TGI 644 – Daredevil Swears in French

Hello everyone and welcome to the Gamers Inn. Come on in, pull up a chair next to the fire. Looks like you've had a long journey. I'm your host Ryan and joining me this week is my guest co-host John. How's it going John? Hello, it's me, John. Yes. I'm good. Thank you. Thank you. I missed the question. I'm like, yes, this is John. It's true. Well, it says here, it says, you know, this is John. It's right there in the notes. Jocelyn is out this week. She's on training.

But she will be back next week. So I asked John to come in to chat. We were talking pre-show. Only when John and I chat will we bring up, was it Starscream and Celine Dion in the same breath? And that's the only context people are going to get. That's right. They're both divas. I don't know if Starscream or Celine Dion are divas. Starscream is definitely a diva. For sure. For sure. Big Karen energy with Starscream.

I don't get the sense that Celine Dion has Karen energy. She seems, she seems, she's a national treasure, a national Canadian treasure. I mean, like she, she appeared in a, in a Deadpool movie. That's true. You know, like that. You gotta be able to have a little bit of fun. How many Deadpool movies was Starscream in? I ask you. None. It's the answer. Zero. Yeah, that's true. That's true.

Yeah, we're going to. And, you know, usually some some folks might think like, oh, Ryan's bringing John on so they can talk about The Last of Us returning to HBO. No, we're not going to discuss depressing zombie shows or video games, because I know the last time we were on wasn't The Last of Us Part II, but it was Cyberpunk. Phantom Liberty, I believe it was.

that which is such a great game i know you're playing it again because you got you got you know a pc to stress yeah i got a new pc that's like okay well i guess i have to play cyberpunk it's just in the new pc bylaws now yeah remember when it used to be uh what was it crisis i think yeah crisis yep like i gotta see if it can this play crisis

still no is the it's the answer every time no turn it up but it can it cannot play it a little better than before perfect yeah it was crisis i don't know what it was before that maybe uh some version of doom maybe doom doom three i i can't remember that far back three i feel like definitely was a benchmark i know for a while there everybody just wanted to know like Yeah, but how well does Quake 3 Arena and how does Unreal Tournament run on it? Those were the big ones. Can you play those?

So that was important for a window of time. Yeah. So you had crisis. And then I feel like some of the Witcher games were in there as like, oh, can it run Witcher 3? That was a big one. I mean, everything. Yeah, how will Witcher 3 look? Morrowind was a big one. Yeah. Because that was another one where people saw screenshots of Morrowind and they were like. This is the best graphics ever. This looks like real life. You can't get more real than real. What's more real than real? Nothing.

That's what. And it'll never get better than this. And I need to upgrade my PC immediately. So yeah. Yeah, everybody go look up a screenshot from Morrowind and think of how we all sounded when we were saying this looks like real life. Yeah, yeah. And back when you used to buy video cards and they'd come with posters in them. I don't think that happens anymore. I think they save all the budget for it all goes back into the card.

But we are going to talk about a brand new video game tonight called Claire Obscure Expedition 33. um we are we are going to talk about this game that uh launched on game pass is also on playstation xbox and and pc It's a turn-based RPG. In our Discord, we were talking about, you know, what is a... an rpg from france you know you have jrpgs and we settled on and we did french check it we settled on lay rpg which is technically accurate as rpg is um

In French, every word is either feminine or masculine. So we checked it. We checked it with our resident. I actually have a few French Canadians in the Discord that helped us out with that one. A lay RPG. I like it. Yeah. So now this game, have you been, you've been playing it on the PC or I assume. Yeah, got it on the PC, playing it on Steam, even though it's on Game Pass. I continue to be one of those people that's like, yes, it's on Game Pass, but I bought it on Steam.

Yeah, and I have... can i okay let's start with this because I have a confession I need to make. Okay. And I feel like your show is the right place to put it out there. Is it which words are French swear words? Is that what we're getting to? No, not yet. Not yet. We might get there, though. We might. I have restarted this game. I restarted this game today, despite making pretty decent progress in it. And I restarted it simply because I missed an achievement. Oh. And I like this game so much.

that I found out that I missed an item and an achievement from the opening area in Lumiere. And as a result, I restarted my entire game to make sure I got it. And I don't think it was worth it, but I did it. Because I somehow, even though I felt like I ran around and I talked to everybody. And maybe this is karma catching up to me because I made fun of Scott because Scott saw the picture of the painting that you can get made of you in that town.

And he was like, I didn't do that. And I was like, ah, you didn't explore well enough. Well, then I found out I didn't explore well enough because there was a mime to fight in that town. And I didn't know that. And if you fight the mime and win, you get a record to play at your camp and you get an achievement. frustrated that i missed it i restarted the entire game just to get it interesting yeah and i didn't do that either uh the mimes that you fight are usually they give you optional

At least the ones I've fought, they've given you optional more cosmetic stuff, the records being something you can play back at camp. But I think I've only gotten cosmetics for heroes by beating the mimes. Yeah, because there's a second one, and that's the one I saw, where you get the outfit. Yeah. And I thought that was great, too. But no, there's one in the beginning, and I completely missed them, and it bothered me enough to restart the game. But that's okay, because...

This game is kind of deep, and they don't necessarily do a bad job, but they don't do the best job of telling you everything. And going back through with a little better understanding of the systems... has made it an entertaining replay so far as I get caught back up to where I was. Yeah, well, I think the fact that this is so the the the combat while turn based is more of like an action. turn-based game where similar to Super Mario RPG, you're having to...

Do button prompts to make your attacks more stronger. You can parry, dodge, and jump at a certain stage to avoid damage. And I definitely felt early on like I was unable to get the parry down, or the dodge for that matter. But later on, I was able to do it. And on top of that, there's all these intricate... Interlying systems for status effects and the way each character individually.

um uh does damage or can do more damage like they're all different and it's kind of crazy like how much variants they put into the characters um so yeah going back to the beginning to have just the the one or two characters that you start off with it's like oh this is this is kind of like going back to The good old days of not having to remember all the status effects and stance changes and all that stuff.

The difficulty ramps up very quickly where you're like, oh my gosh, I suddenly need to remember a lot. Not in a bad way, again. I think to be clear, if there's one thing I hope people take away from me talking about this game, I think this game is amazing. I think it's incredible on all fronts, but it is surprisingly complicated at times. Yeah, I'll agree with you there. It's a very fantastic game. It's deserving of all its praise. It's gotten for the look, the feel, the story, the music.

the the the vo like i think the voice acting is really good as well um you've got uh matt murdoch in there As Gustav, the main character. I always feel like I'm doing the Leo point every time I recognize.

him as Matt Murdock because he sounds nothing like him most of the time but every now and then he'll say something in that like sad reserved way that you're so used to hearing matt say and daredevil because he's always sad you're like oh there he is there he is i recognize his voice now there it is Yeah, Charlie Cox.

Playing Robert Pattinson playing Gustav is really an amazing thing. I do remember when the first trailer hit and we saw the main character. It's like, oh, that's Robert Pattinson. They got him in the game. I mean, there are times where like in the gameplay, it's like, okay, that looks a little more like Charlie Cox, but it's definitely his voice.

But it really feels like they lead more towards Robert Pattinson when they were designing the character. Maybe they originally wanted him and they couldn't get him. But they kept the likeness, I guess? I don't know. Yeah, maybe they thought, well, he loves Final Fantasy VII so much. Surely he'll do our video game for us. I don't know. I mean, I think the vocal performance is amazing. But yeah, there is a part of me when I see the main character, I'm like, did somebody collect royalties on this?

Yeah, I really I really feel like he's in this game without being asked as far as I know. I do worry we're going to get like an article that pops up of like Robert Pattinson, you know. suing or his his people talking to their people and i am a little worried that's gonna happen but i i guess i'm sure it's all it's all fine but uh it i did joke at the top of the show that we usually have you on to talk about like you know deep

you know, sorrowful material in the video game world. But this game has that. The story, at least the start, the prologue. deals with some pretty heavy stuff as as the world is set up in this it's this fantasy world set up in a situation where you have the city of Lumiere and there's across the way you see the paintress

There's like a number of 34. And I guess every time she gets up once a year, she changes the number. It goes down a number. And we were trying to figure this out. And I guess like. You, everybody at that age, so everybody at the age of 34, Thanos snaps away and is gone.

And that's sort of the premise. So it's this ticking clock. So these expeditions go out there every year. They send an expedition to try to take on the paintress to stop this from happening, because eventually you're going to get down to, you know. you know, well, you'll get down to zero and no one will be left around. I think there's this really dark connotation early on in the dialogue where someone...

They're asking you, what was the name of the first expedition? It was Expedition Zero. And they make some very offhanded comment about, of course, this world would be long gone well before we hit Expedition Zero. And you think about the connotations of that. Like you kind of take it at surface level and you're like, yeah, that's right. But then you think about it and you're like, yeah, there's an age level.

where the world is no longer sustainable because it's not like a bunch of five-year-olds are going to be figuring this out. Yeah. This isn't baby geniuses or something. This is real shit. Like who's, who's leading the expedition? Who's governing this place? You know, five year olds. Yeah. It's not going to happen. Like, and it's a really dark world. That's very casual about that. And I think it's intentional that they're casual about that because you are.

living in this world where for you know 67 years the oldest people get wiped out and it's just a part of life and you get to see how they live with it how they mourn it how they celebrate it how they deal with it and it The prologue is really a bit of a masterclass. Sometimes it feels a little heavy-handed, but I think it had to be.

Because you don't get a lot of time to really take in the world. And just organically through the writing, they do this amazing job of setting up the rules of the world. What's going on? Who these people are? Why they're doing the things they're doing?

and making you care about it all at the same time like the early part of this game does a lot of heavy lifting and i think it really nails it too which is impressive yeah because as you get into the bulk of the game um they've done all that heavy lifting at the beginning and and you just get to kind of like know of it in the background and i think as you progress through the game it it's still very much there but the world um eventually

becomes less less like the prologue and is is more i don't know it kind of almost feels a little hopeful i mean you're playing a video game you're you're playing these characters And it does kind of slip into that like... typical fantasy genre where you have your band of heroes and they are succeeding at least that's as far as i like as far as i am in the game you know still i think still in act one um i mean i i hit an act one and then they haven't

showed up like an act two but i've gotten some of those like title card things pop up But it just, it feels as though... You know, you're, you're on this journey of like, we're actually doing it, you know, and, and, and you come across these, like, I think the first time you come across handholds, which I thought was funny, you come across these handholds and, and these characters have these, like. This offhand comment of like, oh yeah, this was Expedition 45, the handholds expedition.

yeah and i thought that's such a throwaway line of dialogue but it but it works because like the way these expeditions were planned is like okay like we know We know we can only bring so many supplies and your job is to get as far as you can while setting up these pathways so that the next expedition can make it farther and hopefully take out the painters. Like the setup of the story.

It's very cool. I mean, the only thing I struggle with is every time they talk about, I think it's the grommage or the grommage or something. I always hear, I hear fromage, which is cheese in French. And I just can't stop. I absolutely have the same problem. Perfect. I'm always thinking. I'm like, what does cheese have to do with this? And I feel bad because like.

It is a very terrible thing that's happening, this homage. But the way they talk about it is almost, it's like, as you said, they've accepted their fate. It's inevitable. unless they are able to complete their mission. But even then, when they set out on an expedition, they are there to just get a little bit further for the next. Like we talk about there's never going to be an expedition.

five but like expedition 33 might not be the one that's planned to be the last one they might be setting up to maybe set up expedition 30 to be successful or something but um you do get the sense that our characters are quite capable uh they don't explain like a lot like they they don't go into detail of like why this is happening maybe later on we'll get some more details but

um you also don't get explanations like how they're able to do all their combat stuff and magic and float and they kind of hand wave that away like they don't It's very Final Fantasy in that, like, no, no, this just exists in this world. Don't worry about it. Even though there's like swords and guns and stuff. They do try to explain the magic a little bit. It's like pick toes or something. And it's like there was some stuff in the prologue about putting...

stuff on your hands or whatever. Someone was having a hard time with that. I can't remember. Yeah, it's the thing that allows them to basically do magic. That's one of the things that I think is a little harder because you're trying to... Like you said, they do kind of hand wave it a little bit, you know, and a lot of times in fantasy, you know, they just call it magic and we all go, oh, yes, magic. I know.

But this, it's sort of the same principle, and they hand wave it in the same way, but they give everything new names. And there's like clearly new rules about it because you have to like put these metal, like, I don't want to say tattoos because it's not ink. Like it can be removed. but they put these markings on their skin and that's what allows them to manifest magic essentially

But they don't explain it very much, and they all call it by different names. So they're talking about, like, Pictos and... Lumens. I don't remember what all the terms are, but it's all these things. And I'm like, I don't know what any of this is. Looks cool. And I'm not gonna, I'm gonna still probably continue to call it magic. Like, good on you for coming up with your own terms.

It looks very cool. You all should continue to be proud of yourself, but I am going to continue to just call it magic. They know magic. Yeah, they know magic. The other thing that I noticed is as you're progressing through the game, like you are constantly coming up against.

new enemies that have new timing windows and new attacks and uh they're still introducing like ways to interact with those attacks and how they work and um Like, as you said, like the difficulty just... it's not even difficulty it's just like the newness factor of like all this muscle memory you have to you have to kind of like commit while you're while you're doing these encounters to the point where it's like okay by the end of this sort of area, I've figured out these specific enemies.

and then i haven't seen them again you know uh and i'm having to learn new timings and new windows all over again uh i do like that they sort of project the the type of attack so like Like me, I know there are some gamers that are really good at reading animations. That's the whole point of Dark Souls and Elden Ring is if you can read the animation, you know what to do because you can predict what's going to come next.

In this game, you can obviously read the animation, but they also kind of just tell you what like this person is doing a slow attack or this person is doing a quick combo. It doesn't like give you all the details, but I do like that sort of like foreshadowing of like. telling you what move it's kind of like pokemon like you know weird mime used hammer attack or whatever yeah yeah so it kind of gives you a chance to prep and you're like all right this is gonna be

or this is going to be that thing where I have to dodge four times instead of three. You can kind of keep some of the stuff in the back of your mind to help you dodge it or if you want to go the route of parrying. It's very much a system where parrying has way more benefits, you get more reward from it. in the form of you earn attack power, which is basically what you cash in for magical attacks or skill attack.

You also, if you get it down perfect, you do a counterattack. So you get basically free damage, and it negates the damage that you would have taken. So it's huge, but the timing windows for that are much shorter than the dodge, which is far more generous. And the only thing you really get from dodging is you just don't get hit, which... sometimes in this game is essential. And I would say that if there's one thing that I've kind of taken from watching...

our community talk about the game. Maybe the most controversial thing about this game is that there are some people that just do not like the punishing element of the active. We compared it to Super Mario RPG, and in Super Mario RPG, it's definitely a bonus, not a necessity. To have your timings down, this game feels a little more in the realm of necessity. But I've also heard some people comparing it to like, this is basically a Souls-like game. I don't think it's that bad.

Yes, I fought a boss that killed me in one hit. And yes, I kept fighting him until I beat him. And I got the timings down and was like, okay, yeah, I mastered that. I did great. And you could say, well, that's some souls-like behavior. Sure. But I, one, didn't have to do that. And two, like, the nature of video games is, you know, you practice till you get good.

You don't look at Super Mario Brothers and go, oh, the original Souls-like game where you have to jump over the pit or you have to do it again. Sometimes it's just the way video games are. I don't think it's insanely punishing. And like, even if you're like me and you see the enemy pull back and you're like, I dodged. Oh wait, I dodged way too early and he still hasn't attacked yet. You can press it again. Like you can literally sit there and spam it and hope you get it right.

It can be a little brutal on some of those windows. I think I'm pretty good at timing counterattacks. That's usually how I... build my characters in Souls-like games, in games that offer parry mechanics and stuff like that. I'll usually do it because that is a skill I'm good at. And this game I have struggled with at times, so some of those windows are really tight. Or the ones that maybe don't feel the best, the timing for it isn't what you would expect it to be. Yeah.

Yeah, sometimes those windows feel a little off, and I think that is just... the way some of these enemies will slowly attack. I think there was one encounter, and I don't want to spoil it, because this game's actually like... funny like that's where you kind of get into the world and even though it's a very The setup is very dark in the sense that these people are on a suicide mission.

And they are not the first to try and do it. There's still a lot of humor throughout. And there was one encounter where you're. You're basically trying to unlock some assistance from another character to cross it. cross a span of ocean so that you can sort of fly.

and uh you have to go do a boss battle and i did that boss battle and while the dialogue back and forth was was really funny uh that boss was like it was it was basically one hit kill uh and you had to you had to basically dodge or parry in order to succeed like and it wasn't an optional fight like you had to do it um and i was struggling with that but once you kind of get the timings down like

he would use this and he was using the same attack like it was the same attack the same timing so basically once you figured it out you were able to just parry it all but But in the moment, it was it was pretty frustrating. But then there are other there are other times where it's like this is a surprisingly lighthearted game, like at moments where they're cracking jokes and.

And, uh, and, and having, you know, more, more lighthearted conversations, even though there are definitely still conversations that deal with, you know, their predicament in a way that it's like, oh, this is. This is not going according to plan type thing, but... uh the other there's just these moments that pop up that are very light and and funny and i was like i was kind of surprised because the way the prologue goes like you assume like okay this is gonna be

This is going to be some heavy stuff. Yeah. But they definitely find a balance there, which is good. And I'm not super far. I'd say I think I'm in... the fourth main, I don't want to say main area. They're like, they're like these little, these little, we talk, I talk about them as like, open area places like there is a world map.

And that kind of threw me off a little bit as I as you exited your first open area and you come into the world map. I was like, whoa, this is this is like a like an RPG sort of world map. You're walking around like the perspective of.

um the environment like your characters as big as like the trees and stuff as you walk it's like a visual representation of you walking across the map and there are enemies there that are present they're like also like much larger than they would be in the areas the open areas uh but it's really just a way to like connect everything together because you're moving from one area to the next and it's not open world it's it's very like open

multiple open areas like little little instances as you're moving throughout uh which is good i much prefer that because honestly like I can't, I struggle with like diving into. into open world games it's it's too much yeah i i hear you on that like well it's

Sometimes you're in the mood for it, and sometimes you realize that the past five games you've played have been open world games, and you're like, what am I doing? I need a game that just gets me from point A to point B. um a little quicker but you did remind me by talking about it uh i think talking about this video game we would be remiss to not talk about how beautiful this game is because It is not often, you know, so many video games have mined, you know,

environments and like it's very easy to go oh floating rock Yeah, cool. We've become very jaded by fantastical things because we see it so often. And I have been shocked at how many times I've gone to a place in this game and just been floored by how it looks. And it wasn't even a case of like, oh, I've never seen this before. It was just, I've never seen it in this way before. presented this well. This game is absolutely gorgeous and definitely betrays the fact that it came from a smaller team.

You're absolutely right. The game looks phenomenal. And I think that they've definitely captured this specific feel of, as you said, it's like these floating environments. Like the world has been raptured. It kind of reminds me of sort of Cataclysm in WoW, the way like they kind of tore the world apart, but left parts of it standing for you to interact with and walk on.

um you get that vibe a lot as you enter new areas of like this pathway is very much you know in you know, it's, it's together and I'm able to get through it, but like, you can see the rest of the environment has been completely torn apart and, and it's sort of like. uh but you're right like obviously we've seen that look before but there's just something they've done here it's more of like a paintery look and it's like a little more washed out and and

To see it in motion, I think really sells it. Like if you're, if you're. If you want to see what this thing looks like, I think screenshots do it some justice, but watching trailers and stuff of how these environments sort of move and you interact with them, I think that they've really nailed that. But as you said, it's a small team. uh i i think all mostly ex-ubisoft uh developers i think it is oh is that is that true i didn't know that i think so i just knew it was a smaller team but uh

I'm shocked at the quality coming out of it, you know? And that's the thing is, you know, you always hear like, okay, it's a smaller team. This is their first project. And you look at it and you go, oh my gosh, this is running circles around. what other people are doing. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a very great game. I definitely recommend folks check it out if you're at all interested in.

really solid turn-based RPGs, but also looking for something that is, I'd say, unique. This is very unique. We don't often get turn-based RPGs of this sort of... level of detail like usually I think you know you've had Sea of Stars you had the Super Mario RPG remake there are obviously turn-based RPGs out there but this really feels like one that they they really wanted to craft

this fantasy world and go for high budget, you know, great music, great look, great voice acting and, and just, and apply it to turn-based, a turn-based strategy. Like usually. That is not the case. Usually turn-based stuff is reserved more for more indie titles or smaller experiences. So it's really cool to see them take that genre and apply it to a big budget. or what feels like a big budget game. So they've done a really good job.

But speaking of vibes and open worlds, you were talking about open worlds. You finished Ghost of Tsushima on PC. So yeah, I have been on a journey, a quest. ...to finish Ghost of Tsushima and... I definitely played this as a spite game to a degree. But the truth is, I don't want to say it was such a spite game because that makes it sound like, oh, I only wanted to play Ghost of Tsushima. despite Scott. That's not true. It's a phenomenal game. You know, we...

Picked it up for Core. I was doing a little compare and contrast between Ghost of Tsushima, which I hadn't played any of. And Assassin's Creed Shadows when it came out, which I hadn't played any of. And I played a little bit of both, and I fell in love with Ghost of Tsushima, and I just stuck with it. And then, in addition to liking the game... The idea of beating it before Scott, who has tried to beat this game twice now, at least, and declared publicly that he was going to beat it twice.

has still not beaten it. And so then it just became funny to me if I did it and he didn't. And that's exactly what has happened. But it's a very good game. So well worth the time and effort. I know that there's a part of me that feels like I'm the last person to come to this conclusion. Like, ooh, a hot 2025 take, Ghost of Tsushima.

It was a good video game, but I will say if there is anybody out there that's like me that slept on it, or for whatever reason, I just didn't hear a lot of buzz about it. It seemed like a game people were excited about in retrospect.

It got talked about as it was going to be part of that anthology collection about video games, and then it ended up just being in the weird PlayStation episode. But, you know, people would... speak about it very passionately and you know when ghost of yote got announced it was like oh a sequel to that game and i thought well where was all this passion and fire when the game came out because i thought about getting it and just I felt like I wasn't hearing anybody talk about it in a glowing way.

And I went through and played it, and this game deserved all the flowers that are in the game. There's a lot of them. Yeah, because this game is very, very good. It's very, very pretty still holds up. And it is a very different kind of combat feel and system to any other.

third-person action game that I've played. It plays very methodically. I really had a good time with it. Yeah, I remember at launch, a lot of folks kind of latched onto the idea that it was this open world sort of classic open world feel where it's like there's a lot of stuff to do.

But then when I jumped into it, it didn't feel like super huge. It felt reasonable. But I think at launch, folks were kind of shying away from it because it was... another one of those open world games in the same vein as the others we've gotten in the in the ps4 generation and it was at the tail end of the generation so like folks were kind of you know over it but i think it did get second life with its ps5 um i think it had a patch as well as a director's cut which was like a like a

like a proper PS5 version. And then as you said, I think people are discovering it recently because it just came out on PC a couple of years ago, maybe last year. I'm remembering that correctly. Yeah, I don't think it was that. Yeah, I think it was... Not that long ago for the PC. It was a big deal when it launched on PC because it was a PlayStation exclusive. It was last May that it came out on PC.

It was kind of one that people assumed would come right away because it wasn't an established IP and it did okay. I think Days Gone is... was another one that came over that was like, people assume would come right away. Cause it, I don't think it sold like super well. It didn't do Spider-Man numbers, but it did. It still did really, it still did well.

as you said we're getting a sequel so yeah i i played a bunch of it at launch on around launch on the ps4 and then played a little bit when we got the ps5 patch And you're right, it is this beautiful game. It is unique in its sort of setting and combat. It was kind of like... you know heralded as this assassin's creed style game set in ancient japan before assassin's creed shadows that we just got this year

But yeah, I think I kind of just got lost in the world and then got distracted and never went back, which is the whole reason Scott's tried to play it twice. Yeah. Does he know that you've finished it? I think you were mentioning earlier that you had sort of dropped him a line in Discord, but maybe he's... He's going to have to act surprised on core or something this week. Yeah. He's on a Vegas vacation. So I don't know if he saw it or not, but, uh, yeah, he's.

He's on notice. It's in the show notes. So he's going to have to live with that. And who knows? Maybe he took his Steam Deck over to Vegas. Maybe he's going to come back and... He's going to pull an extra big surprise and be like, hey, two of us beat Ghost of Tsushima this time. And that would, you know, that would probably be best ending right there.

Yeah. But I think we're due instead for the middle of the road ending, which is me going, hey, Scott, one of us managed to finish Ghost of Tsushima. And it was me. I was the one. I think it's been a few years where that was the trope that he was supposed to finish it. He said he was going to finish it. If I finish one game this year, it's going to be Ghost of Shima. I think that's been... I mean, that's the joke, right? Is that he planted his flag so hard on it. It's not.

It's not that like, oh, you guys are just picking on Scott about something. It's that he publicly planted such a big flag on like, guys, I am going to finish Ghost of Tsushima. If there's a game I'm going to beat, it's this game because I love it. And he called such attention to it that it just demanded that it demanded follow up.

You know, sometimes people say things and you're like, okay, well, maybe they will, maybe they won't. But this just demanded a follow-up of, have you done it yet? Have you done it yet? And then that year came and went, and then the next year came and went, and then this year he bought it again for PC. and promised it again.

So we're going to have to see what he does. But I was strongly motivated by it's funnier if I beat it before he does. So that is exactly what I did. Well, that's good. And I mean, you know what? Maybe it'll... Maybe it'll have him finishing the game, and then he'll be so into the setting and the universe, he'll jump over to Assassin's Creed, and then when the fall hits, he'll be jumping back over to Ghost of Yotai. I mean, you know, it's a good time to be into this.

sort of section of the genre within and that setting of ancient japan so um i i'm also guilty i i need to get back to ghost of tsushima and i think With Ghost of Utah launching in October, it's kind of the perfect timing to jump in. I've also thought about playing it instead of Assassin's Creed Shadows, because I own. I think I have Ghost of Tsushima twice, just from the PS4 and then buying the directors.

the upgrade pack or whatever um so i've definitely you know i haven't like publicly declared that i'm going to finish it uh on a show but i have definitely put my uh i have my money down on it a couple times so um i'll have to i'll have to check that out but uh Yeah, it's a it's a fantastic game. What I played of it. It's super cool. I love the look and feel and the vibe. So overall, you finished it and you you were happy with your experience outside of just.

you know, being able to beat Scott. Yeah, I definitely, it gets overshadowed by my desire to troll Scott a little bit, but. The game is extremely good. The best thing it does is it tells a very interesting narrative. That, to me, is always paramount for a game like this. You can have the best combat in the world, but I need to know the reason why I'm fighting.

This game just tells such an interesting story around a protagonist that goes from... this honor-bound samurai that sees the failings but believes in the code and then is kind of out of necessity forced to transform himself into something else. You know, it was a narrative that isn't always simple. You know, it didn't always say, well, you're the main character, so you're making all the right decisions.

It played with the notion of, here's a character that's bound by honor, and they're not going to be able to succeed, and maybe you can succeed, but what is the price of that success? And were you right? Was this other person right? In the end, you kind of have to judge your own morals there. And that's the kind of stuff I love in these narratives. And I'm really glad that it was a game that wasn't afraid to... to tell that sort of story and give you a character. You know, Jin Sakai is a...

a genuinely interesting character in the world. He's not just a no-personality protagonist, though they do leave a lot of room for you to put your own spin on things to a degree. But the first time you do a stealth kill in that game, it's not presented as a cool moment. It's presented as a tragedy. I think that that sort of thing is really compelling and really interesting. Yeah. Yeah, they definitely... From what I remember of the story, it felt like...

They weren't just telling a video game story. They were telling... A story set in that part of history, you know, pulling from those classic samurai films that that I know the developers, you know, spoke highly of and loved and were their inspiration. To the point where I think they did a very specific amount of work on the, I think, I can't remember the filmmaker, but I think it's Kurosawa films like that filter.

It's just, uh, I think, and I think that was exclusive to like the PS five directors cut and, and they, they build it as like, we, it's not just a gray scale filter. They. They went through the whole game and applied like changes to it to make it look like a Kurosawa film and you could play in Japanese and all that.

They they have this attention to detail that I think going back to our start of this conversation of like why maybe it didn't land so well at the start because it was like it felt very. on the surface level, like very late stage PS4 open world adventure action game in the style of Assassin's Creed. But as you give it more time and it settles in, it's very much a love letter to that genre of samurai films. And they're telling a unique and complex story. And it's not just...

you know, video game story, get your revenge, upgrade your battle stuff. Like there, there is video gamey stuff in there with, you know, following the foxes and, and, uh, uh, you know. dueling specific characters and upgrading your weapons but it's all within this fairy Very unique story that doesn't feel video game-y.

um so with with this are you going to be looking at ghost of yotai on the ps5 are you going to be waiting for ghost of yotai to come to pc i think i'm going to try and wait i gotta stop buying games twice um yeah I always sit here and I go, why won't PlayStation just put it out on PC at the same time? It's because I buy the game twice.

silly you know that's why because they're they're making the money twice off of me because i'm like well i've got to play final fantasy 7 rebirth and then i don't because i don't feel like playing it on my playstation 5. because that's not as good a machine as my computer is, and it sits there, and I just look at it grudgingly.

And then a year later, they put it out on the PC, and I pay for it again. And why would they be incentivized to put it in both places when I'm giving them double the money? I think I need to rein it in. And I think I need to tell myself. There's a billion games out there. You're constantly saying, I don't have time to play everything I want to play. Give Ghost of Yotei another year, as much as I'm now excited for it and really want to play it. and play it when it comes to the PC.

Well, you always have Assassin's Creed Shadow. yeah there's always there's always that i could always go back to that there you go for sure uh all right well uh before we jump into the news i want to thank all of our patrons at patreon.com slash the gamers in your support helps the show directly we really appreciate that

Also, our TGI game club, we're doing The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess still going strong. I think we have two more milestones. So if you're still playing through that classic Zelda title.

um we'll have a we'll have a couple more milestones then we'll have a voice chat uh it's it's one of jocelyn's favorite uh legend of zelda game so she's been leading that game club and we've been uh really enjoying it i don't know if you've ever played uh twilight princess john but we we just i think our latest milestone or one of the one of the more recent ones was one of the more unique celda dungeons where um it's the yeti's house which is i don't think i've ever played anything like

Yeah, I think Twilight Princess gets a bit of an unfair rap. I think it's actually pretty good. Yeah. I think it is an underrated Zelda game.

i think a lot of people made a big deal about like oh we're finally getting good graphics zelda uh that was promised it's not gonna be cartoony anymore uh which i think was approaching it from the wrong standpoint because uh you know i i think if you put wind waker and twilight princess side by side one of those seems more modern than the other one now um but that said i think twilight princess from a story standpoint like it was a zelda where

You know, I really cared about the story, and I thought the story was an emotional story, which you don't usually get in Zelda. It tends to just be like, go be the hero, save the day. And I think the characters were really strong in it, too. I really liked Midna. Yeah, Midna really stands out as, I think that was one of our first sort of conversations, how...

Midna is probably the best side character slash Navi character that... that that has stood the test of time uh you know it's not it's no longer just the hey listen annoying thing it's you have a full-fledged character that's interacting with you and she has her own personality and she is Holding her own in conversation, sometimes more so. Well, definitely more so than Link because he doesn't talk.

Uh, but, um, yeah, it's, it, it does feel like one of those Zeldas that one of the few that really had a lot of story and took itself seriously and kind of nailed it because before that. I think you maybe got close with Majora's Mask. And after that, I think Skyward Sword kind of went cartoony, literally evil mustache twirling villain. I don't think he had a mustache. It was his tongue that he was always.

yeah twirling around but uh but yeah we're having a good time there and uh we're gonna be wrapping that up soon it's kind of our first sort of retro i know it's it pains me to say retro because it's not it's not that well it is i think it's 20 years old but

So maybe this. Oh my God. It didn't seem crazy. I was like, I was like, it's fine. So you said 20 years old and I went, no i think so well it's we right 20 2006 yeah it no and that's the crazy thing is it isn't even like exactly because it was supposed to be a gamecube game yeah yeah It came out on the GameCube, but it ended up being in that window that they always find themselves in because they put some title off.

they put it off and off and off and off and off and finally they're like all right it's coming out but it's going to kind of come out on both consoles it was it was that for the gamecube to the wii transition yeah um Oh my God. Was that 20 years ago? Yeah. So it was November, 2006 was the Wii slash GameCube versions. And, and then the HD version came out in 2016. Which still feels... I don't like this. No, I don't enjoy it. I don't like this picture that you've put me in. I don't enjoy it.

I don't blame you. Not one bit. That was... That was a shock. That's the first time I have felt old in my life. Oh, well. Except for that one time I lightly fell out of my chair and was hurt for like a week because of it. That was the real first time I felt old. That's true. That and Twilight Princess being almost 20 years old. That'll do it. That'll do it. Yep. Well, let's chat some news stories. This one jumped out at me as a very Jocelyn story, so I had to include it. But Frostpunk, 1886.

is a revamped version of the original game with new content coming out in 2027. Have you played the Frostpunk games there, John? I haven't. I think I own it. This is always the shame of a chronic Steam purchaser. I was like, okay, let me go see what I got. Yeah, I own it. and uh i i apparently bought it back in 2020 oh and i have never played it um that's okay like

Frostpunk is one of those interesting ones where it was this very specific strategy game that was doing something a little different. And it was very bleak. So again, it fits in with the stuff we like to talk about, very Last of Us, very prologue for Claire Obscure. where you are basically humanity's last hope and you have to make these terrible decisions like whether to put sawdust in the food so that everybody...

Uh, I don't know. I don't know how, how good that, well, I know it doesn't go well. Usually people get upset when you put sawdust in the food. Yeah. Bad tasting food that feeds more people. Exactly. Yeah. So it seems to me like they are taking the first game. They actually made a lot of really big system changes with Frostpunk to made it a much larger, more strategic game.

So it sounds like what they're doing is they're going back to the original, applying those lessons learned, upgrading to Unreal Engine 5. And this will allow them to not only bring the full game plus its DLC, which it had a substantial amount of, but also the ability to have additional content available. So this doesn't feel like... like a remaster or a remake it feels like they're kind of taking the first game and sort of making like a spiritual like they call it a revamp version like it

It sounds like they're going to take the first one and apply the gameplay changes they had in the second one to the first one. That's, that's how I read it kind of. Yeah. But it is, it is a ways away. Like it's still 2027. I mean, if we want to, you know, if you were weirded out by the Twilight Princess thing, like 2027 is only two years, like a year and a half from now. So like, that sounds weird too.

So not only will you be able to enjoy a new Frostpunk, but also the next Sonic film, as well as the Legend of Zelda movie. Oh man, look at that. Yeah, it's going to be a solid year, I guess. I haven't watched any of the Sonic the Hedgehog movies. Okay, that's not true. That implies that my completion rate is 0%. I have watched the beginning to Sonic the Hedgehog.

a couple times because i've been like i should watch these movies and i fall asleep almost i only decide to do it in bed so it's not like i'm you know an old man that got hit by a beam of light and fell asleep like But I lay in bed and I'm like, I should watch Sonic the Hedgehog. And I put it on and then I fall asleep shortly after he's running around in front of a cop.

cyclops cop yeah yeah um so that's that's about all i saw that one and then i did walk into the room when my family was watching sonic the hedgehog 2 And it was a scene about a wedding. And there were no Sonic the Hedgehog characters.

for an obscene amount of time enough to where i didn't know what they were watching when i came in and i was like oh they're watching you know A comedy, you know, there's like a million comedies that look like that chunk of the movie where it's like, okay, it's one of these movies. And I'm just sitting there watching it. And then next thing I know, Sonic shows up. And I was like, it was the most whiplash I've ever received because I felt like I'd been watching this movie for 30 minutes.

with no clue or indication that it was a sonic the hedgehog movie and then all of a sudden there was a 3d sonic the hedgehog running around i was like what just happened are you guys watching sonic the hedgehog they said yep What is this movie? How does it have this long of a window that's not about Sonic at all? Not even remotely? That's everything I've seen on those movies. The folks in the Discord are going to be thinking I set this up because...

The joke is that I'm not allowed to talk about the Sonic movies with Jocelyn. I have like a quarterly rule. I can only bring it up every, every couple of months. Uh, yeah. Like, i i think i think i so i said oh yeah sonic the hedgehog it's it's a pretty good movie as far as video game movies go and the fact that it is sonic the hedgehog if you don't like sonic the hedgehog you are not gonna like these films

she hated it. And then I think we watched the second one for extra life and, and it was, she also hated it. And now it's become a bit of a meme where every new movie that comes out is kind of like, OK, that's going to be an extra life goal. I did say, though, in my defense, the Knuckles series is not great. It's it's it is it reeks of that like we need content for our streaming service. And it's exactly what it is.

I did watch the first half of the first episode of Knuckles. Okay. And I liked it. I will say that. I liked it. There's something about him just being like a... I don't know, like an out of place Klingon warrior in the real world. Like that I enjoyed. Now you'll note, I only said the first half because then all of a sudden it started focusing on this guy.

that was like got fired or hanging out at a bowling alley and i got very i think i'm very disinterested as soon as it wasn't about knuckles misunderstanding how our world works i just wandered away So my impression of that show is actually very good, but I feel like that's because I checked out right when it was starting to get bad.

yeah there's definitely uh it definitely takes a shift where it's more about uh weight and look i'll say this about the movies like uh having just watched a minecraft movie uh you know my oldest son who's obsessed with minecraft Caden, who's nine, we went to see it in theaters and we didn't experience any of the weird... chicken jockey throwing popcorn stuff it was it was fairly tame um but he loves it and now he comes home every every day and he's singing

chicken lava song or whatever because that's all they do at school now um but i've i've come around on these movies that i i was trying to explain it and i uh like it feels like and i had this conversation actually with my parents over easter It feels like the Minecraft movie was similar to when my parents took me to see Pokemon.

They had an understanding of what Pokemon was, but they were going to see it because like I was obsessed with Pokemon. And that's the same case with Minecraft where like, or the Sonic films, although I do have an appreciation of the Sonic character. But like the kids are way into it and, and we're kind of there like experiencing it. It's a kid's movie. Like those Sonic films are kids.

And as far as kids movies goes, they love them. They don't know. They don't know or understand that Keanu Reeves is shadow and or who Jim Carrey is. They just know that Sonic goes fast and he is. He tells he tells jokes. So. Anyways, Frostpunk 1886. I don't know how we got to Sonic. Just to remind you all what we're talking about, Frostpunk 1886. I don't know how that happened. Let's talk about something. So every week we get new details about the Nintendo Switch 2 and how it is looking to...

If you're into that sort of thing. So Nintendo, and this is specific to the Nintendo Switch 2 editions of games. specifically sort of Tears of the Kingdom, Breath of the Wild. Those games that are Switch games, but they're re-releasing them with some additional features. It turns out that here in Canada, the Nintendo Switch 2 edition, some of those games, are going to cost $115. So even more money than the Mario Kart. So the equivalent being the Mario Kart's the $80, $110 here in Canada.

I think what they're doing with the Nintendo Switch 2 versions for some of these costing a little bit more than a brand new Switch 2 game. i i actually i don't know why they're doing i don't know why they're tacking on an extra five bucks it doesn't really make sense to me like i don't know who's going out and like buying Tears of the Kingdom for Nintendo Switch 2 for more money than you would spend on the Switch version.

It's kind of weird, but it is $80 in the US. So it's the typical, I guess, the new typical price of what Nintendo titles will cost. So it might be like an exchange rate thing that they're kind of bumping it up an extra five bucks. A lot of this stuff doesn't make sense. Like the pricing is the biggest thing for the games kind of holding me back from making the case for buying this day.

Because I get that in some of the cases they're doing more work. It's not just like, oh, the HD up res, right? Some of these games are getting... a little bit more added to it. But at the same time... These are games that came out on your last gen system. And I know Nintendo fans don't care about this, and I know it makes me sound like a PC elitist, but I don't care. It's still a console that's not even up to current console hardware standards. And they're like...

Yeah, this game from our last underpowered generation system, now on the current underpowered generation system, is gonna cost more money... than a brand new game for any other console and platform. I just don't think it's consumer friendly. Now, you can love Nintendo. You can say, I'm going to buy it. Good for you. You know, more power to you. I'm not telling you you can't buy the things you want, buy the things you love.

But I think this is bad practice. I think this is consumer unfriendly practice. I don't think people should be buying games at this price. personally. And that's kind of my measured tempered response. Now, if you want to go to bat for the companies, that's your prerogative, and you can bang the inflation drum, and you can... You know, I've heard the arguments for why people are willing to do this. And if you're willing, that's fine. And if you are so worried...

That us dangerous people out here are causing problems by saying, like, no, it's too expensive. Like, go buy two and undo my wallet vote. Buy a second copy for someone else you love. You know, do what you want with your money. I don't think this is what Nintendo should be doing. I don't think these games are worth the amount they're charging. Yeah. I mean, I remember like, I think back to the Wii U era.

when nintendo has this like initial launch window where they get they drum up some third-party support and they bring ports over but those ports were never more than the standard price i think that's the thing that kind of jumps out at me is weird in that like They're getting away from the industry standards of pricing and doing it.

doing it more so every week. Like the fact that we have yet another story where like literally there, as you said, like some of these games, like Kirby and the Forgotten Land has an expansion built in and that's how they're saying this is why. $115 because it has this extra expansion

But then you look at Breath of the Wild, it does not have the expansion pass as part of that, so you have to buy it in addition. It's not like a... what you would normally expect to be like a definitive edition or a game of the year edition where they bundle the DLC at a discounted price.

never been good at discounting their titles uh or or having well i say that and then i i remember the value in the selects you know they would have these like you know nintendo play selects titles where it was you know a repackaging same game but it was like you know a value price usually introduced at the later part of the console um

It just it kind of does feel a little, you know, on Nintendo. And as you said, you know, anti-consumer to basically say, we want you to rebuy this game, not at the price you paid for it at the beginning, but like. you know i think game prices should be game prices like we had msrp it was you know 60 for the longest time and we we handled the 70 bump and and uh And it just keeps going from there. And I know it's a more worldwide thing. Pricing varies across the world.

But I think that with these prices, Nintendo is, and this is what they did to me, like they kind of priced out, they priced out, you know. consumers in that like well i i can't i can only justify one game and it's because it's mario kart and it's bundled in and i get a discount but looking at all the other launch stuff there's not enough there to warrant like a brand like a new console For me, it's a when, not an if situation because I do really love Nintendo games.

I look at this list of games and I'm like, as much as I do want to try Kirby in the Forgotten Land, I never picked it up on the Switch. Get the Switch 2 edition with the extra content. $115 for a game, any game, is... Yeah, it's crazy. And that's where I'm at. We don't talk a lot about Nintendo on Core because none of the three hosts on there are big Nintendo gamers. Scott's probably the closest, and I'll play a few here and there, but barely.

And it's not some grandstand decision where I just woke up one day and was like, I'm anti-Nintendo or anything like that. It's exactly what you said. They just sort of priced me out as a consumer. It became a value proposition of, you know, I looked at what they were offering and I was, you know, I've always said, I'm not going to buy a video game console unless there's at least three games.

that i want to own but suddenly games got to a price where i was like i i don't want to buy the three games that i are appealing to me for the console because They're too expensive and they're not going to go on sale. Like you said, it's very rare that Nintendo does sales on their games, which is what you're getting their system for.

You know, obviously third parties go on sale all the time, just like they do on any other platform. But I don't think very many people are buying the new Nintendo console. Especially with how much it costs for third-party games that are going to be going on sale. It might be a perk.

that comes with your purchase, but you're buying a Nintendo console for Nintendo games. And the reason I've always kind of understood where Nintendo comes from with their pricing is I've always made it an analogy to like Disneyland. Disneyland is a very expensive place to go and everything there costs a lot of money. There are other theme parks within very short drives from where Disneyland is.

that cost less, have fewer people, and if you're just there to, I want to eat some junk food and I want to ride some rides, they can service that. But at the end of the day, you're going to a theme park like Disneyland because you want to go to Disneyland. You want to see those characters. You want to see those rides. You want to see those attractions. And if that's what you're doing, you're going to pay a premium for it.

That hasn't always been the case with Nintendo. There's been a time where they've generally like, yes, they wouldn't put things on sale, but their cost was... either what market was or sometimes even lower for some of the earlier days um that's kind of gone away and you know when when people take the argument of inflation and stuff like that they're they're not accounting for inflation's been covered in video game development it's covered by

All those battle passes and all those expansions and all that DLC and all the subscriptions and the collector's editions, that's what's been paying inflation prices. When those go away... I still can't afford a $100 video game, because guess what? We don't make that level of money to just throw away at video games, but... It's one of those things where I got priced out, and I think this is going to price out other people.

But I think Nintendo is going to be okay. And all the reports of pre-orders for the Switch 2 are very, very high. It seems like it's going to sell really well. It seems like this is not a barrier for a lot of people. And, you know, hey, kudos to Nintendo. Like, I have frequently not bet on them and been proven wrong, and this might be the case again, but...

Yeah, I can't get excited about the Switch 2 because I couldn't justify the cost of the Switch 1 and all of a sudden now they're asking for so much more for not that much more in terms of what they're offering.

Yeah, I did think the tech side of it was... shockingly what we were looking for you know it is is a bump in all the right spots like 1080p screen htr like it's 120 frames per second like uh 4K docked mode, like it's shockingly un-Nintendo amount of tech upgrades to kind of bring us to the expected level.

that we, we want from a, from a console, but, but yeah, it, it, I was even being priced out of Nintendo games on, on the original switch, you know, and, and I would, uh, I think the only reason I was buying. a good majority of games was because of those vouchers switch vouchers you could get that kind of brought the price down so like Not only were Nintendo titles always like a little bit cheaper than than, you know, console and PC games, but.

But they also had that voucher system. So, I mean, we'll see. We'll see how it goes. Like, I think. I don't know if it'll be as catastrophic as the 3DS or the Wii U where they have to make this big change. I agree with you, John. I think they're going to be fine and it's just going to keep on.

rolling and i think eventually there will be enough titles or there'll be that one title um that i absolutely don't want to miss out on and that'll be the sort of catalyst for for for getting the pre-order i've i've already talked myself into playing metro prime 4 on the switch that was going to be a big one for me but uh I don't want to say inferior version, but I suppose like I'll play the, the lower quality version on the switch and see how it goes. I'll wait for reviews. I mean, that's.

That's the crazy thing, right? To me, the biggest temptation for the Switch 2 would be Metroid Prime 4. And it's like, well, do I want to spend that kind of money to get it on the Switch, too? Or do I want to just buy it on the Switch? I guess if I play it, I'll just buy it on the Switch. I mean, part of the reason I know where my Switch is and can play it is because of Metroid Dread. So Metroid, for me, is a system mover, apparently.

that's that has gotten me to get the switch out a couple times um but uh yeah i don't know i i i don't wish nintendo to fail But I am rooting for a little humility that I don't think they possess. Because I don't think... Again, if you're excited about the system, I'm not saying don't be excited, but I do think we would all agree that, hey, it'd be nice if this was a little less expensive. And it kind of feels like the PS3 era.

Where it's just like, we can charge it because we can. And I don't want them to fail as a company and be like, oh god, what are we going to do? There will never be another Nintendo console ever again. But I would like to see maybe a little bit more of that consumer-friendly Nintendo come back, because I feel like that's where they're at their strongest. I mean, to me...

The biggest temptation for the Switch 2 was to play it with my family. And that's not the kind of money you throw at something that you're like, well, I'm going to sit down with a four-year-old and let them hammer away on it. yeah yeah because there's definitely been titles for the for the switch and and and release for the switch too that like oh man that would be a lot of fun to play with the kids in hand

Yeah, we'll see how things go. I think for the rest of this year, I don't think anything's going to change. Nintendo's going to Nintendo. And I agree with you. It really would be interesting to see. sort of that humility from Nintendo that you get when they do sort of stumble a little bit, like the Wii U, the 3DS. Actually, just the Iwata.

sort of era in general like yeah um i think everyone wishes we could have that that back he he was gone too soon and i think he he did really good for the company and they tried to extend that a little bit um and they did that with the switch but uh but i feel like i feel like we're experiencing a little bit of arrogant nintendo again and i i don't like it i don't like it um but uh let's uh Let's move on from Nintendo. This, this, this will be a lighthearted conversation. Your favorite things.

Blizzard has reportedly tapped Nexon to publish Overwatch Mobile and a new StarCraft game. And I guess this is like sort of a package deal they were going around. uh getting bids on basically saying like hey if you make overwatch mobile we'll let you make a starcraft game No word if the StarCraft game is also mobile, but... But yeah, what do you like?

When I saw this story, I was like, I felt a little like old man Murph of like, I see that they have like Call of Duty Warzone and Fortnite and PUBG on the phones. I know they're popular. I know they do well. That's the idea of bringing Overwatch to mobile. It's not for me. It's not for you. But there is this like... generation of gamers that will play with the touchscreen. And that's their preferred way to play.

So I don't think it's like the end of the world that Overwatch might come to mobile. Well, my understanding, unless it's changed, my understanding is that this is... It's being touted internally as Overwatch 3 and that it's not a port of Overwatch 2. It's a MOBA. Oh. Okay. Look, sometimes you read an article and you go...

Is life a simulation? And does it exist to simply troll me? I think so. And as arrogant as that sounds, this feels like a news story deliberately designed to try and... attack me it feels like somebody was like we can get him we can take him out I'm pretty sure we can drop John simply by putting the right words in a sentence and his blood pressure will boil and we'll get him. There is not... a more upsetting list of words in the English language than Overwatch 3 Mobile MOBA. For me, I...

I really don't know what to say. It's too much that makes me angry to unpack all at once. I mean... If they're going to call it Overwatch 3, that's fine. They've changed the number on Overwatch for far less. So that's fine. Call it Overwatch 3. Blizzard already had a MOBA. Just in case any historians out there are curious, they already had one, and it was really good, and they don't work on it anymore. so that they could put more time and effort into overwatch is why they killed it right and

And then it's on mobile, my least favorite gaming platform. So... Yeah. And that's, I think that's where I'm going to leave it because I don't think, you know, your show has a beautiful positivity. Oh, that's true. And sometimes I listen to your show and it's just relaxing and I just unwind. And I don't think I can talk any more about this topic and maintain that standard of quality and calmness and casual spirit that I think goes so well.

Yeah. Oh man. The genuine Canadian-ness of the show where it's just, it's positive vibes. Sunnyways, that sort of thing.

Well, hey, let's talk about EA cutting around 300 rolls, including roughly 100 at Respawn. We have jokingly... not jokingly we shouldn't say jokingly but the news section has sometimes turned into the lawsuits and layoffs section and Um, no lawsuits this week, but we do have layoffs and, and this was, this kind of jumped out at me weird because I know we had like a big string of layoffs and I, I'm not going to say I thought we were done.

But I could have sworn EA had just done like a big, huge cut not too long ago. And now they've kind of gutted like. 300 rolls across ea but like specifically 100 at respawn that we're working on it was an incubation title they were working on a titanfall game which everyone wants a Titanfall game, but EA just doesn't seem to want to put one out. They'll work on it. They'll spend money on it. They'll put devs on it.

But it's almost like they do that just to rip the carpet from under us, you know, and have us fall flat on our face. But yeah, like... like across the board they've just been having a rough go at like keeping devs on projects and just keep cutting and then they wonder like when when they don't have games to to come out you know um

It's weird. EA has such a sparse catalog in their sports titles that you'd think they'd want to have more devs working at Respawn to have more projects coming out of what is probably their best studio. You know, I think that's maybe one of the things that's, um, And I don't mean this in like, oh, woe is this, because certainly when talking about something like this.

this is far from the big tragedy but like that's what is hard about covering this sort of stuff is because it has become so prevalent that it's kind of gotten to a place where in general like I think a lot of shows a lot of news stories sites and stuff are just like We're not going to talk about it because it's all there is to talk about sometimes. You know, it certainly felt like for a while there it was like, okay, who's getting laid off this week?

And we have had, you know, like there have been more. Devolver Digital, which traditionally hasn't been as impacted, had to do. Layoffs not long ago. Cyan, the people who made Myst, laid off like 50% of their workforce. And it's prevalent. And those are the ones that I can remember off the top of my head. We don't have on show notes. These things are still happening and it's become so commonplace it's very easy to not talk about them.

Because what else is there to say every time it happens? It's like, yeah, a lot of people are out of jobs. A lot of people made stupid decisions based on the pandemic. Lots of people continue to have, they aren't the ones getting laid off, making really weird decisions in terms of... video games that end up getting a bunch of other people put out of work because they have a vision based on metrics. They look at a...

They look at what's popular and they go, oh, people love extraction shooters. And they start development on something because extraction shooters are really popular right now. They start working on something that's going to take five years, tons of money. And they start to get to that point and they go, oh, people don't care about extraction shooters anymore? Well, geez, okay, well, the game's either going to fail or we lay off the team or what do we do?

And then they don't know anything about video games, so they go, okay, well, what's popular now? And the AAA development window doesn't allow for them to just... You can't chase trends like that. It just rarely works. And the times that it does work, there's usually extenuating circumstances. You know, you look at Fortnite.

Fortnite succeeded at chasing a trend because it was a game that already kind of existed that got repurposed, and it got an insane amount of people and money thrown at it to make it work. It was a gamble, and it was a gamble that paid off because they were able to strike while the iron is hot. But if you look at gaming trends right now... And you go, oh, what's really hot right now?

Not that I think people are going to chase Baldur's Gate 3, for example. I think game studios would actually be too intimidated to try and chase it, because I do think that as clueless as I will paint them sometimes... I think even they have the common sense to know that the reason that game was good was because of something they're not willing to put the time and effort into. But let's just pretend for a moment they don't.

you know chasing a trend like that is that still going to be popular in the five years it takes for that game to come out if you're not going to be able to deliver it at the same standard of quality like it's so rare that that works out You know, Marvel Rivals is another one of those exceptions, and it's one of those exceptions because

It has a big IP attached to it. It has an art style that is speaking to people instead of making people go, well, what am I looking at? What is this supposed to be? And it turns out it's a pretty good game on top of it. And it's one of the rare examples of somebody trend chasing and the games doing well. But even Marvel Rivals, I don't think is doing...

the most insane numbers ever. I think it's being very financially successful for them. But I think we even heard reports that Tencent wasn't. They were thinking about canceling it because they didn't like that it was tied to somebody else's IP. So it's a crazy world right now for game dev. And it's extremely volatile as people try and figure out where we're going to be looking after a lot of hiring decisions.

And sadly, a lot of good people end up getting cut while you watch companies continue to double down and make really weird decisions. should be blatantly obvious to anybody paying even remote attention that they're bad ideas. Yeah. Yeah. As you said, it's a very... There are big publishers and big developers that make it a volatile industry where they overhire and then they cancel projects and they don't have.

or don't see the need to put these folks on different projects. They just let them go because it's easy. It's easier to say, OK, cut these jobs right on for them on paper. But what sucks is like the turnover in the industry is affecting. It is affecting how projects are being made. Sometimes you do get you do get projects like Claire Obscure Expedition 33 where you do have.

I don't know if those devs were, you know, had experienced, I'm sure they had experienced layoffs at some point in their career, but had left Ubisoft to make, make this game and it's doing very well. It's sold over a million copies already. But for every one of those stories, there are stories of folks that leave the industry and don't come back because it is so. You sometimes wonder, like, you know, I know it's EA. They they are.

The big bads, like sometimes I think back in the day, voted worst company ever. Yeah, several years in a row. Yeah, and they've never really shaken that sort of... There's always that background, but they do sometimes have this like goodwill, like with, you know, Respawn and how I know Respawn is sort of like this partner studio that they work with. But the fact that it's also impacting Respawn. I agree with you. It just reeks of like bad management at the top level that making these decisions.

um and then not not willing to see them through or at least address them in a way that doesn't result in folks losing their jobs like it's not It's not their fault that they were put on something that could possibly fail. Even looking at the Concord situation last year, it's just... It's very, very unfortunate. And you're right, like layoffs sometimes are happening so often now that we just, you skim over it, right? And it's been a busy time with everything.

going on both in the industry and outside the industry so like it can be tough to keep up with everything but uh this one hit today and and um it kind of felt like we were back what felt like back to the time when layoffs were happening fast and furious and and a lot of folks were losing their jobs which is is frankly very sad it's it's not great for the industry so um And I don't even know if there was like any.

yeah like they it's this it's i'm not even going to read it but i was wondering if there was like their reasoning behind it it's the typical business speak so i'm not even going to give them that uh there's no reasoning behind it outside of just like oh we're gonna we're

driving growth and all that fun stuff so yeah um yeah we we still have more projects from respawn and ea obviously with the with the new jedi game coming at some point and That reactor game they announced for Star Wars Zero Company. Still more projects coming out of Respawn, but alas, layoffs have affected their unannounced Titanfall game that had been reported on by Bloomberg.

We really do need to try to reorder these news stories so we don't end on kind of a bad note, but that is going to do it. For the show. Yeah. And on that positive note, we say goodbye to all of you. I don't know. Was there any... Was there any crazy, surprisingly uplifting? news this week i guess i mean yeah like i mean

If you're a Frostpunk fan, but even that game is very bleak. So the fact that you'll be able to experience that bleakness in Unreal Engine 5 in two years, I don't know if that's like... I mean, it's it's it's interesting news. I don't know if it's considered like super positive. Oh, my God. Super fun news. It's good news, I guess. But. We did talk about Sonic for a bit. Maybe that was our subconscious trying to get some positivity in there because as bad as those movies are...

They still hold a special place in the gamers in heart. So there you go. There you go. Sonic the Hedgehog is the moral. Oh, Fortnite is doing a Star Wars event. There you go. If you like Fortnite... You like Star Wars. There you go. There's some positivity in your life. I do like both those things. And I showed the, I said to, I said to Caden, like they have.

Because he was big into the Godzilla stuff. And I said, oh, they have Star Wars coming next. And he was like, that sounds cool. And the fact that you can get Darth Jar Jar, that might be what gets us back in. We'll have to see. There you go. Darth Jar Jar. That's the positivity we needed to end in. Exactly. Exactly. So look forward to Darth Jar Jar coming to you and may the fourth be with you. So there you go. Oh, shit. I just I just.

Check out our Discord. Go yell at me on Discord for making that terrible joke. tiny.cc slash TGI Discord. And before we head out, John, I do want to give you an opportunity to let everyone know. I know we talked about core, but where else can folks find you on the internet? Sure. If you're sitting there and you're like, I play video games for hours.

hours and hours and I need second screen entertainment that's going to sustain me for as many hours as I game well I got good news for you there's a podcast that is extremely long on a weekly basis that you can listen to, and it's called Core. And that's the show that I do myself, Scott Johnson, and Bo Schwartz. We do that typically every Thursday, although this week it's going to be on Friday.

And we talk about video games. It's a lot like what we did here. But again, it's kind of a ridiculously long show, but that's good because, you know, you're a busy gamer. You need something on your second screen. We got you. Um, so you can find out more about that at frogpants.com. Perfect. Yeah, it's a great show. And as you said, it's like 16 hours. So you're. You're all set. Yep. And that's not even counting the pre-show content. So, you know, that's.

This is what it is. Yeah, yeah. Plenty of second screen entertainment. You can also visit us on the web, gamersinpodcast.com. Follow us on Blue Sky. You can find me at ryanmurphy.ca, john at johnjagger.bsky.social. And also be sure to check out our TGI Community Starter Pack at tiny.cc slash TGI Starter Pack. Thank you so much for staying at the Gamers Inn, John. Thank you for joining us this week. And remember to tune in next week.

the notes are like old like these haven't been updated in a long time i complain every time i host like i gotta just change it that was such that had real like We must recover the energy immediately, Mega Man. Mega Man. Mega Man. Oh man, Mega Man needs to come back. That's what needs to come back. Yeah, why aren't they making Mega Man games anymore? What's up with that?

Yeah. Nothing. There's no, there's no reason for this. There's no reason for the world we've put ourselves in. We can fix it all with a little mega. I think so I think they tried I never played Mega Man 11 I remember it being I didn't play it because if you jumped into the boss door, the game didn't carry you at the height that you hit the door at through to the other side. It dropped you on the ground and then you walked through the door.

And I was like, well, this isn't a Mega Man game. You guys have... failed on your objective and apparently I wasn't the only one because they eventually put out a notice and they're like we're sorry the way the game is programmed we cannot let that happen it doesn't work It just isn't going to happen. Stop writing and asking for Mega Man to float through the door. Clearly, there were a lot of people like me because they publicly addressed it as a weird...