Astro Bot game director reacts to 94 metacritic review score | Friends Per Second #53

Intro all right so how do we start this by being funny like about usually you ask me something you um have you guys heard of this chroming here he goes Trend what is that when you spray your mouth with the paint and then you go to exactly what it is I thought this was a gooning off offset are we allowed to say that on a podcast do we need to cut that or get demonetized dring legal cro chroming is uh the thing from Mad Max where it's like witness me people they're doing that and like kids are going in a hospital after they see people doing this on Tik to and they're following it finally a good one that's so much better than the tide pod challenge I was going to say it's the modern day tide pod thing Tide Pods what was that like four five years ago now how long ago was Tide Pods for real 20 years ago I feel like it was there was 5 years it feels about right so we're due for another one of those and um and this is it this is it so I chroming I I mean what what did did it even do in the movie I didn't read the comic book I don't remember the comic book like does it make them stronger like what what did it do it's just it just jazzes you up man it's just it's just feels good I imagine to do it like I'm I'm about to die so I'm going to look [ __ ] sick while doing it the Australian Authority you would know say yeah we know we know what we're doing down [Music] here well speaking of witnessing us welcome to the friend per second podcast it's episode 53 believe it or not we're here we're back from Gamescom and we're joined by Jordan Midler from VGC Jordan how are you I'm very well how are you Jake it's lovely to see you I'm so good I'm so happy that you're here you're like one of the people I've met where like as soon as I met you I was like locked in I was like this guy I'm about this guy it felt like at sgf every single thing I did you were there and we just caught each other like from across the room and always just made eyes and then it was like we're going in different directions but we know we're together here you know it's powerful you know those orbits are going bring back together it's beautiful love a good Bromance love to see it apologies to all of our RSS listeners uh we do have a Scott on the podcast but unfortunately we cannot provide you subtitles so you're going to have to be it uh maybe listen down at half speed you can like played at half speed it should be fine you know it's bold from an Australian of all people to be making claims like excuse me no one says that they can't understand what we're saying we say that all the [ __ ] time about you people okay it's a whole different ball game people okay you people that's right Scots absolutely we have plenty of administrator as well so we know don't worry we know yeah cuz we sent them off are we the you are like Scots and Irish right it's basically you're just the main export to Australia that's it of course we love drinking you know yeah sure absolutely well as a Jordy I'm your I'm your ally Jordan yeah but you've you've done the same thing that I have where we've uh like weakened our accents to such a point that we're actually broadcastable like yeah when we get a drink in us that's when the proper The Paisley boy and the the really broad Jordie accent that just appears from you the first time someone told me you were a Jordy I was like they must be talking about someone else cuz that can't possibly be game spots Lucy James yeah is Jordy mean that's north northern England right Northeast yeah Northeast okay so we're like one of the last major cities before Scotland so we're not too far from the border oh that's why you sound like that sometimes okay pretty much pretty much yeah yeah yeah yeah got it all right good uh with that let's just jump in uh the first big Sony Kills Concord headline is pretty crazy this happened today uh the lead recording this podcast right so couple of hours ago yeah Sony has announced that they are pulling the plug on Concord just 2 weeks after its launch uh so the game is officially going to be going offline September 6th refunds are going to be issued uh you will no longer have access to the game after the refund and this all of course follows the peak steam player count in the low hundreds and the game just kind of being the running you know gag for the last two weeks and uh This is Wild I didn't expect an announce like this so soon but it was an announcement I expected am I am I wrong in that assumption I thought it would be a couple months rather than a couple weeks the the thing is they had actually not posted any so I was writing this up on my new show this week and I noticed that they had not posted anything on their official coms since Monday of last week right yeah so at that point I was like huh all right I think we might be in the territory now where they're thinking about potentially shutting this down and issuing refunds because because you can't keep selling it if there's no one playing it because you can't get matches right and Sony obviously care about their brand you know like they they do right they they care and so they're going to be like well we can't sell people this thing if it's just going to become a laughing stock that you know keeps going better to bite the bullet and whatever so yeah it's definitely surprising to see this outcome and see where it's gone like how it's landed and the speed at which it's happened but I do think that given that we didn't actually hear anything from of them from Monday of last week I'm less surprised that this announcement has happened today so yeah I mean I'm you did a thing at Gamespot where it was like here you know two weeks is very very short what other games have hid have been closed down and that quickly radical Heights is the closest I think no I think radical Heights must last much longer Mortal Kombat Onslaught was a month and there was another one the the day before Crucible I believe was actually and then just never and it was a beta never came back and then yeah the only actual parallel is the day before which was just a straight up scam yeah like that was not a real game that was all just [ __ ] and lies the entire way through uh and that lost launched that lasted 4 days if I can recall correctly before they announced that closure um so this one was at least you know two is weeks but just an unbelievable result like it is I think at this point we could say like the biggest flop in AAA history you know what I mean like it just it wasn't eight years in development though there was a lot of reporting around like oh it's eight years it wasn't what did you Jordan did you because you guys clarified that didn't you so when I saw that I was very confused cuz PlayStation held a preview event for Concord at PlayStation studios in London and it seemed like they were really kind of um invested in it and that's how when I when I played it and did my preview it was kind of best possible environment to play it and I thought this might have a chance we were still kind of chatten in the way of this seems dead in the water but during that process they were like we've been doing this for firewalks been going on for six years and then we've been intimating the game for about that time so when the 8year stuff started getting thrown around it was somewhat confusing but it seemed to just develop into this stick with which to beat them with now it's just like hundred million doll budget eight years in development it was out for two weeks and now it's been cancelled um it's a very strange one when this when this happened about 90 seconds after the Tweet went up I got the following message Concord dead Concord Dead full refunds is if it was like uh a telegram coming over the wire like the war is over Germany surrenders unconditional it's like what do you mean Concord dead like surely surely I thought maybe meant oh it's going on PlayStation Plus like now and people are getting refunds if they bought it and but you can still play it the fact that it's just gone is unprecedented and um getting anyone to uh speak on that at the moment is obviously kind of impossible because imagine the mood and firewalk at the minute it must be complete sh shock yeah so I think there's a way to I think first of all like I think it'd be interesting to talk about like what is likely going to happen with Concord in the future and then also talk about like well well what is this how did we actually get here and like what what led to all this whatever else maybe we should do like the Forward Thinking stuff in a second um in I mean we all played Concord at different points uh what what do you guys think led to this situation where this game bomb because there's obviously so many different things but I mean what do you think was the main reason why this had such a catastrophic launch lack of Interest it just seemed to me like lack of Interest the only people I heard ever speak of it were hyper online Twitter people or or you know video game industry people and yeah I just I just I think it was just the look of it the appeal of it just didn't seem that interesting it it's not like a you know I don't know it's it's it's just like the approach to character designs or something like that you know people said it was like a Guardians of the Galaxy Light type of thing yeah I think it was just lack of excitement and appeal yeah it's it's a very it's a very ugly game to look at and also even if it was this beautiful game with wonderful characters at its best it's probably the seventh best live service like shooter that's going on at the minute so it was it would have had to been I I wrote this in the review on VGC it would have to have been of Titanfall 2 quality to even have a chance to Dethrone the biggest games in the world and add that to characters that no one could possibly get invested in and the fact that it was um a paid for product it just it sent out to die I think as an unfair kind of um label but Sony obviously knew what was going to happen um based on the fact that no marketing no pre-release review code I bet they're absolutely Furious that they put all that production money into that controller which is probably going to become a collector's piece at this it's a nice controller no no not just the controller please don't forget the secret level episode oh my God yes which secret level by the way if you don't anyone doesn't know it's an Amazon TV show where they basically make like you know vignettes Episode V exactly vignettes based upon video game properties they have one dedicated to Concord it is unclear if that will still be in that lineup which airs in December or if they will pull it all who knows I I don't know I see it still going in it it's no cuz it's given how expensive blur Studios is there's no way they're going to kill episode I I wouldn't say it's a whole episode though because these are just like short stories right so if this is just a short story you could cut it from one of the episodes if that's if that's the way that the episodes are structured though right exactly you know but like I just can't see how Sony would want to handle the embarrassment of having that go to air when they've decided that this game is not coming back like that's very Dam that's very damaging for a brand so I think Sony would just eat that and figure out a way to not have it air rather than suffer that so but I don't know we don't know obviously we're just guessing so because they have you know there the katos and um everyone like they have other representation in that that are that is with the more I don't know respected brands that they own but to Jordan to Jordan's point the big kind of elephant in the room when it comes to live services that no one is playing new stuff the if you look at the top 10 like I know this is the tweet that goes around every single time but the top 10 is always going to be games from five six years ago it's the fortnite it's the cards it's the Grand Theft Auto onlines it's DOTA it's you know do people even want new things anymore okay I I I disagree I actually disagree with that right so like I'm I'm looking now at 24-hour Peak for what's being played okay so first of all banana is number two just so you know still oh my God banana is number two me game uh secondly deadlock is the sixth most currently played game I will I will I will say hang on a new game from valve I feel like is a very different situation of course all right sure sure sure then we have once human which is like the ninth most played game at this point in time it's a completely brand new IP from a newish developer um I know the first descendant is somewhere in the mix here as well and that is also a brand new IP from Korean based developer um you know and that's that's just that's just that's just that right so I about on Console yeah I don't know I mean like I don't have console numbers obviously so I can't say but um I I guess I'm just kind of pushing back against this idea that it's not really possible to make new things that people want to play in the live server space I agree it's extremely looking I'm I've got Matt piscatella thing up right now and it's like the console one is all is all yeah like PlayStation is fortnite card GTA sure like like there's nothing new in either of those except for for weirdly on Xbox you've got the mafia Definitive Edition hell yeah come on love to see it love to see it but so look I I have yeah I've never look obviously it is very difficult to break into this space but I also believe that it is possible to do so if you have the right mix of you know business model and quality and idea and all that sort of stuff it's just I think with Concord what's so frustrating about it is that like it's so frustrating cuz like everyone [ __ ] told them this would happen like we told them this would happen everyone told them this would happen and it's like what were they expecting when they put this out do you know what I mean it seems so ridiculous that these companies would spend four to six years paying 150 people to develop a video game and then they would re reveal it at one point and then 3 months later launch it to market after two really quick betas like what are you doing at that point like obviously unless you've got [ __ ] lightning in a bottle there's no way that strategy is going to work there is a lot of promise to Concord I think in many aspects and if you had had the right development model that released this game three years ago into betas with a closed community and you built it up over the over time and you took feedback on board all that sort of [ __ ] you could have had a game that is now ready to go into 1.0 with a good sizable Community behind it reflecting all the feedback that players have been given etc etc Sony essentially tried to launch this live service game as they would a single player God of War or whatever right where just like no it has to just drop and it's like that's not how you do this deadlock has been playable since last year it's been playable like behind closed doors and you know like you weren't even allowed to talk about it but 100,000 people were playing it before valve even announced it right and they're now deep in the process of you know collecting feedback and whatever it's just like this whole thing just seems such a waste of resources and the way Sony are handling this live service stuff is so so dumb this is not how you can do this the risks are too great for you to launch a game like this in this way it's just strange to me that this is the one that they took the punt on because they cancelled the Last of Us multiplayer project and I saw a bit of that and that looked like something people would want to play Far More Than This so what possible um kind of equation was drawn up that it was like we have even if there's a 1% chance that Concord makes a bit of the money back it's worth just putting it out seeing what happens rather than killing it Stone dead um and I think we'll talk about it later but it's such a weird month and a bit for this to happen where there's this absolute failure that's kind of endemic of what Sony wants to do going forward and then there's something like Astro which is this absolute celebration of what people love about Sony and it's such a strange J ju toos I just think that first of all I think this horribly impacts games like marathon and games like fair fair game that's apparently a game that was was shown is J is it not Haven it's like Jade Raymond's thing or something Jade Raymond's new studio but was it Chris dring today said that he heard chat that it's that there's very positive internal Buzz about fair games and I was like is that I'm sorry I can't believe any of that [ __ ] anymore I don't I don't know if that was Chris dring I don't want to accidentally assign that to him I'm not saying he's lying I'm just say [ __ ] man no beef with CR Strang is an angel Sent From Heaven there no beef with Crush Str and but yeah I think that that Ralph made a great point it was Ching you could have known you could have known the moment that um they showed the Concord trailer and everyone was watching the the kind of cut scene and they're like oh is this like a new kind of single player thing maybe people hadn't heard of Concord as soon as they showed the game playay everyone's shoulders dropped it's like okay one of these but it's like there is a there is a there is a an opportunity for this game like for example Destiny Crucible it's pretty much dead right but there's a lot of people that really liked what that was doing you've got some fantastic fundamentals in this game that could have gone the distance had you build it up over the over time like if you'd got this feedback on the player on the character roster earlier and you were able to start adding some newer characters that really did sort of like you know get people interested and engaged and whatever else like there are just so many things and it's it's just it seems so crazy to me and I spoke about this on my new show this week but just like suicide squad these [ __ ] Executives were like n we got a billion dollar product on our hands baby let's go it's like no you don't who are you listening to redfall when Phil Spence is like oh our internal reviews are actually much more positive than this it's like where are you getting any of your internal feedback from to make these decisions because like everyone is telling you the exact same thing when the game actually gets out the door it's not like oh there's a really divided opinion it's like no everyone tells you this is not going to happen everyone it's just I don't understand how it gets to the point where these companies are spending this much money and taking this much risk when they're being so poorly advised like it really does absolutely blow my mind are they just taking a punt because they're like ah well you know this is this is the business like Hollywood they're like ah you make a picture and some of them work and some of them don't but you know I don't know like is that what they're doing because if that's the case like they're going to be ready to lose a boatload of money on so many projects just to try and get in their head space a little bit like you had said before like it's like it was like a god of war where it's like a game it drops you pay money for it so is it just like their thinking hasn't adjusted to this you know live service model that they actually want to pursue because yeah it's interesting like on the one hand it's like they are focusing on what they know they do well where it's like all right characters cinematic stuff story it's new IP they're investing in but that wasn't enough because of the rest of it or or the lack of it do you think do you think it's like instead of a it's like a sunk cost thing but then they saw hell divers and they were like well internal Buzz wasn't so great on hell divers either but then it came out and it was a massive success maybe the same thing will happen with Concord but like again it's like internal Buzz wasn't great that great on Hell divers why not how why not like why wasn't it great you know what I mean like again who are you listening to internally it's just I don't know man I I don't know what the solution is to it but I I do know that if you're going to move into these live serice spaces it cannot be this kind of like just drop it when it's done thing you need to embrace Early Access you need to embrace a model that develops your game with a community you know close beta test you can't protect the element of surprise in this it's not about the element of surprise it's about like getting it right over time and just like seeding an idea and building it out and just that yeah that this cannot continue in this in this current form like it's it's it's wild it's so strange because Sony has been the home of like multiple live service um smashes that weren't their own like rocket League when it launched was a PlayStation Plus guys launch was a Playstation Plus game like there is there's literal case studies here that they could have at least um moved on like that um that like quit game came out today in PlayStation Plus the fact that that Concord wasn't one of those was kind of astonishing to me it very arrogant move for them not to make it like the ps+ game as well like extremely arrogant because they were just thinking well we can get some we can get 40 bucks out of people it's like well no what what you're trying to do here really that is the perfect fit for a PS plus release the fact that you did it was very very like did it that way was was very silly so yeah I mean um totally totally wild what do you guys think this means for like Sony's overall live service push like so many canceled projects and misfires and whatever else outside of Hill divers 2 do you imagine that Sony where do you see them going after all this they got to be in really deep at this point right I don't know how do we know how many are actually in full production I remember thinking there was 12 at one point but now it's down to like five now it's down to like five or six do you have more specific numbers Jordan no the in terms of that a few years ago when they were like yeah were're working on like 15 of those obviously that was games that never actually came to the the bio but the stuff that I imagine Marathon makes it out in a much different form I I keep tweeting that it's never going to come out but that's that's mostly tongue and in in a much different form to what they probably imagine when they were stting to thinking it back that fair game whatever it is either doesn't come out or becomes this entirely different thing but I think there this has to be this is an argument winning moment in Sony there are people within Sony clearly that are like we cannot just do this because we're throwing away everything that kind of built us up a player base there's no point spending all this money on 10 failures for one potential win and even when we win with hell divers the community hates us six months later and it's a it's a hasht dead game like it's such a such a low success rate that I think that this will change the tide but I wouldn't be surprised if we have another massive failure out of this this like Sony play just as Jake said because there's so much money in it and I think it's age it's it's a deeply uncertain time and I bet you there's some conversations in Sony today being like God I hope ghost of sushima 2 hits big cuz we've got to get back on those as well I mean so looking at there so there's an IGN article from November last year which was Sony commits to launch just six of the 12 by 20 by March 26 uh one of those was last that's gone Concord fair games The Horizon multiplayer game from Guerilla a car action game from PlayStation's London Studio which I'm assuming is now that's no longer on the yeah and uh those are the ones that they've mentioned in that the Horizon one I bet since Herman host is at the wheel I bet the Horizon one full Ste ah head the budet yeah I really I would really just question I would question that one so much like I just I do not have faith in the Horizon IP no as one that is going to pull players in I like Horizon I do I like it way more than most people in fact but there is something about that IP that does not hit right for people and really getting them invested in it and excited about it as I've said multiple times it's kind of like Avatar like it makes money and right pretty it's pretty and popular as in like people talk about it when it releases but it feels like it's just ethereal it's like when you try and grab it it's just not there like that's how that IP feels in some weird way which is why I'm also not particularly hyul at the Lego game that's coming out I feel it's a bit weird that they're making that but whatever that's a l the story but um yeah that one I I I would want I really yeah I'm G to be interested to see how that goes I would say though that like this is a real this live service thing is a very existential challenge for Sony not in the sense that like oh they need to stop making live services and just focus on single player games because the reality is they actually need to have a few live services that they can Bank on right because this is what keeps these Publishers afloat especially now that Microsoft just bought up everything and has a boatload of these massive live services that just print money you know like the whole game has changed now and you know Ubisoft for example would have been out of business years ago if it weren't for like Rainbow 6 and the fact that you know they've essentially turned their Assassin's Creed games into live Services right you need to have successful live Services if you're going to operate at scale as a large publisher and they need to find some of that success if they're going to be sustainable in the future you you the way that games are made these days their budgets how long they take you can't just build a publisher on Sony scale with you know single player games as unfortunate as that is and so I don't know what they do to try and turn this around well that leads to the what is the future of Concord uh you know they are pulling the plug on it they're scaling back they didn't announce what the path is forward they didn't do anything like that they were just like ah bye-bye we'll see you later maybe the the blog post is very tur I would say when you read it it's how long do you think they got notice that this was happening like how long between decision made and this being announced no no no I I reckon the conversation was happening even before the game launched they looked at pre-orders and they were like fuckle up totally yeah agree agree yeah so do you guys think it'll come back because there's there's two paths here there's there's a path where it just doesn't they just you know they they retool it as a free to playay game yeah uh and they relaunch it at some point in the future and then the other path is that they say after careful consideration we decided that we cannot continue forward with conc thank you everyone foring can that happen like I don't know how this stuff works but can that happen with how much money they have invested absolutely for sure that's exactly what they did with Crucible I mean that's what they' did with Anthem but obviously Anthem still sold a boatload but they still called it in um yeah they can absolutely do that and they just they just and hyenas is another example Sega hyenas where they that is the most expensive game they ever developed as a publisher and they choose to they chose to can that rather than release it because they thought the ongoing costs of um of maintaining it as a live service would not be would not be worth it so yeah I think it's I think I think it's very unlikely that it comes back even in a free-to-play guys because how are you supposed to message we didn't think this was good enough for you to actually play with uh to pay for so we're just going to um throw out the core problems with Concord the characters the whole kind of story The am of money that is required to fix quote unquote fix that stuff way more than Sony could possibly want to to put into this thing for what is a one in a billion chance and I think the the the most you'll get is like a Concord classic where is effectively untouched and they just put it up but I don't think there's going to be like a a Concord next or Concord 2.0 where this is somehow um Salvage because the problems with it are like endemic to the game they're not a quick fix yeah yeah I I agree I mean I you know I spent a fair amount of time playing it in those betas and the this is not just like oh you know flick a switch make it free to play and go like first of all that switch to build that switch is a lot you know it's like you need to rebuild the game's monetization and progression models and all that sort of stuff that's a huge undertaking but fundamentally there are there are big problems with this game like it's crew system for example and it's it's variant system for its characters it's so baffling bad like what what is this you know so to redo that is a lot you need a whole new suite of maps uh because the ones that they've got now are functional but just kind of uninteresting we've obviously spoken a lot about characters you know to get this really competitive you need to spend a lot of money on it and uh and I think that was something else that I I noticed I I felt the same way with Anthem right which is that like oh anthem's like everyone's like oh Anthem just you know it's got so much potential it's it's just just keep it alive it's you know it's really just got a few bugs and add some content it's fine there were some very core problems with Anthem in relation to how that game actually played and fixing them would have been a huge undertaking and I knew from the beginning that like Bowe just wouldn't have EA wouldn't have the appetite for the investment required to properly fix that game and actually get it ready to compete over the long term and I think it's exactly the same here so uh I don't I don't think it'll be making a return so yeah it's a real shame can any of you guys name your favorite Concord character rest in peace oneoff or TA or Z or do or you just make it up names you just make it up Nam all all of these are correct all of these are correct what's the what's the Star-Lord guy like Neco necron something like he's called oh who could possibly say um Johnny Concord that's that's him he's the leader of the Concord crew um yeah the I bet there's people um that were working on that blur vignette about Concord that when that character popped up in the trailer they were like who who is he what is he from I know that's katos guy I know that's God of War fell but who is Jonathan Jonathan concordian over here Jonathan Concord is perfect what what do you guys uh what do you guys think this means for uh it's almost like the LeBron question what does this mean for Jim Ryan's Legacy he got he does give a [ __ ] he doesn't give a [ __ ] man he's like I [ __ ] retired baby I got out while I was good but seriously what do you guys think I I think that no one is and no one outside of nerds like us will connect those dots that it's like Jim probably Jim was at Sony for a long time he was he was through the Peaks and the troughs he probably saw the next two years and thought no thank you um M much like another top exec a platform holder that will probably be departing soon like there's got to be a time where you go I am going now um because sure they'll probably they'll get a win who is this come on we're talking about we're talking about full Spencer AR we yes yeah right sure fair enough that is almost certainly happen that's this isn't breaking news this is people with eyes but um the Jim probably Jim good friend probably saw that in the next two years they'll probably get a couple of big wins they'll get a couple of big single player oh it's 95 Metacritic amazing sells like 4 million copies and then they'll have all these bombs and all this money pit and he can just go see you later I'll take my 30 anniversary PS5 with me in my gy Ryan cookies shut down PlayStation London Studios see you later that's it yeah and just at home playing FIFA on his [Laughter] Xbox Xbox Gaming's second most famous Jordy behind Lucy James true you know you know my he was in like some magazine that my dad had was reading up in up in Newcastle and he sent me a picture and he went do you know him not personally oh Jim yeah interesting to contrast the the the tenures of Phil Spencer and Jim Ryan who you know it just it's it just it doesn't seem like it's been a great era for Xbox and Sony I mean Xbox obviously has now you know obviously it's got Activision Blizzard now it makes more money but by virtue of the fact that it now owns more things but that's what you can do when you have a lot of capital you can deploy it to buy things that make money and so that's kind of been their business model but it's also been joined like that that Legacy has transpired at the same time where their console business has all bit effectively died that's harsh but it's essentially true at this point you know and that's a very sad Legacy to have to face into and then obviously on you know the Sony side you've got this huge push into live services that has resulted in nothing just a total total just other than hell divers 2 just complete loss and Mis fire across the board and so and then you you contrast all of both of that with like Nintendo who you know they were just like you know what we're just going to have this little handheld calculator thing that [ __ ] struggle to run snake but we're going to just make really cool games and we're going to keep doing that and we're going to sell 150 million units and we're just going to crush it that's it I don't know that's as much as it is important to have live Services as a big publisher in the modern era I think Nintendo is like the ception to that rule where it's just like no we're just going to keep doing our own thing and it works but the thing is is and what I think Nintendo has been incredibly consistent in being is their whole thing is to to bring joy right that's the core guiding principle and it feels like that is ultimately the Forefront of everything that they do and you can definitely see over over the years like PlayStation and Xbox have just definitely felt just like more slaves to the money and that's you know they run multibillion businesses I'm not in any way naive that that's not the case and that doesn't drive things for Nintendo too but it's just like you don't see Nintendo hopping on trends like Microsoft and Sony do you you know like Nintendo feel more self assured in the way that they operate in the way that they green light projects and even like that you know all the rumors that all these projects are done and they're just holding them they're just holding them they they they're dancing to their own song basically and everyone else is I don't know just of course just flailing about I mean I think part of that we obviously hear about that kind of long-term tenure that takes place at these companies like in in Japanese companies and the fact that they hold on to their people and they you know build them up over time and all that sort of stuff and and they have much more long-term outlooks on what in terms of what they're aiming at and that affects their decision- making whereas obviously you know shareholder Le Western based corporations you know rapid turnover of their Executives really focused on meeting their coord earnings yeah has resulted in lots of very very bad decisions that just seem quite ruinous I I mean we this is a thing right we're like who cares if Suicide Squad fails it's like well okay sure like it doesn't really matter if Suicide Squad fails to us but in a way but the same time it's like well Rocksteady could have made something else we could have been playing something cool there's a whole bunch of developers who are losing their jobs this week at Rocksteady because of this sort of [ __ ] you know what I mean like there are real flow and impacts in terms of like the opportunity cost it's a bad way to frame it cuz it sounds really like busy but opportunity cost to us as players where we could have been playing better games than we got or opportunity cost for employers who could have been working on stuff that they liked more and that would have serviced their CVS better in the long term because they'd be really proud of it and it would serve as a real like Mark of Honor for them rather than this kind of like oh that's disappointing I worked on that it didn't work out right so it is a bummer that so much capital is being deployed towards these like very disappointing projects and they seem to be so mishandled along the way um yeah I don't know I wonder if we'll look back on this this era as a kind of lost era on the triaa space where like so many misfires so much so much um you know so much wasted I don't know there's been lots of great things by the way don't get me wrong I'm not all to mlom but like there's been a lot that's been wasted as well which but almost like a growing pains period where some of the industry has absolutely exploded like mobile the games Lucy referen like fortnite Grand Theft Auto online and then the other guys essentially my or like a lot of our bread and butter is figuring out how they fit into that next step of gaming yeah absolutely H well Astro Bot Discussion it's interesting talking about Sony and Concord while this same week reviews dropped for astrobot uh I'm smiling already because uh I think it's a great game I think it it looks like you guys would all agree with me yes cont you're like the goat now right didn't you like Platinum it or whatever what's your freak we got um we got review code for this at 9:00 a.m. on Friday and at 10:00 p.m. on Saturday I had platinumed the game having done nothing but play it I think Astro is genuinely the best 3D platformer since Super Mario Galaxy and it's not it's that's not see once you play through it and you play it all not a controversial statement in the least there was a moment where I was like okay this is like on Odyssey level now and then once you do everything you get all of the Bots you do the final levels you you see some of the secrets that they've actually hidden unlike a lot of the great stuff that they're showing in advertisements for whatever reason um I was like this is a transformative kind of you're sitting on your parents floor cross-legged looking up at the TV like moment in gaming and I just think it's a bit magical um yeah it's weird cuz I don't talking about this game is difficult because the best parts are the parts where you text other people and you go oh my God this is in it this is in it oh my God they've done this they've done this homage to this PlayStation game they've done this um they've done this Cameo where you're like I'm not sure how the business worked around getting this and you're not even really a PlayStation character no one would associate you with PlayStation first and foremost but whatever it's cool and then um behind that is a rock solid platformer that doesn't need all the PlayStation stuff this is a five out of five without any of the PlayStation no Nostalgia needed it's just good shoves it over the top it's unbelievable yeah I yeah I agree the first boss by the first boss I was like that's a I like looked at my dog I was like that's a [ __ ] video game right there like it just felt so smooth fun to play compelling engaging yeah also just full of life and happiness you know and it it made me remember what Joy is yeah exactly that see when when you spend a career playing like AAA slop and that's what a lot of this stuff is cuz VGC typically just reviews the biggest games because we've only got a couple people so we've got to keep on top of that stuff I've reviewed so much crap where you you get to the end of it and you're like fine whatever but when you when you finish this you're just like there was almost an empty feeling after I platinumed it cuz it was like I am so desperate for more of this I would play triple the length of this game again just to feel that dun of like pure Seton in that was just over and over and over again and I think that um obviously people have evangelized about ast's playroom since the PS5 came out and there was always that worry of like can they stretch it and they don't just stretch it they add so many new mechanics that are sometimes only in one level and then they go no it's fine we don't want you to get bored of that so let's never let you use it ever again move on to another one move on to another one yeah it's so ridiculously inventive and uses the je sense so well it genuinely makes me think like what are other people doing if games can be made like this what there are 65 people that work at teamobi 65 the end credits of Star Wars Outlaws go on for four [ __ ] years cuz every human being that's ever been born worked on that game it is it's crazy yeah I agree I mean I think to me it kind of joins that Pantheon of like Mario Wonder last year which you play that and I I'm not I'm actually not that big a Mario guy like I love I like it of course but I've never been that guy that's all about about it but you play Mario wonder and you're just like Jesus Christ what the [ __ ] man it's just where did this all come from you know the only time i' or the most recent time I'd felt like that before that was actually for it takes two and I think these games all have very similar DNA in the sense that they are so relentless in how much they sort of like pick up adopt and discard gameplay ideas in a way that feels almost like wasteful it's like you could do so much more with this one idea that you've arrived that but you don't you just use it once because you've got so many other ideas that you need to move on to and it's just that is crazy to me how Relentless um that Innovation is and you know you do see it obviously in you Mario Galaxy and and what and and um Sunshine like your classic Mario games for sure outside of that and like PS2 Platformers back in the day had a little bit of that but nowhere near as much but it just seems this generation of AAA Platformers you know I think those three in particular really stand out for how it's almost like I wonder if it's something to do with just our brains and how how short attention spans are these days and we just move on to I don't know like is it is it because that's what they think we want or is it because they just have so many ideas now because very few of these games get made and they're like well if we're going to make one of these games we get a chance to do it then we can combine like 10 games worth of ideas into one game cuz this is the only shot we're going to get you know what I mean um yeah it's just it's a very very very special game it's absolutely a game of the year Contender no question uh I mean I yeah I would not be very I would not be at all surprised if this is on many people's top like Game of the Year pick lists yeah you you you will have to drag it off the top spot of VC's list over my cold dead body like and that and I'm this is coming from a perspective where all year we've been like it's belatal it's not even close it's belatal but this was the this is the the bilateral killer which they'll put on the box um just to your point there Ralph at teamobi their entire philosophy is we do these like every two we meetings where people can pitch like tiny levels or mechanics and we can make them so quickly then we we we draw them out and we just even if it's that or if it's just gray boxed it's such quick iterative processes that that's why the game feels so varied and there's like there'll be an enemy that just pops up for one level and Andy my boss was at team of soie and a lot of the time that's just one person on this team of 65 that was like i' I've been messing about with this like sumo guy and like he he's like made of jelly so when he does the Sumo stuff that dude yeah and then they're like okay two weeks later it's implemented in the game we'll polish it up that's it done move on whereas can you imagine how long it takes to make an enemy in like a tripol big budget game that's three three and a half years to get the hair right like it's just but do you know that what you that story you told is exactly the same story that was taking place at Nintendo when they were when they were doing Mario wonder they had exactly the same thing where people could pitch ideas from across the team and then they would just spin them up and Implement them and so it's so funny that both of those games have that thing I don't know what it was like over at it um at um what's it takes 2 Studio what are they call Haz escapes me hazelight I don't know what it's like over at hazelight um I wonder it'd be great to put that question to them were you guys doing the same [ __ ] were you just having crazy meetings where you're like pitching nuts IDE is and just seeing how much you can make them work I don't know yeah who came up with when you murder that stuffed animal one idea I was going to say never forget it does Astro have an elephant moment no I think I think actually like Ralph you said something about like our attention spans are are ruined and yeah genuinely I think part of the reason that I'm loving Astros so much and I loved playroom don't get me wrong it's like it's it's like every 10 seconds there is something that is just delightful or there is every single time I because you know there's so many hidden things in there every single time I go off the beaten path and explore even if there's not a bot there or a puzzle piece there I turn around and I notice that they put coins so you get rewarded even if it's not a big thing you still get rewarded on your way back and it's just the constant like feeling of you know when you go back to the crash site and first of all they even they even made the PlayStation 5 cute not that Behemoth thing they even made the PS5 cute but at the crash site you know you have that kind of Pikmin moment of oh well if I collect off Bots I can then lift this rock and then I'll get rewarded for something or then there's the gacha machine and you know it's all about if I've collected enough coins that I can pay for the gacha machine and then I get little little accessories for the little Bots that I've already collected and it's all just like it builds and builds and builds and on top of that is this layer of cuteness without being sacker and sweet it's like every single time those little Bots are waving at me or the way that they say thank you you know they're so cute and then on top of that there's the music and the the way that the levels just God the way that the levels are designed and just move around you as you explore through them and there's so much life in it like I genuinely am not kidding when I say like it just brought me so much joy that has been desperately missing from my life for yeah that's so it's so true I mean is there been another game like that this year that's kind of cuz Nintendo has any Platformers no one else really makes Platformers is there been another game that's just kind of like here's a game that's going to make you really happy I guess some parts of yakaza but then at the same time it'll balance it with like mad melodrama of course people getting murdered and [ __ ] like it's that's yeah that's a lot I there thank goodness you're here was yeah showing it to way yeah this was um my partner was sitting behind me like reading while I was watching this and she's like you're like bouncing like you're like sitting in the chair going like bouncing up and down with excitement when when certain are happening and when as Lucy says once you once you unlock the gash machine which is one of the first things you do if you're like attentive with getting the puzzle pieces um and you unlock the accessories initially the the characters would just stand there but when you get the accessory is often like a reference to that character or like a really niche in joke and this game gets ridiculously Niche like there's some big omissions that it's weird cuz as soon as you say that they're an Omission it's almost a spoiler bio Mission cuz you don't want people to like oh they're not here but there are some characters that you would put on a PlayStation Mount Rushmore who are not in this game whereas there are characters from like n y Roi games that are in this there are characters that people who have worked in games for 15 years have to Google so it's it's a it's just unbelievable it's very um Japan Centric like PlayStation Japan Studios obviously because teamobi is over there but um bloodborne on a PS5 here we go finally finally yeah when I saw that Hunter I was like oh my God I want I want like not a Funko Pop what do you call them the nendroid I want a nendroid of that Hunter it it's done a very good job for me I I loved playroom but I still in the back of my head like I looked at Astro I looked at the whole thing I like okay PlayStation advertisement this isn't a character I can really connect with but now after spending spending so much time in this game it's almost like Brute Force erase that from my brain where like I don't care if he is like a cynical corporate mascot like he's basically a PlayStation 5 Robot it it doesn't really matter anymore it's that moment to moment stuff it's the fact that the gamep play is always changing it's the it's the Good Vibes it's like the challenge where it makes sense it's the spectacle that's the other thing is like spectacle that's another thing I'm going to go into later on with Space Marine but it's essentially like just having stuff happen in front of you and you be like thrilled and Amazed by it be like I can't believe this is happening on screen this is so cool I'm running around that just went a really really long way with me totally very special game yeah finally um I just think that the Jo settings is a wonderful controller I think people who are Jo sense haters have like rocks in their brain hey it physically hurts me to use it for too long you should you should get a nice um je sense Edge it's got the it's got the little clicky buttons at the back they don't I know you genuinely well not with that battery life they did they did play yeah PlayStation so bad send me the astrobot controller and it is very very cute and honestly like astrobot might go a long way to helping me like the duel sense but I will never love it well that's that's where we um that's one of the million ways we differ but I just think that this is like the they use the ju sense so well that it retroactively makes me angry about other games who just don't [ __ ] bother with it like but like it's also hard because you know like with this sort of this is the kind of game where you could just invent stuff because you have a controller that can do this and you're like let's just add this thing right blow into the controller like if you had to blow into the controller while you were playing God of War Ragnarok you're like you're like ah it's kind of lame youan of course we do it like but like if you had you know what I mean but here in astrobot it's perfect and so I think the Dual sense controller yeah it does feel like oh man wouldn't it be cool if there were more games that could use its functionality but I think that's less of an indictment on Spider-Man not using it or whatever it's more of an indictment on there just should be more fun games like this you know what I mean there should be more like where's the kind of Mario party but made by Sony you know like where's all of that Playstation All Star Battle Royale 2 come on now okay all right let's green light that [ __ ] all right take that Concord money put it over there and then boom okay there's your on the phone we'll get that SED and one of the one of the saddest indictments of the roster of PlayStation Allstar Battle Royale three of the first party Sony games uh characters that are on that roster do not make it into astrobot so oh man God Rest them Rino well I think uh it's a fantastic game I'm sure we'll probably be talking about it or referencing it and different ways in weeks to come uh any final words with it my only final word is that I'd say yes I recommend playing it it's a lot of fun and I like like how crisis you know would make you want to like overclock your computer and melt it I like that astrobot is like we're going to try and break your [ __ ] $70 controller like let's just dual sense the hell out of it like when you use the laser cannon in Hell divers too and you're like this isn't definitely good for the health of the controller like astrobot is like that the whole time and I like it yeah yeah good game great magical magical should we talk to the people who made the game now it's funny you mention that because we are now going to speak with Team Mobi we actually have the studio director Nicholas ducet on uh we're very excited to have a chat with him sorry Jordan you're not going to be there you are erased from that but still it's a good chat so let's jump into that but first a word from our [Music] Raycon (ad) sponsors check this out what is that my camera is not autofocusing oh jeez but these are rayons godamn you camera my camera's letting me down but you know what won't let you down raycons yes that's right the sponsor of this podcast is raycons and uh they have new and improved uh everyday earbuds now uh multi-point connectivity uh more water resistance uh they're a little nicer they're a little more ergonomic and uh now they have these cool little carrying cases you can get you can actually like sorry not carrying case you can actually put like a little skin on the caring case for a little expression so this is this is the concrete variant oh okay I have like the bright yellow one cuz I always like leave these lying around my house and it just makes it easier to spot them so that's actually quite helpful um but no the newest the new feature that I like about the new rayons is that they actually have active noise cancelling which you know the last Model didn't big difference put it in just clean a sound um and yeah I'm a big fan of it so they always stay in my ear as well which is something I always say when we ever talking about Recons because other earbuds do not they've got a really nice design that works battery life is fantastic and yeah multipoint connectivity is a hand is quite handy because I can have it HED up to like my iPad and my phone at the same time and it's all good so yeah man they're a good solid product and rayon are always at a famously reasonable price they're like significantly cheaper than most other audio brands on the Market um so obviously check your local territory to see what the prices are you will find that they are very competitive um do we have a special discount code for viewers of the of the podcast for users special user discount we absolutely okay uh if you head over to by raycon.com friends you get 15% off with free shipping that's right you get 15% off plus free shipping on rayon's website when you go to by ron.com by ron.com sfriends thank you again to raycon for sponsoring this Interview With Team Asobi Studio Director Nicolas Doucet [Music] episode hey Nicholas okay so I we're getting you right as reviews have dropped for astrobot 94 on Metacritic that is absolutely incredible so the first question to start with is the obvious one first of all where were you when you found out like when reviews hit and how are you and the team feeling well thank you very much so um yeah it's it's amazing uh where were we um actually so I was at home at this very desk um and uh we connected online with a team some people were in the office some people were in their homes we knew the exact time you know the reviews would come in and that was amazing actually that very second suddenly like you know 57 reviews like came you know came in and we saw the numbers and we just like couldn't believe our eyes did you expect them to be that I was do you expect it to be that high because obviously a 94 Metacritic is huge like my Twitter feed all day has just been this outpouring of love like how does it make you in the team feel did you expect that kind of reaction so we had the we had a little survey in the team just for fun you know we and the survey wasn't like a personal op it was not a personal uh rating it was what we believe you know meta critic with might might might say and so it was interesting actually there were some people who give it 94 so there are winners um and uh generally it was it was it was qu High higher than it's been in the past for us but I don't think really genuinely like we expected okay it's going to kind of cement around 94 that's amazing that's like what was what was the lowest score someone someone guessed in that surve you really want to know yeah absolutely in the80s yeah yeah so it started you know the service started at 70 because you know we had to be like you know conservative but you know they were you know the the first rates you know the first scores were in the 80s so there were there was there there was confidence that we' made something good uh you know but then you know we didn't quite expect I think it's going to go up to that scale yeah and since that reviews have dropped you've obviously spoken to your team members now how have those conversations been like is it just everyone giving each other high fives and you know like the end of an 80s movie or something like what's going on yeah yeah so we have a big party you know right now it's my morning in in Japan time it's about noon almost noon and tonight we have uh it's Friday in Japan we have a party in um in the office uh which is going to be you know just yeah reminising and just like yeah high-fiving you know no end it's nice that's actually probably a good um segue because um be really interested just to know about like more about the studio because I mean you know some people know about you guys some some people don't um tell us how aobi came to be you know what is the story of this studio and and and what led to this moment so the there were kind of two phases and one of them so T Mobi is the name of the studio but in fact before that there was a Asobi team uh which was a team as part of another Studio you know back then you know Japan studio and that team was actually created in 2012 so a long time ago but it was a sort of R&D team um and at the time we were um looking for you know uh gameplay interactions around especially the PS4 controller and this PS4 you know the camera you know there was a camera and there was the ju 4 yeah yeah well that was posto and into the PS4 um and uh so that's where the you know asob team you came to be and then you know we kind of evolved throughout the PS4 life cycle and also we we made you know we switched to VR there was like a you know that's where Astro actually you know first you know appeared um but the studio really as a PlayStation Studio started in 2021 when we you know we created and then we kind of call it team subi um we started from scratch really as a new studio and at that time we had just finished Astros spay room and we were beginning to work on astrobot was it a lot of the same team who worked on Astros playroom going into astrobot and like how did that help you know obviously the team working together on one game and going into a more ambitious bigger sequel so yeah most of the team was there so Astros play room was about half so the studio today is uh North of 60 people 65 people and uh half of these people were already working on U on Astros playroom um so yes he helped a lot to have like that common ground and um you know um a a um yeah an engine that we had you know like we we could be you know build build a pwn um and then we added several people um so some Came From Within si uh actually you know they had experience working on the Last Guardian or games like Gravity Rush we have some people from the EP Escape team so it's funny because in yeah yeah so that's been very useful because you know some of the people who animate so you know we have a lot of cameos and Last Guardian is one of them for example and the guy who is actually animating Trio the the big Beast and the boy is the same guy who was animating those in a very different style back on the game right uh so um is actually your animation director um so that's really um it's uh it's it's been really great to to be gathering these people and then more people came from outside uh either from the game industry uh you know in Japan or from even the animation industry you know um working on movies like you know slam dunk I don't know if you guys have been kind of following this kind of um animation that was like a really really big movie for um uh in Japan and so this uh this kind of other pop culture influences have been able to kind of like help astrobot become like a fuller Fuller game I think yeah so how long were you working on astrobot like this version of AST this version yeah so pretty much as soon as we finished Astros playroom so when we made Astros playroom we had this um there were three goals to to to the project the first one was to be the you know the Showcase to the you know the DU sense and really exploit the controller to the best another goal which is something we added on top uh was to celebrate 25 years of you know PlayStation Hardware so we we had all the consoles that you could collect and stuff like that but the last goal it was like for us as a team we wanted to prove to ourselves that we could make a um a 3D platformer that could stand on its own feet without having to rely on VR because we came from the VR space and the rule set was different and there was some really um Innovative cards we could play but the moment we remove those cards um we would be back into a much more um of course a much wider space from an audience point of view but also a much more competitive space because there might not be many many plat 3D Platformers out there but they are the big calibers of this industry right um so for us it was about proving ourselves that we could do that and Asos playroom turned out to be like you know positive experience from you know the user the users um feedback were were very positive so then they gave us the the final nudge the conf confidence we needed to go you know and and spend three and a half years you know uh making astrobot it's amazing I mean so you're a team of about 60 people and you worked for three and a half years to make astrobot yes that seems really wild to us as people like industry commentators because we're always hearing all the time about how you know the the time it takes to make video games and these these massive budgets and ballooning timelines and what have you so what are you what's your thought on that sort of broader narrative that we're seeing and how have you been able to deliver a title of this caliber in such a short time with so few people like how did you do that nice really good really interesting um uh discussion and on top of that we had to build a studio you know uh and we had to so we rebuild our engine so the actually the um the rendering engine you know the V the visual side of it was also uh enhanced there's quite a big difference between how astrobot looks compared to what astop play could do um so and part of part of it comes from the type of games we make and part of it I think comes from the type of organization that we have so the type of games we make U because they're very modular games you know we're not tied for example to storyline uh which you know is U impossible to change you know there are some you know games where if you have a problem in you know section of the game and you you just you just can't chop it because if you chop it then the story doesn't make sense anymore right so you're kind of like you have a dependency to to and it could be to actors or something like that right um the fact it's a modular game means that right up to the end if we want we can swap level levels around we can even cut content we cut content only six months ago honestly like there was a level that just felt like a repeat he felt okay the level is finished almost you know it needs to be like you know bug free but I mean does it really add something to The Full Experience it's it feels like a repeat to the previous level and by being there it's not only a not a very interesting experience but it undermines the one the other one so sometimes it's better to just give one thing that is like you know um you know fully accomplished as opposed to kind of spreading thin and I think that that leads to the other thing is that we're not obsessed with maybe the size of the game you know um we we don't think that it has to be 40 hours of course I think there's a Temptation you know I mean we all like allers and I think there used to be like magazines and when you had like the scores in magazine I don't know about you guys uh but we had something like a lifetime lifetime how long is this game going to last right and that was rated in percentage you know it's like but but if you think about it I mean the the quality of a game I mean I'm thinking of games like me solid very short game when you actually speedrun that game is like three hours you know and amazing game Journey you know 90 minutes experience but you know like so um I think we have to really be um able to say it doesn't the length should not be a um a means to an end it should be the quality first and of course the more we can give the better I mean of course that's that goes without saying but it shouldn't be a case that we absolutely have to have 30 hours 40 hours because I think if we do that I think it drives to maybe like U yeah the the stuff you were talking about taking more time and perhaps yeah so I think uh the the the kind of game we make uh helps a lot and then the second part I was going to say is how we how we make it so we approach in um in two weeks bursts where every two weeks we um we we create prototypes and those prototypes are handed over to single people so one of the things that takes time with game development is when you bring lots of people together you know when you have to realize any piece of work that includes programming art animation sound and people work together that's when it takes time because you know it's it's just a nature of things right it's just like people have to mesh together right so the longer you can delay that um process of everything coming together the more you can get very very fast and Rapid progression so when we do gameplay prototyping we hand over to one single gameplay programmer an entire mechanic it could be a boss it could be an enemy it could be a PowerUp and the fact that they can control everything create their own uh temporary models create create their own temporary animations their own sound effects or they kind of you know grab them from you know whatever libraries but being able to move by yourself alone means that first U the speed the agility that you get of it is really great but the other thing is also the ownership and the ownership is kind of you know carries through the whole project and I think people are that much more invested and want to see that thing come through uh because they they've kind of owned it from the beginning so of course eventually in the project we have to bring everybody together but roughly speaking over three years we do one year of prototyping where people work kind of individually then they come together you know we mes it together and then the last year is is about the polishing and this two weeks process is really great because we come and we I'm sorry it's kind of a long explanation but it's no it's it's perfect it's amaz it's fantastic uh but the two weeks two weeks process is really great because we come together into the studio um and we play whatever was created in the two weeks in the morning and in the afternoon we really debrief about what we like what we didn't like to prepare the next two weeks and by doing that we ensure that you know three years is a long time and if you're for example your landscape artist you might be doing trees and vegetation for 3 years if we if we're not careful people might not even know what they're doing anymore you know they might you know they might be thinking okay I'm making trees but I'm not sure which level is going in but by keeping this kind of tight review Loop uh everybody gets to see you know what they're doing and and the context of the work they're doing um and I think that's really important because it goes back to this motivation and this kind of like um you know this energy that we have to maintain over a long time and in order to do that knowing why you get up in the morning no matter what you do on the on the game is really really important so I think there also something in the process that has worked out for us but that works for small teams I'm not sure how it scales up to 100 200 people but for now with 60 people it works well well yeah all right what's the deliberation process or or or idea process for coming up with worlds uh because you know you have some crazy worlds some worlds that reference other properties is it like an intense process are is it like we have to have a snow world we have to have a water world how do you guys approach that all right there's a little bit of that there are some kind of classic kind of you know platformer of you know Space Opera kind of planets that we want to represent um but also some of them are undefined and we drive from gam playay so we know we have a gameplay mechanic we know we have you know like interactions enemies and at that point the level as it exists is kind of gray boxed and it might be for example it might be a floating island but we're not too sure whether it's floating or lava sky or you know like you know Endless Ocean that can be designed later so that when he goes to the art team that's when we can look at the balance of the game we can say okay well lava we've done quite a bit of that so we should we should not do that again uh we should maybe move towards more something like Sky we're missing some Sky levels and at that point um and I was thinking about the the modularity at the beginning that's also like very modular because what's important is that that level moves and feels and plays well from a gameplay point of view whether you do that in sky above lava it does change the the tension of the game a little bit but fundamentally it's the same game play that you experience so having that flexibility where not everything is designed and decided from the beginning is also quite a quite a good way to go so that's for most of the levels but for the hero levels of course that's much more um you know designed in a sense that you know when we do um is it okay to spoil some of the I think it's okay to spoil the levels but maybe not not the specific mechanics with the perhaps I think that's the secret yeah let's do that so we've seen like the kattos level for example the god of four level and that that one definitely we know that you know we want it to be snow and we want it to have like you know landmarks which are you know like references to to the game so those ones are much more kind of like a crafted I think I have a weird question so one time I saw an interview from a guy called Steven totillo and he was speaking to someone who had previously worked with Nintendo and you know totillo asked this guy like what's what's it like doing that like what's it work like work with Nintendo and he says well it was like seeing a color that didn't exist or that you didn't know existed right it was there was like something that is in something that just bubbles up and through that you never even could have expected and I bring this up purely because like as I was playing this game I kind of felt that thing like I just felt like you guys had found some way to create a Feeling that is so difficult to create uh and I wondered how you would describe that feeling from your perspective because the word Joy gets thrown around a lot like it's joyful and of course it is but how would you describe the magic of astrobot like what was the the north star that you were aiming to aiming for when you were thinking about what you wanted players to feel when they were playing this game that's really interesting so um as you we like explaining I was kind of thinking okay what what what is it caused by and I think the fact that we put on everybody's personal ideas has something to do with that um I mean by that that you know not one person can hold all the gameplay ideas all the best gags and everything especially the humor in the game because since you're talking about playfulness and when we do those reviews every two weeks um the end of the review is always animation and and special effects and for me that's the popcorn moment because you know up to that point we're talking about gameplay mechanics and we have to be very Vigilant we we really kind of gauging reactivity gameplay then we look at levels are they too long are they too short as a real study there when it comes to animation and special effects there's there are no problems it's just pure enjoyment and the reason for that is because the people that are able to you know perform their art in that space are really free to to bring their own um humor not everything get storyboarded I mean to some point the these animations get you know we have a general idea of of what we want them to do for example like a cameo joke has to be linked to that game but the very small detail that go into the animation and the sound effects these ones get added by the people doing the work right and I think it's the total of all these things um that actually makes that invisible color come come come to light I think um it's not something you can really program is saw something and you have to let the organic process take form and that's when comes down to something it's a little bit pH philosophical but I think that's when chemistry also comes in it's a little bit like in a good couple sometime you can't quite explain but you feel good next to somebody right there is something that just works and I think when you assemble people that just click together and it works uh there are moments like that and I found that in a review especially around the visual side of things that I was just thinking I was not imagining that far but these people would kind of trans understand what we had talked about and that's because you know they they they could they could see something that you know thanks to their speciality they could see something that maybe others people couldn't right and I think it's the total of all these specialities coming together that creates the feeling you're talking about I would I would suspect I don't know if I'm making any sense maybe it's a no no I mean it's it's exactly it's fantastic and it's incredible to hear that perspective and yeah given what you and your team have created like it's um it's yeah it's really amazing to hear what goes through your mind and what your team's mind as you're as you're doing this so um yeah speaking about you know platformer as a genre like they're so special and you know obviously seen the reaction to astrobot and feel like a lot of Gamers hold characters like crash and Spyro and Mario so close to their hearts why do you think there maybe aren't more of these types of games so I think uh you know um I think these games you know there might not be so many of them but they're really really like very iconic uh you know like um games and I think it's also like Trend generally you know changes you know it's it's it's it's normal that within the generation you know that there are some Evolutions I remember like in uh in my early days in games like um racing games arcade races it's just all the time it's just all the time all the time and then today actually they almost disappeared however you know racing is still fun if done a certain way it's just happens to we happen to be maybe a bit you in a kind of simulation moment now but I think you know this kind of you know fun arade races will probably come back in a different form and I think with the platform it's the same kind of thing uh I think seeing the people's reaction you know maybe they older the the media you know clearly there was a they were craving for for for something of that sort and it's an enjoyable uh type of game I think also something that we take very much at heart it's the both the privilege but also the responsibility to put a game in the hands of of kids for the first time there are going to be some kids out there for which for whom Astro is going to be that that their first game right and I remember playing my first amazing game you know the and and these are kind of memories you take with you for the rest of your life and so I think for them and when we test Astro with the the kids you know or we hear like parents telling us oh I played Astro play room and it was my my my son or my daughter's first Platinum we get a lot of that really a lot of that like the people who bought the PS5 for themselves but then they need up playing Astro with their with their kids you know as an extension and they have so much fun so I think the the the fact there aren't any Platformers or many Platformers around isn't a it's just it's just um it's it's not pro that actually they're not enjoyable because they are you know we have those facts it's just perhaps that we went through that Trend where they kind of went away and I think a lot of people who used to make them kind of evolved with the audience so they kind of gain maturity maybe the people who used to make the know the on the PS1 PS2 era the astrobot uh light games are now making more realistic games so it's up to us as a new team to come in and fill that Gap and that's how we uh you know that's also why we put team asab together you know very much to be that kind of all ages uh playful uh Studio within the PlayStation uh portfolio I was curious about the technology of this because it runs flawlessly it looks incredible and it seems like sometimes you're just flexing right like we know there the times when you have the all the little particles like little little objects and there's and you just dump a bunch of them and you can kind of like spin astrobot around it and they D everywhere right it feels like at this point you guys were just showing off right so my question is was it actually due to the nature of the game like not that difficult to get it running this well or was it like no actually we move mountains to make this game look and run as well as we as it as it does I'm glad you you bring it up so um actually that feature is funny you said like lots of objects that feature we call it many objects you know it was like nickname you know and that was decided early on that we would um spend some time to optimize um you know physics subjects in large numbers so that we could have a lot of these moments so we did spend some some time and it doesn't come for free uh certainly not but um but the reason we're doing this a lot as well is because we really want the game to feel like a toy and especially with the heptic feedback you have from the controller it really works together really nicely I mean physics are in they're always fun right they're not fun when they take over your controls but they're really fun when you can manipulate them and still have that that very kind of precise experience right um and that was all Focus so that's why when you go in the water the leaves kind of you know like move away from you but when you spin they kind of fly with the right gravity and stuff and and for kids I was talking about kids you know a little while ago but um it becomes and not just kids to be for anybody it becomes a fun play Loop where is you think you were just going to interact with with them for three five seconds you know but five minutes later you're still there kind of doing spinning and stuff like that yeah and that's something that we really uh care a lot about because it's um it's you know the game and the objectiv is one thing you know like clearing the obstacles and getting to the goal is one thing that's one way to look at the game but the other way to look at the game is at the sandbox and you know it's not new but it's true that maybe in recent times there's less and less of them um so it's nice to be able to kind of bring that that Dimension back into into the game in terms of working with Sony's IP what was that experience like I mean were there was there so much that you couldn't fit it into the game was there like how was that prioritization process in terms of choosing what you would and and wouldn't go with yeah so we made a big list uh we made a big list and you know like um when you're going to have like so we knew we have about 150 slots um so you know you're going to have your Blockbusters that are you know like current Blockbusters so you're going to have the cratos and aloy and Jin Sakai okay those ones are like you know that's that's a given and then there going to be like the the Blockbusters that perhaps you know may not be active like right now but maybe had a game recently or maybe like a couple of generations ago so it could be like from Jack and Daxter all the way to Enchanted or something like that and and these ones are you know obviously like you know really big ones and then it goes into the the dark stuff that's the fun part it's like okay deep Cuts you know like you go into like the likes of legend of dragon or you know PS1 kind of cuts or even stuff that was never released outside of Japan or Never released outside of North America or Never released outside of what used to be pal territory so you guys and Europe right yeah yeah so you know you guys would get the io and SAR I imagine back in yeah yeah yeah but that stuff was almost yeah yeah right because it was part of umce at the time but America and Europe and Japan would almost get n of it right so um these references we kind of localized but I think it was quite fun to be able to to to mix it up so that actually we we get to introduce you know um you know certain IPS to certain places so for example like in in in the case of Japan we have Toro and Kuro they the two white and black cat from the pocket station and uh we also have like a chef from my cooking it was like a PS1 game on um using the dual shock controller and that's amazing game from the history that never never left Japan you know strangely um so that was really fun and then the last category was like the third party and if you asked me the question like two years ago you know how many how many of them are we going to be able to to get I would have said or maybe half of the ones we're wishing for will will make it to the to to the game but in the end it wasn't that it was almost 100% um the amount of just support and love um that we got from the the the PlayStation Partners um you know I think they understood instantly like you know okay we're doing a 30-year celebration of course you've got to have from all the way from R racer all the way to I don't want to spoil but yeah sure sure could you could you spoil a little bit like what was a big inclusion for the team that had the whole team like oh we're putting this in the game what had you guys really jazzed well it depends everybody has a different one and uh I can speak for myself so uh there's so many but um uh you guys are more like Capcom or Sega oh wait if it if it's the C there was a Capcom one that was my favorite that I made of yeah from PS2 era I think I know which one you're talking about is it is it an animal is it an animal an animal from the PS2 yeah yeah yeah so he's he's you know he's he's a God as well right yes yeah and uh yeah so yeah yeah so so and that was that was great because um um yeah uh this ones are really really great so in in in my um in my case you remember the game um glues and ghost yeah definitely yeah of course yeah I mean very famous there was an amazing PSP version um uh for that game and only ever came on PSP I was thinking ah that game is not really the PlayStation history but when you think about it that PS3 version was amazing and then they did a recent one on PS4 as well like kind of like re invention so we spoke with K and they like yeah yeah sure you know but it has to be then it has to be the design of that that Arthur so we've got Arthur in there with the ghouls and everything and a javelin and the pants everything cool I love it that's super cool all right so with that you did mention earlier uh that you had done some changes and maybe cut some things so is there stuff on The Cutting Room floor you guys have a big idea process are there ideas that you're looking at for maybe DLC or another game in the near future you're already inspired what's next so I think with every game that we make we always have a bag at the end uh full of things that didn't make the cut for various reasons it could be that uh lack of time lack of space maybe you know it wasn't quite finalized enough um so it's hard to tell impossible to tell today where these things will be reused but what I can say is that um so in astrobot there is a at the end of every Galaxy that you clear you get to repair parts of your mother ship and these repair uh sections are in first person and you kind of like use the controller to like you know do some DIY kind of stuff to repair the mhip almost all of these interactions actually were were prototyped originally uh before Astros playroom but in Astros playroom we had no room it didn't make sense to bring some kind of DIY it was a different story we were trying to to to explain the inside of a PS5 so we had those in our bag for that long and then of course we refactored them and we Revisited them because our knowledge of dual sense has evolved quality since um since those days but it goes to show that actually um when when you work on games like that that are really gameplay Centric um individual ideas like that can really go dormant for a long time before they kind of become uh useful again so I think there's a lot of stuff which is why it's very important that we we don't forget or um or um or backlog and uh or archive of any idea that has hasn't made a cut because they might be a game later down the line that way perfectly makes sense awesome do you think uh are you guys still hooked on Astro are you already working on a sequel or do you have a different idea for the future so right now we're just like taking a holiday but also like working on the DLC that's going to come later this year that's going to have some uh some speed runs and you know more more like the tough challenges and um but you know um I mean you know getting a character of the ground is really really difficult um if you think about any IP right so and we have a lot you know the Astro IP is also very flexible so I think you know we'll we'll have more we'll continue kind of thinking about um game ideas it have to be something fresh that's also very important for us we don't want to be um just like you know doing the same thing 1.5 so um you know time tell yeah cool so there is DLC is have you had you guys announced that DLC already that that was on the way we we've uh We've mentioned it uh we talked about it through interviews like this but we've not announced the actual content itself yet okay okay but you say it's going to be focused on speedrunning activities like more like the the skill skillful play the sweaty stuff all right well Nicholas with that thank you fascinating insights congrats again to you and the team hope you enjoy your party tonight and uh looking forward to chatting again soon well thank you so much for having me that was really nice you guys are really really nice bunch and I look forward to listening to the the final piece thanks thank you thank you User Question [Music] and we're back with uh our first user question so there's actually two ways to submit user questions now believe it or not the first of course is contact frienders second.com that is the email you can send questions too but also we have a substack that's that thing that people do to read um the substack is Friends per second. substack there kind of gets you caught up on games we mentioned throughout the show that maybe you missed or a reference or something like that we have links for you so check that out and you can submit questions this question is from midgame who says afternoon evening or morning guys love the podcast everything you do individually you know the drill honestly the most stacked awesome gaming podcast in the world thank you I'm not good at reading compliments but that is very cool thank you Jordan that wasn't for you ignore that um so uh mid game continues what would you guys say is the best pallet cleanser game that you could recommend so to expand on this I imagine Ralph can relate to this but recently I felt this weird gaming void upon the conclusion of Destiny 2 the game consumed so much of my time not just for playing but as a social outlet too I don't want to throw myself at another live service I I think I've had my fill of that for now since July I've been playing all sorts chance of sonar Dark Souls 3 ooo and I'll soon be priming up something else I think try thank goodness you're here on Lucy's recommendation but I wanted to know what else you guys might suggest for a palet cleanser again uh not necessarily new anything across time anyway I hope to hear this question on the Pod and get that giddy they picked me feeling also in parenthesis uh you can say outer Wilds of course sure absolutely of course not really a pallet cleanser though outer Wilds let's be real I have seen a bunch of people say this weekend that they've picked up outs of Wilds oh just out of the blue really how how weird okay just yeah it's out of wild summer wait brat summer is officially summer is over wild summer has begun so that's it well I I declare astrobot Autumn yeah that's accurate that's fair I mean that's probably a good example like I don't know astrobot is such a great we just talked about it so much but I can't imagine a better pallet cleanser than astrobot if you've got a PS5 like it's just it is just joy for all the reasons that we won't rehash now but yeah I mean that would be absolutely perfect like it just yeah if you got to be as fine man make sure you get as people get caught in the weeds too I think some people don't realize like especially like seeing comments and stuff some people will comment and be like why would I play this game it's like for kids it's like a baby game I think some people lose that feeling after a while where you're so caught up chasing the next AAA thing or you're grinding in [ __ ] Rainbow Six siege for like two years that when you come out of that hole you're not even think like those games fell off your radar so I I do think yeah something like an astrobot really really good pallet cleanser for me it's always just um replaying something old for me a pallet cleanser is really just any dumb PS3 360 era bombastic action adventure silliness so like I don't know binary domain or enslaved Odyssey to the West they're things that you can download on Game Pass or whatever you know complete in a reasonable amount of time and then move on you guys you guys you want to see what I got hang on go on go on show us better be something good it's better [ __ ] looks like it's pretty special is is this the [ __ ] candle for Beauty and the Beast what is this sorry how sick is that it's like a real one made out of brass oh my God I thought it was some thing you got sent from some game you're like it's from lies of PE or something and I'm like you really it's just it's really just a candle over here yeah I went to I went to an antique store I it it's ni oh I I've got something similar I have the [ __ ] statue that blizzard sent me for the World of Warcraft within um this is how good that is um it it falls apart if you even [ __ ] look at it excellent thanks I got this one wait I got this one I can show I got physical batro we go I also got phys yeah I gave Lucy the other one oh wow that's nice mesar looks good actually very it was extraordinarily overpriced and stupid [ __ ] you band ey but I couldn't help myself so I bought it and it's very nice I just raced to the website the focus website for The Space Marine collector's edition statute oh did you they're sold out they're sold out but I was like playing the game I was like I need this I [ __ ] love it I'm dude I am so all it I got to save it for the podcast all right all right all right all right we'll do it we'll do it well I reckon we should just we should just include this in the podcast anyway I think this is fine so I reckon we're back are we back we're back we back I think we should we should bring we should bring it back from there I think it's fine showing off our Collectibles and our candlesticks I think it's to say wait I've got peans beans not quite beans not quite peas God I want one of those so bad well it's a um it's a non-alcoholic beer from pack so I don't I don't know it's not actual peans could have nothing in it and I would love it get that IPA out of here non-alcoholic IPA that's gross anyway before before my vet called uh yes that's $700 down the drain there by the way fantastic uh what were we talking about pal cleansers cers yes um power wash Sim hell yeah oh that's a good one especially if you are coming off Destiny and if you have a group of friends that you play Destiny with you can do the big power wash things as like a chat room game like you're just washing but you're having a having a chat it is just on Jak recommendation in the same vein Metal Gear Rising Revengeance a wonderful game any time of the year to go back now we're talking um currently on sale um I don't get paid by Konami interestingly there is six times as many people currently playing revengeance as there is playing Concord um but um revengeance a lovely one on the same kind of like quite hyper scale I play a lot of neon white between reviews cuz it's like let me just get my brain into this high score Chase fast ass action game maybe because it looks like the kind of game that would be under a a video clip on a Tik Tok it's like yeah this is this is great this is so disconnected from reality but um a lot a lot of games like that are thinking about pallet cleansers in the literal sense of like okay I need to get myself out of this genre and prepare to review this other game which suggests that reviewing games is kind of more of a difficult Prospect than it actually is but neon White's a nice one and um vampire survivors now on PlayStation I just bought it for like the fourth time great game nice oh yeah the uh I mean look he said no live services but I'm going to say one that is a live Diablo is actually one of my go-tos it has been forever I've noticed that you keep going back that you keep popping up on Steam consistently yeah I just grew up with that [ __ ] and so it just got it hooks into me I just love args and you don't have to play it as a live service by the way like you don't have to do all the [ __ ] you just you can just play some Diablo right and you can just click on demons and it's perfect cuz and I when I'm really ready to disconnect from my life it is the perfect game for that cuz it requires so little attention like Destiny you still need to be generally speaking paying attention to what's going on but with Diablo you really don't man you can just sit there put something on your second monitor just go you know and so I yeah really had a good time smashing out the most SE recent season uh it is a really great one to return back to one that I've always wanted to return back to though is actually Deep Rock Galactic um and I think one of the benefit of that game is that you get to choose how high the stakes are right so you can set the really low difficulty and just do the exploration dig some holes you know like whatever or you could go full sweat mode and hard mod difficulty whatever but just a really brilliant game to sort of sink into and you know Choose Your Own Adventure um and brilliantly made and and just wholesome and good and it's it's a really good if you haven't checked out Deep Rock it's it's it's top tier for sure my my only other one and I said that other stuff T not sound like a broken record like I'm so predictable but Tony Hawks proos Gator one and two sure of course um that's that's it did did you see did you see that they they changed it for the anniversary what's that about what's going on there nothing is going on man absolutely nothing is going on I was thinking uh like I'm going to put it out here in the universe now uh it's never like so I don't want to be a host I don't want to like no offense like Lucy or anybody like I don't want to host a panel I don't want to do anything like that I don't want to be an orts commentator but I would do that I would be an Esports commentator just for Tony Hawks Pro scame oh yes I want to put that out in the universe it's never going to become a competitive scene at this point but I would be there day one it' be a sick scene though like you could imagine it'd be pretty wholesome it's been um it's been on gdq you see if there's going to be like the couch opportunity of gdq for it it's probably the closest thing you'll get to all right that's interesting I would definitely do that we're there yeah we're we're there okay all right thank you for your question that was from midgame uh friends per second. sub stack.com also questions frienders second.com thank you users for sending your questions what did I say the email wrong yeah what did I say he said questions I was like getting confident was it's been three and a half years just after has it been three and a half years oh is it three and a half years or two and a half years is this the third year running no we're in no we're in episode so it's and years I was going to say if we done if we done 53 episodes in 3 and a half years I that's right um contact a friends.com there we go thank you all What We've Been Playing right next up I do want to jump into what we have been playing we've got a big long list of games we've been playing Lucy I do kind of want to dive in with you I don't know if this was like a Pax thing cuz you went to Pax West but tell me about tactical breach Wizards CU that just is a good title yes so tactical breach Wizards is the newest game from Tom Francis who made guno and Heat Signature um and it is exactly what it sounds like it is a breaching tactical game he play as wizard X XCOM with Wizards basically up do you stack up at a door and then like breach yes um but you Wizard and so you have like different powers um and one of my favorite things about this game is um there's weirdly a lot of emphasis on shoving people out of Windows it's like it's instant KO if you if you shove someone out of a window this is actually kind of like a lot like uh what do you call it midnight Suns had a big focus on just like repositioning foes so like that off building yeah um and so I haven't I haven't managed to get as much time in it as I would have liked to but I have played a couple hours here and there over CU I I went from Gamescom back home to uh straight to packs and I was playing a lot of another game that I will also talk about but so I wasn't expecting to driive with it as much as I am and I will say that I haven't played as much as I as I would have liked um but it's very funny it kind of eases you into the tactics it's not like one of the things I was kind of like not nervous about but you know that kind of can be a bit offputting for me is that like if it's too tactical and it requires way way way too much forethought I think it does a really nice job of introducing you to all the systems introducing you into all the ways that you can uh eventually throw people out windows and and knock out and knock out these police officers um but it also it's like it's very forgiving when it comes to like one of one of the the characters that you have like has foresight so you can like see I think one or two turns ahead and so you can also like reset things pretty easily and it's also I don't know it's a pretty forgiving at least for me at this point in my life um but I'm really enjoying it it's just like it's funny it's got Good Vibes you just yeah it's I will never not be excited when you like you do that breach moment because you can also redeploy and so attack from two different sides uh I'm probably done a really terrible job of explaining what this Gamers but really it really all is in the name that's the thing yeah yeah yeah breach Wizards I'm very cognizant because I listened to the besties episode on it last week and in my head I was like first of all God I wish I was as eloquent as any of them but also it's like I just don't want to be repeating what the besties are saying because I agree with every single thing that they said um no it's just like one of those games where I was playing it on my my Roger Ally I had um four in a bed which is a TV show in the UK nothing nefarious I was say goodness [ __ ] now we're talking Jordan that's when I text was I text you about it because um one of the one of the complaints was someone had done a massive jobby and left it in the toilet a massive jobby um yeah we have a real great back and forth text thread of terrible British programs there'll be no cont T it would just be a screenshot of like a TV that's way too far in the distance because I'm on some trip watching nothing to declare Australia and Lucy's on the other side of the planet watching this kind of sh it's real encapsulation nothing to declare Australia is not something I've ever heard of but I can immediately picture what it is cu you can't take anything into your country right yeah you can't take any yeah you're like if you have a [ __ ] toothpaste that the cap is open they're like go to jail like seriously it's people turn it up with like caskets full of being like what do you mean I can't import all this stuff from China like don't be don't be so woke come on now and the guy's just being like eh not sure about that obviously in America you'd get shot in the head but in Australia they're just like probably not H probably not get kied out no I I'd seen tactical breach Wizards um a while ago we covered it on the show actually and put this on your radar and uh a lot of positive bud but it's been really great to see how much it's actually cut through because it's not the kind of game that you expect to see much chatter about right it's it's it's cuz every week I cover Indie titles that look fantastic but then you know no one talks about them they just kind of go on Steam and then they get like 300 reviews and that's about it right but this one really seems like the Zeitgeist picked it up and you saw it on Reddit you saw it on Twitter you saw it a bunch a bunch of places there's more than a few reviews on Steam indic that people actually bought it um it seems to have done well for itself I don't know if it broke even or not but I'd like to think that it did like to think that it's been successful for the studio um and that's always great to see so yeah yeah I really hope so it's been it's been a really fun time and I uh I think I think maybe just because the other game I've been playing has been very much like brain switch off it was nice to have something that scratched the kind of the Tactical yeah urge a little bit um and like I said I think I would be I sorry I would be so s like because it's so well written too it's just like it's an I don't know I don't think about XCOM and think oh man like the writing in XCOM or whatever like whatever the you know I don't think about that I think of just like those moment of moments I think of the I think of the near misses in XCOM right or I think of like oh my God my my turns are running out and I got to get this thing done with tactical breach wi it's this like this ultimate like allinone package where it feels like everything has been really thought through and uh it's a good time I really recommend it nice if you think about it the Immortals of avum are like the the original tactical breach Wizards nope there really weren't at all I was sitting on that the entire time not in the not in the SL bit okay well uh I like it I I play I played a cool game uh smaller game called squirrel with a gun you remember that game that went viral like a year ago is it because it has a gun in it Jake is that why you're like oh it's all in the title baby I'm in uh you got me um yeah no I I thought it would be good uh good bit of comedy and uh it is uh exactly what it looks like if you saw that original little trailer that went viral years a few years ago you know if you've seen something more recently it's a very simple straight forward game it's clearly made by a very small team it's pretty rough around the edges but you run around as a squirrel holding a full-size weapon yeah um and you are in essentially little little they break out you unlock sections as you progress further but essentially it's kind of like a like a like a Mario where you're collecting stars or moons but here it's acorns so you're in an area like you know you drop in like one of the first areas for example it's a neighborhood so you have to figure out how to navigate around how to like trigger something to fall down to then let you jump up and get on top of a house to get one star or find a little hidden secret basement and get another star and between that you can just like point a gun at people and shoot them um they are enemies like there are like these like random secret agent guys yeah agent Smith kind of guys right yeah and uh you can you can shoot them you can do like little finishing moves for them but collecting the acorns and and and you know the progression is essentially built around collecting these acorns and then unlocking more weapons and getting further into the game it's only a couple of hours but yeah as you as you go on you go into like cowboy town and then you can get like a saw-off shotgun or like a revolver and then you can get a grenade launcher so it's kind of fun to progress to unlock these little things there's a couple of vehicles and then there's a couple of cool sequences there's like a little you get on a little go-kart there's a whole go go-kart sequence that's pretty fun there's a boat sequence and there's like a boss battle or two and they're pretty like over the top and chaotic you fight a tank you fight a helicopter um and it's just a good bit of fun it was a couple of bucks on Steam so I just bought it um and yeah if you thought the concept was kind of funny it is kind of funny I don't think it's it's more than lasting a couple of hours but like you can jump up in the air and then fire the gun as like a double jump like he'll shoot the gun downwards and he'll just like fly up in the air so it's stupid but it was a good little bit of fun maybe even a pallet cleanser game like we discussed earlier yeah I have just seen clips of it I I look I don't have time to play it like it's just not no space in my life I don't know how I carve down time it's it's very funny that you made time for between Star Wars Outlaws and Space Marine [ __ ] yeah exactly like just do this and we're back with another episode of Before You by about squirrel with a gun almost did one we almost did one did and then I was like there's not enough there's not enough could pop off it actually has the potential to pop off I reckon if you did it prior it might do numbers it might do numbers they at the thumbnail it's a squirrel with a gun but the the two hands actually just have two Firearms that's that's actually pretty sick that's cool yeah yeah I want to hear what you thought about cuz I didn't watch your video yet so I don't know how you really feel about Star Wars Outlaws Ralph yes I haven't started playing it yet um so I'm very interested to hear from because who Jordan you've played it as well youw finished it reviewed it and the B hell yeah oh no well okay look it's it's a really interesting one to talk about and I think we could talk about it for hours so probably have to keep the conversation shortish but like if you've heard it sucks that's true if you've heard it's actually surprisingly good that's true like it really is it just cuts 61 way like six one way half dozen the other depending on you know what what hits for you which gameplay fo ball you get caught up on which heartfelt moment actually manages to tug at your heartstrings uh you know which graphical glitch you encounter which stealth Mission pisses you off like there's just so many trip wires in this game that you could stumble over and that's it you're like nope I'm [ __ ] done I'm I'm I'm out right but you know if you're able to kind of like carefully dance over all of them you know there's actually a surprisingly interesting Ubisoft game there that is remixing its open world formula in ways that is novel and worth paying attention to and I do think there is uh the world design that they've got is remarkable like it's so beautiful to be in these SP and Star Wars honestly has never looked this good except for like the Battlefront games from from Dice um and I think K as a character and the story that is told particularly in the back end of the game it's good like K is actually surprisingly great and I really at the beginning I was like N I don't know about this but then by the end I was like you know what I hope there's more K in the future because I'm into what she's doing I'm into the whole setup it's just I was into it so that's for me personally it's a very interesting game because of how much it gets right and wrong I'm ultimately glad I played it but I didn't end up recommending it cuz I'm just like look man I can't there's just too many problems here for me to really like to to flat out recommend this so Jordan you finish it what what what what do you think man yeah so I think it sets it stall out really interestingly in the way that it kind of tricks you into thinking that this will actually be something uh like not revolutionary but certainly for Ubisoft pretty revolutionary is well done speaking specifically about this whole Syndicate system that is the kind of overarching mechanical um uh kind of framework where each of the different syndicates so the Huts the Pikes the asika clan you have reputations with each of them you can allegedly play them off each other and depending on your reputation with those um factions it implies that there will be huge ramifications for your journey the fact is that are the ramifications for your journey depending on who you are tight with are essentially cosmetic and not only that due to um them clearly being aware that some people will be annoyed at the fact that you couldn't get everything you can buy your way into being um in good graces with all of the Clans incredibly cheaply and there's a really funny image going about on Twitter where this person has excellent reputation with every single Clan despite several of them being like we are blood enemies if you're affiliated with them we will shoot you on site but don't worry K is The Negotiator of the century where she's just friends with everyone um there is a really hamfisted moment uh towards the end of the game that they clearly thought oh God we kind of need to do something that references who who friends got that too yeah and it's very much K just being like thanks guys thanks for doing thanks for doing that thing guys because they didn't record several different cutcenes with all the different uh people that it could be um it's it's so mechanical once you see that it all kind of falls apart and I agree that I think it looks brilliant it's a bit dodgy on PS5 like it ran pretty terribly um but the there is a 40fps mode if you have like a fancy TV um I like K and NEX a lot NEX is ridiculously cute I have a real soft spot for the the Nexus of this Worlds the BD ones the grus all those kind of like designed in a factory to print money kind of stuff um yeah the game part pretty much fell apart from me once I got past the part that they showed us in previews I think it's a game that actually previewed better than um expected um but once you get further out I thought the open worlds weren't great apart from tatooing but is tatooing just a good open world because it's Star Wars porn or is it actually a fun space to explore and that's where I couldn't quite Square how I felt about that that's the thing I was going to ask is that how much of your enjoyment of this game hinged on the use of the Star Wars license oh quite a bit oh yeah I would say quite a bit yeah yeah the the best moments for me were those kind of Star Wars bits and also some of the best writing is in these data pads that are everywhere yeah um there's one in the Moss eely Cantina that very comically explains why it's a different bartender than the one that's in A New Hope like stuff like that great really nerdy really fun but but um yeah the the stealth is it reminded me a bit of those uh DSX games from the last gen and not just because every stealth puzzle is find this human shaped um vent and go through that and that's it but it's like super basic the enemies will turn around and look at you and go no one there um PS has this iconic creature that in the lore is incredibly rare but when Storm Troopers see it they don't go that's that creature that we've all been told about they just go oh my God what is that what could possibly have gone on here it's it's it's just silly it's silly and it's kind of average and I can't Square some of the mega mega scores I can square people being into it but the the super high scores I don't understand do you think it has the same momentum as Jedi fall in order into suror I think that there could there could be a world where they get a survivor out of this if they if they actually um cash in on the ideas from the first one but I think fall in order is a better first game than this is in a theoretical um poop parter yeah I just I wonder how because I mean the amount of money they would have spent to make this like so massive has two Stu two teams right they had the team that delivered Avatar and they had the team that delivered this one of those teams is going to be working on the next division game right now right but that I'm I don't know like they can't be going into full production on that right now like I just I can't see that right I honestly don't know but I doesn't make sense to me so I don't know what massive is really working on at this point exactly but I would like to imagine that they might be thinking about making a sequel because to invest this amount of money in this game build this number of assets right this is the kind of thing where you want to have another bite of the Cherry to make sure you get your money's worth out of all that initial work right plus I do think they've built some great characters in K and in nd5 right little the the robot companions she's got what he's like a Commando droid or some [ __ ] I don't know what they're call whatever um there's all there's there's some real potential to to go forward with this both in storytelling and commercially I just wonder how much of a bite Disney take out of this and whether it becomes if it's still worth it for Ubisoft to go down this path because I can't imagine this sold a boatload I and I've seen I've saw a headline today that was suggesting that was a bit soft I don't know if that's true or not in terms of sales but I just think given how mixed the reception was and also how burned out people are on Star Wars right now after all the [ __ ] the franchise has gone through I can't imagine this sold big numbers so I don't know I would I would like to see a sequel but I just wonder if it's actually going to happen or not I don't know man I I went into it trying to be like oh you know I want to go into this like any Star Wars fan and not like a cynical yeah gamer person but I still just I had a good time with it but there's definitely a lot of flaws where it's hard for me to recommend like and I can't you know like like yeah it's okay but like right now okay is not good enough with all the other games out there but also like how much the game costs if you just go and buy it right now so yeah I think it was it really was for me like at least it made good on what I was excited to see which was like massives imprint on Star Wars the design of the worlds I really liked I really liked the faction stronghold and how they were kind of tucked into the cities and how depending on your standing was like are you walking in are you sneaking in and like how do you figure out that back door and how I just thought that stuff was really interesting and it was really cool to see that like you know built like I'm like this is really cool that they figured this out but yeah I ultimately kind of ended up feeling not as much as I wanted to out of it just in terms of like Star Wars feeling fun feeling like I I I wanted to turn off my brain and just Star Wars game I love Star Wars like like cringy about Star Wars but it just didn't quite didn't quite do it for me yeah I think yeah I I totally agree with all that I think the there's a number of problems number one the core gameplay sucks like it's bad it's just bad gameplay man I'm so and I'm so surprised given ubisoft's history as a you know publisher that makes stealth games and also as Ubisoft massive who make the division one and two and this is a cover Bay shooter that just feels so unbelievably Bare Bones it's like where is all that capability that you deployed to make those games where is that now I don't know like it's just it's wild to me you know what drives me insane carrying like picking up the better we they feel so good they feel so good to use the feedback the way they fire everything is incredible and the game uses every excuse for you to immediately drop them it almost feels like the game's at odds with wanting you to be a civilian kind of goofball Han Solo character and not be like a mass Mur like you know Ludo narrative distance type thing but like the Stormtrooper standard issue is like so fun to use all these things you pick up like you could see what else there could have been absolutely like yeah there would have been a way to keep her grounded and not like a one-person Army while still like giving her some more kit that she could use you that was more interesting than just her shitty Blaster over and over again you know so but but there's also like the game really does pick up the back end I'm not sure how you felt about this Jordan um but like I really felt as though the narrative conclusion you know when the game starts when the crew is assembled the story picks up again cuz the story essentially stops while you go to these different planets and have to assemble your crew yeah and it picks up again in the last like third or whatever and at that point you're like all right you're telling a story now there are surprises and twists and turns and some really cool Mission design and one of the locations in the end is actually fantastic just so many things that I really loved about that back end that I think so that most people won't see because they'll tap out on what feels like a pretty dry game with some shitty gameplay in that first like 15 or so hours you know what I mean like it's it's a real shame yeah the the ending was strange to me because it gives you a warning about you're about to go into the end game and I thought and I thought um okay this is maybe like half an hour an hour but it's like a two and a half hour long mission that just like combines a lot of different things and yeah it I wasn't super sold on the the conclusion it does a bit of the Disney Star Wars of dangling things in front of you to be like I remember um which I'm conflicted on because when the moment happened and it's in the I should say the pre-rendered cut scenes in this look unbelievable those look genuinely fantastic and there's one of those for this big moment and I was like I feel like I'm being Nostalgia bated against my will it's like I'm finding this cool but I don't want to be finding this cool kind of thing um but yeah I think that do you think this would be a better game if they just stripped all the open world shite out and made it like an Uncharted kind of all the single player stuff I def I definitely don't but I think it' be a much better game if they had made you go to certain planets in certain orders so they could tell the exact story they wanted and build that out over time cuz it just two two of the three planets it feels like there's almost no story and the characters that you recruit are just total NN like just yeah so forgettable that actually is a pretty good Star Wars name but um it yeah I so I think that ubisoft's approach to storytelling really cost the story a lot there you know and CU if you had some of the moments you got in the back end if you had those in the first third of the game that might have been enough to be like oh I want to keep going I want to see where this goes you know um this the the open World stuff no I I think that's still to its strength and I and I did find exploring those worlds fairly interesting in its own way like it wasn't my favorite CU obviously you're comparing it to stuff like Elden ring and breath of the wild and out of wild whatever there's games that really nail their open world exploration but I still enjoyed enough of this that I was like yeah okay cool you know this this speeder is [ __ ] garbage though oh my God it is the worst thing ever oh it's so painful to drive it's good straight away you can't shoot you can't shoot your gun while you're on the speeder unless the Dead Eye mode what what what what what what what what were they thinking it's just but then they did so many great things like the represent in my opinion for like the like there's so many zabra in that game that like you've never seen one I mean what does this game take place between right uh New Hope and Empire yeah oh Empire and Jedi that's right yeah you don't there's no zabra running around now all of a sudden there's a million aoran there's like a bunch there's usually only one at a bar but there's like so many here so it's was like that's the stuff they they had that's the sauce and then it's just the fact that like your speeder like gets stuck on like an invisible Rock and you're awkwardly stuck while you're wanted is going up and you're getting like gunned down by like the police it's it's messy it's messy it's it's a real shame I think that look at the end of the day like if if you gave this game six more months of development time I think you could have tightened up some of that stuff like the speeder would handle better and you might have been able to arrive at some more interesting flourishes for combat but I think you still have the same game six months from now that you would right now ultimately right so Ubisoft shipped it when it was ready CU it feels largely ready you know it's not it's not like rushed out the door it was meant to be May right like it delayed a littleit did it get a delay I can't remember yeah it was meant to be sort of like spring I think yeah but you know it is just they scoped it they did what they could they made a game and it's made it's out the door I'm interested to see what the future of the franchise is like I would like to see another one I think Ubisoft massive could do a better job of it the second time around but I think there's some big risks associated with that however far less risk than this initial offering because you would have already done a lot of that work in terms of building the assets for this world and laying down some of the gameplay foundations and I don't know I I I hope they have another crack but we'll see I guess we'll see yeah Le next time around Less open worldness and more of like the adventuring when I was just doing a real Star Wars Adventure even the climbing and the simple stuff but when I was exploring like an abandoned ship I was like okay this is cool this is cool also the music's really good oh absolutely inredible how they took some of the motifs and like kept it familiar but like built on it a little bit that's like what I want from new Star Wars like take that music take John Williams's work and and spin off of it you know and I thought they did a really good job with that really nailed it I agree tangent over Star Wars tangents over I'm always good for one of those but uh all right uh next up I do want to hear about fields of Mysteria this is the game you was this the game you were playing because you were saying that reason I didn't play yeah as much tactical breach Wizards as I want to two is because instead I've put 35 hours into fields of myria uh it's the best Early Access game I've ever played it feels it's unbelievable so first of all uh fields of mystera is a um farming relationship Sim akin to Harvest Moon uh Star Valley is obviously going to be the most obvious comp yeah that's what I see immediately um but instead of you inheriting your granddad's Farm as you do in Stu Valley uh you are an adventurer and you end up in this place called Mysteria that's been ruined uh by an earthquake and you are helping the people rebuild and the way you do that you get a plot of land you start eventually you know my cats are going absolutely insane um you start by clearing the land you start growing crops you start going in the mines and eventually you start start contributing to bigger projects like improving the general store or repairing a bridge so that the uh the market can happen in town on Saturdays and it takes that Stu formula and I'm going to keep comparing it to staru because that's what I'm the most familiar with but it improves it there are so many quality of life updates that I vastly prefer it to staru I think number one would be the fact that the people in the town actually interesting um I would always skip over the relationship stuff in stardew because I just didn't give a [ __ ] um but in fields of mystera they're all there's like this one guy who loves puns there is the um there are the two brothers who work at the forge and one of them is this like gy head who's like really like a like this really adorable guy who's like so happy go lucky and he loves working out and so if you give him like an egg he goes oh my God thank you so much I'm going to put this into like protein and meanwhile he's got his brother who's like really miserable and hates you but kind of in the way that you know that he likes you too um and so obviously as you're building relationship stuff it's it's a really fun and then at the every Friday everyone in the town goes to the town in and there's a Dungeons and Dragons game that they that carries on every week There's um sometimes there like two of them will just be getting drunk on like expensive wine or they'll be doing a life drawing class or something in the corner or the kids will be trying to figure out if they can break into someone's room to steal something or you know they actually these moments that make it feel like you're actually helping out and like it's worth doing it because the people who are you're doing it for are worth it um and in terms of you know there's so much customization so much do you make your own character mhm so one of the things I also really like is that you can swap out anytime you can change what you look like you can change your name uh you can change your clothing at any point um you get to you know build furniture and put it in your house and move it around there's different themed decors that you can have and you can uh obviously Farm but um and going to the mines is is way more fun because there's this other layer to it that I haven't mentioned which is the fact that Mysteria is kind of like got a bit of magic to it there are these weird statues around and in particular there's on The Farmstead that you're given there's this big statue of this dragon and one night you start talking to it and as you do more things in the town um so you know like collecting things and putting them in the museum which is very Animal Crossing um or if you get your town rank up to a certain thing he kind of recognizes that and bestows upon you certain magical powers and these are basically like um you know if you're in the mines and you're like really getting getting through it you can restore all your health and stamina but then it takes a few days for that to get back up and or you know if you are really set on doing something else for the day you don't want to water all your crops there's a spell where it just like Waters all your crops for you so it's like these great big quality of life boosts but it eaks them out in such a way that you're not going to overuse them um yeah there's so much to say about it I really I really love it at the moment I'm in the middle to end of autumn um obviously it changes dramatically per season based on what crops I can grow based on you know even what people are doing and hanging out with and the things that they ask for and I don't know it's really really good and um I didn't realize that the people who made it because it's been in development for about few years now I think five years now it's in Early Access um is the people who made it created Pusheen that cat thing wow yeah what is that thing I don't know what that thing that's that little [ __ ] thing you if you Google Pusheen you'll you'll recognize it it's like p u s h n yeah e n you're going to be like oh that thing oh that thing yeah sure I know that thing absolutely okay is that from a game or like what is it is it just is it just is it just a character thing that they made and they just sell merch on it don't know um but it's uh really really good oh it's a website that they made it was called everyday cute a website and they create a character from a comic book strip and that's why pushy is I'm glad this game is on my R my radar now because I was a stardo valy addict oh then looks good just go on no I was going to say do you think it holds any cuz I'm not I don't like those games ever I've tried Animal Crossing I've tried Stu I i' like oh this is boring I hate this do you think there's any appeal to this one that makes it like for people who don't like that genre in the past like is there anything new that might bring me to it um I think if there's really I think one of the reasons I like it so much is because it fixes a lot of the things that I don't like about Stu but at the same time the were those things that were compelling to me in Stu so I think if you don't have any if you don't have any love for it I don't think this is going to be the one that changes your mind I think this is just a really good distillation of what this genre could be it's great and it's I've been playing it on rag Ally um and it's been it's great great and handheld um dude hard recommend yeah cool the the reviews on it are nuts like everyone oh yeah it's it's it's popped off the sub Reddit is also very good um I'm at the stage now where the fashion Souls moment of it all where people are like this is what my second year Farm looks like and I'm like mine looks like [ __ ] thanks it's nice to see it do so well yes it's cool it's good it's good I'm actually just buying it now I don't even know if I'll play it but I'm just going to buy it cuz I don't know it just feels like nice to support these sorts of games you've been influenced yeah it's just I think it's nice to see these sorts of games do well and like yeah much much much respect this sort of stuff so and I'll Boot It Up on a whim see if anything does change cuz maybe I'm just at a different point in life now where actually something like this hits right you know what I mean I mean right now I'm going to be I'm about to start playing space Marin so I'm not going to have a lot of time for it right now but in the future then yes I might Circle back to it and yeah I want I want to hear about Space Marines which is you know from the ridiculous to the sublime because every time Jake has like mentioned it he's vibrating in his seat totally yeah it's it's very good it's uh it's to me it's like a perfect or a near perfect video game package like because it feels like it's like all right you buy this game you get a campaign you get multiplayer have fun and I don't know it's just like refreshing in how it's like oh yeah I remember like games would be like this like am I going to play this forever I don't know is it designed for me to play forever I don't know a little bit maybe they're going to work on that but for yeah yeah not forever but for a while yeah yeah so that's the only reason I say that is I'll start up front with like my my um my con my negative is that it does start to feel a little repetitive after you're like hours and hours and hours in and that's like you know campaign and then doing some of the PVE missions with friends like after a while I'm like okay really got this down like stun finish kill like finisher kill repeat repeat repeat repeat but I still think that doesn't really discount just how much fun I'm having um from the pure spectacle of it all the excitement of it all to the kind of Gears of War Simplicity of it all where it's like you drop in every level is you two squadmates they can be AI controlled they can be your friends jumping in so it's just kind of got that flow that formula to it that just is very like it's just comfort food um the weapons feel really good uh the gore is really good some of the levels and some of the stuff that goes on is absolutely massive these these worlds feel huge but also in multiplayer when you're doing the PVE missions with your friends not only is that like a multiplayer mode where you have like classes you can choose you can unlock stuff and you rank up and you rank up your weapons and all this they they dump so much [ __ ] in it but like in these modes these actually tie back into the story mode like these these missions reference like okay this is like Captain Titus is like B Team going to do another thing so you're so it's still you're actually playing through somewhat of a narrative and like in these PVE multiplayer things like buildings are exploding statues are [ __ ] falling down so like there's a lot of stuff going on and I just it just it's it's a lot and it's it's cool but for me it just got me into like I'm mean I'm in man I want to I want to live in the Warhammer 40K world don't say that man I do it's like that [ __ ] Brian Cranston meane where like the lights go down and he turns around he like yeah no that's but like really like if you got like Gothic Cathedrals with like computers and robots and skulls and candles in it are you kidding me those are all [ __ ] things I like and then like the Space Marines themselves these marines are like very like cool there's it's definitely like this big fascist weird thing to it a lot of ideas going on but like I don't know they're like big Buzz Lightyear boys they're like big Buzz Lightyear murder boys and um it's just it goes back to what I said earlier with like a pallet cleansing PS3 360 era game this feels like one of the few games that like actually really evolved from that like it's like another one of those but now it's got better graphics it's smoother to play there's a little bit more content offering there um so I've been I've been really really happy with it at the time of recording this I'm like three quarters of the way through the campaign I'm racing to wrap it up before putting out a video tomorrow but yeah really exploring everything else and and seeing the PVE mode especially cuz there is also a PVP mod mode which I haven't really spent time with but for me I'm not as interested in that it's the PVE mode for me and like playing as different classes has been really fun um just experimenting with them all and seeing what what the hell their deal is um and then learning more about Warhammer be like there's one that like is a bigger one and then there's one that like can have a sword and a shield this is [ __ ] insane dude so yeah I don't know it's cool Space Marine 2 it's been it's been making me happy it's just a good oldfashioned video game see I've I've played a couple of hours of it at this point and it was like I played it because I got it while I was waiting for Astro and I was like this is not what I wanted to be playing right now at all but I like play it because a few of my friends previewed it and they said it was really good like you say it's a big stupid Xbox 360 game like it's it's fun and it's so disposable I don't think about it when I'm not playing it but when I'm playing it I'm like yeah this is this is fine there's hordes there's thousands and thousands of enemies coming towards me you couldn't do that on the on the last gen that's pretty cool as you say super super repetitive in terms of you party you do a finisher you paty you do a finisher then occasionally you pick up a a a bigger weapon and you can kind of go to town with that stuff um I think it would be great fun with two friends just to like fly through it talk a lot of [ __ ] either pay attention to the story or don't as you say there's there's some weird overtones weird uh weird kind of fasy stuff but um yeah you that's Warhammer though like that's always been that's just the that's the core Conan yeah yeah um obviously that's like I wonder is I mentioned I think this was in the pre-show but I mentioned this is there people that are is this a kind of game for the Warhammer absolute like Psychopaths that they're coming in to see these great sets of armor being recreated like is this that for them cuz if it is it seems like a really great one of those and it's definitely that for them 100% Your Enthusiasm Jake means that once all the Astro stuff is out the door I will go back and and see if it is going to uh kind of tackle my fancy because I love a Gears of War I would I would pay you 1,000 for a game that feels as good as Gears of War II in 2024 but um yeah it's it's a silly one yeah I play well I haven't actually played the review code yet because I got back from Gamescom then I had straight into Outlaws then straight into astrobot and so the review in buo is like tonight but I haven't even booted it up yet but I played like 10 hours on preview builds and whatever and I just loved every second of it I mean I'm a Warhammer enjoyer but I wouldn't wouldn't call myself a Warhammer fan in the sense that like a theme but like yeah exactly cuz to say you're a Warhammer fan is a whole thing cuz you like you get deep in the law and you [ __ ] paint figures and you've played every game and you like you you know the names of things and I don't know the names of anything but I've you know have like played some games and read some books and always enjoyed what I've touched of it um and this just feels like you know one of the best touch points ever you know like from all the experiences that I've had uh it's hard to imagine how you could better deliver this kind of Space Marine power fantasy uh it's really interesting contrast to dark tide which I think is a much deeper game in terms of its core gameplay Loop right that I don't know if play dark tide no played a bit of only a little bit I like it I made be so motion sick oh sure dark tide is mechanically unbelievable it's such a great video game and just like it would be endlessly replayable if the surrounding progression systems supported that because it just feels so good to play and the immersion and all of it amazing right and this is far simpler than that and I can definitely see that commentary about like oh it's repetitive with the parry and yes I can see how you get to that point with this um um but yeah I mean like I'm imagining that I'm going to play this for you know 15 to 40 hours just play the campaign unlock all the [ __ ] in the PVE Co-op stuff you know done PL but in the future though there is going to be extra content because they're working on like a road map with ex and that is going to be really interesting because if they and this is coming back to our conversation from before okay about life Services Life Services should not be hello we are here to announce a new live service video game please allow us to make it for 5 years and then we will drop this live service video game on you and you will want to play it forever no that's not how please enjoy it should be like okay we're making a video game we've made the video game turns out you guys like it we can make some more of it so let's do that and then you make some more of it right and then that's it do you know what I mean like it's just it's and understand all the reasons why that can't happen in the realities of game making and budgeting and teams and all that sort of [ __ ] but it should be closer to that than what we're at at this point right and that's kind of the model that that Space Marine is going with it's not positioning itself as a live service it's a game that's going to deploy and then there it is and they're going to make a little bit of extra content on their Road mapap or whatever else but they're not promising that this is going to be a forever game right but if we keep playing it and we like it and we want more of it then they can keep making more stuff like that's the dream right you you you put something out to Market and when you've established demand then you make content to meet that demand you don't anticipate the demand before you release the thing do you know what I mean so um all of this is a long way of saying I hope this game has a long life ahead of it um but I love the fact that it's not launching itself as a live service it's just it's just launching itself as a complete offering and that is really cool you know I agree so yeah man Space Marine I'm really Keen for it that's that's next on the dock it for me should be cool should be cool you know what else I played by the way oh yeah we we about this actually yeah I do actually Zelda echo of wisdom oh good we can talk about that past embargo when we talk when this it's like Wednesday and Bargo got invited to Nintendo uh or to an event hosted by Nintendo at a hotel room in Sydney and uh and played uh 90 minutes of Echoes of wisdom it is delightful I uh loved what I played of it if anyone hasn't seen it it is a Zelda game where you play as Zelda as opposed to Link and Zelda can she's she she basically has to she has like a little magic one thing that can recreate items it's essentially a puzzle game don't think of this as a sword and shield game think of it as a oh I need to climb up to that ledge so I'm going to copy a desk with my magic wand and then I'm going to cast a spell that Stacks three desks on top of each other and now I can reach that spot it's very simplified but that's ultimately what it is but it is wonderful I I really loved what I played of it um it's that same art style as Link's Awakening uh the puzzles were all fairly simple but were enjoyable it's just oozing tons of charm it's just a lovely experience how's the music are they doing like a original original stuff here or um I you know what I think I don't I didn't notice it as I played it I'll put it that way right I'm not sure um but there are some surprises in there in terms of the story it's trying to tell which is nice uh and some little some cool powerups that I think going to impress people gun um no Jake there is no gun they did not give a gun maybe later maybe later on who knows um but yeah really enjoyed what I played of it and um very interested to see more my one downside though it ran like [ __ ] on a Nintendo switch I can't believe I didn't I know it's a little bit of staring but but it should but like this if you if you if you look at this game it does not look like a game G that should push this system absolutely not this system can run tears of the Kingdom fairly well this game is nowhere near as demanding as that graphically but it does not run well you know and I was really disappointed about that um but look at this point we just accept that that's how it is on the switch it is what it is there's going to be a re-release remaster of it at some point when the switch 2 comes out so you can probably wait to play it on that if you like um but yeah really great I loved it and I'm really excited for the full release later this month what did you think l no I'm the same boat and you know me not as zelder person um I had a delightful time with it I think one of the things that I really enjoyed was that um talking about it with other people afterwards to see how they did stuff because um the one of the first things you get is a bed and so I was like well how much can I push this like how what can I use the bed for um and then later I was talking to someone else who was like oh you know you can set the bed on fire like no I did not know you could do that and so I was playing with Tam and um also Ben star came to our appointment too he's everywhere man he's absolutely everywhere he really is um but Tam was playing it and there's like a spidery creature that you could get yeah yeah yeah I like that one and like Tam found so many uses for that spidery creature um it was a point where we were facing off against a boss and Tam was like do you think I could do this well we we actually we're getting kicked out of the appointment because we don't around at that point but I feel like he could have probably done it I think it's one of those games where you know how my current favorite thing is can I beat Spyro without gliding like in three years time there will be a video being which is like can I be echo of wind with beds on fire yes exactly like and and I'm very excited to see what people do to come over there and like yeah it was one of those things where like with astrobot I was playing it and I was just thinking to myself oh this is just bloody delightful I don't know why I sounded like a massive Tory when I said that just really really Pleasant goodbye M yeah no it was it does have that kind of energy uh just Pleasant and surprising and joyful and fun and yeah playful you know it just seems very playful and really encouraging experimentation and just classic Nintendo man like they're not they're not out there trying to do the whole triaa thing they're just like you know what would be fun and quirky this thing and you're like oh yeah they let Greenlight that and make that game and they do it and I just I love it it's great so yeah good to know good [ __ ] good [ __ ] uh next up speaking of good [ __ ] we're moving on to show and tell this is a Show And Tell sequence where we talk about something that isn't a video game something else we've been enjoying so Jordan I want to put you on the spot have you been enjoying anything other than video games I have um I've been watching jiujitsu Kaizen the the anime Jesus Christ um we got an an we got an anime boy in our podcast finally we we certainly do not what are you talking about I have an anime podcast Ralph you don't watch anime why don't you ever talk to us about you're the only person who watches anime who doesn't constantly talk about anime what the [ __ ] man different breed this is okay you just watch JoJo though that's the one thing you watch do you watch any exactly that's I'm delicious in Dungeon at the moment dungeon MH that is anyway sorry Jordan go on continue we interrupted you I love the antiy rhetoric and so my my my partner LA is a massive anime head she has watched it all and um I've been staunchly anti- anime for most of my life but she got me hooked with Attack on Titan which is the greatest story ever told it's yeah it's pretty good after that I was like I don't need to watch any more anime because this is this is Peak like this is not just Peak anime it's Peak film making um and then we tried bits and pieces of a few others chainsaw man didn't really work for me Demon Slayer didn't I've seen like three Demon Slayer films at this point no [ __ ] idea what's going on at any point in any of them I'm just like long as you're having fun seen FAL Alchemist Brotherhood no that's I think you would vibe with that that's part of the the list because every time I'm on a trip I obviously have to bring back a present and fale Alchemist is one of the approved brands that the the present can be from so um we try we started um jjet kaisen and the first couple of episodes I was like I wasn't tired but I was straight falling asleep and I was get I was feeling so bad cuz like I want to try get into this and whatever it was after a few episodes I was like okay let's I got into that cycle of let's fire all of them on we watched basically the whole first season in a couple of days and it's it's not attack on Titan nothing's Attack on Titan my dearly beloved um but the characters are fun it is really kind of video gamey in the it reminds me of persona a lot um in the sense that it's a it's a thing set in a school and they all have special moves and they say they're special moves when they do them and it's like little RPG parties going off to like clear dungeons love all that stuff um and it has Banger music which anime excels in oh um so yeah that's my Jiu-Jitsu kaisen has been my my non-gaming stuff there's a bit of a there's a bit of a lull now like I don't think I'm reviewing a big game until the end of this month so maybe more more anime maybe more anime reviews from Jordan some reading would improve your life more anime that's always the answer hey I got one I got one the Terminator anime H Terminator zero on Netflix it's it's pretty good it's uh it's a good time it to me I know it's not like a high bar but I'm like damn I haven't watched anything good Terminator in a long time I think since Sarah Sarah Connor Chronicles and that was like over a decade ago right I've never seen the Terminator I've never seen any Terminator me hul what what the hell that's weird man that's super weird I hate films I really really oh yeah no I forgot this I forgot this about you man watches anime but hates films okay so there's a there's a um there's a footballer in explain your friend Lucy no there's a footballer in the UK [ __ ] what's his name I could see his face Michael Owen who's like famous things that he would just tweet out that he hates films and so like I think like he's a he's someone asked him one s a list of films that he'd seen and one of them I think was what was it the um with the Jamaican Bob SL team Cool Runnings Cool Runnings yeah that was a sick movie I love that was but he tweets out like every time he watches a film he just tweets out like hash hates films one of one of his tweets was watched my eighth ever watched my eighth ever film on a flight home must have been bored # haate filmed um that's very much um that's very much my opinion I have a film degree um from from a from a really really [ __ ] Scottish University but that broke me to the point where um asking me to sit down and watch a film is like asking me to go to the dentist it's like I just don't want to be part of this uh whatsoever [ __ ] man what is this origin story Jesus Christ this is this is the lore I didn't want to tell you guys when I was like hey we should get you should have led with that they're so boring man they just go on they just go who are you we did not properly vet this guest okay sorry seriously every time I'm watching a film I'm like I wish this theater would explode like I wish I was doing anything else okay FBI he was joking he was joking please he was joking God what is it Mi MI6 over there what is it over there for you people the thing is is that the [ __ ] Terminator Terminator one and two Terminator 2 was the greatest action movie of all time but this one is Terminator 1 focused so it's better um it's it's a little more it's a little more Grim yeah uh and it's it's just really it just feels really well made again I am not like massive anime enjoyer and like I don't understand too many nuances with like the creation or the art style or the visual motifs but like as a very casual anime person who just likes yeah like Attack on Titan or like Big O or like random movies or you know the edge Runners like I think if you like Ed Edge Runners and you're not like super into this stuff this is another good one um it takes it essentially tells a story you know a Terminator like Story Time Travel you know the threat of Judgment day but in a way that's familiar but not feeling like a cynical rehash uh it's it's taking place concurrent like while everything else is going on but in Japan so you get to see a little bit of like what's going on there and how it kind of tackles you know Japan being different Japan having different technology in this world uh it kind of runs with it and it's pretty cool uh the Terminator stuff is also very good uh just the way they utilize a Terminator infiltrating going through this world uh is creative cuz I I I think that's pretty challenging it's like big guy who doesn't talk he walks around and shoots people sometimes it's a little hard to make that interesting but I think they've done a really good job there's also a woman that is kind of like the Kyle Ree of this story and she's really cool um yeah I'm just I'm just into it it's just like a really good thing I I don't know if it's just like I'm just thirsting for something Terminator good I've heard it's good I've heard it's good no and also like the studio behind it um production IG is oh is it them is it oh well obviously I can't you mean you mean the creators of Mass Effect Paragon lost absolutely that was what I that was my first thought yeah of course the showrunner for this terminated anime was asked like his favorite um terminat movie or whatever and he said salvation and I was like you know what that's that that rules because ionically believe that that was a great film that everyone unfairly shits on and I'm like why it's it's it's it's a good film like why are we hating on this film it doesn't make any sense good for you good for you so no I I respect him for his um for his so you should definitely watch it because it does a lot of like some of the more creative aspects of Salvation uh it does here uh kind of familiar but it was actually cool to see as a Salvation enjoyer I was like oh yeah they definitely they definitely watch salvation nice so yeah High recommend G up to these days it's a good question G MC G the director of Terminator Salvation right okay you guys remember the iPhone game for Terminator Salvation that was sick as hell you got to shoot like t800s and stuff no anyway no memory uh on a similar note I rewatched the entire alien filmography while I was on the plane yes Gamescom back and forth cuz I watched um this was this was when we were deep in U Romulus discourse oh I can I can Chim in on as the as a tiebreaker on Romulus yes unfortunately Romulus is a very well-made film that happens to suck okay that is my take on Romulus no now we're feeding the the film hater with uh he's got talking points now right I've seen I've seen the first alien and I wrote a like a 7,000 word essay on it actually the last movie he saw back and forward and no interest in seeing the rest of them don't give a sh right right right but um Romulus uh yes very well made unfortunately just very uninteresting and soulless and oh my God the AI the Deep fake AI [ __ ] in there I did not like that unbelievably bad and the line and the line that he says at the bottom of the elevator which I won't spoil Jesus you guess what my God I died when they I don't get what they were doing with that delivery like what they were trying to do all of it was just so annoying so anyway but uh watched uh watched old Alien movies obviously Resurrection still the world wor terrible unbelievably bad I have I've always had a soft spot for three I think it is it goes way harder than people give it credit for uh two obviously fantastic but like I still prefer the horror Vibes thing over the action thing for sure one clearly Masterpiece nothing you can say about it other than that Covenant Prometheus and Covenant though Prometheus I've always enjoyed [Music] likei storytelling and worldbuilding [ __ ] MH and Covenant I also enjoyed for the same reason but it was definitely much scrappier and weirder and just like just yeah it was it was it was odd right Prometheus really felt very deliberate and then Covenant felt like they were trying to appease people who didn't like Prometheus it was like a back pedal but still letting R kind of do his own thing correct and it just it didn't quite work for that reason as well but I still the watching Prometheus again I was like this is a great film way better than I remember in fact and I liked it at the beginning and I think all of the Prometheus hate is wrong and I will definitely die on that Hill 100% I knew I liked you yeah excellent I I have my moments I have my moments so so I'm I'm I'm waiting for the like that we need to do like the hashtag hash complete the David Trilogy could be a trilogy there dude love it I'd be so happy if they did it I mean it'll never happen sadly cuz Romulus has made like a kajillion dollars now and so they're just going to have to make a sequel unfortunately did you guys watch the trailer for the um the guy who made Fargo making the Alien series it's coming to FX oh that's right I dropped today Noah Noah Hy I don't know is that his name that I'll check it for sure yeah yeah yeah oh have you watched like rings of Power by the way is talk it okay you I've seen I've seen the first three no it's much better oh that doesn't sound like very much praised that's that's Dam your faint praise it's much better than total dog [ __ ] or it's good so I rewatched season one um because context for this is that I interviewed the cast at ComicCon um and so I had screeners for the first three um and they gave and I watched them and I was like I'm a bit warmer on season one season season 2 starts really strong I think I think they're a lot more assured of what they're doing the one thing I will say is that sauron's wig is an absolute atrocity it is Dreadful I don't know what they doing there but I did really enjoy the first three episodes um one thing I was going to say about rings of power I want to know about the orc discourse people in now that Orcs can have families and they love each other or whatever is that okay I don't know what I need to be told what to think yeah life is too short for me to get wait oh Ralph is that why you asked me about that's why I asked about that because there was all the discourse about people that like repositioning Orcs as loving fathers and like who just want to stay at home and raise their kids as opposed to no did now and I'm just like oh man I don't know I just I'd forgotten about that to be honest because it was you know it's been a couple months since I watched it but no I um I will Reserve judgment on the whole thing until I finished it but I think overall it starts off much stronger I don't understand why they did the saon thing that the way that they did in the first season I think they probably could have lost the spoilers but it's it was bad man um they had did they put like Kell bribor in this one like in season two he's in season one no no he's in season okay I didn't finish um he's uh he's in there yeah so now we're at the point where so in season one they they had this guy named Hal brand who was a mysterious serous but hot man and then at the end it turns out he's Sauron and then uh you know Sauron at this point is like the Lord of gifts and you know convincing everyone to forge the Rings for him and I don't understand I don't I don't think it was as um as impactful as maybe they hoped it would be but I think season two is off to a stronger start uh thank you for reminding me about rings of power because I was going to say the thing that I've enjoyed this week was I went to Seattle for packs um and I had an actual day in Seattle and so I went to the museum mum of Pop Culture which was awesome they had give me an example of what they have in a museum of Pop Culture guns are we talking like an well speaking of alien they had a bunch of original props from Alien they had um a bunch of stuff from Star Trek they had a Nana exhibit because obviously Seattle local they had um a fantasy exhibit and a Sci-Fi in the Sci-Fi one they had um like a number six's dress from Battle Star Galactica they had a bunch of stuff from Star Wars they had who's that is it greo that green freak they had like his uh his mask and stuff and like Luke's uh Luke's um lightsaber and also the prosthetic hand that he loses sure yeah it's sick when you go in they have the Blade Runner um I mean first of all they have the Blade Runner they have the the seethrough coat and everything they have um his gun but they also have one of the police cars just hanging in the ceiling when you go in damn an Ender Dragon from Minecraft they had a video game exhibit um and it was really funny because I was with a couple of like game devs and there are these signs where it's like what is a video game how are video games doing like how is a game made um so we had a lot of funny photo ops just standing there like staring at these exhibits um but no it was really it was really cool and like they also had like this wild one where was like what is pop culture and then there was Tick Tock dancers and not to say that that's not part of culture but it seems so weird to see something that was as recent as 18 months ago be in a museum already um and it was called they had um a bunch of stuff from The Lord of the Rings they had San staff they had sting and I had a really dumb moment where I was with a friend of mine I was like who's this Paul Allen guy and why has he donated all this stuff and we Googled him hey stop fighting d uh we Googled him and Paul Allen is the co-founder of Microsoft so yeah how you do how you do did they have any Muppets uh they had Robin um and the and they had a bunch of stuff from The Dark Crystal in the fantasy exhibit nightmare fuel I don't want talk about that I get I get upset I went to the the Museum of the Ming image I think is what it's called in New York when they had the Jim hensing exhibit and they had like original carams and original Gonzo and it was like this is you can feel the power in this room um The Muppet Movie great film both of them are okay second one's about one I like the Christmas one Christmas one The Haunted Mansion thing they did on Disney plus recently is like one of the only good Disney things that happened in the last 500 years so I would is it Jeff key in there he might be I think that's the thing he's in he's got an acting credit I mean him in The Muppets Movie and Bobby codic in Money Ball like you know oh isn't isn't Donald mustard in the the latest Matrix movie he is is he there game award and then they did that Matrix time thing right wow Donald mustard what a great I forgot about that movie yeah all right wow well that was a Wrap Up stacked episode thank you guys for being here uh Jordan I would like to know where the people can find you what you're working on what you're cooking on um you can find me in Paisley walking around um I am at Jordan medler on X um but don't call it that you [ __ ] you can't you can't type out you are not allowed to appear on this platform and call it that X going to give it no no again apologies we need to V when you say x going to give it to you then they go oh you know what absolved that's fine God Rest him he's up there um yeah video games Chronicle VG GC check out the website it's where all the news is that's the subhead it's where all the news is um we have a podcast biggest gaming podcast in the UK you I was about to say don't let look that up but you actually can because it's currently true it probably won't be at one point when I say something horribly lious but it's currently true um and.com video games Chronicle to pay for my uh inevitable open heart surgery due to all the energy drinks but um thank you all for having me on it's currently 20 to 4: in the morning CHR I'm feeling sexy and free as Jessie J One sign um it's uh it's been a hell of a night you did great thank you so much for being here man love to have you on again you're always welcome maybe yeah for sure we'll figure it out he's got enough energy drinks he'll be all right he's fine he's fine just starting folks thank you very much for listening uh you know you can rate US on the podcast platforms if we really help uh that we would really appreciate that that does help so thank you clicking the like button on the YouTube video also helps leaving a nice comment on the YouTube video I maybe considering consider being nice help helps out helps out mental health it's nice yeah but either way we're just thank you you're here whether you're laring whether you're commenting thank you uh of course check out our substack the substack is awesome like I said I'm I'm biased but it is Friends per second. substack docomo shoes and go to bed [Music]