a bit more up your alley. Yeah, yeah. It absolutely stood out.
Like, it was one of my minds to throw in that list. But I really like squad base, co-op combat, obviously Division 2. That's right. Right?
Let's go. New, or new classification, what's it called? The new, uh. Special.
Specialization is out there, FYI. Fake fan, you know what I mean? Anyway. It's not the Destiny Power Lord, though, you know what I mean?
So I really like Breakpoint because it is, unlike Division 2, it is so up close and brutal. It is very realistic, for lack of a better way to put it. So people probably already know a lot about it. But if you get a wound, you might get in a certain place.
You gotta pay a job. You have to take your time. You really can't get shot down without boarding. So I love playing with other people.
It remains to be seen as a single-player experience, and you can play it as a single-player experience. Yeah, Simon's on R.N. But I really like it. I like that it just felt so up close and brutal.
I thought the demo was okay, though. It was just hard to get into a demo like that when I only had an hour. And even then, you spent the first 15 minutes like, here's this button, and here's where your loadouts are. How did you get through your inventory frame?
Yeah, right, exactly. Here's your inventory. I was kind of talking about this a bit. First off, not my type of game, typically.
Also, I thought that was one of the worst demos I've ever done a part of. And I think a lot of it just had to do with who I was playing with and how it was all presented and how late in the show it was. But it just wasn't a great showing of the game. One of the producers would ever walk through it.
I was kind of just like so rapidly. Now we're going to do this. Now we're just like, okay, whoa. It was probably because you're talking about the showcase, like Ubisoft's press conference?
After it, yeah. No, it was like hands-on, like playing at the booth. Oh, you played at the booth? At Ubisoft's.
I played at, after the conference, you know, you go to one of their event hubs. Got it. We went and played. I wonder if it was the same.
How long did you get to play? Almost now. Before I hit it. So it's probably very similar.
Someone was on comms with you and walking through it. So I had the same experience. And that's my caveat. I was like, well, I didn't really have a chance to experience exactly how I would.
Someone was pushing us, and I had to play with these other people. But yeah, I would have rather directed it, even if I didn't know what I was doing, because that's the experience, is making that choice. But I did, I liked the intensity of it. And I just leave it at, I liked some of the skills.
You know, you can watch the trailer announcement for all the stuff that's in there. But basically, we ended up a little late into it, where you had to throw EMP tanks at this giant tank. You had to switch or load out, get, you know, a bazooka or missile launcher or whatever. You had to make sure to get ammo for it.
And you had to coordinate as a team to do all this. And it was definitely, that was the most challenging thing they said that was on our map. Yeah, we did the same thing as well. The rocket launchers towards the tanks.
And it's funny, because yeah, the dude helped so much that I actually didn't think it was that difficult, but I could see it being difficult. Yeah, because the idea was, it's like, you have your four people, you need to each bring out your rocket launcher and shoot it, but you can't all do it from the same vantage point. You all need to kind of like surround this tank and then take it down. Did you find the controls cumbersome?
Oh yeah, I mean, but that's not the game though, that's going to happen. Yeah, I thought the weapon wheel, or not the weapon wheel, inventory wheel, because it's like, it's your band-aids, it's your health spray, it's all your weapons, it's on the same wheel. Yeah, let me say this much though, I got an hour into it, I felt like it finally sunk, and that's the only thing I would just add is, this is totally the type of game, like, I mean, divisions that way, like, until you play for a good, honestly, hour or more, it's so hard for, you don't feel comfortable at all, and yeah, you have somebody wheeling you around, go here, go here, it's really hard to process the game, I think that's why they did have some two-hour demos going, I would like to spend some time with that, but what I was going to add is at the very end, I finally was, okay, now I know where everything's at, now I just got the shotgun, I'm like, let's go, and that's the end of the demo, and you had to like peel me off of it at the end. That's good.
So that was a good sign for me. Did you, did Wildlands, did you play Wildlands, did I click for you? Oh, I didn't get to play it. Wait, wait, no, no, sorry, Wildlands, I don't know why I was thinking about Wildlands, yeah, I played Wildlands, and I did like it, it had all the right ideas, and I think that's what this sort of helps bring together as well, like, it goes deeper, a little more serious, I thought the quest and storyline that you followed in Wildlands was not great, it was sort of tedious, you'd unlock all these different parts of the map, and I don't know if this is going to do anything like that, but again, what I like is, I use the word intensity, that's what this feels like to me, it's really close over your shoulder, it's very much about you, and you get hurt very easily, so I think it's to equip the rocket launcher, and then hold the button to bring the animation up, and just like, if you let go, it went away instantly, I'm like, that doesn't add up, I feel like it's at odds with itself, it's just like so early for me to say, yeah, your name, condemn that, because I'm used to, again, these cases, comes out in September, I think, no, there's a beta in September, and then the actual release date is September, October, I forget, I feel like it's not the case, no worries, I'm glad I'm here, though, because you'd be like, yeah, it was cumbersome, didn't do it for me, totally validates, I mean, that's not a lot of time to take into feedback if they are running into other people, I've seen other hands-on impressions, I would say that everyone that was in the room with me doing the demo, not just my squad, but everyone kind of seemed like, oh, all right, cool, and everyone's like, I don't know about this, it's cumbersome, you can't just hop in and expect to know all this, I'm not defending it yet, it's early, but I would say you should have expected that, it's just that type of game, but there's a lot going on, I definitely felt intimidated at first, I was like, where's all this stuff, and your loadouts changed in the menu, yeah, which I definitely thought was, I was like, what, but I will say that the Wildlands demo was one of my favorite three demos we've ever done, when it was me and Greg, and when we first played, they brought us in, and it was kind of like, raiding the area, and yeah, that's what was awesome, it's very similar, so.
I felt, yeah, but it was less complex, as I recall, from a what you could do, yeah, you didn't have to bandage up first, and then heal yourself, and the way you go stealth, like, all those things were, that's funny, by the way, I liked Wildlands, but it was very, I don't want to say surface-off, because it was deeper than that, but this goes really deep from what I could tell, so there's just like a lot to learn, and frankly, like, I feel like if you hop into the, we'll talk about FF7 Remake later, right, there's a process where you're like, wait, what am I doing? Once it's in, you're good, but beforehand, you're like, does this even make sense, you know, I mean, so I feel like it's one of those games, you've got to have time with it. No, yeah, so I didn't personally hold the controller, but I watched the presentation at the Square Enix press conference, and got to see some people playing it on the show floor, I think that what they're doing with the updated combat is really cool, I think it appeals to people like me, who are never interested in a Final Fantasy game that was, you know, old, turn-based method, right, but I'm really more interested in the Final Fantasy 15 style of, you know, third-person combat, that to me is more exciting, but I like how they've kept that kind of classic tactical mode, and kind of make it, give it like a nod to the turn-based ways of your, or however you want to refer to it, and the animation looks great, obviously, like, there was still more to be seen about what is this extra stuff that they're adding in, to fill out so many additional hours of gameplay, like, how much extra narrative does that, what does that look like, what does that mean, how does it change the original storytelling of the game, I think that there's still a lot of unknowns, but it seems like people are pretty hyped for it. I would say that with everything they showed here, I feel like it's all hints of going in a good direction, like, how they're going to fill it out, all the new stuff we saw, dialogue-wise, character-wise, and even plot-wise, of, like, what was going on with Sephiroth and stuff, I think that it's very much in good hands, and I have full faith that they're going to stand on what came before, I think that, I was saying this in the last episode, but the similarities to 15, I think, are just visually just looking at it, it plays totally different than 15, it is way more action-based until you get to the turn-based, it's not so much like a either-or, it's like you need the action parts to kind of build up your, so you, like, slash a bunch to build up your gauge to then be able to use the more, it's not turn-based, but things slow down, more menu-based kind of tactical decision, and a lot of strategy comes into play, of using different spells, and when to switch between the characters and stuff, and I've never played a game like that, that seamlessly combines the fast-paced action with the more methodical RPG elements, that, in a way that works, Final Fantasy XIII tried to introduce that, but anytime it slowed down, it felt like it was a different game, this was a really different game.
Yeah, the only game that kind of makes me think of a semi-similar situation was what they were doing in Dragon Age Inquisition, where you have your party members and they each have individual skills, and then you could go into that, like, top-down tactical mode, do you guys remember that? I do remember. Yeah. But, I mean, obviously different, but semi-similar.
It's what I always really wanted out of Mass Effect's combat, with your squad mates with their individual powers that you've leveled up, to be able to, like, hot-swap between those characters, was, like, the dream, and they just never had it. Yeah. Hit me, Fran. So, yeah, that's good.
Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy. Ooh, I like this. So, yes, I was a huge Final Fantasy VII fan, so formative in my growing up.
I actually only had an N64, and my friend had a PlayStation, and we had to trade. He wanted to play GoldenEye, and we played at my house anyway, but he wanted to have that and other stuff, and I wanted to play PlayStation, so I borrowed his PlayStation, which later led to a corrupted save file. Ooh. He's my best friend, probably, in all of us.
So we blasted through it, and it was hard to explain. I was like, I don't know what happened. It's just the save corrupted. Anyway.
Fran, it's years later. You can admit you pulled out. They warned you, Fran. So I was a huge fan of F7.
I've been waiting for this forever, like everybody else. I've actually been, not intentionally media blackout, but maybe unknowingly, I haven't. So I actually didn't see the Swear conference. I didn't have time before I had a chance to play it.
So I kind of went pretty fresh not knowing more than what I've seen in the drones. Okay, so just to set things up, again, as a reminder, yes, it's a remake of Final Fantasy VII. We know it's chapterized or something. Well, we don't know for sure.
It's going to be more than one game. That's all we know. It's episodic. They're not using the word episodic.
They're staying away from that. They're not saying how many games are going to come, but they're saying that. Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 1, right? Yes, they're saying that it's up to the end of Midgar.
It is right. It is Midgar. You're reliving the characters and the story and doing other stuff in there. But anyway, so I went in pretty fresh.
And number one, what stood out to me a ton was actually, yes, the production value. It shouldn't surprise me. It was Swear. But that, maybe above all, is what stood out.
I was like, wow, how close up it is in the characters, the detail of all the worlds. And actually, when you get into the boss scene, I was really impressed with just the amount of custom close-up cut scenes and things happening to keep you engaged during battle. They weren't quick time events. No, no.
It's in the middle of damaging the boss. Yeah, it'll just be like, it pulls back. Yeah, it's not a quick time event. It's you did some damage, right?
And then all of a sudden, it's like the scene, but it's custom. And there's like close-ups and mid-range shots. And I thought that was really impressive. I just was thinking about other games I played.
And I was like, not a lot of games go to this amount of detail. Granted, this was just one boss and this one level. How much of this is going to happen? But I was like really impressed with how cinematic that boss fight felt for what it was.
I don't know, how did you feel about that? I totally agree. And I mean, I feel like Swear, you know, for all the shit that they get and in a lot of cases deserve, the production value is always the one thing that they knock out of the park. Like with Final Fantasy XV, the boss fights were that way.
Where it's like every single one was equally momentous. Like I know the thing was like, whoa, exactly. And it's like XV finally hit that point, I think, where I remember growing up watching Avid Trollen, the Final Fantasy VII movie, and just being like, oh my god, can you imagine being able to play this? Like that's insane.
And I know that's the case. Like that's what this is now. And I love the cinematic camera of the gameplay that backs everything up. Like switching between characters.
Did you do that at all? When you switched between Cloud and Barrett, like just the way it's seamless. Like you hit up and down on the D-pad and it'll just like, the camera goes out a little bit, goes over quickly and then like goes back in. And it's just like, it feels so good.
It's pretty good. Yeah, so you real time switch between characters where Cloud and Barrett, one obviously with like a big giant minigun and Cloud with a sword. Yeah, you just press the D-pad and it's fast swaps wherever. Overall, I felt it was good.
Definitely like any game like this, the camera's not always quite where you want it to be. Really? Yeah, I definitely. Oh, I thought it was great.
It definitely got in, like there'd be times when the boss was like in between. And you just spin it around, like you fix it. But I definitely didn't feel like it was a perfect system. Like, no.
Not that it was bad, by the way. I was very impressed with the camera. You didn't feel like you needed to adjust it. No.
I did. I felt more, because like the thing is you're kind of auto-targeting on these, right? So it's, I feel like it looks more similar to like a third-person action game. And it's not that.
So it's like the moment you just kind of lock on, then all you need to really worry about is like your menus and what tells you're casting. And you know, part of it maybe is just my place. I like a certain frame on the boss and seeing myself and also my other character, but whatever. So jump to the next point, it's the new combat system.
Yeah, I would say that absolutely surprised me that I pulled it off in a way that does feel modern, but still respectful to call it the ways of yore. Like you said, it is turn-based in a moment, but you're right. It's a progressive new combat system. So you basically, you have real time, right?
I'm clouded, I got a giant sword. I just like block bullets and stuff and get up close and start slashing at someone. So that now builds my next level, right? So I'm building this meter to unlock the real, or the turn-based style combat, right?
That's how it works. You have like, what I saw, there was two meters that you fill up. So each one... You have two slots to fill up, yeah.
It's not turn-based. Like, we keep saying turn-based. It's absolutely not. It's not, but it is the same thing.
So here's why it is turn-based for a moment. It's menu-based. Okay. Semantic, you should work for the marketing department.
I follow you. But like, you really press the button and you build a meter. No, no, no. Don't phrase it wrong.
You're all taking turns. No, no, no. Because you're right that it's not, but it's also semantical because, I'm going to argue it is, because as soon as you finally build a meter and you press the button, it does stop. Action stops.
It's your turn to make a decision. You have a moment to... I mean, well, is it slow motion-ish? Slow motion.
Yeah, it doesn't stop. Yeah, but if there's not a moment where you can't act because the boss is taking his turn, then it's not turn-based. Was there that moment where you couldn't move or do anything because the boss was setting up a spell against you? You're right, actually.
You're right. The boss doesn't take its turn. Right. So that's not turn-based.
It's half-turn-based, then. You take your turn and the boss doesn't get to... You don't get to see the boss. He's doing it.
You can see it. Okay. That's like another level of roleplay out there. Fran, you're coming to Jesus on this and I like it.
And it's also time to probably admit a double dash. Now, I was having a higher than that. I was just kidding. What do you feel?
It gets me off your shoulder, you know? Another day, another time. So anyway, I really like it, though. You build a meter and you get into this next level of combat.
So both characters are building it. You can switch between these really cool moves. Broken or awkward or boring. You know, it was fun to take that boss down.
Lots of different parts that you were focused on. You can play it your way. I actually realized too late. I was focusing on just the main centerpiece for the whole time.
So I didn't break the legs. If something happened, you know, if you break the legs... It's pretty late. I mean, it's immobile and it doesn't shoot as many of the rockets.
But I ended up not doing that because I was just like going hype. And I was excited to play it. So really, the last note I would make is the visuals, though. I'm still getting used to.
It's this really weird, like highly dithered look. There's this noisiness. Not quite a film grain. I don't know if it's because of the hair and some of the stuff they're doing.
Some of it's good because it's not clean. But it's got this dithered, noisy look. Like almost a screen door effect. It's not a lot.
Did you understand? I see what you're talking about. I feel like that's always been the case with Final Fantasy VII's art style. It always has the kind of like dirty air look.
Yeah, part of it is it's also just the engine and the way that it's dithering between stuff. Anyway, not a problem. But it took some getting used. I'm curious if it was a TV.
If it was working. Okay, like who knows. And it's not final. Did you see the Behind Closed Doors demonstration before you got to play?
Yeah, they did like the tutorial thing. That's right. So I saw that, the explanation. That was pretty cool.
But it didn't show us anything really different than the demo, did it? So did you just do the thing where they play the demo on the TV and then you get to go in? Or did you do the thing that was like an hour long thing before you got to play? Oh, I did see an hour long.
Okay, cool. That was like the producer playing through, showing a lot more just like what the overworld stuff looks like. Not overworld, but like playing through the mission and not just the like, let's get to the boss part. Oh, cool.
Above all, this is not turn-based. Very specifically. It's not turn-based. Andrea.
Yes. What games do you want to talk about here? Do you want to talk about Watch Dogs Legion a little bit? Maybe not Watch Dogs, because I didn't get as much time with that as my co-workers did.
That's awesome. That's exciting. Get hyped. Yeah, let me look through my notes really quick about the games that I got to play that we didn't really get to talk about yet.
Well, we didn't talk about Journey to the Savage Planet or Control from 505. Yeah, I'm going to try that in your case. We didn't get to talk about, oh, I could talk about Dark Siders Genesis. Hell, yes.
A game I haven't talked about any other shows about, but I'm super stoked for. Yeah, so this was one of those games that was embargoed until the Tuesday of E3 when they opened the show floor and they had kiosks for everybody at E3 to go and try out Dark Siders Genesis. So this is being published by THQ Nordic, being developed by Airship Syndicate. We got a chance to get a deep dive with it during Judges Week, which was great because we got like 45 to 60 minutes to really play through the whole demo.
I don't know how long the demo was that they had on the show floor. What's up over there, Kevin? Too much pizza for Kevin. Exactly.
It's got the cheese crazies. So they have this new horseman, Strife, that they've introduced, who we got to play as, but then they also have War coming back as a playable character, and so it's a co-op game between Strife and War. I actually really preferred Strife's gameplay style, because he's a little bit more nimble, more, like, he can tumble a little bit faster, and then he's got these dual blades, which are really cool. Now, pause, do you know anything about Darksiders Genesis?
I was going to say, I think I do, and I'm like, is this like a Diablo? Walking in, walking into it, that was my thing, where they were like, oh, Darksiders Genesis, or Darksiders Genesis, like, oof, I'm not a Darksiders guy. And it was, no, no, this is a new take on Darksiders, this is not the Darksiders you know, yes, it is like a Diablo, it is an action RPG, you know, exactly, go in there, fight the things, get the loot, go through, and, you know, get better, whatever. And I was like, oh, cool.
Yes, just to set it up, since you guys are bringing up a good point that a lot of people don't know about Darksiders, so, originally a hack and slash action-adventure video game, we've got three of them. This is, the series is set in post-apocalyptic Earth, where mankind has become extinct, and angels and demons battle for the world control. Among them are the four horsemen of the apocalypse, this is just literally straight from Wikipedia, by the way, the last of the Nephlehem who are tasked to bring bounds and order. They're all playable, and they're kind of like, left it unanswered.
So did they say the other ones won't be in the game? That was my understanding, from the questions that I asked them, that it was just going to be Strife and War, but I don't know. I imagine you'll see them pop up, in terms of a cutscene, they're doing everything on their own action. Yeah, they appear in the game, but I don't believe they're going to be playable, right.
So it's co-op, online multiplayer, or local split-screens you can choose, and if you're playing solo, you can just swap between characters, and so it is very much that Diablo top-down isometric look. You have an AI partner if you're running solo, yeah. Which is what we did, we were all playing solo. So I asked them about damage scaling in co-op, and they said there is none.
But maybe they would add a limiter in the future. There's a variety of vendors that you can find, that you can buy upgrades for, because there's a skill tree for the horsemen that you're playing as. And what I really liked about the gameplay is that it really kind of did this nice combination of some traversal puzzles with really great top-down hack-and-slash combat, which was just really fun to play. Now, the build that we played had a few issues, but it was pre-alpha, so we forgive builds for being a little buggy when they're in that state.
And for people who are concerned or curious, I should say, about the narrative, it is a standalone story that takes place before Darksiders 1. So if you're really into the Darksiders franchise, it's after the war in Eden and after the Nephilim have been destroyed, and they've just become the horsemen. It's the genesis of the horsemen. There you go, look at that, nailed it.
Yeah, for me, again, not having any background with it, I was surprised for me with TSU Nordic, this is the one I walked out the most impressed with, and the one that I walked out, for that day, I think, the game where I was like, this is the one I want the most, because I want this on my Switch right now. I want to be able to play this on the plane, on the bus, or whatever. It was just the gameplay was so good. It felt good to hack-and-slash, it felt good to roll around as the different characters, right?
More fast than war, right? There's actually a different thing, so when we were approaching bosses or baddies, it was like, well, what kind of, what is the approach I want? I can switch off between them. I thought it was colorful, I thought the world looked good, again, like you said, very early.
There was the one, I think I mentioned this at the time when we were in Bargo, that I had one of the weirdest things happen to me in a demo. This is the game where I got to a point, and I got stuck, and I popped off my ear, and Joe Madden was like, Joe, what am I not doing to him? I was like, oh, yeah, like, it's your, it seemed like, there's, like, signposting issues, right? He's like, you, you don't have to worry about that, you're trying to get into a secret area, but it looks like it's in the area.
There's a ladder over there that's, like, hidden. I was like, oh, it was just, like, not lit up the right way. It's like, great. And then, as I went to put it back on, everyone else started hitting the exact same thing.
I think that, I had to tell everybody. It's like, it's like a nightmare for a developer, because I literally was like, oh, man, I told him we should have done something different here. I'll put this in the game. And everyone, of course, we all get it.