More Than a Fallout Boy (feat. Assassin's Creed Shadows, Oblivion Remake, Warrior's Abyss, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, Yakuza 0)

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We're back in the show after two weeks of Nintendo Switch related stuff. I think we're just not going to talk about the Nintendo Switch this week. yeah i feel like we recorded our switch to episode like it was sort of like the the eye of the storm like right before the pricing was fully revealed although you can kind of hear on that episode because we like find out in real time that mario kart is 80 yeah and uh

There's obviously a lot around that. It's not just a Nintendo thing. Obviously, it kind of changes the mood of like... basically yeah we're recording this episode also it's worth mentioning like a little bit ahead of time um so it's possible that the news has changed like dramatically since recording this also like on every front um at the time of this recording like no person from nintendo has spoken about anything related to the price since they delayed the release.

or they delayed the pre-order in the US. So like maybe, maybe Nintendo has gotten together. Actually, like literally today when we're done recording, my plan is to make a video about what it's like doing PR for a large company. Because like... Their response has not been very good in terms of the amount of misinformation about the Switch right now. I've seen a lot of people talking about how...

Mario Kart. I even actually said this in an episode of NPC because I saw it reported elsewhere. People were saying that Mario Kart World, if you get the physical edition, is $90. There's going to be a $10 upcharge. for the physical version turns out that's not true even but like nobody at nintendo is trying to clarify that at the moment so like there's just this kind of and i see that everywhere yes every comment no matter what is like

It's $90 from Mario Kart, which I get. It's crazy. Yeah, but it turns out it's only $80, physical or not, which is only $80. Ugh. Anyway, point being. Yeah, yeah.

no more switch talk no more we're not talking about the switch except for um you're gonna talk about yakuza 0 again which i guess is technically gonna be on the nintendo switch to the director's cut yeah i wonder how much that will be the director's cut which is gonna have mario in it third third protagonist kiryu majima mario chapter 11 and a half all right yeah Anyway, what's new with you besides processing everything? Oh, you know, not much.

I I've been playing, uh, I've been playing a lot of video games recently. A lot of them for like recordings and things that I'm working on, but the one that I have been playing specifically for the. show recently is Assassin's Creed Shadows which I alluded to I think in the last episode or two episodes ago or something it's hard to keep track because we've also been recording them like out of order yeah wait I don't think we've talked about why

I'm so I'm getting married soon and then I'm going on a honeymoon for like multiple months, which I think I have met. Like I've mentioned that, but like we're essentially trying to pre-record some episodes. just in case like I haven't planned a chunk.

of what I'm doing in the month of May while I'm in Japan. So I don't know if I'll have internet. Like the plan while I'm in June is that I'll be in Tokyo the whole time. We got an apartment with good internet so the idea is like we can still keep recording the show.

It's going to be wild time difference wise, but we'll make it work. That will be a fun energy. I'm looking forward to that. I think so, too. Yeah, it's going to be very early for you and very late for me, I think is probably how that'll work. We're already weird when it's like it's nighttime. That'll be great. that said uh for the month of may we don't know what's going on so we're just like trying to get ahead of

recording a little bit here and there just to make sure that, you know, we have episodes every week. And I don't know what it is. I feel like our show is slightly cursed because like most other shows do a version of this. Like they'll record ahead of time to have a bunch of the bank. Like we have done this like twice.

and whenever we do it something happens in the world where like we actually it would be weird to not acknowledge it and it throws the whole timeline off like the first time was more benevolent with chris pratt being cast as mario and we were like

silent about it because we had recorded ahead of time oh yeah now it's like this whole switch stuff and like everything it's just not to make light of anything it just like it's the one time we record ahead it's like the one time we have to specify when we're recording basically yes but

overall the game that I have been playing is Assassin's Creed shadows which you have played a little bit of as well and I'm very interested in your take I we were talking a little bit before recording you're you're very early on you're like at the title card which It's worth noting in Assassin's Creed Shadows is like early on in the game for something like Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which I think was like 25 hours into the game was when the title card showed up. So benevolent Ubisoft.

in this case uh giving you the name of the game i guess early on yeah it showed up like probably an hour in i would say yeah like maybe like hour and a half yeah but you you're you're in like tutorialization like not even tutorials that you're in like we're setting up the stakes of the story mode like you've played as yasuke a little bit and you played as now a little bit right and now you're just playing as now a

So I guess like backing all the way up, Assassin's Creed Shadows, new game in the Assassin's Creed franchise. It's following the lineage of the more recent Assassin's Creed games, which is wild to say because it's been like a decade of these, I think, at this point as well. But Assassin's Creed Origins.

Odyssey Valhalla and this a little a little sprinkle of Assassin's Creed Mirage in between there which was supposed to be like a return to form for the people who like miss the old school Assassin's Creed games like the 2007 to 2015 or whatever it was Assassin's Creed games but But Assassin's Creed Shadows is what I have always considered to be the in the event that people stop caring about Assassin's Creed or think that the franchise is dying. Break glass in case of emergency.

set it in Japan, you're a ninja. Like that's... that's been like the obvious thing to do with Assassin's Creed literally since the first one like I remember when the first one came out in 2007 I bought it I played it I felt the same way everybody else did I was like great setup

for what is going to be a franchise. Like it was so clear that Ubisoft would want to make 100 million of them. And it was also very clear that there are a million different places that you could set it over the course of that franchise. But the most obvious one would be Japan.

And when they set the next one in Italy, and then the one after that also in Italy, and then the one after that also in Italy, and then the one after that in the United States of America, and then there was like revolutionary France.

And they just like kept setting it in places that weren't Japan. It was like, it's very clear that the reason they're holding Japan is like, you need to do this when people start to get sick of Assassin's Creed, because it's the thing that people want. Because this is a franchise where you are literally. sneaking around and killing people like a ninja, but you're not a ninja. Uh, so point being Assassin's Creed shadows, I think.

is coming at a time where I feel like the state of Ubisoft as a company is really... like up in the air it's not doing great like they're selling off their intellectual property reportedly left and right to try and like stay solvent as a company and simultaneously Assassin's Creed as a franchise has not I think been like

Like the constant cash cow that they've always wanted it to be. These games are in development for so long that, of course, like it was all happening around the same time. But still, I think they saw the way the wind was going and said, like, let's make. the Japan one. Let's make the feudal Japan Assassin's Creed.

So that's what we have here. We have Assassin's Creed Shadows, which is the first game since Assassin's Creed Syndicate to feature two protagonists. That game, which I haven't played, but now I'm like kind of very interested in because I've been doing a lot of research about the franchise recently.

that game had two protagonists but they played almost exactly the same from what i understand um this one is like you are playing as two characters one of them is named now a she is a shinobi warrior uh she you know deals death out in the shadows hence the title of the video game um and is like really using like stealth tactics. This is the first game in a long time that, you know, outside of Mirage,

that is really trying to go all in on stealth and assassinations, which is funny considering the name of the franchise and what the franchise has been the entire time it's existed. This is the first one that is like really trying. to I think go after that assassination thing it's worth mentioning also like the previous games in this ilk origins odyssey and valhalla they didn't even really technically have the assassins and the templars in the same way all the earlier ones did this is like

So early on in the timeline that those organizations technically don't exist yet. Or if they do, they're in like different forms. So a lot of those games had combat that was more focused on like parrying, dodge rolling, hitting certain, you know, like deflecting attacks, things like that.

less so the stealth and assassination stuff that you've come to know assassin's creed for which i think rubbed a lot of people the wrong way because that's like that's what you want like that's what you're that's what you're coming to the franchise it makes the franchise unique yeah exactly yeah So having a character like Naue who is like she is definitely deadly with a katana when fighting people head on like.

There's no doubt about it. If you are fighting her, sword fighting her, you can win very easily. But you could also spend almost the entire time playing as her just like... stealth killing people which is i think what people have wanted for a long time on the flip side you have yasuke who is first of all a real person who existed in real life which is wild he was i think he was he was like a sellsword or like he was like a some some kind of like Some kind of warrior, specifically like...

Like he was enslaved by the Portuguese. The Portuguese at the time were trying to be the one country that was allowed to trade with Japan and keeping Japan a secret from the rest of the world. And eventually there was a like essentially a trade deal where a. a lord in feudal japan was like i want him to be my samurai like i want him to be my bodyguard i'm going to train him as a samurai he's going to become a samurai and uh that's

what happened and that's who you're playing as the other half of the time in this video game the weird setup of it all though is

that you start the game playing as both of them and you kind of get a taste for how they both play. And then you play as Naway for the next like 15 hours. Oh, interesting. You're like just now where you're just assassinating people you're like just running around on rooftops and using your grappling hook and like you know trying to stay stealth um when you switch to yasuke finally dude hits like a freight train like the whole thing is like he is not stealth like he can still

If you want to, you can like hide in the tall grass and like, you know, kill like you can assassinate a guy. But for the most part, when you're playing as Yasuke, it's like I am running in. I have a huge ass sword or like a big fucking club or like a giant lance or something. And I'm just going to like wreck these people. Yeah, that's.

clear because he opens doors by running through them which is my favorite design yeah like wario's his way through doors yeah i think also like cold opening with playing as him and then switching to now a they feel so distinct yeah like um i i get what you're saying in terms of like i mean this is my technically my first Assassin's Creed game which is very funny yeah gone this long without playing any of them I'm so interested in this but like I feel like I've

sort of played them by osmosis in some ways because of how influential the series is and also like just the shared vocabulary in the AAA space. but i feel like there was a while where stealth was an optional skill tree and not like the central design of a game yeah and i think it's cool that like

You start off as Yasuke, who I think you described him as playing as a FromSoft boss, which I think is totally apt. It's really fun to play as him, and every killing blow is brutal. Naoi is also very fun, but you learn immediately, oh, what took...

yasuke like two seconds to do takes her like maybe five minutes right like yes and again she's great one-on-one but like you don't you are incentivized not to take on groups of enemies at once you have to separate them or like hide in the grass or you know

put out lights and ambush them yes so i think that that's like if you're gonna do the dual protagonist thing they have to feel distinct or there has to be like a very different story going on in some way yeah in this case it's both and i think it's it's interesting to have Yasuke you know as

an outsider arriving to japan kind of learning about the country yeah uh and then now a you know there's a great moment in the in the opening of the game where yasuke and the warlord he works for are invading this town and yasuke is very clearly having a final fantasy 4 moment of like uh is this good right uh and then that way is from that town right i will say though like i think that i think that the way the game opens is really successful i think honestly like the the

framing of the cut scenes and sort of the the direction of it is really strong yeah i think it's a great way to open the story i was very engaged with it i do find some of the jump back and forth and time a little bit disorienting and not even including the weird future plot which we'll get into oh yeah but like even just like we open with yasuke we cut ahead to when he's like invading this town we cut to naoe who is like

fleeing the town and then we cut like two years before with her and that's kind of like it all works but i'm like there are some moments in noway's plot that i'm like i know you're giving this like you're giving us this now to set the tone and to create some dramatic irony when we go back in time but I almost wish I got the later beat first because when we do get that flashback in the town two years earlier

I felt like I was way more endeared to those characters. And then like in the scenes prior without spoiling, there are these like really intense moments. And I'm like, this would hit.

much harder if I knew who anyone was. You know, that's kind of my main issue with the story right now. Yeah, I agree with you. There's a weird thing with Noway's entire... like when you're playing as her after the point that you're at like when they're like okay open world it's Assassin's Creed you can make your way through Japan and do whatever you want you know quote unquote whatever you want

The objective board is nuts in terms of the amount of stuff that you can do. But for Noway's story specifically, it starts with saying, like, go find meditation points throughout the world. And every time you do those meditations.

you get another flashback sequence of like her training as a shinobi. And similarly, every single one of those is more like critical plot and character information that would have made the opening better. Like without... fail every single one of those is like oh my god like the horrors of this and these people are so wonderful and like there's a reason that this town was kind of secluded and kept to itself etc which i find i also find that to be like a little a little troubling in a way

But on the whole, I do like that stuff. Like, I think it's successful when you're in it. But when you take it, when you zoom out and you look at it like as a narrative, it's weird. And from one of the things I've heard, at least from a lot of other people who have like finished the game, apparently it suffers the same kind of problem that like most Ubisoft games.

seem to these days where it's like because you're able to do the game and kind of any not any order, but like there is a pretty loose order to the way you're making your way through the game, especially when you unlock Yasuke and you can jump back and forth between them at will. and like kind of encounter the story from both sides. It's not until like the last act of the last act.

where you're railroaded on narrative where it's like, oh, the story is good because you're spending so much time jumping around, like not really understanding what's going or not, not, not understanding, but like more so you're spending a lot of time jumping around and getting bits and pieces of narrative that maybe like happen between 10 hours of I'm just going to climb castle.

and like synchronize and then do the leap of faith and go do side quests and whatever, whatever, you know, build up my base and all this other stuff. And then you get another narrative beat. Whereas when you're at the end of the game and you're like, I just want to see the end of the game. I want to see the end of the story. It's like, oh, well, when you tell the story sequentially, like there is something interesting here to be done. And these characters have growth and arcs. But for the first.

50 hours they kind of don't like you're just getting like background information for the most part or doing the thing that you've been doing for the past couple of these games at least which is like Like there are anywhere between five to 12 bad guys and you need to like stalk them throughout the world and then kill them one by one. And when you do, it's like not really that satisfying because you don't know that much about them. I've killed a bunch of them at this point. There are these like...

Like these masked figures. I think there's 12. I think there's 12 masked figures who are like Nobunaga's dudes. Nobunaga is like the kind of like evil lord in this game. And they're like Nobunaga's dudes who show up and like take out now his village.

and she's like trying to track them down and then kill them one by one and it's like it's not that satisfying to kill them honestly like I haven't I haven't found I haven't found any narrative beats with those characters in particular to be like remarkably interesting in any real way um which maybe begs the question like why am I talking about this game like why do I like it at all yeah um

I'll say this I'll jump back a little bit like I played Assassin's Creed 1 I thought to myself this is going to be a good franchise this game maybe doesn't hit the mark but like there are cool ideas here Assassin's Creed 2 takes place in Italy with a character named Ezio and that

game fucking rocked like that at the time at least I don't know how it holds up now but like at the time that game was exceptional and I played the shit out of it I thought it was great everyone I knew who was also playing it was like this game rocks

And I thought to myself, I'm going to be an Assassin's Creed person, probably. I love this game. I'm excited for more. And I think that that game did so well, both critically and commercially, that what they decided to do was do a trilogy of games set in that character's life.

So there was Assassin's Creed 2, I think Brotherhood. And then I want to say Revelations, but maybe it wasn't Revelations. I don't know. There's a third one as well. But three games is Ezio. And I remember playing Brotherhood or whatever the second one was called.

And being like, I'm kind of burning out. I kind of wish that every game was like a little bit of anthology. You know, we were getting like a new character, a new setting every single time, which, you know, is a lot to ask, obviously. But I was also like in high school or early college and like didn't know how games were made yet. So I was like, why can't it be?

in Japan, etc. But then Assassin's Creed 3 came out. People really didn't like it, at least when it came out. I remember that. That was like the turning point. Yes. And then Black Flag came out, which is the pirate one. And I remember picking that up. And that was... it was just bad timing i think more than anything because it came out at the end of the ps3 life cycle in the beginning of the ps4 life cycle so i remember getting it on ps3

And then I played it for like a week and then the PS4 came out and it was like, oh, I guess I should have gotten the PS4 version because I didn't know I was going to get a PS4. But then I ended up getting one, I think, because we were writing for that video game website. And I was like, I should have a PS4. Yeah, I remember that year because we were writing for that website. And I remember in game of the year discussion, everyone's pick was either The Last of Us.

black flag or uh bioshock infinite and mine was fire emblem awakening yes um because i mean because all i had you were right by the way i was right i'm like i used to make fun of myself oh yeah i only had a 3ds if i had a of all those games if i had played the last of us then that might have been honorable mention but i don't think anything was going to top awakening for me that year yeah

I think that's fair. But Black Flag, I remember starting to play and liking enough, but then not being able to put time into it. I just haven't gone back to it. I actually do have it on Switch.

and on steam and like maybe i'll play it again one day that's when i also picked up so maybe we can coordinate that oh yeah that would be fun yeah but that was like the that was the moment I remember playing it where I was like I don't know if I have this franchise in me anymore like I'm starting to kind of wane on it and also I think on a higher level like Like what Ubisoft managed to do with Assassin's Creed and Far Cry specifically at the time, like those two franchises.

they were kind of similar ideas about how to create open worlds in different fonts, right? Like you're just kind of like playing the same style of game in with like different protagonists and from different vantage points.

And that style of design for open worlds just became so prevalent that a lot of other people took it and ran with it in ways that were... significantly more interesting like between the release of assassin's creed one and two and onwards like you get a game like skyrim you know which is like the same icons on a map open world design that at the time like currently feels a little bit rote and

overdone and we'd like to see more evolution of it but when Skyrim came out obviously was a huge fucking deal and there was a time where there were other studios and other franchises that were pushing what Ubisoft had started to I think really make prevalent in directions that at the end of the day like

were more interesting than what Assassin's Creed was doing because they were like, we have a formula and we're going to stick to the formula which eventually, you know, and also releasing games literally every year.

you know annualized the same way call of duty was like i don't know if you need that i don't know if you need to do that with assassin's creed so eventually i forget what year it was but they they took a break they took a break for like two years and they were like we're gonna like really rethink assassin's creed which is a great move i think on their part

And they came back with Origins, which was set in Egypt. And I remember specifically that game coming out and thinking to myself, I am done with this franchise. Like, even if it's good, I kind of don't care as much.

because there are more interesting things happening now I think you know or like also knowing how long those games were and how long they were trying to make them it was like do I really need this like giant open world thing right now when i could check out like 15 other video games in that time and that was 2017 right i think it was around then so that was the year breath of the wild comes out which i feel like is the next evolution of this style absolutely yeah so like

Like, yeah, we're in this space where it's like, not only is the Ubisoft open world structure like kind of boring, but they're even more beholden to it now. And they've doubled down on it and saying like, we've changed everything about Assassin's Creed except this. So I ended up not checking that game out for a long time, but it wasn't until we started doing the show. So 20, I, you know, we started in 2018. I think it was like 2019 when Odyssey came out.

Yeah, it was within the first year, I think. Yeah, which was the one that was set in ancient Greece had two protagonists in that you can choose one at the beginning and then you're just playing as that person the whole time. So you're not like switching back and forth, but you're just picking one of those protagonists.

And I remember playing that game and thinking to myself, oh shit, I think they're like onto something. I think they've figured something out. And it's taken me a long time and it's taken me a lot of like... like jumping back and forth between Assassin's Creed games. Like in the years since Odyssey has come out, I've gone back and played Origins. And I also played a lot of Valhalla when that came out. And I've learned a lot about what I like about this.

style of Assassin's Creed game. And the answer really at the end of the day is like just. immersion over everything else. What I found about Valhalla specifically, which I did not bring to the show at any point, Valhalla was the one that was set in Norway, or I guess technically England. It was like the Vikings attacking England. That game was...

I think a little bit, how do I put this? It's a little edgelordy in some ways because they go all in on like the violence and the brutality of the Viking invasions. And they put you in the hot seat of being the Vikings in that time. And instead of being this like big, beautiful open world that you're traversing, they're saying like, this is for you to conquer and you are brutal and you can. fuck all these people over. You could just absolutely ruin everybody's lives.

And there's this like detachment from the world in a sense that I felt while playing Valhalla that I didn't feel with Odyssey because Odyssey, you're playing as a character who specifically like loves Grease.

Like she loves being there. She's from like an island that is kind of secluded from the rest of Greece. So there's this like wonder of discovering the rest of it and meeting all of these historical figures and seeing all these cities like Athens and like their prime, quote unquote. And like. You as the player, I think, are... Finding that the character you're playing as is this like perfect surrogate for that emotional experience.

Lens is this feeling that you and I describe a lot with games like Dragon Quest XI, for example, where it's like you have a very strong attachment to the world. You have a really strong attachment to the environment and the locales and the scenery and the wildlife and the fauna, etc. lore and the fauna like all of that really i think hits

in a way that you can kind of only dream of as a company trying to make a big open world thing. My time playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey in retrospect was this kind of like almost meditative experience because I wasn't really in it to like do the quest. or like kill all of the masked figures or whatever, or like do all of the assassinations. I was in it to just like see more of Greece.

and just have a good time exploring this unbelievably beautiful world. Valhalla, on the other hand, was like, yeah, fuck this place. it's your like it can be yours if you are violent enough um and not you know conversations about video game violence whatever but like i found that it reminded me a lot of like my fallout experience where it's like this place is doomed have fun like i don't know i don't know if i'm gonna

I don't know if I'm gonna, if I'm being honest. Bye bye, half the audience. Bye bye. Knowing you as well as I do and talking about games with you as much as I do. I know that like for a lot of games. whether they're open world games or like something like pokemon which i don't think you would categorize wholly as open world but like yeah you are someone who is drawn to setting you know dragon quest think is a great example of that where it's like those games are about

the experience and the atmosphere and the world you love death stranding which i think is actually a great counterpoint to like open world games that are maybe guided by combat even like that is a game that is directly about like

connection in all ways right finding beauty in something that is ruined yeah and i think i mean like I get that you don't like the aesthetic of Fallout I think what makes Fallout interesting is sort of like the fact that life continues and I think that like the best Fallout games are about like

sort of the the political satire and the commentary on like what kind of systems of government do we end up weirdly defaulting to when things reset so um but you know i think if you don't want to be in that world and if you play open world games for that sense of immersion but also maybe the sense of wonder is what i'm hearing like you and that's why i think you're an elder scrolls boy uh more than a boy because you want You want to feel more than a fallout boy, Steven.

that was an accident but that's also the episode title yeah it's gotta be yeah you want to be it was a cassandra who's the lead in odyssey yes you want to be cassandra excited to see greece and that's what I'm picking up from you and that's also you know it's subjective I think like

Like I really enjoyed Ghost of Tsushima, which is probably the closest I got to playing Assassin's Creed. I really enjoyed killing all of those fortresses of villains. That was a lot of fun. But I also really enjoyed the fact that like. Once you did a mission in that game, there was this rotating camera on Jin Sakai sleeping on his horse. Yes.

And just little little touches like that made the world feel alive and wonderful. And I guess in that game, it was a place you want to defend, you know, which I think is a bit more incentive rather than like.

taking it you know and there's a way to do that that's also interesting and fun but i get why you'd be put off by the edge authority elements of valhalla yeah i haven't played valhalla to be clear but i understand what you're saying yeah i i think like at At the end of the day, the thing that is working about Assassin's Creed Shadows specifically here also is... I think that that marriage of like character and setting specifically, like Nae's upbringing as a shinobi, I think.

sets her in a time and place where the connection with the environment and the reverence for the environment is paramount, right? And... when you see a lord like Nobunaga show up and be like I'm going to burn this entire village down I'm going to cut down all these trees to put in like all these you know encampments where we're like doing horrific things to people there is this sense of like

Like, no, but this place is beautiful and you're ruining something beautiful. And that, you know, empowers her on her revenge quest, obviously. But simultaneously, as the player, you're like, I want to see more of the beautiful place. So you spend your time galloping around on your horse trying to save the beautiful place. And that that really works.

for me in this game. I think, you know, I, a couple episodes ago, like wrote this game off having not played it which is very unlike us and very unlike me specifically um but specifically because i was like i have played the feudal japan assassin's creed and it is ghost of tsushima a game that you just brought up and you also had make

feelings on the series and on ubisoft i get why you were initially yeah you know hesitant but i think the thing that that ghost of tsushima did which is very interesting is this like almost hyper stylized version of japan at the time right like so much of that game was like every tree is completely golden yellow when it is autumn you know like you'll make it to areas that are like

specifically color-coded to seasons etc and what Assassin's Creed Shadows is doing which you haven't gotten to this point yet but I think you're gonna be very interested in it when you get there is the seasons literally change like while you're playing and it's like oh that rocks part of what's that's part of what's happening mechanically as well so like

As the seasons change, the world will change with it. And the amount of people you have at your... camp at this like home base you can set up they'll like go out and go on missions and come back when the season is done like it literally takes a season for them to you know pull off whatever it is so like if you break into an encampment and you're like I can't take all of these supplies out of the encampment but I can have

have two of my followers do it for me like that will literally take them like three months to do so when the seasons change you have those people back at your camp and you have those supplies back things like that but simultaneously they're also you know rendering this entire huge open world in japan in all four seasons and you are getting to experience the same place over and over again in winter fall summer spring which

also lends to this feeling of immersion it feels a lot like what we loved about the forza horizon series in a way where it's like yeah you know you are just like having a silly fun time driving around but there is this kind of core connection to the environment and the place because you have a better sense of it like as a tangible space.

because you get to experience it changing the same way real life does. You know, this is not just like, you know, one beautiful vista that is unchanging you could just sit there and photo and take pictures of it but this is like a real environment with real creatures and real plant life that is reacting in a real way and i find that that is really compelling as a place to just like hang out in and I've been really enjoying just like

spending time in this version of japan in this video game but i also find that that really comes through in some of the like other design tenants as well so like one random example is just while you are doing stealth missions it is easier to be stealthy when it is raining than when it is not raining because when it's raining the sound of the rain and especially if there's thunder will cover up the sounds of like you fucking killing people which is like

a very natural normal thing to happen in real life obviously but is another thing where like once I realized that was happening in the game I was like oh that's That's brilliant. And that's another level of immersion deeper. It's like, OK, I'm going to storm Osaka Castle and I'm going to kill all the like shitty samurai who have decided that they're going to occupy it. And oh, it just started to rain as soon as I walked into the front gates. Perfect.

Let's see how quickly I can do this before the rain is gone or before daytime comes. Similarly, they've introduced a new thing where they have candle lights all over the place. You can snuff out candles. which then create more darkness, which makes it again, easier to be stealthy. And I think those little touches of like using the environment, literally in terms of like the man-made piece of the environment, but also like the natural piece of the environment to your advantage.

does create a better sense of... to kind of the core of what I always have a problem with when I'm playing stealth games as well which is like Like things behave in a way that feels video gamey and not real. Like when I when I'm playing a stealth game, I'm generally very bad at it because I assume that the game is taking into account like how people would act in real life.

And that's usually not the case. Usually it's like press a button to see like the, the vision cone of the guy who's patrolling left and right over and over again, unchanging, you know, but in Assassin's Creed shadows, not to say it's perfect, obviously, cause it's not, but like. It does feel like it is applying the logic of reality more so than a lot of other stealth games I've played.

And I have I have some issues with it here and there. But like the idea, for example, that there are servants in these castles. And when you use your like.

eagle vision which is so silly you have like an x-ray vision that allows you to see like enemies through walls and stuff but yeah but when you're using eagle vision the enemies who will fight back are marked as red so like these are the samurai these are the ronin these are like the the bandits these are like the the actual enemies with like levels and parry meters and all that kind of stuff enemies quote unquote who will not fight back

but will alert the enemies in red are marked as orange. And they're usually like... servants or people who are like working in these castles um and if you show up with like a big ass katana in this castle and you see a servant and they see you they will like run for help and they will try and you know they will try and find somebody who can take you out

You can kill those people and you get a little bit of experience if you do it. But also you could not like that decision by itself, I think is significantly more interesting than like most stealth games I've played where it's like. I want to get in and out of here as stealthily as possible. There can be no survivors. There can be no witnesses.

i'm gonna kill everybody on site and for me i'm like this is just a fucking dude that works here or like this is just like a right this is just like a woman who's like picking flowers like she's

She's been hired to like pick the flowers or the weeds in front of this castle to like maintain the garden or whatever. Like, do I really need to kill this person? Obviously not. The fact that the game gives you the choice, I actually think is interesting. Like there's obviously a darkness to it there because like.

Like, I'm sure there are people out there who are like, you know, no witnesses, like there will be those people. But for me, it presents a more interesting challenge again. And I think gets me closer to that experience of like. Like things and people are behaving the way I expect them to. If somebody who is working in this castle sees me like, you know, through one of those rice paper walls.

stab a guy and they're also in that room they're gonna go screaming and running for help and then it puts me in a position where i have to make that split second decision of like do i take this person out or do i let them run and i can maybe hide and it'll be okay you know all of that stuff i think really really lends to the stealth and i i have found that in a world where i am generally terrible at stealth games i've been very successful

in Assassin's Creed Shadows, I think because it is applying that immersive level to the way stealth behaves as well. Yeah, that's very well said. I think you nailed sort of the issue a lot of stealth games have where you don't want to give...

too much information away to the player yeah because that reduces the tension so if we can see exactly the enemy's line of sight and everything it can still be fun but like it can kind of be overkill and then it could also break immersion if we're seeing like too many

shapes and colors and stuff you know but like if we aren't shown anything like whenever Zelda tries stealth I love you Zelda please no more because it's just like you have no idea you could be like behind a guard and they see you uh and I think this game does a great job like

Like having all the visual information be, I guess, diegetic, you know, like it is literally very clear shadows. Like it's stuff in the environment. They teach you right away. Like you can hide in tall grass. You can hide in the shadows. Like I. I always feel like I know... how to shake off attention you know like and i think that's the most important thing it's like you're armed with information

So that way you can make those split second decisions. And then that immerses you in what's happening. You're not thinking about, oh, I've done these kind of fortress missions before. You're like, how do I do this now? I'm fully in the minds of this character. And I'm excited to see how that works when we switch back to Yasuke, who is the flip of that. And it must feel like Mario getting the star in some ways where it's like, oh, I don't have to worry about anything now. I can just charge in.

and do that and that's kind of thrilling i love that decision i'm excited too to see how they interact narratively it sounds like that won't happen for quite a while but i do want to see how those plots

intertwine yeah to your to your point about playing as yosuke and those kinds of missions like and charging in like that is very literally what is happening like there are a lot of there are a lot of instances where you will be playing as now and you will try to go through a door and be like the door is barred from the other side so you can't do it and like

Like Gaskai literally runs through barred doors. Like that is just how he operates. So it is just like run in, stealth goes out the window. You can be stealthy, but like the game makes a pretty good point of... trying to snap you out of that like when you're playing as Yasuke like stealth is not really as much of an option you can do it but like it's more to position yourself in the beginning so the fight will go in your direction is kind of how I've been thinking about it

So like, how, how do I get to a point where like I could take out like three guys and, and you know, when the other five dudes who are kind of patrolling here, like I've already taken out three of them. Like that's, that's. That's what Yasuke's stealth is for more so than like, can I take out all eight of these guys stealthily the same way it would be with Naoi. The thing that I want to touch on here, though, is that while this is very successful, I think in terms of this return to stealth.

that they've tried to figure out here. It is betrayed most. by the size of the video game. And this is a thing that you and I have talked about a million times on this show, but like... Like every game, you know, I don't think this is the case anymore, but for a long time, every game needed to be bigger and better than the last one. You know, and when it came to open world games, it meant that like they would be touting how large the square mileage of the game space was.

And in the case of Assassin's Creed Shadows, like the Japan that you are traversing is absolutely massive and it is filled with.

Like it's filled with so many castles and people to assassinate and like little, you know, barbarian camps and bandit camps. And when you're riding your horse from point A to point B, there will be like, you know, diegetic little moments of... story that will happen um where you'll like save a person who will then you know give you the hint of a quest that you can go find somewhere else There's always stuff happening, but the place is so huge.

and the kinds of things that you can do are very limited. And that is where I find Assassin's Creed Shadows is starting to falter.

if you're a person who is like this is the game i'm getting this year you're gonna have probably a great time like if you if you already like assassin's creed if you like what it's bringing to the table like this is i think the best one in my opinion and i haven't played syndicate that's why i want to play syndicate everybody says syndicate's the best one I want to play that and I'll you know maybe do that at some point and get back to the show on it but like

For me, Assassin's Creed Shadows is, I think, the most successful an Assassin's Creed game has been mainly because of that combination of protagonist and world and this return to stealth that I think is very successful. But this style of Assassin's Creed game that they've been committed to since Origin is...

like let's make as big a world as possible and let people do quote unquote whatever they want in it but the whatever they want is really only limited to like 10 different things and it gets into the same problem that you and I had with Ghost of Tsushima which is a game that I think is extremely successful, but also hides the second two acts. in such a way that you don't even know there will be like two more thirds of the map when you get into those second and third acts.

So you and I both burnt out on the game in the first act because we did so much of the side stuff in that first island. Yeah, I actually felt compelled to 100% that. small island yeah i enjoyed all the activities and i was like this is scratching a part of my brain that you know like i i think As much as we are kind of sick of this formula, if it's done well, it can still be fun. Everything has its place. Yeah, look at Xenoblade Chronicles X.

Right. Exactly. I mean, that's, you know, a remaster of an older game. Right. But you and I are still enjoying it. And that is largely like icons on a map of Palooza. Yeah. I think the key difference, though, between Ghost of Tsushima one, at least. in Assassin's Creed Shadows is that Ghost of Tsushima was kind of pitched as like the swan song of the PS4. And in some ways I saw it as like a best of up until that point. Like we're going to play the hits.

we know what the ps4 is good at we're going to give you a really great story stunning world like still one of the best looking games on the console and familiar combat but done really well i mean the multiplayer of that game had no business being as good as it was that was like you and I got fully into the multiplayer alone yeah and that was largely based off of how successful that combat was also like yeah like that that multiplayer is not good unless they have absolutely nailed combat right

So I think it showed how many different kinds of games the combat could work for. Yeah. But, and this is just subjective, but for me, it's like Ghost of Tsushima's familiarity bumped for me less. because it was the finale of the ps4 this game is being billed as like the next big ubisoft game on you know modern consoles yeah that are to be blunt still trying to figure out why they exist

And I see this sentiment a lot about Shadows. And I've felt this way about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which I feel bad it's always my example of like what not to do. But both games.

feel like they would be better if they weren't open worlds to be direct like it feels like both games have a really stellar narratively driven like 30 hour game in them yeah but are just so bloated and and this goes we had an any percent recently that was about like uh when are bad games interesting and when are they like a pain to play yeah and we both agreed like Whenever a game goes for it, it's always exciting, regardless of the results, at least to us.

A Xeno Saga or Shenmue are games that I wouldn't recommend to most people, but I love dearly because of how ambitious they are. And then you have games that are kind of maybe beholden to a structure. There's like corporate... fear of straying too far and it does ironically you know Assassin's Creed Shadows is I think all about internal conflict in a lot of ways both on a societal level and with the characters yeah and the game itself

feels conflicted about what structure it should have you know should it be again like a shorter like more like the old style of game or should it be like the the post Odyssey style yeah and yeah I mean I haven't gotten to that yet but I would I'm guessing I will feel the same way even if I enjoy all that stuff and also like you said I think what I've recognized from afar having this be my first Assassin's Creed game

Is that like we all have as people who enjoy video games, we all have like the sort of like comfort food we gravitate towards. And we have that sort of like we all have a loop in our head that we just kind of need, you know, like. Even if it's not, it doesn't have to be innovative or revolutionary. I will always be happy to play a retro turn-based RPG on some base. lizard brain level you know like uh and i do think for a lot of people like

Like you said, Assassin's Creed is the game you play. A lot of this won't really matter as much, but it's like, cool, there's a lot to do in the game I wanted to get. That's not a problem for me. This is maybe a little bit of a podcast host. problem but i do see this sentiment a lot even outside of like our conversations of just like

I think it's this feeling that every game is sort of begging for all of your time and for you to only play it forever. And that's, I think, where the open world structure can feel almost like manipulative. or feel like a second job where it's like, do I want to be playing this? Do I feel like I have to be? Yeah. Yeah. Especially when you get into like the loot table stuff with Assassin's Creed Shadows, like with all of these games, they have kind of like randomized loot that will drop.

You know, when you kill certain enemies or when you open certain chests or whatever. And like the idea of needing that in the first place feels, I think, inherently placed to make the game quote unquote like. stretch out further right like they it's literally like oh i didn't get the katana that i wanted from from this castle so i'm gonna you know wait until the seasons change so i can come back and try again like it's it's almost it's like a it's like a

faux... I don't know. It's just padding. It's actually, I think, the word that I'm trying to find here. It just feels like padding. Instead of being like, I'm getting something really great for having finished this, the chance that you might get something great, I think, is the kind of thing that you put in a game when you're like the actual systems of this.

aren't strong enough to compel people to play it. But maybe the idea that they could get something better if they do it again will be the thing that's compelling people. And I think what's weird about my relationship with this game and I think with Assassin's Creed in general is like, I don't dislike this. game and I don't dislike this structure and this style.

there is something about like an icons on a map game where, as you said, when done well, like still works for me. And in this case, it's like, I don't even know how well that part of it is being done, but I still do find myself wanting to jump back into. shadows whenever I have free time to play games, which has not been a lot over the past week as my entire life has changed.

but like this week coming up I want to play a bunch of different things but like there may be a chance that when I'm relaxing I want to sit down and I want to put on a podcast and I want to play Assassin's Creed Shadows and like that's

great I'm happy to have that game you know not every game needs to be like game of the year best thing I've ever played obviously uh and in the case of Assassin's Creed Shadows I feel very comfortable being like this is a great game for like winding down it's been the game that I've been like picking

up and playing before i go to bed specifically first of all one thing that is worth noting where are you playing this ps5 okay i've been playing this on um pc i got it on steam i've been playing it on the rog ally x which it runs remarkably well on considering. That's surprising. Yeah. Like, you know, how great does it look? There are obvious trade-offs there, but it runs.

very well and that's been really surprising as you said the other place i've been playing this is um nvidia geforce now which is like nvidia's streaming service where like you just rent access basically to like the highest rig PC possible and then they stream it to you and I've been playing that also like on my computer like on my laptop on my MacBook at

4k resolution spec'd all the way up like ultra settings across the board like ray tracing on frame gen on like all of that stuff like hdr on like every setting turned up to the max This is one of the most beautiful games I've ever played, definitely.

it looks great on the ps5 it looks wonderful i'm sure it does i kind of regret not getting it on like a big ass beefy console that i have right now you know but there was a part of me because they they announced that it was going to be on geforce now at launch and i was like i'd be interested to see what that feels like Sure. And I briefly talked to Christian Spicer, shout out, our friend over at DLC, who's been playing it exclusively via GeForce now and was like, it's great.

So that having been said, like on my MacBook playing with a DualShock 5 controller or DualSense, they're called DualSense. with the DualSense controller, 4K maxed out settings. Like it is a stunning, stunning video game. And I have been enjoying the experience of just like being somewhere beautiful before I go to bed every night for the past like week. But I don't know if the game...

structured in a way where I will feel compelled to see it through to what I'm told is a great finale. Like I don't know if I have the stamina in me to continue doing the same kinds of missions over and over and over again, just so I can see how these stories wrap up.

which I think is is a bummer and again is like part of the reason that the scope of these games betrays I think the more ambitious parts of it yeah that's well said it's it's kind of a strange situation that like the story is the most gripping part of it and it's like the hardest thing to get out of it yeah because you have to do all this stuff

i will make some recommendations real quick uh for people who are interested in playing it like this is a game i would recommend to people if you seem if you're like interested in assassin's creed at all like this is the best one in my opinion but uh

A couple settings I would recommend turning on. When you start the game, they ask you a bunch of questions about like how you want to play the game. Play in, I think it's called like immersive mode, which... which makes it so the people in Japan, when they're Japanese, they speak Japanese and their subtitles and the Portuguese people speak.

Portuguese Spanish and uh that's also in subtitles and um they have like voice actors for those specific languages and they are exceptional they're way better uh than than what I've seen from the English

side of the house. Not to dunk on that voice work, but I think just by comparison, the immersive mode in particular feels... immersive believe it or not yeah they have another thing where it's like do you want waypoints on a map that like lead you to your next objective or not um i have that stuff turned off which means that you need to spend time like talking to people in towns and like like taking out, you know, people eight levels deep.

in uh in the army to be able to like get information or read letters which will point you in the direction of other objectives like that kind of stuff also is i think one of the biggest turns from the original assassin's creed kind of formula to this one this idea that like

You need to actually engage with the environment to be able to see what to do next. That is great. And the biggest thing, and shout out to the crew at Girl Mode for mentioning this, because this is like... huge uh there's a setting i think in the difficulty options where assassinations instant kill people and that's off by default

which is wild so sometimes you'll like go stab a guy in the neck and they won't die and they'll like it'll only take out like half their health or something or like take out their parry meter and then you need to keep fighting them and that feels ludicrous that's i mean i might leave that on because that gives me that skyrim flavor i love where like an arrow can go through a guy's head and he's like what was that

you know like i love that stuff but i know you mean it's like totally any climactic well the the flips i i love there's this piece that our friend chris plant wrote for polygon that's called uh i think it's called assassin's creed shadows turns you into the slasher villain or something like that like it's like Or Assassin's Creed Shadow is a horror movie and you're the villain. There is this flow state that I have started to get into when I'm like...

like going into occupied castles or whatever. And I need to like clear out a bandit camp or something where, because I have the instant assassinations turned on and I'm playing this now way. And she's like so fast and so loose. And with some of the, some of the like extra perks and like.

kind of ability points that you can unlock and stuff. Like I can run into a place Use my grappling hook to like climb up on top of a building, jump off, assassinate one guy, instantly throw like a kunai into the neck of another guy while some third guy is turning around and I'm. sprinting at him already and before he can even pull his sword out the assassinate button turns on and I like jump onto his face and like shove the hidden blade through his eye like that

That experience of like I have killed three people in eight seconds and I can do that for the rest of this bandit camp if I play my cards right is the like Hotline Miami like juice. You know, that is like that is the like once you get into that flow state.

suddenly even the stealth doesn't matter because you're such a destructive force and you understand like the abilities and the way the enemies react so well that you can just like plow your way through a place which is you know more fun when you're Yasuke in some ways because like you literally are this

you know like a tank but when you're doing it is now way specifically where it's like she is more lithe and and mobile you you just are the slasher villain like it is horrifying what you're capable of doing and the game is like so fucking bloody also like it is like

gruesome so i was surprised that like one of the strong attacks with yasuke is like a beheading i was like oh okay we're going there yeah yeah it's just like he just swings the katana so hard yeah i'm playing so much yakuza which is like weirdly pg with the violence even if you like slam a guy's head in the car he's just like oh sorry you know there's like a total detachment from it so it's kind of yeah shocking to see yeah but i don't know like

There's a lot of really compelling stuff in this game. It is working for me more than it's not. I think it's a bummer. I don't need to say it every episode, but everything that's going on with Ubisoft as a company, on the highest level, their executive tier, clearly fucking sucks. but I think like for the people who are on the ground level making a game that they feel passionate about and like you know they did a good job of that like I think

I think specifically delaying this game as long as they did after Star Wars Outlaws didn't hit the way they wanted it to and like had a bunch of bugs and stuff. Like the fact that this game runs as well as it does on something like the Steam Deck or the ROG Ally, the fact that it is this beautiful, the fact that it has not crashed. I don't know.

It's really well done. And for my money, personally, is the best Assassin's Creed game I've played. And I think that that's... that's pretty exciting um especially since you've gone in and out of the franchise you know yeah um yeah so i'm glad i checked it out thank you to the listeners who like chimed in and like pushed me to check it out i do appreciate it a lot of that happened This is the thing we don't talk. A lot of that happened in Spotify comments.

We had a lot of comments on Spotify, like all the time. Thank you to everybody who's commenting on Spotify. I do read all of those and I respond to them sometimes. They're fun. So thank you for people who do that. But anyway, Assassin's Creed Shadows. Pretty good video game.

yeah i i enjoyed i'm glad i'm finally i can finally say i've played in assassin's creed and i feel like a big phony on this show yeah if you if you will do me a solid i think give it like i know this is a lot but like give it another like three to five hours Like I think give it some time where you like get into the open world and start to get to like experience stuff. Like when you're like building your base and hiring scouts and like.

are given the option to kind of do whatever. I'll be interested to see how you feel about like the open world part of it. That's the irony of this section is I feel like I had this. whole take on it but i actually on some level haven't experienced this game's open world structure yet so i might come back next week being like i actually love all that stuff forget everything i just said but

I was speaking more generally just about the general fatigue of this structure and, you know, the games I played like it. But yeah.

I also do still want to play Black Flag and Odyssey. Those are the two that appeals to me the most. Oh, before we move on, I do just want to say, as a newcomer to this series, it felt a little bit like... diving into the deep end of kingdom hearts lore to cold cold open the game with the strange future company plot that's like the through line through all these games

Like, before anything, you hear a voice, like a very Siri-esque voice, like, Hello, assassin. Welcome to your memories. Yes. And then... And then there's a voice like, don't trust them. Don't you're being lied to. Yeah. It keeps.

switching back and forward to that and then it takes you to this so i i can't i vaguely remember that that's an element of these games and i'm sure that is exciting to the people that have been playing it from day one you know there's some continuous story there yeah but then it takes you to the screen where they show you the full timeline of assassin's creed the series and part of me was like wait a minute did i just accidentally buy like a deluxe

package where i get every game because you can then select like yeah you know valhalla or whatever and if you do it takes you to the playstation store and it's like you can buy this game it's one of the strangest decisions

like it I can't even I'm not even sure if I should critique because I'm like you're just reminding me that the store is there like I don't know what do you want the answer to this yeah I need to know what's going on here there is an answer here okay so when Assassin's Creed Shadows was first plotted out um it was supposed to be the beginning of a kind of live service version of assassin's creed oh and this

thing that you're referring to that like opens the video game is a remnant of what that was gonna I forget what it was called but there was like this kind of overarching like Assassin's Creed kind of live service thing and shadows was supposed to kick it off but the idea was that like that

thing that you're talking about was the Assassin's Creed like launcher and it was going to allow you to play all of the new Assassin's Creed and like every content update and stuff would happen through that launcher and that would also be introducing like new

story stuff to the Abstergo plotline, which is like the current or future plotline. But because... of how poorly received that concept was when it started to leak they then pivoted back to it being like a mainly single player game but they kept this idea of the launcher so if you have the other games installed like it will kick you over to those games technically

but really really weird way to do it and I'm curious like how much of this how much of the modern day stuff is present in the game itself then if the idea was to like siphon it all out into this weird launcher thing um because from what i understand at least too the games have kind of like shied away from that which you know talk about bad games that are interesting because they're trying weird shit like the Absurgo modern day plotline stuff in the original Assassin's Creed games.

I think that's fascinating. Like, I think it's such a weird swing and it's so fun and bizarre. I like the idea of like a person who is reliving the memories of their ancestors is learning. everything that they can do. So like, I think his name is Desmond Miles, is the guy you play as in Assassin's Creed 1, is like learning how to be an assassin in real life because of his experience playing as Altair in Assassin's Creed 1.

Like that stuff is very silly. And then when you're doing the modern day plot line and like suddenly Desmond Miles, who's just like a normal guy can start to like parkour off of stuff and like kill people with an assassin's blade.

It was like very funny. But also, I feel like they've gotten further and further away from that stuff. And I remember specifically in Assassin's Creed Odyssey starting to get to the point where they were starting to introduce some of the modern day stuff. And it was like...

so buried and so like this is for eight people that it almost felt like they were embarrassed to have it in there that's how it comes across it comes across like we have to do it a little bit but like don't make it the main thing they do do that to sort of

frame the two protagonists like they were like oh there's an error in this memory switching protagonists you know yeah um but uh yeah i mean i don't know enough to really have a strong tick and i do think it's interesting i think it's i honestly Why not go all in on it? I agree. They should make a game that's the inverse. yeah it's like a modern day game and occasionally you remember rome like every now and then that's

That's actually very Xenosaga. Can I tell you something? Yeah. I wasn't going to talk about this on the show, but I will talk about it briefly because it's for something I'm working on. But I watched the Assassin's Creed movie last week.

oh yeah i saw you post about that in our discord start starring michael fassbender and come out let me tell you something it is that opposite actually now that i'm thinking about it like it is literally like you spend most of your time with michael fassbender who is like at abstergo being sent into the animus and maybe like

Like I would say an eighth of that movie takes place in Spain with him as an assassin. And the rest of it is like his storyline as a dude in modern day. And it is very silly. It is an. extremely silly movie it feels so early 2000s in a way that i wasn't expecting yeah it's kind of how it's sort of the flavor i imagined for it yeah i don't think it's not like It's not horrible, but it's also definitely not good at all. I had this friend. I love the way she recommends TV shows.

because she watches a lot of stuff and she knows what she's talking about but kind of like how we play so many games we have these weird like this game isn't good but it's interesting kind of take She'll be like, this show is not great. But if you're like sick and you like don't want to go outside and you don't want to open your eyes and you're like.

crying. It's pretty good to have on in the background. I'm never going to watch this. Why is it bitch that way? It's fine to throw on and ignore. Alright, cool. Alright, well that's Assassin's Creed Shadows.

I will play more of it. I planned to even before you asked. I just I wanted to at least get a taste of it because I knew you were going to bring it this week. And I had to pull myself away from the other games I was playing. I'm glad I checked it out. It's fun. Yeah, I have it. To be clear, also like.

I think it's like the first 10 to 12 hours is when you're playing as Naue. And that's like an estimate. You could spend a lot more time playing as Naue realistically and not get to the Asuke stuff if you don't commit to Naue's storyline at all. But I've only been playing as Asuke for like two hours.

so I still don't have like a really firm sense of the back and forth between them that much I like playing as Yasuke I think more than a lot of the reviews I've seen but I do want to put more time into it and if I do that I'll maybe come back and talk about it a little bit more yeah sounds good

That's Assassin's Creed Shadows. Let's take a break and come back. You have a bunch of games that you've been playing. I do. And I've also played some of them so we can talk about that. Oh, yeah. All right. I'll see you then. Bye bye. Bye. Brendan. Hello. You just share with me some important news. We're learning this on April 7th. This whole month is going to be like a report. Yeah, it's going to be structured like an Assassin's Creed game. It kind of is.

this is the future plot coming in yeah uh we just heard from a game spot a story on game spot that the news of the oblivion remake can drop any at any point this month the game will shadow drop oh the game oblivion remake will shadow drop at any moment this month wow the so like oblivion i was actually thinking i mean i'm always thinking of oblivion but we're talking about the stealth i was also thinking of oblivion yeah i i'm still not

sold on that idea i know we're a little bit different on this i think you have more hope than i do i think the idea of remaking oblivion is a little bit like why mess with perfection the sort of awkwardness of that game is kind of why we love it you know no i'm to be clear i'm with you for the exact like i know exactly why you feel that way and i agree with you 100 there is just like the little

optimist light deep in my heart that is like, but maybe it'll be good. The same way I was about Resident Evil 4 getting a remake where I was like, I don't know if that's going to work.

really and then it happened and it was great like i'm there's a little piece of me that's like i hope that they wouldn't do it unless it was good and they could prove that it was good and worth doing you know yeah i feel like uh elder scrolls is is their thing and i think post starfield you would think maybe they want to regain some trust it feels so much like bioware with the mass effect collection you know yeah it definitely does yeah just sort of like okay let's let's

this feels also very breaking case of emergency like we got the oblivion remake yeah ready i mean you know i think skyrim is still like always in the like top 20 best-selling games on steam so yeah they're fine they're doing okay right but in terms of just like critical consensus or getting people excited at the like

Like it's sad, but I do think the idea of like a new Bethesda game right now, just saying that out loud, the audience goes like more than like, oh my God, stop what you're doing. You know, right. Like when Skyrim came out, that was the attitude. Right. Or the cultural cachet they had going into Starfield, right? Like when Starfield was announced.

and it was like coming and they started to show it off it was like oh my god this is so exciting then you get your hands on it and it's a different story you know yeah and like we both liked that game like enough uh in the early hours but i definitely think it's safe to say it failed to stick with people truly i'm not trying to be mean but like whenever i bring it up to people they like forgot it came out like yeah deeply sad yeah but if oblivion is the comeback

That would make me very, very happy. That would make it all worth it. Yeah. I am so, yeah. I mean, hey. if it's quote unquote at any point this month like maybe it will have happened by the time this episode comes out which is also funny that's that's why you have to timestamp everything when we record an event yeah why what were they why were they wrong because it was the past why did they pick april 2025

Record in advance for the first time. Why weren't they responding to adoring fan cart? Because we didn't know it. Adoring fan cart. I would love a more. I would pay 80 bucks for an Oblivion cart with just all the strength. Like you'll play as Burr's Gorkash for the adoring fan. Oh my God. Or one of the guards. Holy shit. Anyway, looking forward to that. Whenever that shadow drops.

i just like i just to say it out loud please i guess because i don't think we did but like the reason that you and i stick with oblivion and love it so much is because of the like the jank of it like because while I think in the years since Oblivion there has become this there's this like large scale if a game has any bugs

that means that it is shitty and the developers are lazy and et cetera, et cetera. Like this like discourse about the idea of bugs existing in a video game. Whereas in the time of Oblivion or even in Skyrim, like in Skyrim when the dragon implodes on itself.

like the model is literally like imploding and the model is T posing like a person. Like that's the kind of shit that everyone loses their minds over and is obsessed with and finds is like a fun part of the charm. And like, obviously if it's breaking the game, that's a problem, you know, or for something like.

you know these days like when cyberpunk came out and had a bunch of issues were like unplayable yeah yeah like that stuff is not good but there is it there's a piece of the like it literally feels like there's scotch tape holding some of these systems together with oblivion like that the good shit man like get like give me more of that so even the stuff like the the weird zoom in when you talk to a person like i mean that's

That's just comedy. That's so funny that that's how they decided to have you interact with people. And I love that stuff to death. And I feel like that's also the kind of stuff that they're going to try to sand the edges off of when making a remake of Oblivion and then it needs to stand on its like narrative and world design alone which

you know i mean like the world design of oblivion is literally the like copy paste of the same space over and over again to make the world big kind of design because that was the era and if you're just putting that in 4k with ray tracing that doesn't mean it's not copy pasted world design you know yeah i agree with that that's why i'm a little bit hesitant to be fully excited um i mean the other beautiful thing about oblivion is that it's almost like the surrealist

immersive sin yeah where like the possibly you know we're talking about assassin's creed shadows like it starting to rain is a really organic moment but is also like a possibility the developers like want you to take advantage of yeah a unicorn appearing in the woods that is programmed to because it's a pacifist it will attack and kill anyone who has attacked anything else in its radius which is invisible to the player right means that in our stream of it from 2019 the unicorn we brought to town

started like a civil war basically the minute it saw like a guard with a sword yeah and that kind of stuff is thrilling and like is not like oh this is this is a immersive this is a organic moment that no one saw coming and that's i think the beauty of oblivion is like you know I think a modern example of like where possibilities are planned but still organic is like the modern Zelda games where it's like

Like players can do stuff. I imagine that, you know, especially in Breath of the Wild where like people were.

using like strange glitches with the powers to pull off these like amazing things and then that is later incorporated into the design of tears of the kingdom that is the kind of thing that's like i think more impressive today some people might see the oblivion stuff and like you said be like this game is broken but again it's like i don't know the fact that yes the world is copy and pasted yes some of it hasn't aged well but Still, in 2025, I can safely say...

I don't know what's going to happen when I play oblivion. And that's what keeps it special because like it truly anything can happen. still yeah and that's what makes it the best game ever it's kind of like um it's kind of like why you know, why would you make a sequel to Dragon's Dogma, you know, when like the expectations of players has changed so much?

And what didn't work for, I think, a mass audience with Dragon's Ogma 1 would also not work for a mass audience with Dragon's Ogma 2 if you tried to keep most of that the same. And it's kind of like the miracle scenario where for the... freaks like us who love Dragon's Dogma 1, they did just commit to the same stuff.

And it still created that sense of like, you literally have no idea what's going to happen anytime you boot up Dragon Zogma 2. And I hope that they don't sand too much of that off with Oblivion if they decide to, or if this thing is real and if it comes out this month, but...

I don't know like I don't I just don't know like I it feels so weird like from a company perspective to decide to do this to be like oh it's been however many years since Skyrim Starfield didn't work out you know what's gonna save us is Oblivion even a Morrowind remake would I think be a safer bet I think so too because like there is a much larger at least based on conversations we've seen online

reverence for it as a classic yeah and skyrim is sort of a modern staple oblivion is this awkward kind of middle period yeah that is still i mean like it's not like no one else likes it it was a very successful game yeah but yeah the other side like the fear of sanding off the edges is

is valid the other fear i have is being too aware of the accidental comedy and leaning into it you know you know like leaning into like yeah we know we know that this is funny which like could work but could also ruin the joke if you acknowledge it too much because a lot of the comedy of Oblivion is just again those like accidental things like a village voiced by the same guy talking to themselves you know that's the shit that I love

I think the thing that I'm most interested in is where it falls on that spectrum between remake and remaster. Yeah. Remaster. I would love like just touch it up a bit, make it look a little bit more palatable. That would be fine. There was, there was this like, there was this tech demo I wrote about it. Like.

forever ago. There's this tech demo that Nvidia showed off that was literally like four rooms from oblivion that they like ran through this like like upscaling processing thing that they have but it literally it literally was like oblivion and and they had to say specifically like on the bottom it's like this is not like there are no plans to make an oblivion remaster or whatever but even even in that video that they showed off like what it did what it was able to do algorithmically was like

very impressive and was like adding ray tracing and lighting and stuff to oblivion which just seems like so silly to me and there is another version of this in my head that's like the The absurdity of Oblivion in the most high fidelity you can get. in modern technology may actually end up enhancing it in a way yeah yeah like photo realistic adoring fan you know what i mean like there's something There's something about that that's like, this shouldn't be real.

here's the thing about about video game graphics they are always still in the uncanny valley like we i don't know if you shoot for if you shoot for realism at all yeah you're gonna you're gonna fall two percent short of it even at the best yes and if i were to guess we're not this is this will not be the most high fidelity beautiful game ever made which

it will be more than 2% short of 100%. And something about seeing a Doring fan in glorious 4K with ray traced lighting or seeing that unicorn go on a killing spree throughout Cyrodiil is like... I don't know. Maybe that's going to hit. Maybe that'll hit in a totally new way. You know what I'm excited for? I mean, I love the music of this game. I will actually tear up.

when i hear some of the if they you know have some reorchestration they like remastered it and stuff yeah but also i think one of the best things about oblivion still the core game is the detail of the city state While the world is kind of like a little bit generic for us. fantasy for the most part with some glowing exceptions yeah the cities are all really unique and really have like very different architecture very different vibes

I would love to see like a modern imperial city and like really feel the scale of that. Yeah. As well as one of my biggest sins. is not finishing Shivering Isles which is the expansion of Oblivion that's starring Shea Gorath yeah a modern like you know modern graphic depiction of Shivering Isles, actually, that alone I would get. I would actually rather just get a remake.

of Shivering Isles because that is like a more kind of concrete like single player adventure game where you're basically in Alice in Wonderland I really hope they include all the DLC in there I hope so too especially I mean Shivering Isles is the one there's also one about the blades but shivering aisles i mean it is canon spoilers but it is canon that the hero of kivach or the hero of oblivion is the shea gorath in skyrim yeah uh which i love

yeah so yeah i hope they would include that i hope so too and have that like included at launch and not be dlc again but could you imagine that that I could see them doing that too you know unfortunately I would bet anything that they will charge for horse armor again just for the bit yeah yeah why not it's so funny that that was like the most egregious

thing like we have we have seen so much worse yeah we've eclipsed that in so many ways horse armor feels kind of like innocent by comparison pick a god and pray uh as as uh fire emblem once told us that it comes out the day this episode comes out there's a non-zero chance that that's

what happens yeah this is an accidental uh future assassin's creed story about the oblivion remake right we're recording we're recording this on the 7th right there's uh i don't i don't even know how many days there are in april but you know like Like the chances of it launching the day this episode are just as high as the chance of it launching on any other day this month. I'm surprised it's not because next year would be the 20th.

anniversary of oblivion uh which it's so funny some games you say that and you're like oh my god that's 20 years ago oblivion's like no that feels that feels 20 years ago oh i thought it was 30 yeah yeah exactly uh but 2006

2026 is next year that feels like a cleaner year to like do a remake like it's the 20th anniversary but I guess you know yeah I'll take it now you just say I'll take it unannounced no marketing just here it is yeah that's honestly more oblivion yeah they'll be like ahead of its 20th anniversary oh I can tell you worked for a big company.

Yeah, that's pretty good. Anyway, you want to talk about other games that we actually have played? Yeah, I would. I'm like, how the hell do we segue from that? So I'm a little bit behind on like new releases. Yeah. And I you every week.

throw at me a bunch of great games that that i whenever i say on the show like oh i'll check it out that's not just me being polite i am literally going to backlog.com and adding that to my backlog yeah um so i'm in an effort to play some let me warn you about one actually in advance okay it's not out yet it comes out in three days after the time of this recording have you seen the reviews for blueprints yet no i saw uh aj talking about it in our in our discord with our friends but i haven't

seen anything what is it let me let me read you a post from jason schreier on bluesky.app yeah yeah uh for the last month i have done very little but think about talk about and play blueprints It's sort of like a cross between Slay the Spire and Outer Wilds. You progress by gaining knowledge, but it's also much more than that. It is one of the most incredible games I have played in my life.

I don't know Jason directly, but whenever he is like... that like and it happens every so often he'll like really go like he's the same way with Octopath 2 whenever he's that enthusiastic about something I usually also love it it so that's very exciting yeah he it was like he was the other person going super hard in the pain for Octopath Traveler 2 yes exactly exactly yes I read that this morning and was like drop everything add to wishlist like

When does that come out? Three days from now. Three days. So April 10th. April 10th. Yeah. Okay. That's exciting. Yeah. In the meantime, I got some catching up. Yeah. Sorry. I played Warriors Abyss. Yay. Yes. Well done. Well done indeed. kind of big hits of the year was uh was it origins dynasty warriors origins yeah um a new dynasty warriors game that was like

Like clearly like a, oh, this one is given a AAA budget or at least a AA budget. It is sort of a soft reboot or maybe even a full reboot, but like clearly bringing a new life. to a series that like lost its way with the last mainline entry yeah and since then have been like the the last handful of like spinoff Warriors games between Persona 5 Strikers, Age of Calamity, Our Beloved, Three Hope.

all those games i think are great even if you're not like normally those kind of spin-off games are like do you like one piece do you want to have one piece action figures get this game like that's usually like

and they work on that level i think that's again is a totally a place for like turn your brain off bash action figures together kill a bunch of goblins i love the first hyrule warriors for that but i do think that those other games i just mentioned and we talked about this before but like three hopes

specifically i'm like this not only feels like a good warriors game this has good ideas for a mainline fire emblem game that i would love to see persona 5 strikers also felt like this is a really solid sequel to persona 5 you know yeah um So, uh, it was cool to see them like learn all that stuff from the spinoffs and then apply it to the next mainline entry. And I really liked what I played of, of origin. Same. They also released like around the same time warriors abyss.

which uh you pitch it as like what if dynasty warriors meshed with uh hades yeah it is a roguelike with muso combat um and it very clearly is borrowing from hades even the way you kind of like jump through portals to the next area it's cool i mean like i Hades came out in 2020, and it does feel like we're just now in the last year or so seeing games directly go after Hades, which is cool. Stuff like Astral Ascent and this.

feel like the clearest examples yeah what's that um that one that just came out something 33 like uh 33 immortals maybe it's called but it's like there are 33 protagonists playing Hades at the same time is the idea oh that's cool yeah but um just the idea of like a meshing Musou with a roguelike was very interesting to me because like

Like my one, like I like these games. I've played a lot of, not only the spinoffs, but a lot of the mainline Dynasty Warriors and like Samurai Warriors games. And there's always a point where like... levels take a very long time yeah the fantasy of like this kind of massive battle the one verse 1000 pitch

is really cool but like i always describe these games too as sort of like you're playing rts but you are one of the units but you're the most important unit and you're on the ground you know yeah uh so like you'll be you know doing your combos attacking a bunch of dudes then it'll be like

Like this base is under attack and you have to like run back and do it. So you'll have to think strategically about like where you are. What are the objectives? Right. What could go wrong in some of the other objectives? Yeah. Yeah. And in a lot of the other older games.

If you lose, you just start from the very, very beginning. And it's okay. Well, that was like an hour. And like, as much as I'm enjoying this, I don't know how much I want to keep trying this, you know? So I think actually paring it down into like a quick burst.

structure where you're just going into room after room being given a kind of moose objective like kill this many enemies or like do this combo or take out this enemy or whatever yeah and each time you're getting like new abilities and and augmenting your character the variety of characters too just in like

like not only from the Warriors series, but also all the crossovers. There's like a ton of strange crossover cameos here, which is fun. And what I really like is that summoning system, which you predicted I would like, but I just haven't, like that's... that is the element of this game that i think keeps it from just feeling like oh you put two things on top of each other like the fact that in each

once you clear a room you go to the next one and you go to this like summoning tree and you can choose one of the other playable characters to become a summon and the way summoning works is like each character is tied to a different combo of moves So it's incentivizing you to not just bash the same button over and over again, but actually think about what combo do I want to use and what combo do I want to tie to each.

character yeah and eventually like which characters do i want with me you can also unlock formations as you play and you'll put all your summons in a formation and if you have them all out at the same time and then you do the musou attack they do this like you know huge over the top special move and that's really the screen like inverse

colors and stuff it's like oh yeah you're like ending the world with your big attack i'm really surprised with this game it's interesting to see you know the big budget mainline entry alongside this like clearly smaller budget more experimental game yeah it really worked The one thing that's kind of weird is that this feels like it has a lot of free-to-play

structure in it but it's not a free-to-play game which i'm glad it isn't but like you can see how this would be on phones and tablets and where the dollars would be yeah you know where the cooldowns would be but it's not that and it seems like they're like

the way they released it too was so again kind of out of nowhere like the oblivion remake uh coming out today um and i'm curious if like they will continue updating this game it is adding more to it or if this is the beginning of like a new spinoff series but either way It's really fun. I was very pleasantly surprised by this. I was kind of just more curious about like, how does this work?

because it's like a weird enough combo that I'm like I need to see this for myself yeah and I ended up playing for like two hours straight and I was like oh damn I'm actually really it's good yeah it's like it's very interesting yeah yeah I um yeah I've played I've played a bunch of it since bringing it to the show as well um it

so great on a handheld pc also yeah i gotta get on handheld because i have it on ps5 and that doesn't feel like the right place to play it yeah i think it's on switch as well which is cool um but i i have it i have it on the on the lix and it's like So great for the very few times I bring the Ally X out of the house.

like if I'm on a plane or something like it's great or if I'm on a bus or something but I think this game is great and is unfortunately going to get buried by like a hundred other roguelikes this year I think but if you are even remotely interested in it

it dear listener i would definitely check it out but i i agree with you now that you say it like you could feel that there might have been like free to play origins here in some way shape or form and i wonder if we'll see a version of it like launch on ios and android at some point that is free but has some kind of like

free-to-play thing going on. I could see that. You know, especially like once Netflix games got Hades for example like it feels it feels like that opens the door for something like Warriors Abyss to have a light like a second life as a free-to-play thing on mobile can I just say also I went out to I went out to lunch with a

friend from work um shout out i won't i won't put you on blast but they brought their steam deck with them uh on the on the train i was like oh wow like your steam deck left the house that's really impressive. Like, what were you playing? And he told me he's played 150 hours of Hades 2 already. Oh, that rock.

And I'm like, there's 150 hours of Hades 2 to be played, and I'm not the one playing it. Oh, yeah. Like, maybe I should get back into it. Like, I know they've updated a bunch since I first checked it out.

five hours and made it to like the fourth boss and was like i should maybe wait until the whole thing's done but like even prior to the big update that super giant said that there's already more game than the first game in its entirety yeah which is wild but now i'm like I mean, is it like done enough?

for me you know like now i'm kind of at a point where i'm like oh maybe i should maybe it's time to go back to hades 2 i did a similar thing where i wanted to play early access and we did and we talked about it um and then i was like okay i actually might want to wait Not because the game felt unfinished or anything, but I was sort of like, I want to have that 1.0 excitement.

I think something that I loved about Hades was sort of like the shared experience of it, like talking with friends about how their runs were going and then hearing like an innocent friend go like, oh, I beat the second boss for the first time. Like, am I almost done? And it's like, oh.

You have no idea what's ahead of you. But, you know, I think I started Haiti soon. I wanted to talk about it with more people and everyone was like, don't tell me, don't tell me I'm waiting. That was actually the major incentive to wait because I want to be able to. freely discuss it with friends. And I also don't want to be like, I knew that when it's like getting fan art and everyone's excited, you know.

uh we're it's just that we're like close i would bet anything it will be out this year not to put pressure on supergiant but i feel like it just it feels like it's gonna be like a fall release i i'm starting to think not really yeah so Specifically, and again, maybe this has changed since we record, but Greg Kasavin, who is one of the founders of Supergiant, showed up on the Nintendo Switch 2 event and was like, when Hades 2 launches...

in 1.0 it will launch on the Nintendo Switch 2 and the way a lot of people read that moment including me was that means 2025 like 2025 like around the launch window of nintendo switch 2 we will see hades 2 um he has since clarified online that that is not what that meant but what he like really literally meant was when it's done in 1.0 it will launch

on the switch it will be on the switch too as well um but he he specifically said that does not mean it will launch in 1.0 in 2025 which like it still could i i i would like to believe that you're right and it's going to be fall that makes sense to me especially considering how fast and how well received the updates have been um but now i'm a little bit like oh is it going to be like q126 or something like a lot of things i think we'll know after summer games fest

that feels like yeah this particular one has the key to a lot of lingering questions the keely to a lot of lingering questions The Keyblade master, Jeff Keighley. Who's going to get Silksong? Is it going to be Keighley or is it going to be like one of the big three?

Well, it's not going to be Sony. We can rule them out. I feel like it would be Xbox or Kili. Yeah. That's my bet. I mean, I guess technically Nintendo had it, but that feels like not canon. Yeah. Yeah. I think specifically being like... It's going to launch on Xbox on Game Pass day one. That feels like that means it's Phil Spencer's if he wants it, but it could be Keighley. Yeah. Do you think that's 2025 is the big question? I know we talked about this a little bit already.

Every time I say it, it's like... Also, you know it's coming out. I only have two feet. I can't fit them both in my mouth, Steven. I know, but it's coming out the day this episode comes out. I can feel it already. We're unstuck in time. I would like to believe yes.

And the reason I would like to believe it is because I'm actually not going to say what I was going to say. I'm going to keep some secrets. But I would like to believe yes. What's a more casual version of a tinfoil hat theory? Like a tinfoil mask? glasses yeah like a like a tinfoil ring a tinfoil bracelet oh I like that my tinfoil accessory theory is that I think we haven't been given a lot of concrete dates

for a lot of heavily advertised games because of the open question of when does GTA 6 come out. For $100. i've never seen you lose i think i've never knocked the wind out of you via the internet before gta 6 being a hundred dollars like might actually make me lose interest in video games like entirely just like you know i think i'm good i think i'm gonna read more yeah um i hate hey book podcast into the library

The Mark Twain bonus really did a number on me. Yeah. Oh my God. We've read every Mark Twain book over the course of one year. We even watched the weird claymation movie. Okay. And that one episode of The Next Generation where Data goes and meets Mark Twain. That's a really weird one, isn't it? It is an extremely weird one. Mark Twain on the Enterprise is almost like it's...

It's beyond goofy in Pirates of the Caribbean. It's like, oh, this is, no, no, no, no, no. Well, he specifically is like, this makes sense. It's like, yeah, I understand the course of human history and the way technology is advancing. This makes sense. That's a really fun duo of episodes. I do think though, honestly, maybe a hot take. I feel like. after so best of both worlds is when picard becomes borg uh It's a known thing. Two part episode, really some of the best TNG you can watch.

yeah it's it's simultaneously the finale of season three and the opening of season four yeah and then followed by family which is my favorite episode actually We talked about Star Trek a lot on Can't Let It Go. Yeah. Which is also on TWG. But anyway, I feel like after that, almost they felt pressured to always do a two-parter every time the season ended. And like...

Some of them are better than others. I do think that one's fun, but the Mark Twain piece of it is like, eh. It's very weird, yeah. It's so strange. I do love Guinan and Picard in that episode. It's a great episode for their friendship and their relationship, yeah. Speaking of going to the past, do you want to talk about the other game you've been playing? Oh, yes.

yes i do actually all of these games are about going to the past and i think that is abyss i guess yeah we're supposed to be going to hell and then everything else is about going to the past uh into the past how about that into the past that online um I teased this last time. Whoever buys that, shout out to you.

Someone's going to buy it and they're going to forward it to the worst shit imaginable. It's an old timey version of the show. I saw the first moving picture yesterday. Have you heard about Oblivion? It's an old fable. That train came right out of the screen. I swear to high heavens. I swear to high heavens, I jumped out of my seat, jumped right out of my pants.

The Baron told me the first automobile will be $100. That might make me lose my interest in locomotives. In 100 years, I will invent pong. Pug in a hundred years! This is the game of the other year. Yeah, Pong was goatee and like stick ball was go toy. Yeah. Oh my God. Game of the, yeah. I like. I like a version of Into the Aether where we've gone to the past and it's like, game of the other year, this year, Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. Yes. The future is another year than this one.

yeah and then it cuts back to like you're being lied to that the future assassin's what is that gonna possibly mean it means nothing um but i have been playing once again the great ace attorney chronicles This is a collection of two games, The Great Ace Attorney Adventures and The Great Ace Attorney 2 Resolve.

um these were originally only on the 3ds in japan and uh thankfully honestly one of the kindest moves of capcom they localized these games i don't think anyone expected us to get in the u.s but they were localized and released in one collective package.

called the great ace attorney chronicles and that came out a few years ago like 2021 um i've been playing them on switch but they're available everywhere and honestly i mentioned this before i'm a huge ace attorney fan um i and paul spent like over a hundred dollars on a miles edgeworth figurine which is like one of the few times i've done that there's a few series i'm just like i want that now um and edgeworth is one of them

But you can now get like every Ace Attorney game other than the crossover with Layton in the various packages. capcom has released really in the last few years so you have the uh original trilogy which you can get everywhere then there's the edgeworth investigations duo duology of games uh there's the apollo uh justice trilogy which is apollo justice and then the two 3ds games and the great ace attorney chronicles um

These being set in the Meiji period and the equivalent of the Victorian era in England. And this game is also kind of about like Japan's transition from an isolationist country to like... forging relationships with other countries um and the plot of the great ace attorney chronicles is largely uh ryanosuke who is phoenix wright's ancestor uh becomes a lawyer specifically in england with his assistant susato and uh it's

just the best thing ever i i really i really think it's the best one um i have now finished the first game so I finished the great ace attorney adventures and i've started the second one hell yeah um and i think what's cool is that like it It's a very upbeat, positive and warm game, but it doesn't shy away from sort of like the difficulties you can imagine of like being a stranger in a new country, nevermind being a lawyer in a new country. And like the big twist.

of the Ace Attorney Chronicles games is that in every other Ace Attorney, there is a judge who determines guilty or not guilty and in chronicles it's the jury when you're in england it's the jury who decides and the jury are all like there's always this

tendency to have the witnesses in an ace attorney case be like very goofy gimmicky characters who maybe then when it's revealed whether or not they're the murderer it will get more serious but like there's always a shtick you gotta get a gimmick and the jury are on a whole other level of camp like there's like and it's always the same 10 people which is one of the funniest jokes of the game is like

they always make it clear like these jurors were randomly selected from all across england it's like the same eight people and there's always like two of them that are directly connected to the case in some way yeah that maybe even become witnesses but

But honestly, it introduces some interesting gameplay additions where like this game plays a lot like how the other Ace Attorney games play. And if you don't know, largely they're visual novels that are divided into investigation sequences and then the courtroom sequences.

The investigation part is more visual novel E, almost like point and click E, where it's a lot of dialogue, a lot of talking to people, learning about the case, investigating the crime scene, and gathering all the evidence you'll need in court. And then in court... it's much more gamey like you have a health bar if you've if you fuck up you can get a game over and largely it's about finding the truth by using evidence

to point out contradictions in witness testimonies but what the jury adds and that's basically how every game plays what the jury adds is another level where like there will be a point in the case where the jury all decide we all think this person's guilty and then uh ryo nosuke can like basically be given one chance to change all their minds

And so then you'll have to hear what all the jurors think and then pit the jurors against each other if there's a contradiction within what they're saying. Yeah. And it's just.

it reminds me a lot forgive me but it reminds me a lot of when i first played fire emblem three houses and like that fire emblem was a series prior to that that was never in 3d um largely it was almost all like text boxes and like the tactics grid and then seeing the combat the combat was in 3d but like you were never freely roaming an environment so even though i don't think three houses is by any definition like

super impressive visually it was weirdly thrilling to like walk around a 3d environment in a fire emblem game for the first time and similarly in grace attorney chronicles like seeing the protagonist like walk you know through the courtroom and like tap his head as he's talking to the jurors i'm like oh my god a new camera angle like we're so used to like the back and forth and even just like the way this game handles the transition i mean this isn't the first 3d one but i think it looks

a lot more distinct and like the animations of the characters are so expressive and so funny uh there's a character named herlock sholmes who is literally sherlock holmes but like a legally distinct and there's an animation he has where he just like falls whenever he's like surprised and it's

bits of physical comedy i've seen in a video game and this has been on my backlog for forever i first played this collection in 2022 i think it was my one of my games of the other years then and uh i've been wanting to see it through and i just you know We're pulled in a lot of different directions for doing the show. There's always a game I went back to and I will say. The first game in this collection is great.

but it takes a while to get going as these games often do. Like the first few cases, it isn't until you get to case three where you're defending a guy who is possibly actually may be guilty and like the the characters have to sort of grapple with like the morality of that yeah and whether like because really the central theme of a lot of these games but specifically the first chronicles game is trust

and sort of like how hard it is to trust other people whether that means like you know trusting in your client in the courtroom trusting people in another country that you're meeting for the first time learning new customs and cultures you know i think it's it's

cool to see these characters like in this game by extension confront real themes of like racism and prejudice and break through that you know like yeah it's rare you see that in a game and i think that that's a very powerful message to to to land in a place where all the characters kind of see each other as equals and as human we can certainly use more of that these days and uh the ending made me cry i loved it and i immediately started the second game and the second game like just

immediately pops off in a way the first game takes a while to i won't spoil it but the second game opens like every now and then you'll play as like a character for one episode that you don't normally play as yeah and the second game opens that way and i i want a whole series playing as that character because it's so fun and it's such a cool again it's like i think there's something if your story is exploring empathy acceptance and trust

there is something about playing as a character that accomplishes that and that's a unique thing to video games where like we can empathize with the character on some level if we are playing as them yeah and to a degree i think that's also what shadows is doing with the dual protagonists as well and giving us different perspectives um full circle baby oh yeah but uh yeah i just like i haven't been able to play anything else

but The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles and it's making me feel really driven. Like this is a series that I actually think I want to see all of. I'm fairly close to having played all of them by now. Yeah, you've made a really decent amount of progress, right? Because you've already played the original trilogy. You played the Edgeworth stuff. Not all of them. I started the first game. So the two big things, I mean, I'm...

I'm on my way of finishing Chronicles at this point. And then the two big things that await me are the Edgeworth duo and then the Apollo Justice trilogy. I'll probably save that for last because that's... Apollo Justice people like. The Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice on 3DS are where they're a little bit more mixed, even though they're generally well liked.

but the edgeworth the second edgeworth game is is apparently amongst the best so my plan is to do chronicles edgeworth and then apollo justice yeah nice i picked up chronicles at one point and i think i made it into the second case

and then didn't get any further so I think I was in that like kind of slow open that you're talking about but I've also been thinking a lot about like when I'm on when I'm traveling like what what games to play on that trip and I feel like Ace Attorney is like a really good like I'm gonna be on a plane for 15 hours game you will love it i mean i the thing about chronicles that like this is a problem the series has overall we're like yeah there are some games that the entire game serves as setup.

to the next game and so it's like it feels like homework but then when you actually get to the payoff you're like this is unlike any other narrative design um and what the great ace attorney adventures does the first game within chronicles really does like weave a thread through the whole game stuff you thought was like totally unimportant and throwaway becomes relevant again and it sets up a much kind of higher stake

story for the second game um and i just think that's that's the beauty of the series too is like seeing how the characters grow over time specifically edgeworth i think edgeworth is the character that has sort of the clearest arc throughout the entire series. He starts off as a villain and then becomes kind of a rival and then he becomes a friend. But throughout all that time, you can tell he's grappling with his own sense of justice.

And yeah, I mean, my big question now, you know, catching up with the series and seeing how Capcom in the last few years has made an effort to keep the series relevant. They've released all these collections. They've even released Ghost Trick, which is the creator's side project. Shutakumi made Ghost Trick in the era where he wasn't working on Ace Attorney. I wonder what's next.

i wonder if like there is another game like if it i don't i don't necessarily know if we need more because there's so much here already and like

You can kind of just keep releasing these collections to keep the series relevant. And these games will always have an audience because they're just... wonderful but i just wonder if like capcom is interested in like like they are with their other series like making sort of a golden age capcom entry for Ace Attorney if there's like any room for that because it seems like the creator is uh so Shutukumi created the series worked on the original trilogy and then Chronicles but left

somewhere in the middle and it does seem like he alone brings a lot to the franchise because yeah those two you know the original trilogy and chronicles are usually regarded as the strongest but the other ones are like still really good it doesn't seem like you necessarily need him on board to make a good one right um even though i would like to see him work on it but if he doesn't want to i wonder if there's a way to pass the baton at all um

so i don't know i just i i wonder what's next for this franchise but the good news is that i have plenty of ace attorney ahead of me as i continue playing through it yeah no no shortage of ace attorney yeah i wonder what they could do with it that would make it like my my worst nightmare

Is that they go like full 3d open world, not like open world, but you know, like, you know what I mean? Like, like full 3d, like you are, you like, you are a third person over the shoulder, like Phoenix, right? Walking around needing to investigate kind of stuff.

well like the visual novel aspect of it i think is important but like i do think something like a persona for example does represent a possible future if they're trying to like update it from a gameplay perspective but i think i would prefer just like Personally, I would just rather have more good visual novels. Yeah, that's and that's kind of I think Ace Attorney is actually a good example of what we say when like we say like not every game needs to be like a definitive reinvention.

The bulk of these games follow the same structure. And that structure is pulling from like 1980s visual novels. This is a very well established. structure for for adventure games or visual novels i would bet anything capcom knows what people want from ace attorney and like you can't really change that too much I'm actually the funny thing is you said like you don't want it to have like you are physically moving the character to investigate.

that is what happens in the Edgeworth games, but it's still on a 2d plane, but you are like running around as Edgeworth finding stuff. Um, I don't I don't hate that for the investigation. If I'm being honest, I think the courtroom is more precious to me. Yeah, I actually think the investigation is where you could experiment more. But I know you're saying you don't want to like I think it's important.

for visual novels that Ace Attorney stays a visual novel because like this is sort of the the gold standard in the blueprint for like almost every modern visual novel you know like you've made your can't really I retract my statement

from the court. As you once famously said, objection. You love that still. It was really good. It's been years. I would recommend this series. This is... it's cool because like i didn't really know this series at all before we started doing the show this is one of the franchises that i've become like a super fan of while doing this show yeah right and that just it's so fun to like

find a series that means this much to you like as an adult and as like without any kind of nostalgia attached to it i think that's really special totally yeah i i that's one of the the wonderful things about doing the console retrospectives is how frequently we work out being like we are huge sickos for x

thing now that we did yeah um i feel like i could look back at like every single retrospective we did and just like like rune factory for example i'm just like so excited for the new rune factory and so much of that is born of the experience playing the ones for ds and 3ds

when does that come out is that this month i think it is this month yeah it also came out today it looks like uh it didn't it didn't yeah wait uh it's coming out oh no may 30th okay so next month that makes sense because that was also one of the like this will be on the switch 2 when it comes out games Oh, yes, you're right. You're right. You're right. So I'm looking forward to that.

but that's ace attorney chronicles i i have one more game i don't have that much more to say in fear of veering into spoiler chat but it needs to be said i am as much as i am basically the two games that have like refused to let me go the past week are the great ace attorney chronicles and yakuza 0 yeah uh both of which i mentioned last week in some way i am on chapter 7 of yakuza 0 i have uh unfortunately for me in my free time unlocked

the real estate mini game uh in yakuza zero which is thrilling and is so clearly the precursor to the business sin in like a dragon yeah which also like was basically half my playtime with that game it's It's real. The plot is really taking off in this. I would say to anyone who's interested in Yakuza 0, I do think it has a little bit of a slow start in retrospect.

and i think so too and it's like it's a little um i don't even think it's slow as much as it is like unclear what the stakes are yeah yeah i think that's i think that's fair i would say it becomes clearer when you meet the three lieutenants said to you it reminds me of hotline miami where like there's the three kind of masked villains of the room like who are you i bet you suck

you know yeah um and uh i think i think that's when it in it started to get more interesting to me and then it really popped off when you switch to majima overall i would say i i think the majima half is stronger um based on what i've played so far but they're both really good um i just think it's like i i haven't played as much before

It's making me want to get the new pirate game where he's the main character. Yeah, I think it's sickening that neither of us have played that yet. Yeah, that will happen on that. Yeah. I just kind of wanted to do like I before I picked any of that up, I wanted to or any of the new games that I wanted to get zero under my belt. Yeah, I'm I'm starting to feel fatigue isn't the right word, but more like.

more precious about the order in which I play the Yakuza stuff now. I still, you know, I'm not going to relitigate. I feel very strongly about the like, it could be Zero or Kiwami, whatever you want. But, or... seven but for me like the majima thing that game feels like it requires infinite wealth in a way which feels like it requires seven at least And then also infinite wealth because of some of the curious stuff.

covering feels like it requires at least a cursory knowledge of zero through six so there's like it feels like one of those charts with all the red yarn like linking stuff together where it's like really like what does it all lead back to and the answer is like zero one or two yeah i mean i've i have seven under my belt and i'm grateful for that but yeah even going into infinite wealth i'm like this

i think going to different wealth you at least want seven under your belt but like the curious stuff is very important too and i'm wondering like i'm wondering when the series can maybe fully let go of him as much as i love kiryu i'm like Will there ever be a timeline where Ichiban kind of gets... I think I might have mentioned this before, but where the series does feel like, okay, we're on a new level where... I mean, Infinite Wealth does also feel like...

passing the baton to like a new ensemble even yeah there's so many new characters which is cool there is that um what was that like new game that they announced do you know what i'm talking about um they announced like a new a new thing what is it called i know that rgg is making the new virtual fighter which i'm very yeah um they just like they announced

They announced some new game that they showed like very briefly. Yeah, I don't know if I'm going to be able to find it, but it looked sick and was not starring Kiryu or Ichiban and seemed like it was set a little bit in the past. Yeah. Anyway, I'm excited about that. Like I'm interested in them leaning more into. Is that Project Century? Maybe it is. Those are the two TBA games.

that is it yeah i mean that that little clip oh that's from the game awards like just look so rad yeah i mean this this is also an interesting series to talk about in regards to like it's that cool oh wow old timey in regards to like assassin's creed being a year yearly release and that may be like devaluing the franchise a bit. Ace Attorney, being able to stick to a traditional formula and make that work for them. I feel like Yakuza is an interesting place where we do now seem to get...

like a Yakuza game spinoff or mainline entry every year or so. Yeah, sometimes two in a year. And I'm wondering if, I'm wondering for that franchise if that is the right move or not. Just because of how big these games are and like...

Like, it's not a big in the way Assassin's Creed is big. It's, you know, it's... the same town but more stuff to do kind of thing yeah but even even still like that was the case for a long time but even playing yakuza 0 like you have you have those two cities to go through in infinite wealth it's like You get Kamurocho, but you're also getting Honolulu. There's huge areas to explore in every single game now. They're the two cities.

Kamurocho is kind of always one of them, but there's the two cities in Like a Dragon as well. I don't know. There's just like... the games are getting so big and the stories are so huge and they take so long to finish that the idea of finishing them it feels like a trails it feels like you know yeah like final like playing all the final fantasy or all the dragon quest games it's like you really need to like commit to doing it

it and for the people who do like shout out great this again i think this is maybe a podcast host problem you know where it's like yeah it also does feel like there are some games like you know zero like a dragon and infinite wealth are the full thing you're getting the big story and you're getting like a ton of side stuff yeah then there are games like

like a dragon gate in the man who erased his name who that seems to be much more like this is just a story yeah i'm sure there's some side stuff to do, but that game feels shorter and more narratively focused. So like it does seem like they kind of alternate between like here's the full package and here's like more story and more context if you need it.

So, yeah, I just I don't want this series to I don't want to be sick of it is my thing. I want to make sure. But honestly, like it's always good. I haven't played a bad one yet. You know, I and I think that.

it's more popular now than ever it is i think the third highest grossing sega series cool second to sonic sonic and total war and then it's like a dragon and persona if i'm not mistaken wow that's amazing total war is that high yeah yeah i mean um and sonic i guess just because of everything around sonic but yeah i mean i didn't i didn't realize it was that high for sega but this is a huge series for them and

specifically in the last like 10 years yeah right yeah zero it feels like really kicked off kind of like zero is the reason it really at least in the u.s it became more popular yeah Did you ever check out Judgment? Did you ever get into those games? No. Again, this is the problem. Not only are there a lot, but I do genuinely want to play a lot of them. I think, again, my plan is I definitely want to circle back to Infinite Wealth.

I definitely am fully gripped by Zero. I feel like Zero, Kwame, Kwame 2 makes sense. we'll make that happen at some point yeah back to infinite wealth three through six is where i'm more up in the air about like yeah you know i know people like those games too but that's where i think it gets a little bit more mixed

And also where I can maybe, you know, I don't know if I need every beat of the journey. I do want, I'm intrigued by four and five though, specifically, because those are like the multiple protagonists.

games right I don't know the thing that's really sticking out to me about like the franchise as a whole is obviously like Kiryu's relationship with all the people in Kamurocho his like kind of adoptive daughter thing yeah but Specifically, like his relationship with Majima and his relationship with Nishiki and the main antagonist.

of Yakuza 2 also seems Ryuji I think yeah is that his name I don't know seems really interesting at least based on what I've heard from other people and like that's the stuff I really want to experience in terms of the backlog and then after that it's more so like

I'm okay with kind of missing some of the context. I can Google stuff if I need to. But Judgment and Lost Judgment feel cool to me. I'll at least play the first one. Sorry, the reason I'm bringing that up is I just think you'd really like... judgment I think it I think it has like a very kind of like darker edgier kickoff And then once you get past the intro sequence, it becomes...

what you love about the whole franchise very quickly. Yeah. But also like investigation and Ace Attorney shit, you know? Oh, that's true. I forgot about that angle of it. It's smart of them. They're kind of doing what I think Square Enix does where like... Like, you know, you have the mainline Final Fantasy series that's going to be like a big budget 3D high fidelity experience.

And then you have this sort of experimental like Octopath Traveler stuff coming out in a weird way. I feel like it's almost the flip of that because like now the main line like a dragon series is turn based. um and judgment is keeping the sort of more classic style of like the beat-em-up arcadey combat alive yeah um it was interesting so zero i i was getting to the point where i'm like damn the combat's getting really hard I'm constantly getting stunlocked.

whenever there's more than three guys i just like can't even get up and attack without them kicking me back down i looked i just googled like yakuza zero stun lock and i found a reddit thread and someone was like

How do I deal with this? This is impossible. All the comments were like, you have a weird item equipped. You have a weird item equipped. You have a weird item equipped. I checked my inventory. I had a weird item equipped. The way equipment works in this game is you have a weapon and armor, but you also have accessories.

I think it was called a charismatic autograph or something. It's like a thing that boosts all your stats, but it makes enemies more aggressive. And I just must have missed that or didn't realize.

how much more aggressive it meant. Yeah. But it made... I'm... incredible at this game now because I was playing on like super hard mode super hard mode that's a stupid item I didn't realize was making it impossible yeah I never use beast mode for you have like different fighting styles and I can't afford the time it it takes to swing in beast mode because these guys keep like dive kicking me that's so funny so it's the combat is much more fun now and i have to say majima's breakdance

style oh my god is so broken in the best way possible yeah um and like i just when whenever kiri or majima learn a new fighting style they see someone out in in the setting do it and they go like and they're like awesome it's so funny I love it okay

What are you doing? I'm going to go back to Yakuza 0. Woohoo! I'm going to do it. Fuck the Switch 2 version. I'll look up the extra 23 minutes of cutscenes on the internet. I said this on the Switch 2 episode, but it's like you can get... mario kart world which i'm sure will be fun or you can get every yakuza game on steam for the same price

yeah yeah i wonder i wonder if yakuza 0 director's cut is also going to be 70 bucks probably i mean it is an older game i i would i don't know but if they're adding new stuff to it yeah the tariff nightmare is is really like i don't know what to think

right now in terms of like what to expect so i'm not even gonna make a guess but yeah if if that wasn't on if that wasn't an equation i would guess like 50 or 60 i feel like when it's an older game like even even on the switch to octopath or not octopath bravely default is 40 bucks

you know 3ds and ds games will probably be on the switch too uh that's yakuza 0 what else we talked about today greatest turning chronicles warriors abyss assassin's creed shadows and the uh the oblivion remaster which is out today definitely Can't wait to sit back and make a battle made.

Oh, my God. Wait, if this comes out. OK, just hypothetically, if that comes out the week this episode comes out, that'll be OK. That's two days before my wedding. So I'll have I'll have at least 48 hours to play.

the oblivion remake it's also very lovely that your wedding is the same weekend as my birthday yes so it will literally be for us for two different reasons Todd Howard looked down and said shout out to these two I'm rooting for for a new bethesda game being good to be clear i just you know i'm always i'm always a little bit more guarded i don't think it's pessimism it's just sort of like i don't i don't want to get my hopes up too high yeah um i will say at least

uh you know Todd hey Todd Howard he did a pretty good job with that Indiana Jones game at least yeah well he was I think he produced it yeah he just produced it he didn't he didn't yeah he didn't like direct it but like

Like, you know, he's still got something in there. Take us home, Steven. Thank you for listening. If you like the show, the best way to help it grow is to share it with a friend. You can go into the cast.online. All relevant links are there, including links to join the Discord, which is the best place to keep up to date with the show.

We're also on Blue Sky, which I think is probably the other best place to go if you don't want to join the Discord for whatever reason. You can also support the show at patreon.com slash into the cast. I'm trying to think of upcoming games. I mean, honestly, other than Rune Factory, I'm not sure off the top of my head. Oh, I guess, what was it? Blueprints?

blueprints yeah that'll be blueprints expedition 33 and the oblivion remake are kind of floating around ready to strike yeah you know the other thing is that another one of my biggest sins is that I never finished Tears of the Kingdom. Oh yeah. So I'd like to make that happen this year as well. Yeah. That I think is a game people are dying to hear us talk about if I had to guess. And that could be a fun spoiler discussion at some point. I have.

strong opinions about it yeah i'm excited because i feel like i yeah i'm just excited to hear your opinions and see if we even if we disagree i'm excited to have that conversation yeah um but yeah that feels like that'll be great when the switch 2 is out and it's in 4k and beautiful yeah that's That's the one game I'm going to upgrade at the very least, depending on the price.

because i hadn't finished yet so yeah from at least so we're recording this after the like weekend of hands-on demonstrations of the switch to that people have had and the the response to the Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom Switch 2 editions is like... hugely hugely positive people are like it looks like a totally new game which is cool that's amazing and not to not to dwell too much on pricing again but i am curious why donkey kong is 70 bucks

and everything else is 80 you know like i'm just trying to gauge like i just think it's too soon to tell what is like long term gonna be the way it is just because of how chaotic this time is right now you know but like something about Donkey Kong being 70 gives me hope that there's still an inkling that it could go back to 70 you know yeah I'm not sure though yeah I'm not really yeah it's

It's so, they're pricing games the way they did in like the 90s with the Super Nintendo. Like the Super Nintendo had like wildly variable pricing as well. And it just feels like we're kind of in that space. again and I think that like while that does make sense

it also creates consumer confusion, which is a net negative, I think. Like, we're not in a world where... all pricing for video games is the same obviously you go on steam and things are wildly different pricing but when it's like a first party nintendo game and one of them is 80 and one of them's you know 50 and one of them 60 and one of them 70 like it raises questions about like why that's

the pricing for each thing yeah exactly and that's more the problem is like the the confusion and the lack of any kind of explanation as to why yeah and i i've seen that about you know super nintendo pricing and that's worth remembering but it's also worth considering that like Like that was a time where I mean, it was a totally different world in terms of like wealth imbalance.

and like you know uh the money families had to spend on things and also it's really only worth thinking about well how does this impact us right now like how does this affect it's a really really difficult time financially for everyone so it's like the the fear i have and the fear that many have is like this is already an expensive hobby i think doing this show there's always a part of me that's like i want to make sure you know i'm not like

inadvertently encouraging people to spend a whole like fuck ton of money on on stuff you know yeah i i want to support developers obviously like you know i want to highlight things that i believe in that i think people will enjoy and at the very least to share my experience with it but like 80 if 80 becomes the norm this becomes a very very very

exclusive hobby in a way that would make me very sad you know and i know it's a ten dollar difference but it's like if that's where things are heading and there's no checking how much more that will increase over time then it just makes this feel like golf suddenly and not something we can all enjoy you know no shade on golf but i just feel like that's like yeah when i was thinking of an exclusive hobby no no i think i think that's a i think that's a totally apt

comparison to make and i feel i feel like you know as we've talked about many times this is an industry where most people most people are buying one or two games a year and if that drops down to one game that changes the industry in like

like an unbelievable way. Yeah. And, and, and even if it drops below one, like what if it's like you buy one game every two years because they're too expensive to justify the price because, you know, GTA six is a hundred dollars and Mario cart world is $80, et cetera. Like. A lot of people will not buy more than one game a year or maybe won't even buy one game a year. And that changes the industry in a really marked way where not only...

is that influencing in a big way the kinds of games that people are buying, but also the kinds of games that like executives are greenlighting. And that's, I think like the ripple effect of that is the thing that's not being considered as much. That's the thing that really concerns me at the end of the day. It's like, does PlayStation start charging $80 or $90 for all of their first party stuff? And then suddenly they find themselves in a place where they're extremely risk averse.

making the same thing over and over again and then playstation doesn't exist anymore because like they made huge bets on games that fail exactly that that's the danger of even you know this this ten dollar bump from 70 and 70 we were still kind of processing right yeah the thing about nintendo is that like these games never drop in price so it's like at least

on PlayStation you know if you wait six months it will drop down on a sale but like yeah the most you can hope for with Nintendo is spend a hundred dollars on two vouchers and save five dollars like right that's not appealing to or maybe they start doing the like nintendo hits again or like what was it nintendo selects or whatever it was called yeah yeah you know like at the end of the 3ds life cycle is like you get games for 20 instead of 30 yeah like i i

I personally would not be able to afford any of this without the Patreon. So once again, thank you to everyone who's able to support us there. I know it's a weird time, but like that's. Like it truly, if that wasn't happening, I would be totally fine waiting like one or two years for the Switch 2. Yeah. If I'm being honest.

you know and that's what i did with the ps4 because i had zero dollars and i just moved to a city where i knew nobody and that's what most people did with the ps3 as well as yeah which that feels like ps3 is in the air yeah um that's that's another video I've been thinking about making is the comparison between those two but

But I think another thing worth highlighting, and maybe this is a good thing to wrap up on. It's how fucking good great Ace Attorney Chronicle is. You're damn right. Yeah. Is something very similar, not obviously, you know, in terms of like world economy, but. Something very similar happened with the Nintendo 3DS where it launched.

at an extremely high price. People balked at the price and then didn't buy it when it came out because the price was too high. And then it was like three to six months later, Nintendo lowered the price by like almost $100.

And they started to sell it at a loss, knowing that they would make up for it eventually in software sales. And I feel like that's... a direction they could take here that would make a lot of sense the problem is that the software price has gone up that's that's actually the biggest issue here less so than the fact that switch 2 is expensive is that the games are expensive but yeah i do see a world in which nintendo does

take a hit on the hardware end and keep the pricing of the games the same or vice versa and then and then it becomes a little bit more palatable yeah i also think i mean i think this is so like still early response to this tariff nightmare yeah and like the the global stock market crashing yeah um i mean it's

it's scary you know beyond just video games it's a very uncertain time for everyone uh and you know i don't i don't want to this is just a small piece of it you know and and considering that like games are a luxury this is like the least of concerns in terms of like No, totally. Yeah. Other costs of living going up.

So, I mean, things are moving so quickly that by the time June rolls around and The Stitch 2 comes out, we might be like a post-currency society. I have no idea what June is going to look like. It has been a wild couple weeks. Oblivion remake might be out today. Uh, you know, the currency is PlayStation portable consoles and I'm rolling in it, baby. I would love if PSP was the new currency. That would be great for us specifically. The Switch 2 costs five PSPs.

uh anyway yeah so not to make light of all this stuff i just want to be uh it's the only thing you can do i think in some ways you know it's like yeah it's just we're all in this try your best to bear it yeah yeah we're all in this together we're all processing it and uh thank you for giving us your time this week i hope you enjoy this episode and we'll be back next week um we'll be again recording a lot of these in advance so this

come off like a Resident Evil journal. But I hope I hope we I hope we have to smash cut to. oblivion remake conversation like i hope i hope we you know we're going to record another episode it's going to come out the week after this one but i i hope that we have to delay that one so we can insert an immediate reaction to the Oblivion remake. Yeah, this very Mercury retrograde recording schedule. I'm dying to move my Xbox back into my office with my capture card.

And that's going to be the thing that causes me to do it. That's all I'm saying. Hell yeah. I'm excited for that. But anyway, thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next week.