Welcome to the Gamers Inn. Come on in, pull up a chair next to the fire. It looks like you've had a long journey. I'm your host, Jocelyn, and joining me as always is my co-host, Ryan. Hello, Ryan. Hello, Jocelyn. How's it going? is going pretty good. I'm actually kind of excited to talk about our game this week. Mm-hmm. Almost shockingly so. And I don't know, guys. Like, I might be starting to somewhat understand the appeal of roguelikes. Oh.
Oh, the intrigue. Yeah. Well, you've done, you did, you've been playing a lot of Blueprints, which is a road bike. I think I'm almost at 100 hours in that game. Wow. That's a lot. Now that's with some overnight pauses, right? Just the one. After I realized there was no way to leave a day halfway through, then I was pretty good at budgeting my time. Although, there was one night last week when I told Manny I'd play Fortnite with him, but then...
He wasn't around immediately. So I started up a new day and then I literally had like the most insane best run that I had had in like a week and a half. And I was like, okay, Manny, I'll be right there, I'll be right there, I'll be right there. And I'm literally like, I think the run took me like two hours and I was like, I was not right there. I'm sorry.
But yeah, I like I ended the day with an entirely bubble full house except for one square two new rooms I had like a hundred 100 and something, 120 or 130 steps left. I had like 300 gold, I had like a ridiculous amount of keys that I didn't even need, like I was just like... resources out the wazoo I solved like three new puzzles that I've been working on for like weeks I just yeah I was like wow this is the best run I've had in a really long time
So yeah. Still playing blueprints. Can't get me out of there. There are still question marks. There are still... lore to discover and things to solve so but i'm getting there i'm getting there and i have a pretty good idea based on like the achievements what i still have left to do so i'm getting there
Yeah, that's good. But I am starting to have a lot of wasted days. Like, if things don't line up perfectly, then I'm like, okay, well, start over, call it a day. So I think I'm on day, like, 70-something now because, yeah, I'm just like... this isn't going how it's supposed to go so start over yeah but you get unlimited days right there's no like time limit as far as i know i mean like when they do this setup at the beginning of blueprints um they say like
within a timely manner or something like that and say that you can't stay overnight but I have yet to in the game um get kicked out of the house because it's like too late at night and i have yet to like hit a wall on like you've taken too many days although that being said like i did um reach the goal i got my inheritance so like maybe if you don't reach the goal in like a hundred days he's like okay clearly you can't be my heir
but i don't know could you imagine sleeping outside for 70 days because that's what you're doing you're in like a exactly yeah you're in a tent outside the giant ranch and yeah i suppose you get to go inside and use the bathroom and shower and And eat, you know? Well, yeah, but who drafts a lavatory? Like, ugh. Oh, I don't know. Who eats random bananas in all those rooms? Sometimes you find food underground and you just eat it like a turnip. It's like, oh, sustenance.
Yeah, sorry, I'm still playing Blueprints. I think I'll probably be playing that for another few weeks, I would say. Just off and on, but yeah.
much much much bigger and more complicated i think than lorelei was like lorelei still had a very um linear narrative and so because blueprints is a roguelike there are you know like any any given day can give you like new information and there's some stuff that like i've known since like day two that other people don't find until you know day 30 and it just depends on like the orders that you the order that you do things the puzzles that you can solve and and whatever so
I mean, like, it is much more of like a... I mean, I'm sure in the end, it has a linear narrative, right? Events happened in an order. It's just your understanding of events.
changes over time as you get more information you're filling in blanks as opposed to like starting at the beginning and moving to the end which like Lorelei had kind of that as well like you were filling in blanks of events that had happened in the past but like yeah it's totally different um mode of storytelling and blueprints and i think that like the reviews and at the beginning that said basically that uh finding the 46th room was
Like the end of the tutorial is just, it feels so real. Like I think I finished that goal in 20 something days. And, yeah, I've played another 50 days after that, trying to, like, solve all the puzzles and find all the information.
Did you ever go back to it? Did you and Caden ever go back to it? No. I did have a conversation with Crofton about blueprints, because he's all in, and... he had sort of suggested as like a daily crossword thing i guess some folks are approaching it that way where they do one run it's like okay this is my you know quote-unquote wordle for today i'm gonna jump in here do a run and i had uh i had thought of that it is a good like um brain exercise yeah
like my thing is like i wonder if i'd do more planning if i had one run like i i don't really have a plan when i go in i'm just kind of like experiencing it so But every time I sit down, I've looked at Claire Obscure Expedition 33 and thought, you know what, I could probably go in here and do a little bit. That's a very jump in, jump out game because it saves constantly.
um you do a couple battles kind of got a a handle on like the exploration and the pace so um i'm very i don't and i don't even think i'm gonna be able to finish that because doom is out I think it's out on Game Pass in a couple days.
so it'll be interesting i might i'm i think i'm like two-thirds of the way through clear obscure like it's a pretty pretty quick game once you're gonna get into it so we'll see but blueprints is on the list like it's it has not fallen off the list but it's just it has not gotten my attention lately yeah i
feel like you should if you're going to go back to it you should probably start like a brand new day one run because i can't imagine trying to go back to it like having only played however many days called 10 days I'm trying to remember what I knew, what I didn't know. Like, yeah, I feel like I would want a fresh run at it. But I mean, you know, to each their own. You don't want to throw away progress. But I almost feel like my reaction kind of maybe.
you know, shows that I maybe haven't been playing it correctly. Because I'm like, well, I should be able to jump back. Like, what do I really need to remember? I'm shocked that you don't have a plan. And I am also shocked that clearly you have no notes. I'm at like 400 pages of notes, Ryan. I don't think you understand. i have i wait i do have like some limited notes i like very very minimal just like it's a blueprints apple note
And actually, most of this, I think I actually started to record more like overtime hours I worked for work than actually the others more. I think I must have had it open when I was trying to calculate something for work. But, you know, I have an address, a date, some safe codes. There was like some puzzles that are like... crow without roe or something Started writing those down.
okay there's not much here it's and this is the thing i think like shockingly embarrassing how i've been playing this game of like Just maybe... Kind of like I'm not treating it with the respect others are. Yes. Like, I don't understand how you sit down. For a roguelike puzzle game that has a very obscure goal. And your approach is fucking YOLO. Let's go. That's exactly what it is. I don't need any notes.
I'm smarter than this game that everyone says is mind-bendingly crazy. I don't think I'm smarter. I just, I'm lazy. oh my god that's all uh i i enjoyed what i played of it but i but and then i wonder like maybe i have fallen off and i didn't get quite as hooked as others because i haven't been paying enough attention to it but like i kind of i feel like i understand what's going on with the story but then like i'm not really I don't really care, but...
That's a B thing. That's my problem, not the game's problem. I think you need to be in the right mood and headspace for something like that, right? Because it's not a game that smacks you over the head with most things with solutions to puzzles or... with their story beats like you have to
really search, and if you're not in the mood to search, you're not going to have a good time, because at the surface level, it is a very simplistic game. You walk up to a door, you open the door, you choose one of three rooms, you pop the room down, and you walk through the next door. Like, that is a very, very simplistic way to look at the gameplay loop, right? So if that's the level that you're approaching the game at, you're not really going to get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
If you are opening the door to a new room and looking at every single picture on the wall, at every single interactable item, at everything you could possibly open at a later time, if only you could find a key or, you know, like. If you treat every room like a hidden object puzzle almost, like you walk in, try to memorize everything that you can, and then you open the next door, that's when you're going to get the most.
out of the game, right? Like, I still have some big question marks about stuff that I don't even know if it's a puzzle. I'm just like, I found this one thing, this one picture, one time, and I'm like, I feel like there's a story here, but I haven't found anything else that relates to it in a hundred hours in this game. So, yeah, like, there's just, um...
There's a whole lot of depth there if you want to try to find it. But if that's not the game that you're in the mood for, then no. At a surface level, it's a very... Simplistic and can be very frustrating gameplay loop, right? Which is what I've been in for a lot of days because like... I keep opening the same rooms and doing the same things, and I want a very, very specific outcome, and if I don't randomly roll that,
then I've wasted, you know, a half an hour of playtime and a day in the game. And, you know, then I'm like, oh man, okay, start over. do the thing so like if that's all you're doing then yeah you're gonna bounce off the game pretty quickly so yeah like make sure you're in the right headspace ryan start a new run and have at her maybe i i like
I think maybe to put it in better terms, I think I engaged with it from a gameplay standpoint. I appreciated what they were doing. I thought it was a really neat concept, but the story and the... some of the puzzles. It almost seems like some of the puzzles are... Like, the solution is quite simple. You just don't have the information. Or...
or like overly complex, but it's, but you're overthinking it. You know, like I, I walked into, I think it was the foundation and there's this like, box hovering and i was like well i don't know how to get that thing down
Usually when someone gives you a house, it's like, hey, this is how you operate all the stuff. No, your uncle's a dick. He just says, like, good luck and walks... Well, he didn't walk away. He's dead. So... you know but oh my god i just i felt as though uh there there are those moments uh where you when you do discover you know what i mean like oh my god now i'm dead i'm dying i'm dead i'm dying
It just feels like some of the solutions... Look, and it's not even a complaint. It's more of just how my brain works. I step into a room and it's like, okay, this is a puzzle game. This is going to be overly complex. I think there was one solution you were talking about. It was the... The code to the office safe. Oh, yeah. The safe codes make me rage. 100%. Like, there are some puzzles in this game that 100% make me rage. And I think that, like... You know, sometimes you're, maybe, what?
blueprints does is almost like hide the puzzles in a lot of cases and like the pieces of information that you get are almost like telling you What object you need to bring into what room to be able to interact with what space? And so if you just walk into a room, there's no, there's no clues, right? Like you need to find clues about every given room and other places in the house. Right. So. that can seem very frustrating at some points, for sure.
But anyways, I feel like we've already talked for like 15 minutes about the game that we're not even supposed to be talking about this week. This was supposed to be this super quick little introduction. Like, what else am I playing on top of? Crab Champion. Oh, yeah. Yes, we played Crap Channel. We did. So thank you very much to Shadowproof who gave us copies of Crab Champions to try.
I had no idea what this was at all, period. And again, I think it comes down to my general dislike of the genre of a roguelike, but this was, I mean... i was sold as soon as i saw the banner on the steam page because it's literally just a crab with a gun like jumping through the air and i'm like okay what is this and it was actually um
I think better than I was expecting, because I think, like, did you tell me it was in early access or something? Yeah. Yeah, I think I had mentioned it's early access. I think you mentioned it, yeah. And so I was kind of expecting it to be a little bit like clunky and like for the visuals to not be as appealing as they were. I was really surprised with all of like the effects and stuff that they had going on.
I thought that the gameplay was actually, once I got used to it, was pretty smooth. Like, this was such a stupid fun time. Much, much better when we played together though than playing solo. Solo was fine, but together was way more fun. Yeah, and I think that's how it was built to me by Shatterproof, is that it's a game that excels when you're trying to cooperatively take out these Other enemies, other crabs, bugs.
uh giant skulls floating floating pumpkins yeah floating pumpkins um giant starfish giant starfish yeah we got that far Uh, and it's like a run-based, it's a run-based roguelike where you're just, you're, you're a crab and you start off with two. Just see how far you can go. Yeah. Yeah. You have like two, uh, dual, I don't know if they're dual like machine guns or. or whatnot but uh dual pistols dual guns no no wait you start with like a you start with like a just an ar
Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, you're right. Yeah, because then I ended up with dual lasers, which was awesome. I was like, I didn't have two guns at the beginning. I had two guns in the second run and that was so much fun. Yeah. Because then I was a glass cannon. That was just amazing. I was doing like... 20 000 dps and it was like oh there's a boss melt yeah oh it was so good it was very satisfying
Yeah, it was very, very fun. I can see how it's a great game to kind of jump in and just have a game night with your friends.
try to get as far as you can in a run and and i felt like we were like progressing and and we were unlocking keys to you know impact our our future runs like you know you had unlocked uh or i unlocked like the dual shotguns and uh crossbow and some other things so It's a very... fast-paced game and and can be it can be tough to know like you know, when you've suddenly lost all your health, especially if you, it was that mode where you had like the glass,
canon mode where you were like i think you had like two less than 200 health i had less than 200 health which you start the game with 250 and i just kept taking the bonuses that were like lose half of your max health but gain you know 50 damage or something like it was that kind of a trade-off so yeah i was at like 113 health i think as my max health and you start the game with 250 so yeah it was basically like
don't get hit which again usually not the kind of thing that i enjoy like am i just a different kind of gamer now like should i just go and try elden ring because apparently i love don't get hit mechanics now and you know like i love roguelikes give me different powers every time why not like who is this person i don't even understand
I mean, you have access to Elden Ring, doesn't... I think Matt has it on PC, probably. Oh, sure. I want to say he played that on PlayStation, actually. Oh, there you go. there we go we were just talking pre-show about how we never touch our consoles anymore well now you have to you know dust off the ps5 for another reason uh and if you don't have a playstation copy i have one as well that you can borrow so uh
I think it's happening, guys. Yeah, this is happening. Joss is going to play Elden Ring. I think that's a fine thing. We're talking for the Switch anyways to decide if I'm going to get a Switch 2. Yeah, and then isn't there... I think there's a co-op Elden Ring coming out this month. I think Night Reign is supposed to be out this month, I think. Oh, well, clearly I have to go beat the game and the DLC before that comes out. Yeah, you've got some work. You've got some melon rings to conquer.
um but no it was funny when we were playing crab champions you you were the glass cannon but also like i was taking perks that were like just making my health go up So we were able to sort of offset that in that I was tanking. Yeah, you were in my tank. Yeah, and I had some additional abilities to freeze enemies randomly.
so it was a it was a good build it was fun yeah we did pretty good that run until i think until like all roguelites or or horde mode type things you just get overwhelmed and and and you both die you do have the ability to revive each other but there's like this sort of hover ability where you have to like just
stand in the radius of where that person i was gonna say yeah it's like it's almost like um king of the hill right like you have to you have to stay in one spot and and help your your um your partners like Health tick back up to 100% and if you leave it goes back down again Yeah, so that was frustrating. Yeah, you have to stay...
Sort of in the circle. Especially when you died in the back of that cave. I was like, what are you doing? I don't know what happened. And look, this is early access. There were some moments where They have the map, but it was like a cave system, and I have a tendency when playing what feels like a bullet hell game, where there's just lots of shit flying around that can kill you, I always shoot.
while walking backwards, and I walked myself into the edge of the cave, which was between the invisible wall of the edge of the arena. and the cave wall. So I kind of got like pinched in so that for Jocelyn to come revive me, she also had to, you know. I also died. And yeah, I think it was. And it is still early access. It released April 1st, 2023, which is perfect. That's no note. you know it's been in early access for two years like i don't know
It might be one of those games that just never comes out of early access, right? Yeah. Yeah, they do say anywhere from one to three years after the initial launch, so they're still within that window, but maybe they've edited this a few times.
Oh, one year. Well, yeah, because I guess they probably would have gotten it. They were in before Steam changed the rules, right? Because Steam did, like... i guess update the terms and conditions around early access that they were like eventually you have to be a game you can't just be in early access forever but i feel like that was like late 2024 that they changed that yeah
I think you're right. I mean, but we had discussed while we were playing, like, this feels like a game where it could be in early access. for an infinite amount of time like just keep building keep adding on to the mayhem and balancing and like what does this look like can it be finished you know like there's still clearly some stuff in there like there's some placeholder attacks there's this giant crab that is supposed to operate the store and it's just
like a non-animated model with text saying like, Hey, this is Terry shop. Terry will be a feature down the road or something like that. And, uh, I love that placeholder. Uh, text it's just the game the game knows what it is and it's there for the mayhem and i i can appreciate that and Like when I was playing with Caden, just to kind of check it out when we first got it.
like he was sold instantly it's like oh it's a crab with a gun and you can run and jump and you're fighting these other sort of little creatures and it's just it's just mayhem you know and plays great with a controller or mouse and keyboard, depending on your preference. I played a chunk of it before we played. I played a chunk of it on the Steam Deck just to kind of test it out.
works great there um and then we played pc and and so no issues so even though it is early access it it runs quite well like i didn't have any technical issues yeah same i i had no problem running it whatsoever and and it was like i say it was a really really good time uh just to kind of like Run around, blow up some enemies, blow off some steam. And maybe this is because I've been playing so much Blueprints and I haven't been playing all that much Fortnite because...
I'm not a Star Wars fan, we're not going to go into that again, but... um i think like because my normal like blow off steam game is not something i've been playing that much of in the last few weeks that like jumping into this i was like yes i need to turn my brain off and make things explode and that definitely crab champions scratched that itch for me yeah so it also looks like
I'm trying to figure out what the max player count is. It looks like six people at once is what the Steam discussion is saying. Okay. That's mayhem. Well, especially since, like, if you vote for the thing in the middle, so basically you get sent to these different biomes and these different islands, these different arenas, and you have to kill all the enemies or survive a certain amount of time, and...
Once you do that, you get a chest and you get to choose, like, basically upgrades to your abilities or your health or, you know, damage or whatever. And then... You get to choose the kind of chest that you want to get. after you beat the next island. So if you're like, okay, I need more health or I need more damage, then you would, you know, choose that chest out of the three options that you're given.
Except that as soon as somebody in your party does that, there's like a nine second timer that starts counting down. And it's like if they haven't chosen from their chest, their abilities from their chest, because the chest rolls the same way where there's three options in the chest for you to choose from.
If you haven't finished reading and stuff, it's like, oh, well, Joss has started the timer. Sorry, Ryan, hurry up. That would be absolute chaos if you had six people trying to do all this stuff at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. Six people's a lot. Yeah. These are so friendly. There's no friendly fire. No. Oh, thank God. No. Because I was spraying and praying a lot. Yes. Terrible naming. So not only do you have your main weapon, you also have an ability, which was mostly grenades.
for us uh and then you have melee which i didn't use very often unless unless no neither did i things were getting in our grill but But it's the chaos as it unfolds. The weapon is one thing, but I think by the end of that run, we were like, are those drill bits yours?
is the raining crystals our thing or is it something we need to worry about and that's just the abilities you unlock over time suddenly turning your basic grenade lob into this thing that spawns a drill uh area of effect also drops like crystals from the sky um I think there were multiple points where we were like, where are these boomerangs coming from?
You know? Yeah. That actually might have been the funniest. Like, I do remember being like, hey, wait a minute, is it your drill bit? Or do I need to not get hit by that? Because at that point, again, I had a hundred health, give or take. You're very worried. That's the funniest thing. It's just Ryan running around. There's boomerangs everywhere. And he's just going, are those your boomerangs? Who's boomerangs are that? And they're literally coming out of his hands.
he doesn't realize because there's so much else going on there were moments coming out of his claws coming out of his claws yeah claws uh there were definitely moments where it's like there's so much chaos But it's
It's a safe bet. It's your chaos. I felt like the enemies were... At least the runs we had were fairly subdued. Like, they kind of had... They had their abilities, but, like, it was more... it was more the mayhem and and the mass amount of enemies i think there was a lot of there's these like
depending on how you choose there's these like 2x so that was a meme for our runs like always 2x always choose 2x because it doubles your rewards at the end doubles your rewards but doubles the effect of the enemies like more enemies or or more status effects or something, and it worked out quite well. Until it didn't, but I can't remember if that last one was a 2X. Probably. Probably.
but yeah like it was a lot of fun and i think it still has the sting of a roguelike where when you fail And you start over, there is that ramp up where if you make it very far and then you suddenly restart. There's that, like, that lull. Total loss of power, and then, yeah, you have to build yourself back up again. Yeah, that was... one of my least favorite parts like and the other thing that i don't love is the fact that like and i've talked about this with um oh that dead game
That super cute cartoony should totally fit my vibe. Have a nice death. Have a nice death, yes. And I would be like, okay, I really, really like this weapon combo. And then I would never get it again. And I'm like, okay. I have a fun way that I like to play, and because of the RNG factor in the game, I just can't do the thing I find fun. that's not fun for me and so like we played a couple hours and had and had a lot of fun but I think we kind of like finished off with that glass cannon build.
And I was like, I had double lasers. I was running around like crazy. I was doing a ton of damage. It was very, very satisfying.
i'm like when i go in in the next game although you can choose your base weapon which i do like like once you unlock it you can go back and equip it before you go in for your run so you can at least choose your base weapon But yeah, like I'm... probably very unlikely that i'll be able to do that exact build again um so although i will say like of the like modifiers to your abilities
and stuff like the the rewards out of those chests there was actually more kind of like consistency i i don't think that there's a very large pool of options so like If you choose the health chest, there might only be like five. options you know so i i think maybe there is a little bit more consistency in crab champions than other um roguelites roguelikes i've played uh in the past
Because, like, if you keep the pool small enough, like, smaller pools are more consistent. So I think that might be what's happening here. But also, like, smaller pools give you less options and are maybe less exciting for people who really like the randomness. There is kind of that to consider is that like.
If you choose a specific type of reward, then it's a pretty small pool, I think, from our experience anyways. Maybe once you start unlocking stuff and once you get further in and progress more, there's more options, but... At least for us, I feel like I saw the same sort of modifiers.
over and over and over again yeah no i did notice that as well and i wonder if that's sort of the early access portion is they're slowly introducing new abilities i did see there were some options in the shop as you're progressing the currency has been like some of those skills were unique to what I maybe had not seen in the chess. Like, there's more rarer ability mods and stuff like that, so... More rarer. Rarer, yeah. Rarer.
But yeah, I appreciated the progression. I think it worked really well. I felt like we were doing... you know things were ramping up but we were like keeping pace And that's usually how it goes. There's always like one little slip up and it's like the whole thing. the whole thing falls apart but that was That was not the game's issue. That was more just panic mode enabled and getting stuck. But I can see it being... I would love to see it with more than... Two players was pretty hectic.
i can imagine four kind of being like a like a good maximum like okay this is just Yeah, I don't think I'd want to play with 6. Like, I think 4 would be kind of nice. And especially, like... After playing it solo for a little while and then jumping in with you... It seemed like, and maybe the enemies health scaled, but it seemed like the same sort of number of enemies.
which I was kind of surprised. I assumed like, you know, double the people, double the enemies, but it didn't really seem like that. I think they were a little bit hardier, but yeah, seemed like the same number of things. Yeah, no, I think so. I had played a couple runs solo and it felt very... very similar but uh there's also like the different biomes you're in like the first biome is like it's a
It's the stuff you see in most of the screenshots. It's the beach. And then you get into a desert theme. And then I think we got to an ice planet. yeah there was no punishment for falling down the icy any sort of caverns from what i could tell but then you get to the the volcano level and there's just like lakes of lava lava everywhere yeah and Yeah, it did not end well. We discovered quickly that magma and crabs don't mix. It does not mix. We were on fire. Not in a good way.
We learned our lesson there, but it's going to be interesting to see this game sort of progress. I'm really curious how... like i just i it's so hard to tell like what's the end game i guess the end game is that the developer gets you know gets not bored but just says okay like i got it to a point where i'm happy we're gonna end it there you know like i just don't see like where's the
where's the ending like you could just keep going building this game because it is like so wacky you know yeah because when you when you get to basically when you get to the final boss then it gives you the opportunity to basically like retire or go again but everything's harder so that's what we did we went again but everything was harder um and then like it's uh basically just unlocking cosmetics right like Which, I mean, cosmetics for why? Well, if you're playing with your friends, then...
But yeah, I don't know. I think overall it was super goofy, super fun, scratched the itch of something where I just had to turn my brain off and make things explode, which I need after big long blueprints runs. I think overall, it was super, super fun. I did have a good time. Definitely better with friends. But yeah, go check it out. Crab Champions in Early Access.
right now uh so thank you guys so much for supporting the show over at patreon.com slash the gamers in our patron for the month of may is shatterproof so thank you so much for supporting the gamers in If you like what we do here, if you want to help out Ryan and I, again, go to patreon.com slash thegamersin. Then we get to do cool stuff like TGI Game Club, which is coming to the end! We are at the final milestone for Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. So, yeah, it's been...
A long and memorable game. Sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad ways. But overall, it's been really fun to leave Game Club, even though sometimes I forget and post on Mondays. That's all good. But it's been good. It's been fun. Yeah, no, it has been a lot of fun. I think... An interesting sort of experiment with like an older console title that hasn't had a re-release on current hardware and kind of see how that goes with players in terms of returning.
uh we did do some older titles for pc i don't know if they were like as old as twilight princess but this is the first time we've kind of And this was voted on by, so for folks who haven't done a game club with us before, like we usually do like a vote to see what the interest is and Twilight Princess.
you know came out on top with with a good chunk of votes so uh that's also another opportunity for the next game club is if you want to go in there and vote i can't remember what the other options were but it's been really interesting to return to this one because i feel like majora's mask might have been on there and like maybe I'm not 100%. I mean, you definitely could lead a game club by just sticking to the main path of Majora's Mask, but man, there's so many.
tangents in that game but anyways uh yeah we are we are coming to the end of our first TGI game club of 2025 so if you guys have thoughts or comments or suggestions as to what we should do next Head on over to tiny.cc slash TGI discord and join the conversation over there. That brings us to the news this week. And we've kind of got a lot of stuff going on. I feel like.
We're entering that point in time where we're going to talk about some rumors, we're going to talk about some delays, and I feel like everyone's kind of like, if they've given us 2025 but not a date yet, They're kind of at the shit or get off the pot point. Like, it kind of made June. You have to decide, like, okay, is this actually going to make it out this year? And if so, we should probably give a date. And if not, we should tell everybody.
um so yeah marvel 1930 or sorry 1943 rise of hydra has been delayed to 2026 which does make me sad because i was looking forward to this one we talked about it a couple times when we've seen like teaser trailers and stuff and I am a big Captain America fan, and this is kind of like the era that I really enjoy. There was talk of having... black panther was going to be involved and like i'm just i was really excited to see like a new kind of story in this era
So I was looking forward to playing this. But yeah, we've got an official delay to 2026. And not a delay to a date in 2026. Just delayed to 2026. Bad face. yeah yeah it's uh you're so right though there's gonna be a lot of these games that got a 2025 release date or a year Well, we just saw, last week, we covered, um...
Yeah, GTA 6. The big one. GTA 6, yes. Yeah, the GTA 6 that everyone's been waiting for for 800 years and how they're like, one more what's one more really exactly i and i was really looking forward to marvel 1943 just like you but seeing what the game looked like and what had been showcased earlier,
uh made me wonder like i don't how is that running on a base ps5 and i had the same reaction in gta 6 and supposedly that is 30 frames per second 1080p 4k whatever it is uh gta 6 on a base ps5 you know and it's like i just i'm wondering I'm worried that, like, the floor is going to fall out from those base consoles again. And, uh, Priza Hydra definitely had that feel of, like, this is...
No, this can't run like this. It looks amazing. I want to see more gameplay for it. We've really only been seeing snippets and sort of tech demo-y stuff. So I'm not surprised it got delayed because we haven't heard. Anything. on it for this year, which is kind of telling. Yeah, so we'll have to wait until next year for that as well. We got a rumor, which you guys know I had to talk about. Normally we don't talk about rumors, but this one, this one we're going to talk about. Horizon 3!
has rumored to target a 2027 launch. potentially being a PS5, PS6 cross-gen release, and we were talking about this pre-show, because Ryan was saying, oh no, it can't be time for the PS6 already, but the PS5 was launched in 2020, which a 2027 ps6 release would be a normal if not on the long side of a console cycle so i mean like if they're targeting a holiday 2027 launch then
That kind of makes perfect sense. And Horizon 3 being cross-gen, I think, makes a lot of sense and I could absolutely see happening. And I will... I mean, like... I held out buying my PS5 for so long because I was waiting for them to do a Horizon branded playstation like Bundle? If they don't do it for the final game in the trilogy, I'm going to be so mad. Give me a PS6 that's Horizon branded for the end of the trilogy. Please.
I will pay all of the dollars. I will not buy a Switch 2 between now and 2027 and put all of that towards this Horizon 3 bundle that is in my head only.
Well, it's interesting because I feel like the PlayStation 5 has done one special edition and it's the it was the super limited 30th anniversary stuff yeah we're just like the playstation gray consoles but they have the they have the blades i guess celebratory gray you know it's the first color that comes to mind happy birthday period you know that classic office joke
But they have the blades, the case sides that come off. They have the blades. Oh, okay. Yeah, I don't know what they're called. I don't know if they're called blades. I think they're just called like PS5 cover plates or something. And they come off, but they only did colors. They never did like, this is the God of War theme. It just seemed like a lost opportunity.
You guys got me that, like, the PS5 Horizon wrap thing, that, like, vinyl, and I love it. Like, my PS5 looks... chef's kiss beautiful and i'm just like i don't understand why playstation themselves never got on this like customizable bandwagon beyond like you say these these colors like
Yeah, they could have made so much money just printing their franchises on the side of the PlayStation. Like, I don't know why they didn't do that. Because I think it looks freaking awesome. My Aloy on the side of my console. Yeah, I think that was just like a Etsy vinyl story. Yeah, yeah. Nothing crazy.
I think that it's interesting that Horizon 3 being a cross-generation game again... they're really taking that this is sony zelda to heart by like yeah releasing all these cross generation titles in this franchise but like the other thing is like this was also the first generation where both microsoft and sony made a conscious effort to be like
For the first two years of the new console, you'll be able to play a majority of our first party titles on either. Yeah. And that was just because of how their hardware... evolved more to be more pc-like like generic architecture nothing crazy no cell processor power pc it's just this is this is just a specific set of pc hardware within it within a console So it allows them to kind of do that without sacrificing the overall...
you know feel of a next generation game um now that being said like We've talked about price of the Switch 2, and we talk about we were both surprised we have blocked the memory out how much a ps5 pro costs in canada which is because we were saying oh the ps6 is definitely going to be a thousand dollars and then we look at the ps5 pro and it's like hold my beer it's it's
it's 960. It's already $1,000. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, because I think you were saying that you thought that maybe the cost of it in the the states might be 900 to a thousand dollars and then that would make it you know 12 13 1400 in canada and that seems Right. Given that they're... Well, yeah, given that their half-step is $1,000, they just don't want to say that. But, I mean, when you're $40 short of 1K, like, that just is $1,000. Come on, PlayStation.
So if you've already got a thousand dollar console and it's your half step, then your next full gen is going to be probably in Canadian dollars, which is not as strong as the US dollar. So in Canadian dollars, you're probably looking at another couple hundred dollars. from your half step right so i would say twelve to thirteen hundred dollars is
reasonable and those are the most sarcastic air quotes ever, but I will probably end up paying $1,500 for some sort of Horizon 3 bundle if they make it. Yeah. Now, what if it's the only game available at launch, Joseph? Oh, that hurt my heart. Oh, well, I mean, okay. There is a big difference for me between Horizon 3 and Mario Kart. No shade to Mario Kart. It's a great franchise, but... Horizon is my favorite game franchise. I know. They are giving me the end of the trilogy.
I will pay all the dollars for this. Like, day one, not even a question. And I'm by no means sitting here suggesting that I would put Mario Kart World above Horizon. Look, I'm looking forward to Horizon 3. I think it's going to be the Mass Effect 3 of bring it home, finish the fight. it's nice to get back to like a trilogy i love that comparison yeah i mean and i look mass effect 3 had its issues but i think if you look at what halo 3 did what mass effect 3 did it finished a trilogy
It concluded the story. And then with a patch, it stuck the landing. But I... i think we're this is kind of what we've been sort of missing from this generation is like Where are the rumors? Where are the big sequels? I think when you look at what Xbox has and what PlayStation has, there was a lot of upfront... sort of announcements and rumblings of what is being worked on like a new spider-man a new god of war and uh We exhausted that through 2024-25.
those games came out and then because development takes so long I was going to say, yeah, it's just development cycles are so long now that the development cycles for these big AAA games are starting to line up with console generation cycles, right? So...
Yeah, it is kind of crazy with just the amount that's being invested. And again, we should probably say, again, all of this stuff is rumors. We know... a Horizon 3 is coming, but that's actually what made me so excited about this rumor is not that it was, you know, the whole cross-gen PS6 talk, but just the fact that The main entry into the trilogy is, like, there's rumors about it now. It's actively being worked on. There is a rumor launch window.
Like, this is the kind of stuff that we hadn't been hearing about Horizon. There was so much else happening in the Horizon universe, like doing VR stuff, doing, you know, like the TV and movie deals and all that kind of stuff.
building out the lore of the universe which is great and if they can hook people into playing horizon by making like supplementary content and getting people interested in the lore of the world to maybe go check out the game i think that's a huge win because like i say it's one of my favorite franchises I think that the story and the lore in Horizon is so good, and it's the kind of thing that totally caught me off guard, because I was like, When I originally saw the trailer, what is this?
stupid game. Like a girl with like a pole. fighting a metal dinosaur like this looks so stupid but it's so good and i think that there's a lot of you know potential to find new audiences through this supplementary type of content but when that's all you hear about for years after the second entry into the franchise comes out.
I'm like, I personally was starting to get a little worried. I'm like, have they even started the third game? They've told us the third game is coming, but that's all we've heard. They basically like finished to cliffhanger. absolutely we're making a three but then nobody talked about it again so it's like are you making a three or are you making like all of these other things instead so it was just uh made me very happy today to hear that there's at least a rumor
of a launch date means that there's active development going on in the background. Yeah, we will have it. Soon. And I think that's the biggest thing. Soon, yeah. Well, the biggest thing for me is we will have it like they are making it. Yeah. And I think that just goes back to my point that we.
because development is so long pre-production is so long the there aren't even rumors or leaks happen like rumors is one thing leaks we don't like to see because usually that's attributed with like information that's stolen or purposely leaked, but I think that we are so far away from development to announcement just based on how games are made.
You don't get those rumblings. But there's also stuff coming out every day, so it's not like we're... sitting here like tapping our toes like when are we gonna get the you know the next video game announcement it's like well i mean one just happened you know as we were talking
there's new video games announced every day. So I think companies not only are holding things closer to their chest, but there's nothing to talk about because things are still... still in flux and there's reporting and there's a lot of rumors out there and but like sometimes those rumors are on things that may not see the light of day because development is so Tricky. Volatile. Volatile. Much better word. But I think Horizon 3 is...
Is it for sure? I mean, they talk about this Horizon Online project that Gorilla is working on that will come out before Horizon 3. i i do worry just based on i mean we talked about this previously with you know, marathon. I forgot about that MMO thing. Yeah. I just worry that the way Sony's been handling their recent multiplayer offerings, if it's not a Helldivers 2, they kind of...
That kind of like... cut the cord and walk away so they may not do that with with an ip that's like more well known more established I like yeah I don't know yeah yeah one can hope I'm holding out some hope there I mean but again like
I may not even play it. I don't know. What I want is the third game in the single-player trilogy. That is where my interest lies. All the other stuff is just noise to me. I mean, I was interested in... the tv show but i think they've scrapped the tv show now so i mean that was the only thing that i thought was kind of interesting potentially but That's only because I want to see a TV show of the fall of civilization in the Horizon universe. I think that would be so interesting. But, yeah.
Anyways, speaking of TV... We got a teaser for Fallout Season 2. It is premiering this year in December and they have also confirmed season three. which I guess Fallout fans should be super excited about. We've talked about this before. I didn't play the Fallout games. Everybody is excited because they're going to Vegas.
Vegas is 100% confirmed. They are, you know, like the teaser trailer is literally just the two of them standing on top of a sign that says Vegas 50 miles or whatever. And, you know, then it pans to the skyline. It is the teaser-iest of teasers. Other than just like, follow.
zooms towards the the lens so yeah i think uh it's it's gonna be really cool i'm looking forward to it i really enjoyed season one yes so did i i i i'm a fan of the recent fallout titles i i mean famously like when the Season came out, I played a lot of Fallout 4 again.
um the fact that i didn't my brain was like i knew they were shooting it i knew they had wrapped filming uh there was a a gif out there of walton goggins like pulling the makeup off which i i believe you're not supposed to do like that hurts he did look like he was in pain um but I didn't think that they would have it out by December. That seems like a quick turn. It seems fast, right?
Like, cause I remember watching the first season like here in our new house, like, which feels like we moved in yesterday. So like. the fact that we're you know seven months or so out from a new season of fallout like that is a very fast turnaround time i'm impressed although i think um The Lord of the Rings series had a pretty fast turnaround time, too, compared to some of the other stuff.
I think Amazon in general seems to kind of turn their stuff around pretty quickly. Yeah. I mean, in these days, television... movies like they're they're shooting the next you know back-to-back avengers films now and that's out next year the first one's out next year so like you know these days there there's a lot of pre-production and then once they're shooting like they kind of have everything in order
um it's that before period with pre-production that you don't see and i think you see that specifically with fallout where season one aired as you said like uh last year maybe this time last year And now we're looking at a year and a half later, getting the second season. But I really loved the vibe of the show. It captured the game so well. It made the TV show feel unique. and how it portrayed this like post-apocalyptic world with all its characters
And also did something different from the games, like tried to offer a different story set within the universe of the games. Not just straight up retell what the game did. exactly and they've said they've got a six season story so the fact that they are not pulling a netflix and confirming like this is the way to do it like if you're confident with your show
You've got a first season strong outing. You've filmed all of season two. And you're like, okay, let's tell everybody ahead of time. Season three is confirmed. you know six months ahead that shows to me that they're going to work it's going to be a quicker turnaround um they're they're satisfied with what they see so that they can kind of not lose people to that like netflix like i'm not gonna watch it they're just gonna cancel it type thing
So this is the right move. 18 years to get it out, I feel like. Stranger Things, which I know is coming soon, but I feel like I don't even remember what happened in Stranger Things because it's been so long since we watched it. Yeah, I feel like the end of Stranger Things was like that classic.
well that classic ending where you know the finale's coming he's like we defeated him but he'll be back and bigger than ever we gotta prepare like it was one of those it was one of those yeah empire strikes back endings where it's like yeah we won that we we may have survived the battle but the war is coming type thing so yeah uh so yeah fallout uh coming in december they haven't confirmed what season three is going to be about though right like if it's
going to continue in New Vegas or if it's going to move on because Fallout 4 was not in the same area, was it? No, Fallout 4 was Boston. Right. And Fallout 3 was... I don't know. Which, like, it would be really weird to take our characters all the way to the other coast. So I don't know, like that makes me like eyebrow raise question mark about if we would even go visit those kind of locations for season three.
or if they're just going to kind of stick to West Coast stuff. But again, not being really familiar with the settings of the video games, like hard to say, but yeah.
I think it'd be really weird to just cross the U S in an apocalypse. I don't think they will. I think they have a story they're telling that is like based in that location. And I think new Vegas was, you know, in that range and it's such a beloved it's not even like uh a mainline bethesda title it was made by obsidian uh and man if we're talking remasters that microsoft wants to green light maybe go with fall of new vegas perfect timing yes i would be very excited to play that yeah me too me too
Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of Microsoft, 200 Overwatch devs at Activision Blizzard are unionizing. So yay, Overwatch devs! Yeah. I made a promise. Anytime we get a large unionization in the video game industry, we'll talk about it here. We'll give it time on the show because I think this is... This is good news. I think that... I think specifically with Activision Blizzard, a lot of the conversation around why they're unionizing and why there was a bit of a stall there.
around the time of the acquisition but has now ramped back up the unionization talk and it's specifically pointing to those layoffs that happened right after the purchase.
went through yeah remember when we were so optimistic about microsoft coming in and making positive change to activision blizzard what were we six i know so naive and and unionizing doesn't like completely stave off layoffs layoffs can still happen but it gives you a seat at the table as as a union to sort of be there when these layoffs are happening and and uh we didn't have it in the news but there was
Additional layoffs from Microsoft, laying off 3% of their staff across all teams, not just their video game teams. I don't know what the impact specifically on their video game teams are, but I... I think that it only makes... This is only just going to keep happening for Activision Blizzard and other industry veterans, especially under Microsoft, because they have that like...
It's some sort of clause that they've signed with their developers to basically say, hey, if you form a union, we won't combat it. We'll acknowledge it by default. Kind of like that. But it's not surprising that there was all that momentum with Activision Blizzard to unionize, and they sort of stopped when the Microsoft acquisition was going through.
I think we're going to see more of this. It's Overwatch, and then I think their World of Warcraft team is unionized, and I think that might be the two. I believe so. I think we covered the Warcraft team six or eight months ago. Yeah. Yeah, there might have been a testing. There's definitely, like, I think maybe the testers were... Yeah, in the QA, there was QA things happening, QA unionizations happening. I believe that was the first Activision Blizzard was the QA staff.
Yeah, it says here Microsoft has recognized the union alongside the other 2100 plus Microsoft workers who have formed a union with the CWA, which is the organization that World of Warcraft. has had gone through so it's kind of crazy to think 200 overwatch staff members and 2100 I mean, this article makes it sound like there's 2,100 people that were... Oh, I think that's a combined... The video game union siblings at World of Warcraft and Sega of America.
So it's happening. I mean, yeah, it's not just you know, here and there, I think it's, uh, this is, this can only be momentum. Exactly. Yeah. So, uh, Oh, and then Bethesda as well. I think they, they had some, They had some unionization efforts, I believe. I think you're right. I think so. The more they do it, I think it can only make the industry better. Yeah.
And, yeah, I mean, if they do get laid off, then they can just buy themselves. Sure. Which is another trend that we're seeing. Giant Bomb has just bought itself from Fandom. Yeah, and I put this in here because it's a good news story. What happened with Polygon?
where they were purchased and then gutted yeah um and then with giant bomb they had been purchased by they've had corporate owners for quite a while uh they did start independent but then they got purchased by game spot and then uh cbs uh and then fandom uh and they kind of got passed around a lot and i think fandom was like changing some stuff
where they were basically like giant bomb is primarily like their other podcast. And then they do their live streams, a lot of video content, uh, as well as podcasting and fandom is known for all those. guide and wiki type sites that you when you google um what was that uh wookie's name in star wars holiday special you're likely to come up with a fandom website
Not a specific Google search that most people do, but fandom sites will pop up when you're looking for those specific. Actually, funny enough for our Twilight Princess game club. uh trying to determine like characters and where they are and who they are and and uh what that weird you know chicken thing is It was usually a fandom website that would pop up. Fandom knows weirdo chickens. They do. They do. New tagline. They can run with it. They can have that one. We're not using it.
but uh but basically fandom was saying to giant bomb like hey we're gonna change some things you can still do the podcast but we want you to move away from video focus more on guides and written content And obviously that was not Giant Bomb's sort of... path that they'd taken before there was some people that quit the website some high profile uh folks and then i feel like a couple weeks later they announced at pax east that they had purchased giant bomb from fandom and they are now
They're owners of their own website again. Yeah, they're fully independent again. Yeah, which is great news. I mean... They started independent, and I think there was a clip I saw on Blue Sky where uh jeff gersman the one who started giant bomb way back in the day he he has his own like patreon show and he had had dan reichard on and was describing him as co-owner of
giant bomb and they just both broke into laughter because it's like the person who started it worked with Dan for a long time now talking to him as the owner it's interesting how things change over time and it is nice that it has persisted because obviously it's a website that has huge fan base so yeah a lot of people were stoked i'm pretty sure they're always the number one earners for extra life is giant bomb yeah for sure they they put out They do really well, and they have a huge team.
uh they have a big big streaming event and um and yeah like i think fandom didn't know what to do with them i didn't get the sense that they like fought the purchase There was a lot of comments that there's still some like... transitional web stuff going on where you know fandom is being very supportive of giant bomb i mean they they sold it to them they're not fighting
sort of the transition period, like, it's all been, you know, for the most part. Yeah, it's not like it was a hostile takeover or something, right? Like, they bought themselves, so, you know.
It makes sense that fandom would help facilitate, like, a separation. Sure. Yeah, like, there was no... I don't think there were... hard feelings at that point obviously when they were trying to make the changes in a forced manner like there was some hard feelings to the point where people quit but this is similar to the game informer situation this is a positive outcome Fandom will be fine with their ad-ridden Wikipedia.
knockoffs uh and uh giant bomb will be fine too they'll continue to do their podcasts and their their video streams their quick looks and all that fun stuff so good news Which, yeah, I definitely probably should have ended on that instead of ending on a story. I reorganized stuff because it was like flowing. And then I was like, oh, no, we're going to end on a negative news story. Well, we're going to end on like a... I mean, it's not a rumor. It's a...
We don't know what we're going to do, but it might be bad situation. But Nintendo is considering that they're going to raise prices post-launch of Switch 2 in... Because of tariffs, basically. So this actually might be the cheapest you get to switch to for a while. And, yeah, that sucks, man. It almost, although I think this is probably more geared towards the U.S.
obviously. Nintendo has already apparently moved some stuff to Vietnam because they have lower tariffs than their previous production in China. to keep costs down for people purchasing in the U.S. We had previously talked about before we got Canadian pricing that we would potentially be impacted by tariffs even though we don't have like...
We're obviously not putting tariffs on other people, that's what the US is doing, but because their logistics is so intertwined with Canada, and, you know, there is no Nintendo Canada now, and all of their stuff comes out of the States, so... You know, it probably has to go, like, US and then into Canada, and then we've got reciprocal tariff situations going on, and it's just a mess.
So, yeah, this could potentially in the future be not the greatest news for Canadian customers as well, but I do think that this is like... Prices going up would be targeted to the U.S. mostly. But yeah, we could just get hit because we're also over here. I don't know. We'll see. It almost made me reconsider a pre-order. Just because, like you said, we had the whole conversation a couple weeks ago about how Nintendo stuff never goes on sale. But, I mean, like...
Nintendo stuff now is going to go up. That's worse than not going on sale. If the price just stays the same, then it gets cheaper over time because of inflation. But, um, yeah, I don't know, man. I just, ugh. I mean, like... i don't want to buy it right now i don't want to buy it right now but i don't want to buy it later and pay an extra like hundred dollars or something yeah and that was my thought process is that if I know I'm going to want one 100%. Eventually.
and if there's even a whiff, which there is, more than a whiff there's a good stink going on this is not a rumor this is not like us speculating this is literally nintendo saying If the situation stays the same or worsens, there's a very good chance that we are going to have to raise our prices. We're already seeing it with Xbox and Sony. They've already raised their prices. So it's just...
It's just how the market is working, even if the tariffs are moving up and down and eliminated, delayed. It's that uncertainty that causes you know, these manufacturers, we have to increase the price because it's not something we can just, you know, turn a dial on. Like there's a process. And if, you know, we can't just.
change things on a whim so uh in the meantime we get bonus money yeah true i mean yeah but down the road they might they might have a quarter where they lose money yeah yeah quite a bit just based on how things work so it's that it's that game i'm not defending it i don't want prices to increase
I definitely don't want tariffs. But there is a strong chance that because of our geographical location you know canada and the u.s being on the same continent and these these switches or any of these consoles are not being manufactured in North America, they're being shipped to North America, there is that chance that we just get lumped in and that is really unfortunate because it is not. Canada that is causing these issues.
But we'll see like a lot every week it changes. And even I think things are paused now for 90 days. And Nintendo has specifically said, like, this is a quote from their president, so it's right out of, you know, Nintendo of Japan.
They do talk about the U.S. tariffs, but this is more of a blanket statement that prices could go up in reaction to tariffs that they don't stabilize. But they say their top priority is to quickly... popularize the switch to meaning like they want to sell as many as they want people playing at this price at the launch price and then worry about possibly having to increase the price down the road Um, so it's, it's this wait and see, uh, process and, and I mean, hopefully things work.
I do have, I do hope, I do have hope that at the very least, like, the world will be able to buy their favorite console at the traditional announced price, as opposed to worrying about it going up. Because some of the numbers, I don't even want to reiterate the numbers that they're talking about how much it could go up, but hopefully it just stays. I was going to say, wasn't there an estimate of almost 70%? Yeah. 69.4%.
From the Consumer Technology Association. Well, since we're talking about it, it is funny. I did read that, and it was like, the way I read it is like, one report says it could go up by 69.4%, and then in brackets, Thanks, Tom's Hardware. Yeah, I thought that was good. I read it that way.
Yeah. It's like, it's all Tom's hardware's fault. It is. I mean... whatever man whatever Eurogamer has against Tom's hardware I don't know yeah Tom had it coming I guess that's the real beef you know tariffs aside that's really what's going on here is Eurogamer and Tom's hardware my brain just read that and i read it as this like Oh, 100%. It's like, petty, like, I guess we have to tag you in our article, Tom, because you know how you get. Yeah, it's that.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with a colleague that uses dot dot dot when they type. like at the end of a sentence and i said to them it's like to me i read that as like you're unhappy i don't know what it is and i'm like no it's me pausing i'm like i don't know dot dot dot i feel like I feel like it's a... I'm leaving more unsaid. It's a generational thing. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. You know, anyways.
I read that comma. It's a very loaded comma. There's some beef in that comma, for sure. Poor Tom, poor Tom. But yeah, that's it. We're done. If you guys want to continue on the conversation, head on over to tiny.cc slash TGI Discord. You can also visit us on the web at gamersinpodcast.com. Or follow us over on Blue Sky. You can find me, Jocelyn, at jocplays.com, and Ryan is at ryanmurphy.ca.
Also, be sure to check out our TGI Community Starter Pack at tiny.cc slash TGI Starter Pack. Thanks for staying at the Gamers Inn. And remember, tune in next week. Bye, everybody. Bye, everyone. Poor Tom.