Tetracast 387: The Secret Cabal of Bad Dudes

you Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the TetraCast. This is RPG Sites weekly podcast where we get the site staff together to talk about our favorite genre of video games. I'm your host. My name is Brian Vitale. Joining me, I've got Josh Torres. Two, three, four. Are we going to keep counting? Or is that it?

That's part of the Xenoblade X song. Brian has not played Xenoblade, so he doesn't get the reference. My 2025 backlog alone has gotten too crazy. And you heard Adam, so Adam Vitale is here. Hello. We have Mikhail Mednani. Hello. We have Chowmin Wu. How's it going? We have a little bit of an extended cast today. So joining us for the first time in a couple months, we have Josh Tolentino.

Hello there. And joining us to talk about some of the games we're going to be covering today, we kind of have a special guest on this episode. We have Hayes Madsen, who is a writer over at Inverse, joining us today. Hello, thank you for having me. So we are recording this on Saturday, March 22nd. GDC has just wrapped up for the most part, and we've had several contributors to RPG Site as well as Haze. over from Inverse that have just returned from the event.

So that's going to be kind of one of our topics because it's a first for our site. I think it was a first for everyone that's on this podcast who went to the event. We had a lot of preview opportunities coming out of it, a few interviews. I do know that we got to meet a few RPGs.

alumni covering for their new positions, catching up back with them over at the event at GDC. James is not here, but he does have a few other write-ups up on the site as well, who is also over there. So a lot to talk about. And of course, we've had some big, major RPG releases. Of course, we've been talking about it on the podcast leading up to today. Xenoblade Chronicles F, Definitive X, Definitive Edition, Cross, whatever it is.

And then Assassin's Creed Shadows, of course, has kind of been in the news since it's frequent delays since it was supposed to release last year and finally released just this last week. So those are all the topics we're going to be covering at the start of this podcast. And then we'll go into, obviously, our usual rundown of...

headlines and news. So Adam was over at GDC and I know that Hayes was there as well. And then Adam, I know you met a few other people that have been on this podcast previously, though it's been a while and contributed to RPG site in the past. And of course, you met Alex there as well, who is our boss over at GDC. So I'll lead it off with Adam to talk about your time at the event. And then, of course, you can ping pong between you and Hayes about your time there.

Yeah, and before that, this is a very impromptu thing. It's awesome that Hayes was able to join us here on the TetraCast, and that was something that I guess you, Hayes and Adam, I think, met for the first time, potentially, in person. at gdc and you kind of got this whole you know getting you on the podcast together like it's really cool just you know just to see you here because i've read some of your stuff uh you know throughout inverse and other outlets and it's just like it's

It's really cool to kind of meet you here and get to speak with you. Oh, thank you. Yeah. I think, Adam, I think we met at Summer Game Fest last year. Yeah, we did. Summer Game Fest. Yeah, but we definitely talked about this during GDC. So that's how that kind of came together. Yeah, I mean, it was very obvious if you follow Hayes on social media or even just talk to him that... Like I said, he's a big RPG nerd like we are. Plays practically most of the big games that come out.

both Western games and Japanese games, it seems. So felt like an obvious, you know, hey, you should come talk with us sometimes, especially on a game like on a day like today where we have some big games to talk about. As for GDC, like you said, Brian, this is my first time going. I believe this is Hayes' first time going. We were actually invited to participate by some of the...

PR people that we work with regularly. And at first, my thought was I didn't know if it was something I wanted to do because it wasn't something I had really planned to do. But we went, James and I, representing RPG site.

uh obviously you got to meet uh some of the other media people like kaze who attended the event a lot of developers um and there's there are both some demo opportunities like there are at like an e3 or a or a summer game fest but what sets gdc apart makes it a little different is that there are more like panels and lectures from developers

talking about various components to game development, game design, and even maybe the less technical things in terms of just like, you know, game studios and this whole, you know, industry. For example... There was a talk from Taruki Endo from Square Enix talking about the battle design to Final Fantasy VII Remake Rebirth.

There were various talks from the Atlas team talking about metaphor refantasio. There was a battle discussion and a user interface, a UI discussion, which I think Hayes will agree. Probably the best talk I went to, and I only caught half of it. What did you think of that talk? The metaphor one was definitely the standout. It started out with them showing a bunch of prototype concepts for...

UI style. I think there was five they did. There was like a parchment inspired style. Like a classic RPG. One based around anxiety. And it was very cool to just see kind of like... different visual styles, very different visual styles that game went through before it landed on one. They had said that in terms of the UI design, at one point... Hatsura Hashino basically told them, like, forget about Persona. Just stop thinking about Persona and do something different.

And one of the really interesting details is actually that the UI designer is the first game he's ever worked on. He's worked exclusively in advertising up until now. Hmm. Okay. Wow, that's interesting. Yeah, I mean... I really love the thing about GDC is that eventually, they usually timegate these panels, but at some point they release them online for free to preserve perpetuity, pretty much.

It's not something like, oh, these really valuable panels about game development. It's something you have to exclusively travel out to to experience them. Eventually, they do get released online. um i think through their portal uh in-house portal and like you can go watch them um at your own your own time you know and that's it's just it's just always valuable especially as the games have gone on with video games that like sharing that knowledge and getting

you know different perspectives throughout every aspect of the industry of like how different uh teams of developers or even indie developers like solo developers like tackle their own set of challenges and like you know things to keep in mind when you're designing your own project. I don't think they'd have the same person coming every time to repeat

Telling about the same thing, right? No, no, no. It's usually always like... It could be the same person sometimes. It might be like Harada from Tekken. He might be talking about... like you know another like new tech end and like the development that went into that but it's not like it's not like repetitive of course they're gonna like get different developers and since there's always new games coming out talk about like the latest projects of like what

challenges they face with the latest projects, what obstacles, hurdles, and things they thought about when they were developing these still relatively brand new games that released on the market. Yeah, I'm not sure the exact rules for like... which talks get vaulted. They have the GDC vault, but all the major ones should be there eventually. Yeah. It's interesting. Oh, go ahead.

yeah i just i just remember like say for example there's like a near panel on gdc like years ago but i still remember i watched like um maybe maybe two years ago i i re-watched that um panel about like the development of um i forgot which year it was but they had they had a gdc panel talking about the development one of those games it's you know it's great that's not lost the time it's it's gonna be there anyway go on sorry here's

Part of what's interesting is how these panels come together because a lot of them are like GDC, the organization, reaches out to companies. They're like, hey, we'd love for you to do a panel on this or a session on this. Like the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth panel, that was the case. They had reached out to Square Enix and wanted them to do a battle system panel. And I talked to Taruki Endo and...

Funnily enough, when they first asked them, he was like, does anyone want to actually hear me talk about this? I don't think anyone really cares to hear from me.

Apparently Hamaguchi had to convince him to go and give this session, and then it turned out to be wildly popular, and there were tons of people that wanted to talk to him at GDC. That's an interesting perspective, yeah, because like... i just never really thought about that in terms of like how the game developers themselves like whether they think this is valuable or not to go out and like host these panels and kind of have that not not self-depreciation but like

that mentality of like does anyone care about what i have to say on this you know i like i wonder what what it is to them maybe to that was just like you know i did this project did my job and then like i need to tack on to the next one like i i wonder it got me thinking right now now about like man it's like i don't know i don't know it's just one of those things that to me i'm just like i love this kind of shit i love hearing

both big and small from developers about like from their own personal lens about like how they see their project as the one creating them not necessarily as what someone on the sidelines not necessarily someone for media someone is like you know is it just like you know a typical i'd run one of the one of the mill project to them or is it something like this is i'm aiming to create like my magnum opus So it's obviously a case-by-case thing with any sort of game. I have two things to say.

I went to the Metaphor. The Metaphor Atlas, they actually had two different panels. They had the UI panel, which was great. They also had kind of like a mechanics battle system panel. Not necessarily... pure battle system, but just kind of like battle design and more like mechanical design and metaphor. And I actually really like this one. This is a little bit more mechanical, a little bit more nerdy, I guess.

But I've actually said this on this podcast before, where I think one of the core design components of an RPG is resource management. Just broadly, any RPG, there's...

usually some component of resource management that plays into it, whether it's HP, items, MP, stamina, time, things like that. And literally in this battle panel... I forget his name, but the lead battle planner at Atlas who's worked on Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne and Persona 4, Persona 5, and Metaphor literally has a slide just declaring, RPGs are resource management games. And I was like, this guy gets it. And that talk was a little bit more into the...

The design of like a metaphor of Fantasio has like the action battle system and the turn-based component to it. And just two examples. One, originally there was a way to... beat any enemy in metaphor re-fantasio using like the action battle no matter what their level was you could just

grind it out. Maybe not the best way to phrase it, but you could, if you were careful, just beat enemies without ever going into the turn-based mode. That was originally part of the design. But then what they ended up realizing with playtesting is that like... The playtesters would try to avoid the turn-based stuff as much as possible because they were trying to be over-cautious about conserving MP.

and things like that where even if it was like way easier to beat them in the turn-based mode and really what you should have done players were just not we're trying to avoid it and kind of making it harder on themselves uh without realizing it and they they adjusted it to what it is in the final version where if an enemy is weak enough you can beat them in the action mode or you can do this uh you kind of get this like preemptive strike right

um get the advantage and then they talked a little bit about the um how like how they fine-tuned how you can get uh advantage or not uh and how well that works uh how they added like the retry option um in battle and they even said like they understand that the retry option can be a little bit like cheating if things aren't going your way if you're trying to get like a lucky hit or lucky steal or something like that

But they were like, you know what? If players want to cheat the game just a little bit using this retry option, if that's what makes it fun to them to do that, we're going to leave it in there. That's interesting. Yeah. I'm glad that there's like a, like a acknowledgement of that and then saying like, you know what, if that's how they want to like, you know, if that's how people want to enjoy it, that's totally fine. One more thing too. Cool.

uh they were talking about how they did their play testing and how i guess my inference is how they have a how a lot of companies do it and how atlas used to do it was like you'd have play testers come in and they would play test parts of the game and then they would have to like write up a report about what they thought. And then after the report was written, the battle planners or the dungeon designers or whoever would have to read the reports.

And basically, this is actually got some chuckles from the crowd. Like, no one wants to write reports. No one wants to read reports. And even if it's about, like, playtesting and... But also play testers kind of felt like they had to write something and it was a little bit hard for the designers to know like what was something that was like a genuine thought or something that was just kind of written down out of like some sort of sense of obligation to write something down.

And what they ended up doing was they ended up incorporating this sort of like internal live test live streaming where the testers would play the game just kind of naturally and they would be streaming it. And a battle designer could just be working on their own stuff as a battle designer elsewhere. But then they could, on the second monitor, watch the live stream of the tester. And...

The tester could talk about what they're thinking about in the moment, and the battle designer could watch them, see what they do. And they talked about things like, you know... They designed a boss to be defeated in six turns or whatever, but then they realized, oh, the testers are beating it in three turns. I think we made the boss too easy, and we're going to turn that up, or we're going to adjust that.

And that's something that wouldn't necessarily come through in a report. Yeah. That's a really smart way to utilize, like, using internal live streaming to, like... drive that process. That's really smart. And also, because no one was writing reports and no one was reading reports, the developers could kind of watch the live streams at will.

and then work on their own stuff in the meantime. And it was actually more efficient that way. Yeah. Because you're multitasking. I get it. Rather than having to block off time, be like, all right, time to read those. It was QA reports. Yeah. It's interesting you bring up testing, actually, because I went to another panel that was about how Obsidian has...

During the development of VALID, they gave their QA testers more of an active role in development. There was a whole panel about how they taught their QA testers to use actual development tools. And they similarly would have these sessions where a couple QA testers would walk through quests with quest designers, go through every part of the quest and how it was designed to kind of give a sense of how...

that narrative could play out. And the QA testers would help narrative designers by suggesting things to break it that they wouldn't normally think about. And it got to the point where... They had an external QA studio that was doing testing on top of their internal team. So they would have their external QA testing doing what they call black box testing, which is just...

playing the game from the player perspective and trying to break it from there. And they would send that to the internal QA team who would then do gray box testing, which is testing it in the design tools. And so QA testers could then go through and do that and actually change and fix the issues that pop up on the fly. So that didn't even have to go to the dev team. And it drastically sped up the development process because...

they could squash bugs and fix bugs without even, like I said, without dev team ever having to touch them. That's, yeah, that's smart. That's also really cool. Like kind of giving more tools to the QA testers themselves.

you don't have to like make more work for like other like the internal dev team you know like just so they can kind of address issues that they that they are in real time encounter and like okay i have the know-how too you know navigate around them yeah and i think that's what's really cool about gdc in my mind is that you get optional ways of looking at games and how they're made that you might not normally think about and it's kind of a mix of

You know, some stuff is surface level, high concept. Other stuff is really nitty gritty, talking about actual... nav meshes and dialogue trees and things like that. Yeah, it turns out video games aren't developed just out of magic and out of someone's thoughts. And it's just like, it's just right there. It's like, there's like a billion processes.

uh to go through and the way you tackle each of them is with wildly varies from developer to developer like even though you might have a similar tool set the way that you utilize them the way that you uh and how it uh corresponds with your game and what and game design it's like The possibilities are endless in how people tackle it. I think it also helps to contribute to the fact that Obsidian does try to integrate their QA team like that.

You know, you see people who are former QA or current QA, and usually once they're, you know, moved on from the position or another company. They talk about how they're treated like, you know, second class citizens or outside of the purview of developers. And then, you know, you see this being picked up by not not critics, really, but by. people in general who say, well, you know, QA isn't real dev.

You know, if you're QA, that doesn't count, quote unquote, where it's like, no, why shouldn't it count? We should integrate them. We should give them, you know, a seat at the table is kind of stating it maybe a bit too poetically, but, you know, it shows.

the you know the improvement in the efficiency and in the effectiveness of that when you really do integrate them in that way and say no they are they are a branch of our dev team just like any other i think most development studios would agree that like our game couldn't be as good as it could be without these people who helped test us

for this. Our game would be at a more devastating state. It would not be as good as it is. 100%, yeah. And that specific panel was obviously from Obsidian's perspective, but it was kind of just... Making the case that QA developers can use the tools of whichever game they're on, even to a small degree, that could help. Yeah.

Were there any other standout panels that you attended or that you saw that's like, oh, I didn't expect that to be here, or that's really cool that they're doing a panel on this specific topic? I guess I can just say one real quick and then add in a few of any others. I went to one on designing the endings of Cyberpunk 2077. That was really interesting. It was very...

depth, but it basically was about making sure that endings don't betray the player expectations and don't betray the themes of the game. They opened it with instead of trying to please everyone, we decided to try and piss off as few people as possible when making the endings. And one of the core things they talk about is how... Every ending in Cyberpunk deliberately switches the perspective from first person to third person to signify the end of V's story.

and that the control is being taken away from the player. So instead of being the participant, you're now the viewer watching the choices that you made, what effect they've had. So it was a lot of like... conceptual stuff that I thought was very cool. And endings is the kind of thing that like there's a lot of thought that goes into that.

Yeah, I imagine a lot of that presentation was talking about the building blocks to kind of make it so you reach an end organically and not making it so it came out of nowhere. I'm thinking about narrative. Yeah, that's really fascinating. So not a panel, but on Wednesday, they had the awards, both the Indie Awards and the GDC Awards.

You know, there's a lot of award shows, right? But I would actually recommend if it's available to watch later, watch Sam Lakes. He got the Lifetime Achievement Award. Awesome. Yeah, watch his little acceptance speech for it. It's a really good speech. Some people were crying. So that's how I know it's a good speech. Yeah, I would want to spend like 10 billion hours talking about your GDC visit on this, but I know we're limited on time here.

But just in general, when you're walking around the floor there, speaking with people, I know, and it's undeniable, you know, you can't escape it. It's definitely the reality that we face in various... uh aspects of the game industry uh kind of the two one of two of the main concerns there are you know to prevent like you know ai is getting more prevalent in the game industry and also just the general like ongoing layoffs

Going on in the game industry, did you guys were able to speak to anyone or get a certain vibe or sense of how people are faring out there? What I'll say is the panel's... on unionization were swamped. Oh yeah. Absolutely. I didn't get to go to any of them, but absolutely like the busiest panels, lines wrapped around. the hallways um cwa which just announced a industry-wide union was also at a booth there and they were swamped too

So that's kind of the observation I have. Yeah, wasn't that, it's like for Canada and North, or in the US, and it's like even for former game developers could be involved in that initiative too. I think it's an open union to the industry. So anyone who's part of the game industry can join it. Nice. Okay. Yeah. You know, but if you can, if it's feasible, definitely look at the UI.

Union options, because that's the only way you can really kind of fight this right now. It seems devastating. I think K's can relate. We, or I... I got a bunch of invites to AI different demos or presentations or whatever, and I just ignored most of them. I think Hayes can relate. Not really interested in that. yeah um i've got at least two dozen invites yeah yeah and as for like games media even at the even at the uh there's been layoffs everywhere but like um

Even during the awards session, Alexa, the host, made jokes like, you know, it's kind of like it's levity, but it's serious, right? Where she's like, I know games media is here. All five of you. so you know like it's a joke but it's also just kind of like an acknowledgement of the reality of things unfortunately so um but there was definitely um

The definitely mention of, you know, like I went to a panel from a former writer, Natalie, who wrote for our site and she does PR now. Her panel was about mentorship and talking about like junior. this is specifically for game writers, like writing into narrative development, things like that, and talking about like, hey, this industry is... is hard to get into and probably harder than it's ever been to get into and is not the most stable right now. And that's an understatement.

that was just one example of one talk that was kind of like acknowledging this situation and uh that was definitely present throughout yeah you know good good on her you know that she she's come a long way really tough journey and just it's good to see her up there talking about it and you got to meet a few other alumni too as like as one little like you know punctuation point on on this on this talk yeah uh aaron wrote for rpg site

a decade ago a long time ago uh josh did a review with her once yeah we did the zero time dilemma like it was like a co-review where we had two different platforms i was uh Maybe you're more experimental back in the day and that kind of stuff. But Aaron is awesome. Ran into her for the first time. I've known her for like 15 years and ran into her in person. So that's always great. That's honestly like a big reason to go to these sorts of things. Yeah.

networking, getting caught up. How is she? She's great. She actually wrote some previews for us, which we'll talk about later, which is great to have her on the site again. But yeah, it was great.

Yeah, it's always kind of, like, a weird thing, like, because GDC used to be, like, a more, like, smaller event, of course, but it was, like, it was very game developer focused, but they didn't, like... the media opportunities to go check out like demos or like for games media thing was it's like a recent development for gdc i don't remember it being the media presence is definitely a bit smaller than other things i've done yeah

It's more developer presence. Yeah, that's why it's always a weird thing. I always kind of get weirded out by like, I get it, but it's also like, man, I wonder how game developers or the target audience... traditionally feels about having more media events happening there as well. I think it's interesting too because there's less trade publications now.

You know, there's a lot of general game sites out there, but there's less in terms of actual like development and trade publications. So, yeah, it's interesting mix to find. who covers, who goes in depth on stuff, and who's surface level. It's just an interesting blend of people at GDC, I think. And since this was both your first time there, how was the venue, general location? How'd that go? I've actually been to Moscone. This is held at Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

I actually have been there before, like 10 years ago for my research positions. And it's changed a bit since then, of course. It's largely the same. It's a pretty good venue, I would say. It's in the middle of San Francisco and everything that entails. But there's a nice park area right next to the convention center, which is basically where everyone hangs out.

um that's honestly a pretty nice place just to kind of like whether you're meeting with people whether casually or even semi-professionally like hey let's go meet at the uh the gardens you know just literally just across the street um and things like that you know Plenty of food. There's a ton of hotels nearby, too, and most of my appointments were at hotels and not actually in the Moscone Center. Okay. Got it.

I feel like that's true for a lot of events, but especially here. Certain developers, especially smaller developers, they want to take advantage of everyone being in one city at this time. Yeah, it's not like an E3 anymore. People are trying to find more of these outside of Summer Games, trying to find more of these networking events. Yeah. Thanks. That's... you know i'd love to hear more about gdc but you know yeah um but is there anything else like you guys want to mention here before you know

As far as our website goes, RPG site, we have a few previews up. We have an interview up with the Claire Obscura producer. We have more stuff kind of in the works that'll go up over the next couple days, next week or so. So different demos that we saw, different people that we talked to. And I'll plug Inverse as well. I'm sure Hayes said he talked to Endo for an interview. I'm not sure if that's up yet.

There's a couple things I can't talk about, but what I can say will be going up next week is I had an exclusive interview with Taruki Endo, the battle director of Rebirth. Very cool. And then I got a... pretty extensive look at Phantom Blade Zero as well. So that's, that was very interesting. So those two are kind of like the big things I'll have going up next week.

All right. So yeah, that'll be all up on Inverse, right? Yes, correct. Inverse.com. Got it. So cha, you know, be on lookout for those. So obviously we'll talk a little bit more about GDC in the context of the previews and interviews that are already up on RPG site. And then there's, I know if you go into our drafts, I see a bunch that are still in the works. So by the time this podcast is published and you guys are listening to it, probably more of them will be up.

but they'll be probably filtering in as Adam and James also get into publishing those interviews and those previews for a bunch of different games that we're excited about. But before we go into those, we'll go into probably the biggest release for our site's purview.

for this week of course that xenoblade chronicles cross the definitive edition finally the last you know the black sheep the the final game that was stuck you know behind bars on the wii u it's available on switch people are revisiting it people are playing it for the first time after playing the rest of the trilogy of course the the series nintendo as a publisher uh just the video game space in general is in such

a different space than it was 10 years ago when this first released on the Wii U in 2015. Back then, it was kind of like this... sequel, not a sequel. Now it's kind of this spinoff, not a spinoff sort of thing. So we talked about this in the preview context a few weeks back. We had the review up on the site. Colin Black wrote that for us. Unfortunately, Colin had a personal

He had another commitment, so he couldn't make the podcast today. But he wrote the written review up on RPG site from the perspective of someone who played the Wii U version of the game. bounced off of it, and then revisited the definitive edition and really, really enjoyed it. But for this podcast, I do know that Adam, Hayes, Josh, and others have played either the original game or have been making their way through the remake.

So again, I'll start off with Adam because you were kind of our point of view for the remake for the preview a few weeks back. We'll get Hayes' input, and then we'll get other people's input who played the original. And I'll just sit back, because as you could tell from me not understanding what Josh is referencing, I'm just a listener here, because I have not played the original or the remake, but I'm eager to get to both.

Is there any reason to own a Ryu now? Since this game's been ported, is there any other reasons to own one now? I guess if you want to play Yoshi's Woolly World, yeah. Star Fox Zero. The good Mario maker. I still like that more than the one we got on Switch. Yeah, you're right. I was thinking, I was like, you know what? You're totally right, Super Mario Maker. That's the reason. Damn, I still can't pawn this thing.

I mean, I'll say the obvious things. I'll say the obvious things. So obviously when Xenoblade Cross first released, it was the second Xenoblade game. And I think it caught some people off guard because it is quite different from the first Xenoblade game in terms of like structure and progression and style. Obviously, it's similar in ways like the combat is similar and things like that.

But, you know, it's got a different flavor to it compared to Xenoblade 1 and even the games that came out later, right? And I know Josh reviewed the original version. He really appreciated it at the time. So he got it. And, you know, I think with this re-release, people like Cullen, who wrote the review for us, it's on our site. You can go read it right now.

I think this is going to be a relatively common approach where he played the original release. He didn't really get it. He didn't really gel with it. actually bounced off of it and then he's coming back to it now with kind of better better context about like oh okay i understand my my expectations are calibrated about what this kind of game is he hear he heard like what we would say about the game and other people would say about the game about

Like, you know, what should your expectations be? It is a little different and things like that. So he really liked it. And if you go read his review, he talks about, you know. It's a very in-depth review about the game. We'll talk about the game generally first. I guess the one thing that I'll say that I feel like a lot of people kind of key in on... who really appreciate this game, is that the world of Mira is the star. It's... There is a story, like a front-to-back story.

uh it's not as not as prevalent as other xenoblade games or even like other jrpgs but like the world exploration the the side quests the the the dialogues that you have most of them optional most of them not on like the main path uh and um basically exploring this world and learning about its mysteries and both in a narrative sense and in like a just a wanderlust sense uh

are basically like the highlights here. Would you agree, Hayes? Yeah, I actually want to jump on that because I did play the original. I didn't beat it on the Wii U. I played like 60 hours. But I think... The thing that jumps out the most to me about this game, playing it 10 years later, is actually the story. And I would go so far as to say this is my second favorite story in the Xenoblade franchise after Xenoblade 3. And I think the reason for that is...

Like you said, it's told completely differently than every other game in the franchise. It's all about exploration. It's all about side questing. talking to NPCs, seeing the city of New Los Angeles grow. But I think that it digs into some really interesting ideas and themes, especially in the way that you see the city adapt to this alien planet.

And as you progress further through the game, you meet various alien races, and they come to live in New L.A., and there's some really big themes of integration of different cultures and learning to work together. it's not all good. Like there are side quests where like humans are murdering some of the alien races that have started living in new Los Angeles or like there's a church that is, is, um,

tricking this alien race called the Monon into thinking that there's this holy water that can cure all their diseases. There's some really heavy topical stuff that comes. But it's all told through NPC dialogue or side quests. You're not getting it in those main story quests and cut scenes like the rest of the Xenoblade series. But I think the storytelling here is incredibly ambitious.

It's just packaged in a different way. Yeah, it's not mandatory or fed to you. Go for it, sorry. I've always appreciated that sort of storytelling that's a little bit more like... Non-linear, like not just, you know, a linear sequence of cut scenes that most games are, but, you know, based on who you interact with and who you talk to, maybe a bit more vignette style and coming from Xenoblade 1.

It definitely is a different kind of approach, but I agree with Hayes 100%. I actually think it is one of the most interesting narratives, but it is just kind of approached differently than the other Xenoblade games. As far as some of the new content goes, baked into the main part of the game. There's a couple of new characters. They've showed them in some of the trailers and whatnot.

One of the characters is Neil Nail, who I guess was actually referenced in the original game, and maybe some of the additional materials that came out around that time referenced this more.

than i was aware of but neil nail is actually one of the uh new um party members that you can get partway through the game and she's a clarion and that's another race that was in the original game but i actually really liked um her affinity quests because it actually uh it kind of brings a little bit more light to the clarion race and how they uh operate and fit in to everything else and i actually think that's kind of like a smart addition

to the Definitive Edition because of all the themes in Xenoblade Cross, talking about these different races on this alien planet and different customs and different... ways of living and ways of being, I felt like that actually, her quest actually kind of fit into that pretty well. Yeah, and I think the way that the new characters are integrated, I can't remember the other new character's name, the pilot. Liesl.

Or Liesl. Liesl, that's it. But the way that they're integrated, if you had never played the original game and you didn't know that they were new, you would have no idea. I mean, it feels like a seamless part of the game. And some people may not realize that HB, Bose, and someone else are actually also technically like additional characters because they were DLC for the Wii U version in Japan.

But when we got the English version, they were just baked in already. I forgot they were originally DLC. Yeah, that's right. So if you're wondering why... HB's heart-to-hearts don't clear nodes on the map like other people's do. It's because he's technically a DLC character. You would never know in the West. It's HB, Bose, and the...

Yelv, I think? I might be wrong. But there's a couple... Anyways, my point is, to Hayes' point, is that they're built into the game, but the way the game's party characters work is they're all kind of optional in a sense. you kind of run into them and do their quests as you happen to run into them, right? They have their own things that they do. I'm only like maybe 15 hours of this game because I bought it.

and got some time into it. I don't know if it's B. I feel like the weird one. I mean, I get it why I'm like this, but I'm still trying to get used to the new models in this game, like the new character models, because you're a lot more... you know in line with like the the style of like the other xenoblades and so like they're less doll like less like you know kind of up looking like in the original and like

I guess I subconsciously became so used to those that now these new models look weird to me that I'm trying to adjust to them still. 15 hours in, and after all the promotional material, I'm like, man, Elma and Lin still look weird to me. I don't get it. Maybe it's just me. Yeah, I get that. The original game had more of like a...

not gritty, but like kind of hard line sci-fi look, you know? Yeah. Like you said, this kind of puts it in line with the other Xenoblade games, which I get. I get why they want to do that. It makes sense. Yeah. So for me, I'm still trying to get used to that. And I think as...

When this game first came out, you know, of course open world games were still a thing when this game came out, but the amount of open world games that we've gotten from that original release till now have like, I feel like has become exponential because open world has become... more and more popular as a game design and format in general since that original release. So this game, I was wondering, will I appreciate this game less?

because i because i still hold the original game because i still held the original game like in very very high regard as like one of my most favorite open worlds in a game ever like since i played so many open world games since that original release will i will i appreciate it less because i feel so fatigued and weary about like whenever i played a new open world game these days i'm like oh man it's another

big open world to explore but another you know towers to to unlock and whatever and here we go so i was so i was i was playing this game i was like no this game still has that magic for me i still love exploring this world and going out and installing those data probes and uncovering the map hexagon by hexagon and

And I was trying to think of why this game still works for me when I still feel so fatigued by other modern open world games. And it's like a combination of little things that really build upon on top of themselves to make this feel so... pleasant to play like i think one of the standout ones for example is like the strength of the soundtrack and how your party members don't really speak at all outside of combat like outside of combat they

They speak because that's actually part of the game mechanic of the soul voices. But outside of that, when you're just trying to find your way around, they don't speak at all. You can soak in the music and the atmosphere and all the creatures. On the screen, seeing the wildlife kind of make it believable that you're exploring this planet and having a believable sense of place and time in it. And it also helps that...

pathing around this world involves a lot of looking at enemy icons and saying, what type of aggro do they have? Yeah, it's dangerous.

Yeah, if they have a certain type of icon, they'll aggro on sight. If they have a certain type of icon, they might aggro on sound. Sometimes they'll have both. But what it does, it's not like every single enemy has that. It doesn't feel like... oh it's another like these pack of enemies they'll aggro me on site whenever like you know i get near them it's like no even the same even the same type of mob like might be uh you know might be

pacify like they won't aggro on you while another same type of mob might have like these aggro markers on them so like you're actively thinking about like some of these creatures are friendly so i can get to this even though this let's say this data probe installation is like surrounded by like level 42 like spider-esque monsters i can just go up to them and install that data probe because they don't have the aggro markers on them so i know that it's safe there

so it's like this mixture of like running around with you don't have to worry about stamina you have a great jump height you have no fall damage to run around it no fall damage so you're thinking about just like different routes of like how do i get to this safely uh in a way that like you know i won't get into a fight at all and that can't that that keeps the the momentum exploration engaging because you feel like even though even though like you absolutely cannot like always go

everywhere in the world right away until like you get like the flight unit on your scale you have that believability because it has jump height because of like you know finding uh safe ways around mobs that's like i can go to almost any place i think i can on foot um if i try hard enough even if you can't you'll think of like alternative like different routes on that map like okay maybe i can go around here and there's like a more

more direct path to like that side quest marker all the way out there you know and it it's so good about building on top of those things along with just like just the gorgeous you know like visual aesthetic of the world, like different biomes have like vastly different color palettes that all pop out at you and have different ways of looking at different times of day and different weather patterns.

And of course, different soundtracks. Exactly. And this game still has that magic. I was worried about the luster of the open world and Xenoblade X having fallen off. It's like, no. Not at all. It's still a blast to explore ever since the original release. I think that's actually what I like so much about this remaster. And ultimately, I gave it a 10 out of 10, and that's kind of wise.

It streamlines a lot of the mechanical navigation and ways that you use your map and stuff, but it integrally does not change that experience of the open world. So the follow ball feature works a lot more intuitively now.

taking you to your objectives but you still have to get around that like level 80 monkey in a canyon or something you know so like the map is much easier to use the frontier nav system is a little more intuitive follow ball works a lot better but that core experience of how you explore this world and how you make your way around this world is still the same so i think it kind of like

The way I say it is it sands off some of the rough edges, but just doesn't change that core feeling. Yeah, I think the... One of the most 50-50 things... In general, I'm more positive than negative on it, but... like i think the the one thing that kind of feels like they kind of gave too much power to the players is this quick cooldown system where you know it's a new feature where

early on they give you like this whole feature of like whenever you use a skill that's on cooldown if you have like this bar still borrow this quick down cooldown or quick down whatever meter quick cooldown You can press that on the skill on cooldown, and it'll immediately do it again, even though it's still on cooldown. Adam and I were talking about this.

previously when he was going through it and like a little bit of talk about on the podcast for the preview but like it's one of those additions it's like i don't mind it since i'm replaying it so i'm like i'm okay if like the battles are like are generally more you know swifter but it does change the power dynamic in a way that was is not reflected in the original for example there are some early side quests that like oh there's like a massive clump of like

level 25 mobs and i'm only level 10 or a level 13 or whatever where it's like okay if i if but i already have like a a working build of like if i just spam this melee skill enough they'll die before i die So I feel more confident in taking down these higher level mobs, where in a way, in the original release, that would be virtually impossible because you're forced to have these more battles of endurance.

uh in the original because you didn't have this quick cooldown feature so i think that's like the so far the one aspect of the game that's like drastically different in the terms of like you you they just kind of give you the tools to kind of break this game open really really fast um way before you even get like the overdrive feature in this game which you know it's it's um like i said i'm 50 50 on it i'm more positive negative on like because it's i'm okay with like kind of

making things go by a little bit faster when it comes to combat encounters, but it is one of those things that's like... I don't know what they were kind of thinking. The original game, and this is true for any game that has such a high level of flexibility, there's a lot that you can do in character building.

uh in this game in terms of like your equipment and your skills and your there's both active skills and passive skills and different weapon types and things like that there's a lot you can do with your armors and like the different like enhancement augments that you put on it

It's already a pretty darn flexible game, and if you're the type of person who likes to theorycraft and min-max, you can, in the original game, and this is true for any game with this level of flexibility, you can kind of... easily break the game open and become overpowered and i feel like that's part of the charm um is to like see how strong you can become but the quick cooldown system does like just make it even easier

And I mentioned this in our preview podcast where, you know, I was level 35 and I would see level 50 enemies. And in the original version, there's no way I could beat them because I couldn't beat them fast enough before they killed me. But now with quick cooldown... it's a little bit more tilted in your favor where it's like as long as you can spam these skills quick enough you can do it or you're more likely to and the way that it works is you can

you can gain a lot more exp more quickly that way you can build up those like those overdrive bonuses quicker and it just it tilted even more in your favor and like you i was a little bit mixed on it because just like uh especially Especially when you compare it to the Skell battles, because the Skells don't get the quick cooldown, at least not nearly as early in the game. So it's a little bit...

i'm with you it's i'm a little bit mixed on that i i wouldn't say it's like a big detractor but it's definitely something that changes the complexion of the game so it's hard to like ignore it but like i don't hate it i don't like it it's just like oh this is definitely different and it's definitely something that if you play the original version and you play this version it is noticeable

And we talked about this also, but it's kind of weird that they gave it that to on foot, but still nothing for Skells. Skells are... You can get it for Skells. It takes a long time. Oh, okay. So they do get it. Eventually.

I see the concept for it because the other Xenoblade games have more interactable elements during battles. I mean, you have the soul voices in Xenoblade X, but in the other Xenoblade games 2 and 3, you know, you're... you're kind of constantly doing something, whether it's using a skill or doing a chain or whatever it might be.

Xenoblade X by comparison has a lot more like waiting between cooldowns. So I see the concept of why they put it in to make those battles feel similarly like engaging that you're always doing something. Yeah. I guess one of the big things, obviously we can't go too much into detail about it, but one of the big things with this definitive edition is they added new story content to it.

the original ending of Xenoblade X. And because, you know, a lot of the, one of the big flaws in that game is like, it kind of ended on a big, big cliffhanger. And people were like, are we ever going to get a follow-up, a sequel? And then, you know, now we have the definitive edition that does continue the story after the end. Obviously, we can't go too much into the spoilers. And we don't want to spoil people who haven't beaten it yet.

Yeah, but Nintendo has teased it in some of their trailers of like, hey, there is this new land mass that you'll be able to explore. So I kind of got some general impressions from both of you. So there is a new kind of epilogue to the game. It takes place after the original ending.

This shouldn't be a surprise. If you played the original game and if you watched the trailer, it's kind of obvious that that's where it takes place. We won't spoil anything. It's not like Future Connected or Future Redeemed where it's like a separate... menu or a separate game mode or anything like that. It's kind of tacked on to the ending. By the way, the original level cap in Xenoblade Cross was 60. Now the level cap is 99.

Partially to incorporate this, but also that affects other game balance things, right? But anyways, so yeah, once you get to the original ending of the game, I will say that the original ending to the game is all intact. It's all there the same as it was before I was wondering when I was playing through this like is the ending like

adjusted any to fit in new content or anything like that? Do the events take place slightly differently? And the answer is no. The original ending is... practically exactly the same as it was before with the cliffhanger that you mentioned um but then just after you get that first set of credits it kind of continues on with an epilogue story um it's about i think i beat it in about eight hours

Just to kind of give you a rough idea of length. It features a new character and it features a new kind of threat and it does build upon that ending. It does answer some of those lingering questions. I won't say anything more than that. And let's see. How do I want to say this? You eventually do get to go to this new landmass. It's not right away.

There's first a couple of events on Mira just as part of the new story events and the new quests and the new character and whatnot. But eventually you do go to the new math, the new land area that they talked about. or that they showed in the trailers it's um it's separate from mira and the structure is a little bit different um

What's the best way to describe this? It's kind of like a little mini map that you get to explore. And there are new enemies, there are... new unique enemies uh the tyrants um the it's it kind of ties into the new story of course um there are a few new soundtrack options not a lot but a few new like If you wanted more Soano soundtrack, there is a little bit. I guess it's kind of comparable to Future Connected in Xenoblade 1 Definitive Edition. Yeah, I think it's more like that.

Yeah, I wouldn't say it's quite as big as that, but similar. Interesting. You get a little bit more backstory on... So at the end of Xenoblade 1... Or, sorry. At the end of Xenoblade Cross, the original version... You get a little bit of Elma's backstory right at the end. And this epilogue does go a little bit deeper into that, which shouldn't be too surprising considering the state of things at that point in the game.

and then you know ties the new character into that uh i won't say anything more than this but actually one of my favorite scenes in the new content is a dialogue scene between lin who's one of the main characters of the game and the new character um that's introduced in this epilogue and it's not like a big story moment it's not like a big epic reveal or anything like that it's not a big twist it's just kind of like a nice little dialogue that's got it's very tetsuya takahashi

feel to it i think hayes might know what i'm talking about um i do yeah yeah there's just like a little small section a little small dialogue there that i think it feels very xeno um xeno sagas you know blades you know gears um and I guess what, do you have any like, like Josh or whoever, is there anything you have like a question that you want answered that wouldn't be a spoiler? I guess like, how...

This is going to be a hard question to answer. How big, I guess, is the new area? It's not as big. Honestly, it's the best way to go. It's not as big as any of the individual... There's the five main continents on Mira. It's not as big as any of those. It's probably not even half as big as any of those. But I know...

In terms of what the trailers have very much teased just a few seconds of, it seems like some part of this new landmass is like floating islands. Yes. Does it... instill you with the same feeling as you did when you first like explored Miro for the first time like everything felt new and like you know there's a sense of wonder in the exploration or is it more focused or more typical

not really it's a little different the way you approach it it's it's uh um you are like searching around this new land area um And I don't want to say what you're searching for, but you are like searching around like the different caves and the different areas of this land area to try to progress the story and things like that there.

But it's a little bit of a different approach than, you know, like, you're on an alien planet. Let's just go try to survive that Neura has. It says it's like floating islands. Are you more reliant on scales in general when you're going through this? I guess I'll give you a very, very minor spoiler. When you first get there, you do not have your skill. And then you get it shortly later. Okay. Interesting.

The other thing I think, and again, being as vague as possible, but I think Xenoblade theory crafters will have some new things to talk about with this. for a decade debated over Xenoblade Cross being connected to the rest of the series. I really can't say more than that, but there will be some new things to talk about in that regard. I do wonder if they're going to re-issue a new art book for Xenoblade X Definitive Edition that'll reflect the new edition.

because, like, the Xenoblade X The World of Mira art book was, like, it provided a lot of that side material that you were talking about, like, with some of the new character editions, like, they were first seen in that art book, like, kind of, like, as, like... concepts or things that they had to cut for the final thing. So I do wonder if they'll have a new version of the Xenoblade X on the book.

talk more about what they added to definitive edition and maybe even show off more things that like oh we wanted to include this but had to cut it um i think this is the that file of mirror or something right that's the book yeah yeah the file of mirror the world mirror or something like that Yeah, because I was actually looking for that book. I have it in one of these IKEA boxes at home because I wanted to get it out and my limited edition for the game to take a photo of them.

I couldn't find it. I still haven't opened it because when I bought it, I hadn't played the Wii U game. And I am about 10 hours into the Switch game. And this is something which everyone who played the Wii U was in. Sorry, go ahead. In the original game, this is a little bit saying it kind of plainly, but the side quests are very much just filler.

I know filler is kind of a loaded term, but... You mean Xenoblade 1? Yes, sorry. I was trying to say the original game as in the original Xenoblade game, not the original version of Cross. Yeah, I'll try to be more careful with my language. In Xenoblade Chronicles 1... The side quests are not really there for a narrative vehicle. There's a few later in the game that sort of get there, but they're really more just gameplay.

opportunity for you to mess around just to just to go have fun i think literally in xenoblade one there are quests that are like battle hunt one battle hunt two battle hunt three or something like that like it's literally like checklist so putting yourself into the person into the mindset of, okay, now I'm playing Xenoblade Chronicles Cross, the original version of Cross on the Wii U, and then having to recalibrate your brain and be like, oh, there is...

I've not played this game, so I'm kind of gleaning from the way you've described it. But there is key narrative in those side quests that maybe don't push the main thrust of the... story forward, but give you the character moments, the world building, the racial interactions, and things like that, compared to Battle Quest 1 from Zelda Big Radicals 1. So that...

Obviously, now that we can go, you know, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and 3 have kind of found a good middle ground where you have the blade quests in 2. And in 3 you have, I forget what that seventh party member is called, but those hero quests for your guest characters.

and how they interact with the different colonies and with the world story. So now going back to Cross, our mindset is just completely different, which people who have played both versions of the game can compare and contrast. People who have only played the original Xenoblade Chronicles Cross or the remaster. uh just are coming at it from different perspectives so it might explain like why people take to this game so differently or why opinions on it can be so varied

I think I agree. And I think it's also kind of important to say with the side quest that all of the main quests in Xenoblade Cross are kind of gated to world progression. So you have to like get a certain survey rate or sometimes complete certain side quests. So it's just kind of like the whole way the game plays out is kind of built around that idea of side questing. Yeah.

I guess one of the final things I'll say is like it's like it's always like weird like how monolith soft like just like there's like always some weird small things that like monolith soft does uh for its games that's just like it's one of those things to kind of make you tilt your head like in this one right away it's like there's no way to see the first cutscene in the game in any other language but english if you have a western copy

of the game are booting it up from like a western account but you want to play with japanese voices because you have to first get through that opening cutscene then you can change the voices once you've made your character and then like you get control for the first time and then it'll let you like reselect a voice language so like you could technically just like if you want to change voices you select from one audio language to another

then go back, and then you can reselect your voice, and whatever. But since it all has to be facilitated after the first cutscene, after you made your character, there's... You have to, like, I think set your... switch region as they say your system region yeah like if you want to see the first cutscene like in in japanese voices for example which is like it's so weird that you have to do that if you want to see that cutscene in japanese

I'm sure someone who positions it artistically enough could change my mind, but that's a pet peeve of mine. Like, I want to go to a start menu. Maybe I'm a fossil. And then press, like... new game or start game. When you boot up something and it's like, oh, we realize this is your first time booting it up, we're going to immediately kick you into a cutscene. That's the thing. It does boot you into a main menu cutscene before you start it, but you can't switch...

audio language at that first boot up even at the first like time you visit that main menu to start the new game so it's like they even they even had that step already there but they just arbitrarily won't let you switch audio language Did the Wii U version have Japanese voices? I don't think so. I don't think it did. Yeah, I don't think it did. Not on Wii U, yeah.

What I remember from the Wii U is if you wanted the game to have a lot faster loading, you need to go to the Wii U eShop and download all these data packs for the game. Yeah, you had to put it on a flash drive and plug it in. I still have my flash drive literally plugged into my Wii U right now. remember when they had like the xenoblade x limited edition on v u that had like the cursed flash drive because i don't weird i have that i have yeah yeah

It was supposed to have like, I think five songs or something from the soundtrack. Yeah. I haven't plugged that into anything though.

and then like the but like the letter designation for it was like i think x and that like fucked up a lot of like for some people's setups like a lot of things because it was like designated as x uh from the get-go so that was a fun time um i should try that and see what happens now because i'm gonna look for it but yeah one question i did have because i didn't get very far on the wii u is

So I played 10 hours and I'm wondering how long till I get my skill. So I decided to look up a guide and apparently I need to play a long time. It's about 30, 40 hours. And even longer to fly, right? Yes. CD, who occasionally contributes to RPGs, he writes for Nintendo Insider. Alex Seedhouse. He goes by CD. got his skull, and he was like, finally, I got my skull. He jumps, and then he falls into the water underneath New LA. He's like, oh, I thought I could fly, but I can't fly.

Yeah, because it plays the song called Don't Worry from the soundtrack. You know, I've probably heard the soundtrack more than most other games that I've played. So hearing it in-game for the first time is funny. Because that's what I'm doing for the first time. Yeah. Yeah. Flights probably not until like 50 hours. Yep. Do that game at the earliest. Yeah. There is a new scale that has, uh,

like the cockpit mode and like the more like, I was going to bring that up. Uh, so maybe, maybe this is new, new material kind of, but I did like in Colin's review, he's like, one of these scales has cruise mode. It turns you into a plane. I didn't find this useful at all. It was very blood.

It's just one scale of many that has this extra mode. And the thing is, scales are sort of expensive. So if you want to see it, you have to pony up for it. I mean, I did get that scale and I put it in my party because you eventually want to have like... generally speaking for like endgame stuff you eventually want like you want four scales one for each of your active party members and like I made one of them the new scale that has like the cockpit mode the like

the jet mode or whatever it's called. It's just a new scale of many that were already in the game. It's like minorly cool. I was just gonna say, if you really want, you can buy a scale for every single party member. Yes, you can. 22 scales. You want at least four, eventually. I'm trying to remember if how the Wii U handled this. If the level of detail... Because when I'm playing through the Switch Definitive Edition, especially if they're going through New LA, there's a constant issue of like...

Things look empty until you get up close to it and then they start popping in. And I'm thinking, was it this egregious on the Wii U version? It was. But I can't remember. It was. Okay, yeah. I mean, I'm going from my memory here, but... I'm positive that the Wii U also had this version where things just loaded in sometimes slower than other things and you just have to sit there a bit. That was in the original game. That's in the definitive edition. It's just kind of like...

It is what it is. Switch 2 will save it with this hidden inaccessible 60 FPS option executable that people found. Have you all been playing it more docked or handheld? I played it docked. Okay, because... Okay, because when I played it, Handel, it feels really good. It's definitely the... crispest Xenoblade has looked on Switch by far. But when I play a dock, there's a lot of input lag. Are you noticing any of that? Because it feels a little sluggish.

I notice it. I'm playing with a Switch Pro controller, and I definitely feel that. But it's not the type of game that you need to be super reactive to stuff, but I can definitely... It doesn't really bug me because of the type of game it is. But also, I wish it could be better, but it's something I've learned to live with as well. But I get it. I am interested to see how it will run on Switch 2. Presumably that will be an improvement. It's just...

It's cool that it's back and people seem to be loving it and the additions, for the most part, have helped it more than it doesn't really strip the identity of it. It's kind of weird to see a lot more people are having more appreciation for this game now and obviously a lot of the new quality of life stuff helps a lot for that game. For me, I was just like, as a person who reviewed the original...

version of that game and definitely understood its flaws but also appreciated for what it's doing. It's kind of like one of those it's cool that more people finally get to play this game and talk about it.

get to learn about like these characters and once again we always say it like every time you bring it up but uh just in case you know don't don't skip out on the side quests in this game definitely try to do as many of them as you can it's worth it that's the heart of the game Yeah, I think for final thoughts, anyone who listened to this podcast, and I think people broadly have kind of understood this idea, is that going into this game, you kind of do have to just understand that it is...

a little bit of a different flavor of Xenoblade. It obviously has a lot of the same core, like, tenets that we expect from Xenoblade, but it is, you know, even by title and by nature, just, you know, its own thing. And so, like...

you know i've already seen some people coming into the game for the first time absolutely loving it um especially usually it's because of the world right and i've seen i've already seen a few people say like i don't know if this is for me and that's totally valid and it's just kind of its own thing I love it. I know Hayes loves it. James, who's not on this podcast, loves it. It's a really cool game, I think. And I'm glad they gave it a second chance rather than having it languish.

on wii u forever so now my final question is obviously one of my like spring games is to play this because it's my one lingering kind of gap for all of monolith soft That and finishing the original Bat and Kytos eventually. But what do we think is next? I'm trying to remember. Wasn't there next for the studio, I mean? Because obviously as soon as they remastered...

the first game, got the third game out with its own epilogue, and then got cross-remastered. I'm trying to clear the cobwebs out of my brain. Wasn't there some concept art that they were working on? Some project? It's been kind of down low. It was more like a medieval fantasy-esque concept art. They had a hiring thing where they were hiring for more fantasy-based medieval...

they had like one concept art. I'm actually on their website right now. See if I can find it. We don't know anything about it really, but it's just kind of like, maybe it's not Xeno. Maybe it's, you know, something else. And obviously model of soft works on a bunch of other like Nintendo stuff too, but yeah. Basically.

About a month ago, they also hired the cutscene director from Square Enix that worked on 7 Remake, Kingdom Hearts 3, and Final Fantasy XVI. Oh yeah, that's right. Could be part of that too. i say this every time i'm like i i hope model this soft goes works on a thing that's not xeno related uh yeah i i always like when you know people get the ips are cool but new things are cooler yeah Although I will say... Go for it, Hayes.

I wouldn't mind a Xenoblade Warriors 2, I'll say that. Okay, now we're cooking, but it has to be on Switch 2 because I don't want to see that thing running on a base Switch compared to some of these other Warrior games. Like Age of Calamity. Yeah. That would be a funny thing to see. Who do you think is going to buy a Switch 2, which we'll learn more about in less than two weeks?

And the first game they'll play on it is Age of Calamity to see if it runs better. At least a thousand people. Definitely at least a thousand people. They could sell me a completely broken-ass product, I'll still buy it. I mean, it could run Switch 1 games, you're already being paid off.

Yeah, I don't know, model this off. I hope they show something at that Switch 2 presentation. Yeah, that would be neat. See what they're working on next. Obviously, this isn't the only thing they were working on. There's other projects internally that they're... They've been cooking up. I just hope it's something completely new. But if it's another Xeno game, I'll be there day one as well.

They do a lot of co-development too, so I wouldn't be surprised if they're helping on a big game for Switch 2 that's not one of their IPs, you know? Absolutely. Yeah, people are talking about, like, you know, they updated their portfolio and, like, talking about, like, man, when you look at the Monolith Soft Portfolio page, it's, like, truly one of the most, like, established...

high-profile analogy, I guess, of games that you've developed and co-developed and did a development assistant on. And it's just... What I really want from them is a new Project Cross Zone. How about that? Or re-released the previous Project Hot Zones. Because those games have some of the best localization work I've seen in games.

The people who brought those over, you need to have a certain mastery of the video game industry to understand and get and parse through all the interactions in those games. They're lovely. My favorite one is the Sagatan Sanchiro. Yeah, the Sagata Sanchiro one with Sakura from Sakura Wars. They actually got the commercial reference. Yeah, it's fantastic.

Well, now we've had a couple of our episodes of this podcast talking about Zumba Chronicles Cross. Obviously, we had the preview episode a few weeks ago. We've had this extended talk today. We obviously have the review from Colin.

up on the site, RPGsite.net. And then we have Hayes' review over at Inverse, Inverse.com. And we have a few guides for the New Big Chronicles Cross up on the site already, and maybe a few more to come. We'll see how that's looking. So we'll have all that covered up on the site. RPGsite.net. The other major RPG release for this week, kind of going in completely in the other direction.

as I teed up at the very beginning of this podcast, is finally the actual release of Assassin's Creed Shadows. A lot of talk going into this release about Ubisoft, about the series, about the game in particular. One of the few times that we've exercised our right to write a review in progress over from Josh Tolentino, who has started the game but has found out that it is quite big.

So I know that Josh has been playing this. I'm not sure if anyone else has picked this up as it's released. I do know that Adam from I know has some of the more recent history with the RPG side of the Assassin's Creed series, but has kind of explicitly stated that you weren't.

immediately interested in Shadows. But we'll go ahead and give the microphone over to Josh, which we kind of call Josh 2, just so you know, if you haven't listened to this podcast before, delineate between Josh Torres and Josh Tarantino. So Josh, if you're still with us, hello. Hello. Yeah, I've been playing Assassin's Creed Shadows. And yeah, good to be back. And it is a like...

Technically, I just found this out because I had to look up when it was supposed to be released, when the other games were released. But this is the first game of what... ubisoft calls the third period of assassin's creed so technically shadows is the um this is something i misspoke about in our review in progress but i mentioned that it's like the fifth game

of this rpg era of assassin's creed but apparently according to ubisoft's own classification i guess it's the first game of the third era so either way it's just it's it's I would say it's part of that lineage. That was started with Assassin's Creed Origins and continued into Odyssey and... Yes, that's right. The Viking one. And I think it's pretty good. It's really big, which is why we went with the review in progress. And we only got our review code a few days.

the the pc review code we received came out um a little close to release date so there really wasn't enough time to get a good good enough look at it um in the time available So we went with the review in progress for that one. The full review is hopefully soon. But I think... Despite me not kind of bouncing off a lot of Assassin's Creed from this era. Because like as I mentioned the last time. I mean the last game I played. Assassin's Creed.

game i played to completion was syndicate so that's maybe almost a decade ago at this point and that that was the last game of period one of what they call it

So you just skipped period, too? I wouldn't say I skipped it. I spent some time. I spent about maybe 20 hours with Origins, 10 with Odyssey, and a few... a few with uh valhalla um so but each time each and every time it was like the map would open up and then i'd be oh this is so much bigger than everything i mean than i thought it would be and I will put it in the backlog because I've got stuff to do. Yeah, me and Adam both played Valhalla. And Adam, I don't know if he 100% did or...

Got very close to 100%ing Valhalla. He sounded like it drained years of his life. He sounded rugged. He sounded like he's seen a lot after it. He's like, oh, I don't know if I can do it anymore. This just reminded me of when I was reviewing Assassin's Creed Odyssey many years ago, and I think Ubisoft used to still give very not early access. Like, you know, with Atlas and Capcom, I think we've gotten used to like three to five weeks sometimes.

But with Assassin's Creed Odyssey, I think they sent me the code seven or eight days before the embargo. And I spent... the whole weekend on what I hadn't watched much of the trailer. So I spent the whole weekend on what I was playing and

After, I think on Sunday night, I saw Ubisoft Presents Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and that was like the prologue island. And I said, I am screwed. There is no way I'm finishing this in time. And I did it a bit late. I think it was for print at that time or something. But yeah, that... that i knew i'm never going to hit an embargo for a full review on this and

I think I got Assassin's Creed Shadows maybe a day or two before Josh 2. I was playing it on PS5 and I just played like 10 hours. We'll discuss it then. But yeah, this... I do not know how I would have been able to cover this if I had to hit an embargo. I'd probably just be like 70 or 80 hours you need for this kind of thing, so no way.

that's what i have to say now that adam's back but um adam i was i was describing like how you described your uh your time with valhalla like either 100 100 percent Or nearly 100%ed it. And you and I both like played it. I didn't beat it because I felt the fatigue like 40 hours in. I'm like, I can't do this anymore. And you're like, you sounded like you've like...

You went through, like, a tremendous, like, exhausting experience after you're like, oh. Yeah. I'm, yeah, I'm still a little bit burned out. I mean, partially my fault, of course, but even then, like... The way that Assassin's Creed Valhalla is set up, and let me know if... I don't know if Shadows is set up the same way or not. But Valhalla, you go to, like, England, and you have, like... You have, like...

10 different regions of the map and they each have their own little story. I don't think you need to do all of them but you basically like go to a region and then you follow you know like three or four quests in that region to do like the story of that region. And then once that's done, you kind of check it off the map and you go to the next one. And then there's like 10 of these or so, roughly. 10 to 12, 8 to 12. So they're kind of like separated stories.

I think the unfortunate part with Valhalla is that they were kind of all samey, and they all kind of went through the same general... progression in terms of how the stories worked and like they always ended in a raid and kind of had like the same kind of skeleton to them and it kind of just felt big and repetitive does shadows do anything at all that's like is it

Is it like these separated regions with the separated stories like the holo was? I hope I'm making sense. Actually, in that sense, um... The way you describe it, because I did not actually spend enough time with Valha to really get into that, to get a feel for that structure. And I'm not quite done with the shadows yet, but the skeleton of it seems to be... As you describe in that each region has kind of its own. There's a there's kind of an overarching kind of like.

As far as I'm aware, learning from Osmosis about Valhalla and by extension about Origins and Odyssey, it has the same structure where you've got this organization of baddies.

that is part of this that's that's that's fictional where in shadows there is a i guess this shouldn't be surprising to someone who's played a lot of assassin's creed um but Right behind all of these historical events, there is a secret cabal of bad dudes who are trying to do things that usually involve... ancient artifacts and stuff that's the that's like the fictional side right i mean it's always i think that's our podcast title a secret cabal of bad dudes yes

The secret cabal of bad dudes. I don't have the game loaded up, but I don't know if it's really considered a spoiler to name them. But anyway, secret cabal of bad dudes to kill. That's sort of how, I mean, to answer your question, Adam, yeah, it's like each region sort of has its, especially after the tutorial island, the tutorial province. The whole map is not like the whole of Japan. It's not like an odyssey where it looked like you had...

all of Greece in this sort of small open world style arrangement. Instead, it's a slice of Japan of what you might call part of Kansai. So that would be... It uses the old province names. So there's Iga, there's Yamato, there's Yamashiro province, there's Harima and stuff like that. But anyway, these would be the Kyoto-Osaka metro. In modern day, plus a bit down of the Key Peninsula in the south and up to kind of like the northern beach areas.

And that's kind of a slice of West Central Japan that contains Kyoto, Osaka, and like the seat of power for the Nobunaga. I mean, for Oda Nobunaga's territory. And that's kind of where the placement is. Because... And so the tutorial region is kind of in the southwestern area right after the prologue. And each of these regions, as you've unlocked more, each of them has their own story that's kind of involved with this secret cabal.

But it's also got a more historically inspired bit where you've got, oh, here's this figure from history. And then this cabal member is interacting with them or they're undermining them in some way. And you kind of move through it. And then like in the modern, this period of Assassin's Creed, this RPG period, they even have level requirements. The opening province of Izumisetsu is like level requirement 6. And then by the end it gets up to 35 or so. Or yeah, a little under 40 I think.

So I'm not quite there yet, but as you unlock these provinces, they kind of do have a sort of episodic vibe where they aren't really that connected. But... They do, I mean, they make references. So it does a better, I would say it does a decent job of keeping it feeling like a larger story. But there's definitely like, you could call it an arc.

It makes it feel like you're on a campaign of sorts where time is passing and you're running a... a big organization that's resisting this cabal and also resisting like Nobunaga's conquest of Nobunaga's advancing conquest of Japan and so on. If I could jump in. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I actually can talk a bit about how it kind of compares to Valhalla. I completed Valhalla, regrettably. I wish I hadn't. Thank you for your service.

Yeah, but Shadows kind of adopts a middle ground between Valhalla and the last game, Mirage. So in Valhalla, you're kind of... You have a map and you're going to each region and you're kind of completing the story there and moving on to the next one. It almost feels like a bunch of seasons of a TV show. But in Shadows, the structure takes from Mirage where...

your objectives are to assassinate, like Josh said, this cabal of people. And so even like your objective map is just a bunch of icons of people you need to assassinate. So instead of kind of... Playing through the map, you're instead selecting who you're assassinating next or who you're investigating next, and you're going through this hierarchy of people. That's kind of like the core difference between those.

Yeah, I was wondering how they would involve the formula from Mirage because that was the most recent one. I don't know if it was completely separate from that format or not. Good to have that insight on that end. I guess this is pretty interesting and what kind of surprised me about this game. Even though they have this dual protagonist, it takes some time to get Yasuke. Because I know you play through the first 8-10 hours as Naue.

And then after that, it's like, okay, then you can play as Yasuke. I thought they would be available both pretty early on. I want to hear some thoughts about that. Yeah, so I... Recently, relatively recently, I just unlocked the bits where you get free access, where the world really opens up, and you can choose between both protagonists more or less at will. And I think it's an interesting step. I'm not sure it works 100%, but the framing of the dual protagonists is interesting because like...

If you paid attention to the marketing, you'd think that this game is split between them equally. And it's two dual protagonists. In a way, you can play... Once the world opens up and once you gain access, you can kind of choose who you're playing with most of the time. But at least early on, it feels like a... And here's where I kind of go back to the last Assassin's Creed I had a lot of familiarity with, which is Syndicate.

It feels like a Jacob and Evie sort of situation where you can kind of choose which one is which, but it sort of feels like the story is more like it's about Jacob. And... where the writing makes allowances to feel like it's about both characters and it gives them moments and it gives them sort of an arc each. And it's actually, it's much more substantial than in the way Syndicate handled it. I'll have to, I mean, I have to point out. But it kind of feels like Naoe is the main character.

I mean, she gets the most involvement. She's the one, without going, I don't know if it's really appropriate to spoil, but she's the one that's connected to the assassins most directly. At least so far, like I said, I'm not all the way done, so things could change. But yeah, it sort of feels like she was the main character. Not to say that Yasuke is like an afterthought, but his story.

His personal journey and his involvement in the game and the events here is a little bit more... It's a bit more personal. It's not directly connected to the whole plot. It's like there's more focus on his relationship. Maybe they were trying to be a bit more light touch on it. Because one thing I've seen about... This era of Assassin's Creed is that they are a little less willing to mess around with people who actually existed. In the earlier Assassin's Creeds, you were...

You could hang out with Queen Victoria and you could assassinate the Pope. You could hug Leonardo da Vinci.

Yeah, Leonardo da Vinci was your cue. I mean, there's still that sort of involvement. Early on in the game, you get tea lessons from Senoriki, which was one of Nobunaga's tea masters and one of the more influential... people in japanese aesthetic history but like it doesn't feel sort of like i mean then you and in the prologue in fact where you you you start as an iga ninja and and then for those who aren't like

Watching their pop documentaries, Iga was the guerrilla resistance of the people of Iga against the conquest of Nobunaga and other warlords. Kind of put a lot of fuel into the... popular image of the ninja, a popular image of the shinobi. And Naoe is an Iga who is somehow connected to the Assassin Brotherhood in some way or in some peripheral way.

And her people's resistance against Nobunaga... is yeah I mean like helps inform all of that history so I mean it's not like they don't do any historical stuff it's just that like the later era they've been a bit more light touch with actual historical figures and I think that might be an influence on how they treated Yasuke during this. I mean, it's definitely like a speculative role because we don't really, we don't 100% know about what...

what the actual historical figure of Yasuke did in the records. So they kind of speculate that he might have been one of Nobunaga's close samurai or a warrior under his command. Yeah, and they're totally fine to explore that space too. You don't have to be totally bound by it. They're more than willing to bend the rules on history. Assassin's Creed was and never was bound by historical accuracy of what it wanted to do.

So in Valhalla, this is more mechanical, but in Valhalla, playing through that, I kind of felt like I was... So in Valhalla, you play as a Viking, right? And you're... I felt like I was just mowing through like almost an endless number of just stupid bandit mooks or whatever, like over and over and over again, just mowing them down over and over. And it kind of got a little tiring.

I guess, how much combat are you doing in Assassin's Creed Shadows? I'm kind of guessing that... yasuke might do more or because he's maybe yeah maybe he's could speak to this because he played both as well so yeah you can provide direct comparisons yeah and i've played about 60 hours of shadows at this point um Yeah, the dual protagonist approach is definitely kind of intentionally to address that, I think.

Because Naoi is much more focused on stealth. She does have combat, and she has combat abilities, but she has a lot of stealth abilities, and she has better assassination. better sneaking and Yasuke is much more combat focused. So in pretty much every quest in Shadows, even main story quests, you can choose who you want to play as. So if you want to approach main story quests as...

assassination attempts, like classic AC, you can do that with Naoe. Or if you want, you really just want to run in and just fight everyone at one time, you can choose Yasuke because that's very much his focus. He's just... He does no stealth. You like the Valhalla experience. Yeah, he just runs in and you use your skills and you fight 15 dudes at once. So it really is, at least in that regard, I think the dual protagonist approach is smart.

It's not perfect, obviously, but I think providing options is really good. The only issue, I think, is that the further you get into Shadows, you see that... There's not a ton of variety between these assassination missions. And even though you have that variety of Nae and Yasuke, essentially you're still just doing the same thing over and over. I mean, there's some...

variation in terms of level design, but it really is much like Valhalla or Odyssey or Origins. Eventually, you're kind of doing the same thing multiple times over and over.

It's the Far Cry issue where in the end, like, it's an outpost. And you can kind of vary that up with level design. But unfortunately, the... the system's depth isn't quite there to support the size of the map so before long you've got some like standout locations like really big places like osaka castle but yeah like for the smaller places you got

um you do eventually kind of oh you've seen this trick before it's five guys it's a war you find to find two treasure chests or kill one guy in the middle stuff like oh is there like any like interesting things to do out in the open world in terms of open world activities like you and i uh josh we both played rise of the ronin for example just uh like another uh big open world

uh historical japanese uh setting like how does it compare to to that how team ninja did it in that game there's like what you can do in the open um I would say that Shadows is definitely connected to the previous Assassin's Creed games.

And Rise of the Ronin is a contrast to that in that it feels, to me, connected to Way of the Samurai, which is a much different style of open world game. In the sense of, like, what... interesting things to do in the open world there are actually um foreshadows there um there are some pretty interesting things like you've got um i guess you you can build out your hideout i mean i

I guess that's not technically an open-world activity, but you've got an expansion of the settlement stuff that you see bits of, that I saw bits of in Valhalla. Or, I mean, not an expansion, kind of a... an evolution of the settlement thing where you kind of build, you have a base that you can sort of lay out and upgrade building by building. And out in the open world, there's activities like the...

You can have the sort of, it's not really pets, but you can have wildlife at your hideout. And one of the ways you get it, get the wildlife to show up is when you see animals out in the world.

in certain situations. Actually, I haven't really figured out how you get it consistently, but you can draw scenes of animals using Sumie, which is a... ink drawings like ink paintbrush drawings of these things and you take a picture of a tanuk i mean it's basically photography but you know pre-camera but you you take a picture of the of this tanuki taking eggs in the intro in the tutorial section and it then becomes a painting that you can put up inside your base.

so you can add that and then eventually you can sort of get the animals to show up in a way that's related to that and now I can I mean you can also do kujikiri which is this meditation sort of mini game i guess which um reminded me of the the scanning the um the boss summon scanning mini game from final fantasy 7 rebirth where it gives you a rhythm game and then the prompts slowly disappear and then you just keep up the prompts until the bit is done.

And that allows you to meditate and get bonuses and at the start it allows you to explore memories. From Naoi's past. Where you see her ninja training. From the character's past. So in Naoi's case it's her ninja training. And stuff like that. So those are some of the. The.

the side activities and all over the place there's these um little animus disruptions that you can you can basically look at to add a codex entry about the real life location that is I kind of missed that sort of stuff, and I didn't see a lot of that in Origins, and it was nice to see that stuff again, fill out again in Shadows. How about you, Hayes? Did you find the open world exploration rewarding, or in general, was it satisfying to you? I think so, especially coming off...

I think I told Adam this weekend that like, I kind of hate Valhalla. I played 160 hours of that game. And I remember being at hour 100 and being like, why am I doing this to myself? I'm. i think adam's not saying the same thing too yeah yeah but i think shadow's open world feels more satisfying in that regard because there's a lot of little quests that you stumble upon and so like

Those will sometimes tie back into main story quests or give you more context on side characters. And a lot of the open world activities, like there's shrines that you can pray at. There's temples that have scrolls that you can find.

and the Kujikiri as well, like all of these give you what's called knowledge points. So knowledge points, as you accrue them, unlock more skills in your skill tree. So whereas Valhalla kind of had this like... really overwhelming skill tree that had hundreds of nodes it's more paced it's paced out better in shadows

um where like everything you're doing is kind of contributing to that knowledge rank or contributing more meaningfully to your character progression and you're getting knowledge points to get new skills for now in yasuke is it it's like a limited resource where like you have to choose between them or do they both get that

skill points they both get it yeah any skill points you earn any levels you earn are all shared between naoi and yasuke so it's it really is just like which character you prefer playing as okay i guess it's also important to say that like There is still kind of a modern day story here. It's not anywhere near substantial as any of the previous games, but you can kind of...

It's weird. There's disruptions that you can find in the Animus as you go that are kind of story-based. But then there's this weird system where there's like daily...

or weekly challenges you can do. Oh, no. Okay. That's kind of why I want to go on that. It's got a battle path. I mean, it's got a rotating store, and it's got... the equivalent of a battle pass and that relates to the modern yeah the modern newbie bizarrely the modern day story is kind of battle passed out where you do these weekly challenges you get points and then as you progress through the battle pass you unlock like

diary entries or electronic entries you can go and read in the Animus. So there are little bits in the main story where you see Animus disruptions. Are battle-passing story bits now? Like story fluff? Okay. But if you want to see more outside of that, you've got to do the weekly challenges. I've got to get my modern-day Assassin's Creed story. I've only seen two of these modern-day things.

Like I said, they're weekly challenges. So I've only been able to do four because I've only had the game for a week. That's insane. That's one of the most insane things I've learned about this game so far. That's new, I guess. What this reminds me of, actually, is Black Flag, the framing of it. I spent enough time with Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla to know that the modern day story in those games centered around one character.

Kind of like a second protagonist after Des... I mean, you could call her a second protagonist after Desmond Miles, where this is Layla, this lady Layla, what's her... Layla Hassan. Yes, yes. There. And then she's got an arc of her own.

And there's a whole thing with her. But here, you're sort of a faceless person where the animus... ghosts or something seem to be talking to you directly and you're just some you're just some person using this animus tech to experience memories and in fact the start of it shows you where oh Welcome to our Animus Ego software, your new mindfulness app. They're never going to replicate the feeling that everyone got when the Assassin's Creed 2 ending.

like the final boss or goddess or whatever like looks at you at the camera directly it's all you know what I'm talking about so what the fuck are you talking about why are you doing that Desmond Yeah. When you boot up the game, actually, it's kind of weird because you see that cut scene that just talked about and then it boots you to like an Animus menu and you can see shadows and you can see Mirage and Valhalla and Odyssey and Origins.

Yeah, they're trying to build that whole connected Assassin's Creed multiverse thing in the future. And of course, if you go to the Origins section, you can click a link to take you to the store to buy the game. Yeah, it would be funnier to me if they had built it out as like Animus Connect and then made it look exactly like Ubisoft Connect or whatever they're calling Uplay now.

Like a third launcher. It makes so many people mad. It just feels like they're trying to make it the Call of Duty launcher to have all their games. Because it even, like, you know, on PS5, when you go to a game tile and you do, like, manage game and add-ons to see what DLC you have, it randomly listed a lot of stuff I own for Mirage and Valhalla over there.

It is detecting the stuff installed if you have the stuff on your system. So I don't know. I wasn't actually going to download like company ever 200 GB of Valhalla to find out if it lets me boot up from the same title screen. But yeah, I don't know. It is detecting that stuff over there. And I was annoyed because I was hoping there would be a good title screen for Assassin's Creed Shadows. But it's just this confusing Animus menu. And there's a separate, you have to press the touchpad.

to go to the system settings but to get back you have to press another button and all it's kind of annoying to deal with so yeah i think the lack of a title screen is actually really disappointing because this game is gorgeous. It is one of the best looking games on modern systems. The era of Japan that they've recreated, there's so many gorgeous environments and sunsets and backdrops.

fields and forests and so like not having some really stunning title screen or even a title screen that can like swap between the the different regions as you go through them they could have done some really cool stuff with that one of the things they emphasized uh when they first announced this game was like they had this whole uh system to showcase like seasons changing in real time and having that had like gameplay implications like you know like maybe during like the winter yeah like better

ways to stealth around did you feel that at all like when you're going through the game of like just general like when the seasons are changing did that change up anything that you were doing or just like it just like it's like cool a different change of scenery It was sort of, the seasons change, actually. The seasons kind of change. Their mechanic was a little bit confusing at first, where the seasons sort of change if you've spent enough time out and you do a fast travel.

Suddenly the season changes. And so it kind of like becomes another aspect of how they treat weather where it's sort of random-ish. and it affects your and it affects conditions like in winter there's you can make more noise and when it's in fall and summer and so on there's a bit more noise cover from the

from the wildlife and the crickets and whatnot. But, I mean, in that sense, it becomes sort of an environmental thing. But it's not so detailed that all of a sudden you have to change up your whole approach. It's more like it just adds a few wrinkles to an infiltration. And I assume just the general scenery and the... Way more important for the stealth is light levels. Okay.

um they re i mean this was sort of part of the marketing but yeah they definitely redid the stealth completely and it reminded me a lot of metal gear solid 5 where the Especially in contrast to old Assassin's Creed, where if you're in a bush, you're completely invisible to them, to an enemy or something. Light levels, like if you are in the daytime, it's so much harder to sneak in the enemies have.

much longer sight lines where they won't necessarily run at you immediately, but you start getting detected as soon as they turn their heads if you are not kind of prone. and in a place where that's especially like if you're out in the daytime if you're not prone and in cover even on normal mode you'll see

these enemies will start to get sight of you pretty quickly. And you actually have to be... I mean, you have to treat it like a real stealth game. And that was pretty refreshing after the previous games were stealth more... just sort of felt like a concession to what Assassin's Creed used to be. Yeah, I mean, Odyssey and Valhalla are not really stealthy, known for their stealth, and Mirage had to be the one to kind of bring it in again to, you know, stealth is important again.

With the seasons and exploration, one other thing that kind of ties in, the seasons change, it refills your scouts that you have. When you're going for objectives, kind of like... the last few games it gives you like bullet points of where people are so like oh they're in this region they're in this castle they're in this town and you have to find where they are what a big marker i mean it doesn't put the marker right over their heads anymore

Yeah, but you can use scouts to search an area and narrow that down, but you only have a handful of scouts and they refill at the end of the season. But... If you don't like the Scout system, you can actually go into the menu and completely turn it off. Just get straight up guided to the exact objective that you want.

The scout system is kind of cool, and it does play into the whole system, but it's just kind of that weird Ubisoft thing where they're like, if you don't like it, you can just completely change the way the game plays if you really want. I respect that, but yeah, it's an interesting... As it plays by default, it's an interesting twist. They can do the same thing for now a stealth gameplay, right?

You can just turn on one-hit assassinations, and that's a significant change in stealth for Naoi because she's more vulnerable.

And so you have to be a lot more careful about killing off elite enemies where you can't just sneak up behind them and exterminate them. Because unless you've got like... the right arrangement of perks or and stuff on your gear you won't be able to take down an elite enemy in one go and then you'll have to do some fighting against them and they usually can call reinforcements

But if you don't feel like that, you can jump into the menu and make sure that you will kill them in one hit as long as you can get up behind them in stealth. So, yeah, it's kind of that... I wouldn't say it's a lack of confidence, but you can, in fact, change the game the way the game completely works. I mean, it works completely if you so choose. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. I don't know. It is toggleable, so it's really just up to the player to decide how they want to experience it.

So I have a question. I see some clips of this game. Why does the game always go in black and white during combat and the blood just becomes red and everything's just black and white? I'm not really familiar with this game, so... That's like a stylistic thing whenever you do like an execution move or an assassination. So like when you kill a target, it turns to that screen for like an added visual flair.

In general, since we've been on Shadows for some time, but just based on how the past Assassin's Creed you've played, whether it was recently or not, Is this a strong, solid entry for the series? Just in general, where does it fare? Where a sound screen has been going? Is it worth it, pretty much? I'd say so. Like, as I said, I bounced off of all the other Assassin's Creed games of this kind of gameplay here.

since the pivot from the old style. And this doesn't... I feel like I could commit to this. I mean, I'm not quite all the way in yet, but it doesn't... It feels more... It feels less like it's big for its own sake, the way Origins did, the way Odyssey did, and the way Valhalla seems to do, to hear it from you guys talking about it.

It's big, definitely, and I think it's still a little too big for its gameplay systems to really support. But to me, at least, it's made much better use of that scale. Not just in presentation, but in making gameplay feel like you're not just doing things because you can. How about you, Hazel? Where'd you fall on shadows? Yeah, I think I pretty much agree with Josh, actually. I think, you know...

The RPG change to the series has been interesting, but I think it started going too far in the wrong direction with Valhalla. And I think Shadows is kind of an attempt to... blend the rpg elements and the classic elements it still has some problems that assassin's creed has suffered from like that bloat and kind of doing the same thing over and over but i think that

There's a thoughtfulness here to try and put the series back onto a track that people want and try and get that unique identity back again. Because I think... Despite interesting things that Origins and Odyssey and Valhalla did, in a lot of ways you could say that they're trying too much to be like The Witcher 3 almost. This feels more uniquely Assassin's Creed again.

And the story does some interesting things. It starts out slow, but it goes some places. A lot of the core gameplay does some unique things. So I think it's a good entry that... creates a new kind of blueprint that can be built upon to bring the series back to what Assassin's Creed has known for for so long. yeah hey did you write about this on on inverse or no just curious yet uh i actually have a piece going up sometime in the next few days on pc gamer about oh okay

contrasting this and Valhalla. But I haven't written a lot about it because I went straight to GDC after I played it. And what were you saying, Josh? Yeah. On that thing with just about the presentation of the story, it's also a lot more... This is something I didn't see as much of in the previous games. And even in the pre-RPG Assassin's Creed, but this one is a lot more explicit, I guess, about being a work of historical fiction. I mean, it's a lot more obvious about how it pulls from cinema.

i mean the the the cutscene where that opens on that that that shows you the title the cold open for the title screen has a modern like an enka sounding soundtrack either it's like And my first reaction was like, is this Tarantino? Are they pulling from a Tarantino? Or are they doing a... Or are they... Which genre of film are they being inspired by? So there's like montages.

There's a level of pop soundtrack. And it's a lot more... Whereas the previous games kind of made it feel like you were... Oh, you're watching The Secret History. This is... This is sort of a documentary. But here it's like, no, you're not going to mistake this for being the real true story behind the Crusades. or anything like that. But it's an interesting pivot in that way to me. I mean, stylistically at least. Okay. Any final thoughts on Shadows to close it out?

Would you just generally recommend it for people if they're interested in playing an open world Assassin's Creed game? Do you think this is the best one of these in the Assassin's Action RPG? Pivot? I think it's the most coherent one so far. Okay. I don't know if it would really change your opinion if you're completely burned out.

on this template especially like if you're burned out on assassin's creed template right now or if you're burned out on the way ubisoft does open world i don't think it's necessarily going to change your mind But if you're like me and you have been sort of disconnected from that formula for a while, this is a pretty good place to come back to it. How about you, Hayes? I think...

This is the best Assassin's Creed since Origins, in my mind. So I think if you enjoy classic AC, it's worth jumping in. If you found yourself a little burned out by the RPG games, I still think it's worth jumping in. And like I said, this is just flat out one of the most gorgeous open world games we've got in this generation. So, you know, there are some flaws. I know that going in. But I think if you just want a good...

open world game that you can kind of just explore at your own pace. I think it's a good option. Okay, cool. I know some of you have had to leap for personal commitments. Obviously, it's going to be a long podcast, going through the news and stuff. I'm not 100% sure who had to leave and who was staying. Well, it's in the middle of the night for Mikhail, so let's let him go. Unless you want to stay up. And yeah, middle of the night for both of you.

So, yeah, obviously, I don't have no regrets covering at length the GDC coverage, the Xenoblade Chronicles Cross Definitive Edition coverage, and the, of course, Assassin's Creed Shadow coverage. So do give out all those documents. Documents, reviews, a look through the Xenoblade Chronicles Cross review on RPG site and over at Inverse. We have the review in progress for Assassin's Creed Shadows up on RPG site. And keep an eye out for Haze's feature over at PC Gamer when it goes up.

But yeah, we're going to go into news. So if anyone needs to step out, we understand it's been a long podcast. And we don't normally do two big games all at once, but... That's just the way the release schedule lined up. Thank you so much, Hayes, for being able to join us here on the pod. It was nice having you. It's been awesome speaking to you.

Sure, yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm going to jump off to go do something I have to do, but I'd love to be back again sometime. It was great to talk. Yep, and thank you also, Mikhail, and thank you also, Josh Tolentino, for... Staying up at ungodly hours where you're at to speak with us. It was great. Thanks for having me. Thank you. We'll have to do a TetraCast East. where we get up in the middle of the night. Just to be fair. That's right.

Before we get into news outright, we'll probably at least call out some of the features we have on RPGsite.net from GDC, though a lot of these are Jameses, and I know you're still working on some. So I'll probably just point to them here. And then we'll probably go into detail discussing them potentially on next week's episode. So I know James has a preview up for a few indie games that are coming out.

We have Steel Century Groove. We brought up this one when it was first announced. This is the one where it's giant robots in a dance-off. So I don't know if he got hands-on, but he did get to preview this over at GDC. He also has a preview from Wu Chang Fallen Feathers. This is the soul's life from from Lindsay games. We also we talked about this in passing. Aaron was able to.

put up an interview and a preview for the upcoming Guardians of Azuma, the Rune Factory action spinoff that's coming out in May. So we have those two features up on the site, both a preview as well as... an interview with the producer Hisashi Fuji for that game. Out of all these previews, the one, Adam, that I might lean into for this episode, just to see if there's anything to glean from it at a high level.

is that you got to talk to the staff of Claire Obscure Expedition 33. I'm trying to figure out which specifically you spoke to over, it looks like, producer Francois Maurice.

it's a french name pardon me so i don't know if there's any like big takeaways from that opportunity um they wanted to go into or we can uh delay that when james no that's totally good no i i actually did most of the interview james was there of course too we both asked questions but uh i played the uh i played the dance battle indie game too it's like pokemon okay with robots and dancing it's hard for me to know like how well that lasts that like that

I guess idea can last throughout the game, but it's definitely like unique. Uh, I don't know. It's Pokemon dancing with, or it's Pokemon, but with mechs and they're dancing and that's what it is. That's literally like a one or two person team game. As indie as you can get. Anyways, so yeah. James did the preview for Wu-Chang Fallen Feathers and I did not see that.

I had some other ones that I'll be writing up later, which we'll talk about next week. But yeah, so there was an Xbox event at GDC, and there's a bunch of games there. Claire Obscura is one of them. Just to kind of touch on them very lightly, there was Mandragora, which is a side-scrolling Souls-like-ish RPG that was there that's coming out in mid-April, which...

I don't think I'll do a preview for that because it's coming out so soon. Might do a review, though. There was also the mascot... Oh, shoot. Promise Mascot Agency? Is that what it's called? Yeah, Promise Mascot Agency was at the event. And a few other games there. The Hotel Barcelona from... Oh, shoot. What's the guy's name? Suda? Both of them are involved with the Hotel Barcelona. Yeah, that was there too. But anyways, Claire Obscure. So we got to talk to the producer of the game.

And we got to ask him a few questions about, you know, inspirations and origins and things like that. And first of all, we also asked him, what does Claire Obscure mean? And they, he basically said outright that they already have like a larger kind of franchise in mind. And clear obscure is like a reference to an Italian painting technique, which I'm not going to try to pronounce, but it has to do with like light and dark, which you could.

kind of obviously see how that could fit into like themes and narratives and things like that um but expedition 33 is actually what they like refer to this game internally like that's the game's title is expedition 33 where clear obscure is more like Like the franchise title? Yeah, so they already have like plans, like bigger plans. Yeah, they're actually already thinking about a sequel. They're thinking about other media. Didn't they already announce some sort of TV adaptation?

Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. So like that's a this of Expedition 33 specifically. But yeah, read the interview. It's not that long. It's a pretty quick interview talking about inspiration. So. The producer that we talked to isn't like the creative director. He joined on relatively early in the process, but the creative director is actually Guillaume Bruch.

And he, the creative director, he grew up on Final Fantasy games. So there's a huge Final Fantasy influence. Things like Final Fantasy 8, 9, and 10 specifically was what he cited.

And according to the producer that we talked to, Francois Moriz, he's a big fan of... the final fantasy games but also he's a big fan of he mentioned chrono trigger of course earthbound undertale he mentioned paper mario the thousand year door as part as the um as part of the uh the action reactive combat stuff uh was actually sort of fun is if i understood him correctly francois said he had not played final fantasy 10 or persona 5 um before he joined the team

And Guillaume, the creative director, basically kind of gave him that homework. Like, hey, play Final Fantasy X and play Persona 5. And he did, and he loved both of them. And he even said, like, Final Fantasy X is a masterpiece.

And you can kind of see the turn-based stylings there, of course, for both of those games. But yeah, we just talked about the various inspirations. A big one is that... the game was originally just going to be turn-based it was just like it was turn-based at its core it was always designed to be turn-based because the team especially the creative director loves turn-based games but then he was playing Sekiro

And he loved the parrying of Sekiro and how that felt. He loved how that felt. And he was like, I want to incorporate this into this turn-based game. And that's kind of how it started, was he... grew up with Final Fantasy, wanted to make a turn-based game, but then it was like, oh wow, this Sekiro, the feeling of parrying is so cool and so thrilling that he wanted to put it in his game. So that's kind of how it came in.

And of course, they've done a bunch of like fine tuning and tweaking to try to, you know, how they're going to fit this in. And the producer that we talked to, Francois, said like, Not everyone likes parrying, but there are like builds in the games and equipments in the game that allow you to like make parrying easier or have better bonuses there and allow you to kind of work around, you know.

how you approach things like this in terms of like you know some people like they just don't like this sort of reactive mechanics they don't like the dodging or the whatever timing but they have some builds in the game to kind of like allow people to play with a slightly different builds and play styles and that's in addition to like options to turn it off entirely yeah and i don't i think scott actually went through this in his preview

that he wrote up, which he was pretty positive. I think there's a mode where you can kind of turn off the QTEs for the reactive stuff, where you don't ever get the best outcomes.

But you'll never get the worst outcomes. Kind of like a medium middle ground. You can just turn them off and don't have to worry about it. That kind of reminds me of Shadow Hearts. I remember, you know... match the ring yeah i remember if you had to like get a certain ratio to get this accessory where it auto does it for you i think you need to at least hit like an 80 ratio or something oh yeah as far as i know there's nothing like that

He also mentioned about, you know, very briefly about working with Kepler Interactive, which is the publisher. And of course, he's not going to say anything bad about the publisher, but it's like very supportive, collaborative. making decisions together. He said it was important to him that the game also had French audio in addition to English audio. Because these guys are French, right? It does not have Japanese audio yet. I don't know if there's plans for it.

He did say that they're actually really happy that they were able to get this game published in Japan by Sega. Sega's not doing the Western publishing, but they're doing the Japanese publishing. And they've already had interviews and they're going to have a physical edition in Japan and things like that. And he said, that's really cool. You know, obviously these guys grew up fans of Japanese games. So the fact that they can make one and sell it there.

With a Japanese localization, no Japanese voices, but they're very happy about that. So read the interview. I think it's kind of a nice, relatively quick chat. And read Scott's preview also. Yeah, that's coming out next month, right? Yeah, about a month from now. Almost there. And with that, we'll go into news. Not a lot of news this week, but we'll go into the few things we do have. We have a lot of dates. So the very end section of this podcast kind of backloaded and kind of filling out.

uh april and may with a lot of indie releases and a few other things uh in terms of like game announcements uh not not a lot we have one indie game listed here um tell me if you've heard this before it's a poker roguelike It's called Hero's Hand and it's slated for release on all consoles and PC next year. So it's kind of got it. Yeah, there you go. The thing is, though, is that like.

It's possible for two completely separate entities to have similar ideas, but of course that comparison is going to be natural. Apparently it's got a lot of inspiration from Dungeons & Dragons. I'm sure Bolatro as well. Kind of like a comedic... themings to this game and a very kind of cutesy fun you know colorful art style it's from a villain games and i don't know if it's their debut project but it's the first one that we've kind of covered uh

So we have the announcement trailer. This was from Day of the Devs, which was kind of over the last week. We had that event and we had the future games. had a handful of trailers over the last week. So that's where some of these updates are coming from. But yeah, Heroes Hand, you know, deck-based roguelike.

Bellatro-like. Bellatro won Game of the Year at the GDC Awards. Oh yeah, that's right. What was actually kind of funny is, so LocalThunk is a very, he's the creator of Bellatro, he's a very like... private person no one knows what he looks like um so the the publisher playstack their pr guys like kept kept going up to like accept all the awards and i'm assuming they've done this many many times but they're like

I am not local thunk. He's not local thunk. She's not local thunk. We're not local thunk. But we are the publisher and we are accepting this on his behalf. Thank you, local thunk, for making this great game. I respect the vision of that developer, man. I respect the, you know, not wanting to go public, you know. Like, I remember, like, he's posting up, like, stories about, like, the development, like, you know, just...

Just the mindset, the process of this game, and just not thinking at all, had no expectations it would go this way. It's like, I expected to sell like five copies, and I was like, two. I get on my family and friends pretty much. There's also just some funny jokes that are kind of floating around. His name is not even John, but people are like, are you John Local Thunk? He's like, no, I'm John Playstack.

I love that. It's pretty fun. We have a handful of updates for upcoming games that... aren't accompanied through trailers though i guess one of them is this one's a little bit more kind of biz dev focused than than actually like you know press release be excited about this a few weeks ago we talked about makarashi

which was kind of, it's from Blackjack Studios. And it's kind of, I kind of teed up the history of this game. It was originally licensed out from Square Enix to be a front mission game, front mission Borderscape. Then when they no longer, for whatever reason, had access to the IP or they're no longer working on Square Enix, they rebranded it as Metal Storm, releasing worldwide as Mekarashi. And we said, oh, that's kind of an interesting lineage for a game. We'll keep an eye on it.

Well, apparently, Square Enix has filed to sue the studio for copyright infringement, saying, you know, you're using Front Mission. I've not read. I looked up the link that we put in. to our article court listener.com, which kind of gives the idea about when it was filed, the wording of the complaint and things like that. But I haven't like dived into like what the specific, you know, issues are.

But apparently whatever break between Square Enix and Blackjack Studio or the new publisher, potentially Zion Games, was not not amicable in some way. That's my reading of this. So I don't know if that puts Makarashi's release in question or if this is going to be settled elsewhere. This is obviously not the sort of news that we typically cover, but it's interesting that we went from, oh, this is a way to leverage the work they've done on this game.

to still get it to release. But now it's got this court proceeding occurring in parallel that we have no idea how this is going to potentially impact. Yeah. It's interesting because this game released in Japan already late last year, in October, and someone actually mentioned that in the comments, and Kaika's even clarified that Square Enix actually behind the scenes already...

kind of had disputes over it releasing it over there. I went public with it until these lawsuits got sent to the courts along it. The English global release of Mekarashi is still set to go. They stopped their Steam page up, but I believe the Japanese and South Korean versions got geo-locked in the respective countries.

So it's kind of like in a weird situation where as far as we know, everything is still set for it to release sometime this year in the West. I don't think they've given a firm date yet on it. and they're still running their promo cycle. They're still releasing new promo material for it up until its launch. So I don't know if there's going to be some sort of bomb.

but i think it's gonna most likely scenario is there's gonna be like a a silent like back settlement agreement on this and then we'll never hear from it again and everything will proceed as normal because that's usually how it goes but you know it it is interesting that like square enix is like finally um you know following up and like like it was weird already they're like oh they they canceled this front mission borderscape game

But then, since they're now moving away from their Front Mission IP, they're still releasing something that looks pretty similar to Front Mission. It's like, is that okay with Square Enix? What about the previous development assets they had on hand? And now this is kind of the follow-up to that situation, but no, Square Enix is not happy that Blackjack Studio and Xeon game still went through with what is now known as Mekorashi.

These things do happen here and there in this space, especially when it comes to very similar looking mechanics. based on inspiration from the IP that they're making a spiritual successor of. Chow and I, many years ago, talked about this with Shiro Neko Project and Dragalia Lost. Yeah, that's like saying they stole their gameplay system. Yeah, you know. So it's kind of a... kind of a... not that similar situation, but it's in the same, you know, same...

Yeah, there's lots of things that happen. I mean, I think last year, or is it the year before, it was Konami suing side games, saying that they stole their EXP system or something. It's just like, oh my god. Yeah, it's tricky out there. It's really tricky. so well we'll see i mean i'm still i'm still willing to give the english version of this game a shot because i didn't hate the japanese you know version when i when i played but i was like ah i don't want

Let's go through this right now. But since there's a PC client, you know, maybe be hustled to. Have a soft spot for, you know. mecha srpgs whether no matter what platform they're on no matter if they're handheld design focused you know i need to get them where i can because it seems like they don't have enough of them They're dwindling these days, okay? I need get it where I can.

The second game we kind of have an update for is for the recently announced Digimon story Time Stranger. So this we finally, you know, we've known that they've been working on a Digimon story for a while now. We finally got the reveal of Time Stranger.

back at i think it was the state of play in february so now we kind of have more details coming out of digimon con which i suppose was in the last week about exactly what you know who's working on time stranger its scope compared to the previous games in the sub series etc uh some of them some of the things some of the highlights from this are it has a lot of the same the same key staff members from from cyber sleuth the more recent game uh the same character designer susahito yasusa yasuda

who I kind of intrinsically think as, you know, the Digimon character designer at this point. But they did also work on, like, yeah, I was going to say, I have played Devil Survivor 1, so I also do associate them with that character art as well. The boss designer. is the same and this one I wasn't sure goes by the name O O H exclamation great so that one I was like that like kind of goes by that sort of stage name is still the boss designer and then the composer is masafumi takeda

They talked about how the digital world will be more accessible. You'll access it more frequently in this game compared to the previous games, which I guess you access the actual digital world. You know, not as often. They say over 450 Digimon will be available to collect. So it has a very large roster. I'm not sure offhand how that compares to the other.

the uh the other games other than that it's higher they're they're saying it's higher but i'm not sure exactly how much higher uh compared to cyber sleuth or yeah so i yeah so yeah they're saying it's around 100 450 uh digimon in time stranger and that's Cyber Sleuth plus Hacker's Memory had a grand total of around 330, so it's a significantly higher cap. So that's awesome. They also revealed the names of the protagonist. The male MC's name is Dan Yuki, and the female protagonist is Kanan Yuki.

whichever protagonist you select, the other protagonist is still involved in the story. They'll serve as your operator. So you might hear more lines from the protagonist that you don't choose. Because they're your operator, and they're going to be constantly yapping at you during missions. He also unveiled a new character.

One of the main heroines of the story, Inori Misono, and her partner Digimon Aegeomon. The design of Aegeomon is weird because it reminds me of Haseyo from .hack, G-U, but younger. I'll put a picture in the...

Snapchat, even though this is not going to be helpful for audio listeners, obviously. It also revealed the starter Digimon, and me, who has been out of the loop of Digimon, I haven't even seen those Tri-movies from 10 years ago, let alone... the reboot series or whatever like hey i recognize these starters patamon gummon and demi devamon i know these guys these are classics yeah that's right i i love

I love the social media posts. Someone said to these starter selections, it's like imagining Professor Oak walking up to you and be like, Hey yo, do you want the Archangel Michael, the Demiurge, or this really cool seal that I found? And it's like, yeah, that's pretty much an accurate statement for these starters. Which is very fun. I don't know who I'm going to pick yet. I really like all three of them because I'm a Digimon Season 1 or Season 3 kid.

I have a very strong connection with all three of these. I'll be the lame guy. I've got to go for the WarGreymon somehow. None of that turned into WarGreymon. I know, but I gotta get WarGreymon. This is my endgame goal in every Digimon game. I mean, you're definitely gonna get Agumon easily in this game. They should put 450 Digimon in, but not put Agumon. Oh, that'd be awesome.

Damn, that'd be hard because there's so many Greymon variants. Holy shit. Yeah. They also re-confirmed. They mentioned this when they first mentioned that they were working on a new Digimon story game before this.

game was revealed but they reconfirmed that hey they're gonna have the olympus 12 uh be directly involved in this game because in other previous titles did you hear about the olympus olympus 12 but they never really become relevant so this is kind of like a big thing for digimon fans like finally the olympus 12 is gonna be you know um involved all they're all gonna be involved and like gonna meet up and shit which is you know fun awesome

um they shared like some clips of the locale like some locales in the digital world in this game which was fun because like you they showed you like a bar where like all these Digimon are hanging out like you see like Arukenimon which is like the the big spider protagonist in season two like hanging out there um drinking you have like lilymon as a waitress there you had um i think it's called zubamon which is like the third evolution of gobamon like the ultimate evolution like the turtle

uh one he's like he's like a blacksmith at like the home hub like uh which is really cool it's basically like like a lived in place but with all digimon in it and like recognizable digimon from the first like two to first three seasons it's like oh i know that one it's awesome that was my favorite one um the one that the trailer that they hit we have up on the site um uh shows uh

the the big new trailer uh that they showed off at digimon con which basically just um shows um you know like like a move showcase from um several digimon in that uh in time stranger a lot like you know um recognizable um Digimon, like Terriermon, Vmon, Stingmon, Edamon and Metal Edamon, Andrewwoman, you know. But there's even ones that haven't been in the series yet. I forget their names, but it does showcase in the video.

There's other Digimon from the newer crowd that they will like. I'm like, yeah, that Digimon looks cool too. Have they shown Renamon yet? Yes, they showed Renamon. That's all Junior cares about. Renamon is like the yellow one, right? That stands upright. It's like a fox. Yeah. Renamon's at 32 seconds into the trailer. There you go.

They showed Gallant Mon. I really like it. Cool stuff. Unfortunately, they didn't show off anything else. There's no release date or window that we have outside of this year still. So far, they've been saying the right things, and that's good. I'm excited.

I didn't really like Cyber Sleuth. Hacker's Memory is a little bit better, but I didn't really cling on to those games. But I hope this new game is the one that really sleeps me off my feet. I really want this game to be the Digimon game that I like. And I hope it is. the Digimon game to play if you like RPGs and you're either a current or lapsed fan of Digimon. Yeah. I can't wait. I can't wait to see what else they have in the game.

And the last update before we get into trailers, this one's a little bit more minor, but still worth shouting out. Obviously, back in February, we got the global release of Trails Through Daybreak 2. Obviously, the PC support for that series has been well supported by... Durante and PH3. They went back to port in a bunch of newer contemporary technologies into the Daybreak 2 PC port. This is things like DLSS4 and TAA. I actually put this on the podcast.

mainly because I saw James Skeet about this, saying like, oh, this clearly shows that they've been working on Kaino Koseki. And I kind of wanted to pick his brain, like, what about this suggests Kaino Koseki? I don't really know. I don't see it there. I just think it's more like, oh, if he's doing something like this, he could just bring this feature to Kai. It's like, why would you implement this?

like all of a sudden. It's also like, it's an open secret that, you know, we'll probably get Kai in the West from East America and PhD Durante at some point in the future. The only question now is whether it's this year or next year. Yeah, it's a basic question.

It's like, you know the guy's working on it. It's like telling me, it's like, I wonder if Square Enix is working on Final Fantasy 17. I wonder if Nintendo's working on a new Mario. It really makes me, I don't know. I don't know about that Mario. There's some smart things here. Like, for instance, like...

If you have your render scale set at a value primarily less than 100%, and now it doesn't affect UI elements like the map or the menus, we're like, oh, that makes sense that you could render the game at a lower... internal resolution, but it doesn't make your map all blurry.

So kind of some fun adjustments there. And Mikhail went into a pretty well, really like reported on the detail that PH3 put into their to their update about all the kind of smart under the hood improvements that they made to the PC port, which, of course, even coming out was. top first class compared to all the other porting houses. I always feel like news like this stings a little.

Because it makes at least me wonder, and probably other people wonder, it's like, I wonder how the PC port of Trails of the Sky 1st is going to be. Because as far as we know, the Ronte and PhD are not working on that. Minimum options. I don't know. I'm bracing myself for the worst, but I'm hoping for the best. It's like, it's cool that they're doing this. I'm happy for it, but it's like, man.

What's that Trails in the Sky remake gonna look like then? Is it gonna have awesome DLSS 4 TAA and all this other shit in it? Is it gonna be awesome like these words? I don't know. And some of the stuff, if you read through this, it's really interesting to see Peter talk about this, Peter Toman, Durante. Because, like, for instance, I guess the engine is custom and there was no, like...

He had to implement the TAA implementation from scratch. So he knew the basics. He referenced a paper about the overview and basically had to just like... invent it and do it like for us on the receiving end it's like oh they added this so it's a drop down but it's like how much work went into that just to like oh i'm going to build this from scratch for this custom engine

to be able to implement it into this game that didn't originally launch with this capability. So some of that stuff, it's easy to take for granted. So it's always cool to kind of get a small sliver of a look in. about the work that goes on behind the scenes in order to support these sorts of updates. We have a couple trailers here. I don't think we have to spend a...

a lot of time on each of these. We have the second character trailer for Claire Obscura Expedition 33. We had the first one for Gustav last week. This week it's, I think it's pronounced Mai, M-A-E-L-L. E, but I'm not 100% sure, actually. So Maya, I believe, is the one that has the stances. So the stances, like she can have a stance where she deals and takes more damage, and you can change your stances on the fly.

I know when Scott was playing the preview, the Virtuoso stance was kind of like the pure DPS glass cannon stance. So the trailer isn't really a primer, it's more for flavor, but it does show a little bit of this in some of the combat highlights. So that is kind of put in, and I assume we'll see the trailer for the third combatant, whose name I'm forgetting, in the next couple weeks.

During Future Game Show, we got a new trailer for Mandragora, Whispers of the Witch Tree. This one is releasing in less than a month on April 25th. Sorry, April 17th. So we got a new trailer for that. I played this at GDC. Oh, you did? Yeah, it's definitely like... So the thing with side-scroller RPGs is sometimes they're like very light.

Like, oh, this has a skill tree or it has some levels, but it's like about as a basic of an implementation as you can get. This one is definitely pretty dense relative to other side-scroller RPGs.

like there are six different classes and each class has like its own like sphere grid it's like a sphere grid skill tree and not only that but like when you pick a class you can actually use any of the six sphere grids so you can there's a lot of opportunity for like class mix intermixing and skill building and things like that um it has it is a souls like you know

You die, you lose your souls. Yeah, you can pick them up. But it is something that I'm keeping an eye on. Obviously, from a demo on GDC, it's a little bit hard to tell. Like, what's the story like? Or how good is the progression long-term? But it's a pretty dense side-scrolling RPG, for sure. And then I was going to ask about this last one, Adam. This one is a release date, but I threw it in the trailer section because this game is being basically...

sold based on it's a remaster of System Shock 2. System Shock 2 25th anniversary remaster. We talked a little bit about your time with the System Shock remake from... 2023. So System Shack 2 25th anniversary is releasing on June 26th. And along with this, they show basically this trailer go from the original graphics to the remastered graphics and back. Of course, like we talked about, it is a remaster and not a remake, but...

Did you get to either talk to or get hands-on with System Shock 2 while at GDC? Yeah, I actually will have kind of a... I had a light interview conversation with... A couple of people at Night Dive. Larry Cooperman, who is like the business, the VP of business development, as well as Grover Kimberly. Grover.

wimberly who is a producer at night dive and i got to play a little bit of the demo i got to have like a kind of a chat i am going to do a preview of this game shortly here so it'll probably be up in the next couple of days um and basically like Nightdive got the rights to System Shock like a decade ago. And this is something they've always wanted to do, especially System Shock 2 being so beloved. But the System Shock 1 remake...

took more time and effort and resources than they were anticipating. But it was like a huge learning experience. They're really happy with the result of that remake that I talked about last week. And then Larry was saying that Night Dive has been courted by a lot of different developers, including Bethesda and id Software, to do stuff like Doom and Quake.

and dark forces and all these different projects. And, um, that slowed things down because they have to shuffle people around. They have to do these things. But the way he put it is like, these guys are like, old school classic pc nerds if id software comes up to them and says like hey we want to do a new version of doom they're not going to say no they want to do it um and uh i you know we talked about this

how many projects they're doing and he basically said for the foreseeable future they kind of want to do like four or five projects a year um remasters or new ports and things like that but anyways um system shock 2 I'm not familiar with it. Like I had never played the original. I said this last week. It is more RPG. So like for our website purposes, it does have like some stats and skills that you get to select and even almost like a class system that you choose.

I'll have my preview up in the next couple of days, but I grew up in the 90s. I grew up at the end of the DOS era, beginning of the Windows era. This game basically slots in there very nicely.

um even though i've never played it when i started when i started playing the demo at gdc it felt very familiar and comfortable in a way because like oh yes this feels like a game from the 90s and the way that larry put it was We want these games, especially the remasters, we want them to feel like what you remember from back then without necessarily actually playing like you remember, you know.

Stuff with, you know, small things like controls or UI or things like that. One of the examples they used was in the original System Shock. You could not... control the camera with your mouse um but you can in the remake and that was one of those things where it's just like yes it's a new addition but it's one of those things like coming to it now you sort of assume and expect it and Things like that. But one thing he also said is, let me see if I can find it in my interview here. Here we go.

They didn't want to add too much. So the thing with System Shock, and Brian would understand since you played the original, is that it is pretty light on waypointing, tutorials, hand-holding, things like that. And they didn't want to add too much in terms of quality of life there. And he actually brought this up kind of spontaneously. He was saying that, I'll just quote him here.

It's fair to say in those days, the assumption about players' abilities and playthroughs is that they would be able to figure things out without necessarily being explicitly told. You'll learn that you probably don't need to pick up every coffee cup you run across just because you can. And you learn that you have resources that you have to manage, and you have to manage them carefully.

and things like that so he he finds that people like appreciate these kind of components to their games and he didn't he doesn't want to change things too much so kind of this whole like how do we update it how do we keep them faithful That's their approach. And so read that once it's up. Yeah, definitely. I'm appreciative as someone who didn't play the original, just played the first remake.

Like we kind of said, the first one was remake. This was remastered. Having someone have a light touch and not an overhanded touch in terms of updating these games as they were, but for a modern audience, trying to thread that needle, not compromising it in the sake of... buffing out too much of the you know the edges to make it something that's not recognizable to what it was but yeah i was actually playing i was actually playing the demo

And it plays a little differently from System Shock 1, the remake. And I was actually kind of playing the demo. He and Grover were watching me play it. And, you know... Like, there aren't a lot of tutorials. I was like, okay, how do I open the menu? Tab, I, M. Like, I'm pressing different keys. And like, okay, here's the menu. And I'm talking to myself. Like, okay, here's my inventory. Here's my equipment. Here's my stats. Like, how do I equip the gun? I just drag it over here.

Okay. And then Larry even said, like, I actually have, let me find it here real quick. Sorry. He says, like, I have endless enjoyment from watching people learn how to play this game. So that's kind of the approach that I took, and that's kind of the approach that they're taking when they want people to play this, is that it's faithful to what it was. And again, play how you remember it playing, even though not necessarily how it actually played.

So yeah, look forward to the interview slash preview or however you decide to container it up on appartista.net when Adam gets that published. And of course, we kind of already talked about all the other previews that...

james has put up that aaron's put up and there's a few more that i know they're in the works so we'll probably definitely be able to dive into a lot of those um in the upcoming weeks uh to go into more detail of those games especially as those release dates like as we get closer to the um

Guardians of Azuma release date in May, going into the preview and talking about that game. Before we go to the final set of news, which is going through the dates, there is one other feature up on the site that I actually didn't know that Mikhail was working on. It's a primer. It's a beginner's guide to the Atelier series. Of course, we talked about Atelier.

Yumiya, I blanked for a second. What was the new name? Atelier Yumiya a few weeks ago when it released, of course, just, you know, earlier in the month. Atelier has seen a resurgence ever since the Rise of Trilogy was so successful.

And we kind of talked about last week about this is the start of a new trilogy. We talked about like some people who are fringe of the series don't even realize that it's like subdivided into trilogies. And even then there's caveats like Sophie to things like that. So Mikhail did a really good deep dive into like. What's the deal with Atelier? How do the trilogies work? Which characters are tied together in that way? Where does Yumiya sit? Where does Ryza sit?

So and even like which platforms the games are available on the DX versions of these games as they kind of get re-released on on more modern platforms. How do those fit in? So we have kind of an evergreen kind of primer up on the site now. for those looking to be introduced to the Atelier series or have recently been introduced with Yumia or potentially Ryza. So the complete beginner's guide to the Atelier games from Mikhail put together.

So definitely wanted to give that one as a shout out on the site. And I'm not sure if there's more to come, but I would not be surprised if we kind of make these kind of a feature of the site for more series going forward. So now we're at the last leg of the podcast, so we just have a couple dates here. This is the first time we've covered this game, Traveler's Refrain. It's a story-driven indie game with a musical theme to it.

It's going to be releasing on PC on April 11th on Steam. Kind of gives me like Moonlighter slash Crypt of the Necrodancer kind of vibes. Phantom Brave The Lost Hero, of course, released on console just earlier this year in late January. We knew a PC port was coming probably later, and we got a release date for it, and it's going to be releasing on PC on April 24th.

Alongside the announcement, there was a release date announcement trailer that we have up on the site as well. I don't know about this release date. April 24th? The April 24th is the same day that 100 line comes out and the same day that Claire Obscure comes out. I just feel like, obviously this game, those games aren't going to be, well, Claire Obscure might be big, I don't know, but they're...

If you are NIS America and you have to choose a date for this game, why April 24th? The date was it probably should have came out the same time as the console. I mean, probably, yes. That was a good time. But let's just assume you had to release it later. Why not wait a week or two weeks? I just feel like April 24th is not... It'll be good luck. That's not even counting. People are still playing games that they missed out on earlier in the year.

You know, it's tough out there. It's a very crowded first quarter. Best of luck to everyone. I'm Wuthering Waves. is getting a steam release on april 29th now remind me weathering waves is on pc but as a standalone client like genshin is that where is that status

It has a standalone client and an Epic Game Store. It's also an Epic Game Store. Oh, I didn't realize it was an Epic. But it's kind of stupid because usually how these games with standalone clients go, even though they're on, say, Epic Game Store, you boot up to Epic Game Store.

version only for it to open the client that would have been on the standalone client. So I assume that's how the Steam version is going to go too, because that's how it is for other games that have standalone clients on Steam. It's like you press the play button on Steam only for it to open up the client, the standalone client, because that's where all the actual patching is done. Because they already have a unified system.

I know that's how Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy XIV, I think PSO2, New Genesis, you can get those standalone or on Steam or Epic. But what happens is if you buy the game on through something like Steam.

then if you want to buy DLC expansions, microtransactions, or whatever, you're locked to it. Maybe there's some different specifics, but I know for Final Fantasy XIV, they're like, don't get on Steam, otherwise you're married to Steam. And for Guild Wars 2, if you get the expansions on Steam, you...

you can't if arena net on their own website has a sale you can't get it there you have to get it on steam so i wonder if there's going to be similar concessions to something like weathering waves or maybe there already are on the epic on the only the only like um

things that you kind of get out of like getting it from a separate client for example like steam playtime for example if you want to start tracking your playtime and let steam do it um because there's no good way other way to like uh track your steam tower your playtime in general yeah you can do it there um micro transactions if you're trying to get more currency you'd be able to like use like your steam wallet for example but now that's taxable

Because, like, let's say you live in, like, in Washington State, for example, that has, like, a separate, like, tax on things on top of what you're buying already. so you're like it's actually going to be more expensive to buy that micro transaction on steam because you have an additional tax on top of it meanwhile if you were going to get the micro transaction let's say under your standalone client there what the set price is

they're going to make up for it like already so let's say like i get like a like a 60 microtransaction thing on steam that'll be a little bit more expensive because there's a state tax on top of that when you're going to the steam client where if you were trying to get on their standalone client it's going to be a set 60 dollars on it with tax so like it's gonna that that price is hard locked on their on their standalone client uh you don't have to deal with like state tax through steam

for example, on that through their standalone client because that tax is already part of that base price calculated on that end for them. Just stuff like that. I don't know why I know this, but I've experienced it, so maybe that's why I know it. The main reason is Steam Playtime. If they add Steam achievements and Steam portfolio or wallpaper or stuff like that, maybe I guess, that could be an added benefit too. So it's all just like...

Is there any real reason to move over to Steam if you're already playing Mothering Waves on their standalone client? Probably not, but if you really want that playtime progress, then you'd probably move, I guess, play on there. But if you're spending money for microtransactions in it, you're probably going to boot up the standalone client, whether you're doing it on mobile or the separate PC client, because you don't want that additional tax if Steam is taxable in wherever you like.

And it's probably more slated for people who are very embedded in the Steam ecosystem and don't see outside of it. So getting the new players in. Yeah, that too. Apparently May 8th is a big day for indie games. So I have...

three games here listed that are coming out on May 8th. I think they're all on PC. No, they're all on PC, but some are on some other consoles. I'll go in order here. Creature Keeper is a monster-taming RPG, an indie game, with a very cutesy kind of... uh saturday morning cartoon art style releasing on pc on may 8th it was really supposed to release back in 2023 but got delayed a few times We have a sandbox RPG Pixel Shire. This looks like it's kind of in that Stardew Valley.

fields in Istria kind of realm. So this is releasing on PC as well as on basically every console, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox series, even Xbox One on May 8th. And finally, Empryol. E-M-P-Y-R-E-A-L. Action RPG kind of gives me like those, unfortunately, like Elex sort of vibes. Yo, DLX is back. Let's go. I actually played this. I like DLX1. Oh, you did play this. Yeah, so it's releasing also on May 8th. Xbox, PlayStation, PC. Any one-sentence.

comments on this? It's like a mission-based action RPG where you... The interesting part about it is that you will get drops as you go through the game. And the drops are like... This is weird to talk about. It's called a cartogram. And the cartogram is like a new map. And it's like a...

If you think about like action RPGs of like the PSP era, like there's like these missions that you go through where they're like little bite-sized levels that you go through. You beat the level, fight some enemies, get some drops, fight the boss, then you kind of like are done.

It's actually kind of like that sort of design, where you're fighting enemies, you get a drop, and a drop is a cartogram, and that's like a randomized level. Now, the developer I talked to wanted to emphasize that the levels themselves are not procedurally generated. But it's like a handmade bespoke level with like the randomizers and stuff on top of it are like the loot tables and the enemy tables and things like that are somewhat randomized. And like...

You go to the levels you get these drops and then like go through these little dropped levels that you get and It's kind of like this sort of like loot based gearing up It kind of reminds me a little bit of Path of Exile, because in Path of Exile, you run maps at that endgame, and even though the maps are procedurally generated, there are different modifiers, different enemies.

and you get like loot out of them to continue building you know whatever build you're striving for but there's a there's an element of like hey there are you're you're getting He says to construct a map and run that map for loot. So the sort of idea is rather than beating a boss or beating an enemy and being like, oh, I needed this pair of gloves or whatever.

You get a level, and then the level, if you look at the loot table, it'd be like, oh, this level that I picked up, that I can now use, I know it's kind of weird to think about, you use a level to go into it. to like well act that this loot table has like gloves on this level so maybe i can get a better pair of gloves here or whatever or like oh i needed a drop from this sort of enemy which this

randomized level that I got will have it. So that's kind of the interesting twist to it. I will say that the demo I played was like not very well balanced. It was kind of like throws you into the middle of the game and it's kind of like... It was almost, it felt like a beta test. But anyways, it's kind of interesting.

Later in May, we have the Western release for Death's End Request Code Z. This is kind of the sequel slash spinoff to the Death's End Request. It's a sequel, but it's a different gameplay style. It's a roguelike instead of a command-based game. I know this was kind of when it was first announced. One of the primary focuses is that it got a 0Z rating because of gory, very mature endings.

I assume it'll be M in the West, so I'm not 100% sure. It was originally going to release on Switch, but the Switch version in the West. So it's on Switch in Japan, but will not release on Switch in the West. And the physical release in the West has been delayed, but it'll release digitally on May 13th, physically on June 27th. Yo, Boone Mouse ads are back on the menu, huh?

Yep, that's the collector's limited edition. The limited edition has this boom mascot on it. Oh, that's back on the menu. Let's go. That's what the people wanted. Along with a trading card, an official soundtrack, and collector's box. And art book if you care about that. But you don't care about any of those. You want the boob mouse.

One minor correction. I guess the physical edition is only delayed in Europe. So if you're getting the physical edition in Europe, you'll have to wait until June. And then the last thing here is Monster Hunter related.

On the 25th, so a few days from this recording, we're having a... a monster hunter wild showcase covering uh what's going to come in title update one which we already talked about i think a lot of this is already detailed you already knew that mitsuhine was was coming to monster hunter wilds uh mitsuzune uh and

They'll go like, I'm not exactly sure like what additional details they'll provide because we already know like what's been slated in the roadmap, but they'll at least give it a little bit of a showcase on the 25th. I hope Muses Zune is cool. I mean, you know, we've seen it in Rise. I forgot if it was in Ice, World of Ice. I don't think so. I think it was in Rise. I hope there's something more substantial than just showing off Muses Zune, though.

It was in Rise. Yeah. They said there's other new additions, but I'm hoping that there's more monsters besides Mizutsune and this title update. Just bonus announcements. I guess. Obviously, they slayed the patch at the Gathering Hub. Man, they need more content for that game. TLDR, they need more content in that game.

I'm like, I still have to catch up, so I'm okay if it takes a while. I guess we already know that the title update is coming early April, so maybe they'll probably give us a date, I guess. Yeah. And that covers us for this episode. So that was a fun episode. We had a pretty large cast at the start. Like Adam said, it's not often that we get to...

And, you know, have two big major releases and kind of very different major releases to talk about at length and having people from within our site and, you know, guests on the podcast being able to talk to Link about both of those. Yeah, thank you for everyone who joined us. I know a lot of them had to log up, but thanks to Hayes, to Mikhail, to Josh Talantino, and to Chow, who had to step out as well, for joining us previously.

It was action-packed. As you said, a huge amount of stuff to talk about, but thanks to them for making time wherever they live to join us for a bit and talk about them. So next week, it looks like the big two things will be First Berserker Kazan and AI Limit, though I'm not sure Junior. I know he has a time zone concern as well, but maybe we'll have a review that can at least point to for that game. But it's only coming out in a couple of days. Were you going to say something, Adam?

Okay. So those are the big two releases for next week. And then, of course, the week after that, everything Switch 2, which whenever Nintendo has any sort of showcase, we seem to be very busy because they seem to have a lot of games that fit our scope, whether that's Monolith Soft. or otherwise, I'm sure we'll be talking about that in just a couple weeks. So it doesn't slow down.

I've kind of called out all the different features, previews, interviews on the site several times throughout this podcast. At the highlight, of course, Assassin's Creed Shadows Review in Progress and the Xenoblade Chronicles Cross Definitive Edition Review up on the site. Go to RPGsite.net and check those. out. Join the Discord. Discord.gg slash RPG site.

Search for IPG site on all the social media networks, and you should be able to find us and follow us there. If you listen to this podcast, whether it's directly on the site page or through the podcast app of choice, Spotify, YouTube, whatever, give us a thumbs up. give us a rating we'd love to see those and until you hear from us next time on the next episode of the tetracast stay safe take care and we'll talk to you next time