¶ Intro / Opening
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. How's it going? Pretty good. Pretty good. I feel like I've just like lit myself into so many different people. Oh, I've been playing so many games. I've had Olivia to look after all weekend. And so I've got like babysitter Joss and I shouldn't say babysitter. We've got mom Joss.
I do that all the time. Look, let's talk about that for a second. I always say, oh, I got to babysit the kids. And then Ashley's like, you're not babysitting. They're your kids. And it's just a force of habit. It's like, okay, I gotta be a solo parent for a couple hours. Yeah, I am officially in charge of children, and it's still really weird for me to think of myself as a parent.
I always say babysit. It's not like a, you know, it's not a big deal. And I always like, I guess, yeah, it sounds like I'm... removing myself from the absolute responsibility of the kids. But I do find it sometimes funny when I do that. Oh, now you can tell Ashley that I've done it too. Look, it happens to 100% of the hosts of the Gamers Inn, so it's fine. It's fine.
Yeah, it's all fine. So yeah, I've got mom Joss, gamer Joss. I've got, oh, who else have I been lately? House cleaner Joss. Yeah, dog walker Joss. So many different Josses in this house. Yeah. What about gardening, Joss? Or did you not recruit that one? You've seen my house. It's grass and trees. That's it. You don't cut the grass? That's gardening, isn't it? I don't think that's gardening. That's definitely a mat job.
It's his Saturday. He loves it because we have a riding lawnmower that he uses. So yeah, he just goes out with his headphones and listens to music and whips around the yard on his little riding lawnmower. Nice.
Yeah, it's not a chore. It's an escape. You know what I really dislike about living in the town, living in the city with cutting grass is that we kind of have a lot of... semi-retired and retired people around so they're always cutting their grass and it's one of those moments is like actually they'll be like we have to cut the grass because like it i grew up in the country so like you let the grass grow so that you weren't mowing this giant field all the time
Our grass is wildflowers now. Sure. Like three weeks. It's just a giant pollinator garden. Yeah, I did it on purpose. Fight the man, fight the power, say no to lawns. They're actually very, very bad for the ecosystem, but that's a whole other aside. Yeah. Anyways, long story short.
we always feel this peer pressure to, to cut the lawn. Even when I'm like, this feels like a waste of gas, you know, cause they're, they're lawns just, just, you know, pristine and ours is like just an inch higher or something. Yeah, I it's not my cup of tea. I don't like cutting the grass. So. All right. That was supposed to be a really good segue into the altars, but I don't really know how to do it now. So.
That's kind of the big thing that we've been playing this week, I think. We did dabble in Smite 2. We had our game night on Friday. And honestly, I thought that that was going to be the only thing we were going to talk about because, you know, it's the sequel to one of our, you know, beloved games on Gamers Inn. We played Smite 1 so much for many, many years.
so i was like oh we're gonna play smite 2 and it's like it's gonna be what we talk about on next week's gamers in but there's honestly like not that much to talk about um It is a carbon copy, basically, of Smite 1. And I mean that in the best possible ways because that game needed an update in terms of new back... background stuff new uh oh what am i ryan what's the word i'm reaching for uh new background stuff platform yeah yeah yeah sorry
Yeah, like so because it was they actually make you boot up Smite 1 in order to like get your benefits and like tie your accounts together and stuff. I think it's called the Divine Legacy and you have to do it. in game you can't do it on your account page on the high res website um and i think they did that on purpose so that you would see what an upgrade smite 2 is over smite 1.
But in terms of, like, gods, mechanics, powers, gameplay, like, modes that are available, everything, it's... basically the same and i'm saying it's basically the same as someone who literally has not booted up the game since 2017 so i'm sure that there are some hardcore smite fans that probably have different opinions but as someone coming back to the game literally eight years later um yeah i i i knew like i recognized gods i recognized their kit
We were able to jump in and play right away. We played a bunch of arena, a little bit of joust. Like we had a really, really, really fun time. And all three of us, Josh jumped in and played with us as well. All three of us were able to like.
immediately know what was going on uh it was smooth it looked really pretty there's not really all that much to say because if you liked smite you're gonna like smite too it's the same except it's like it prettier runs better go team yeah except that oh the monetization is terrible it's way worse it's awful unless maybe they change the monetization in smite one and that it did get copied over i don't know but
The monetization in Smite 2 is like, I would say nickel and dimey, but it's like nickel and dimey except like $10 and $15 here all over the place. Yeah, like we... When we jumped in, so the link between Smite and Smite 2 with the Divine Legacy stuff is that if you don't buy the Founders Edition, which is the new God Pack, which unlocks all the gods, which you have to rebuy. Yeah, you do. You can play Smite 2 for free. You do have to quote-unquote rebuy.
the god pack in that the god pack from smite one doesn't you know carry over to smite two in any way they're two different games but i will say I'm pretty sure we paid either 25 or 35 bucks for the God Packens Might One. And that was good for like literally 15 years. So I think we definitely got our money's worth out of that original God Pack. I had no problem buying it again because it was very much worth it the first time around.
Yeah, no, it's a good value. And I think it is like basically buying. You're buying the game. You're buying the game. You're buying what is the major addition to the game, which are new gods. So I was fine with that.
But yeah, you get the Divine Legacy stuff. It brings forward. If you don't buy, if you just do free-to-play and you link it, you get 50% more, right? Or no? You get 50% of what you spent in Smite 1. brought over and that can only be applied to specific classic skins which are the you know the stuff they brought forward from smite one not everything but some stuff it basically yeah it helps you it helps you buy stuff in smite
Yeah. Yeah. It's confusing. If people at home are like, this is confusing. It is. Yeah, it is very confusing. And there's like. Different places where they use the word premium, but they like if it says like unlock premium and you'll get this and then you don't really realize because I made this mistake. You don't really realize that premium isn't across the entire thing. I thought I was buying like a battle pass, but you have to buy like premium on like every single.
page of a shop that you want to open like it is it's really predatory and very unclear and uh yeah really designed to uh steal all your dollars so yeah i think that the
Founders editions are definitely worth it given the in-game monetization. You get a ton of stuff in those founders packs. I'm really surprised that they don't... advertise how much money you save save air quotes by buying those basically huge bundles Because every hero has these like, has like its own little battle pass that I think costs, I think it was another like 10 bucks.
um per page of that battle pass and you get 25 of those in the biggest founders pack along with a whole bunch of other stuff so like just those ascension battle pass things alone is worth like 250 bucks again in their monetization. Whether that's worth $250 to you as a player is another conversation, but given their in-game costs, there's a lot of... value in the bundles i'm using so much sarcasm and air quotes here um but yeah like i i do think like the monetization in the game is super shitty
If you see yourself playing a lot of Smite 2, then the Founders Bundles are, I think, again, air quotes, worth it. Like, they give you value in a terrible monetization system, if that makes sense. Yeah.
and it's interesting because like i think the ascension pages that you buy um if you are like if you are playing certain gods that you really really enjoy playing like i can understand being like okay i'm gonna unlock some of these pages well it's like it's the old mastery levels right like um so if i remember correctly again haven't actually played smite one and in years and years and years, but if I remember correctly...
you used to gain worshippers and level up your god. And worshippers was just their word for XP. As you played specific gods, you would get more worshippers, you would level them up, and then once you hit like... I can't remember if it was 5 and 10 or if it was 10 and 20. But anyways, it doesn't matter. Once you hit certain milestone levels, you would get special skins. And I feel like...
There was like one skin that was like golden. It was like the gods base skin, but they're like skin was gold. And then all of their like clothing and accents and stuff was like this like rich blue color. And then the like super high level skin was like you were made of like diamond. Am I remembering this correctly? Is this ringing any bells to you?
Look, I will be honest. I don't think I was ever good enough to get like the worshiper. I think I got like one or two. Like I probably need because she's like default basic hero. Everyone can play. But yeah, she, I think, yeah. Anyways, it's basically that same system again, except for instead of that just being available to everybody, you have to pay real money to unlock the pack.
the mastery path that leads you to those skins. So yeah, it's not great. You do get a skin immediately there's like as soon as you level up high enough to ascend then you can unlock the pass and you get an ascension skin right away um but yeah it's uh not not great not great yeah those are all locked behind like and again like i say i'm pretty sure it was like 10 bucks because every
Every god is like locked behind this $10 transaction. So like if you bought all the Ascension passes for the currently available gods, you'd probably spend 500 bucks. Like it's just insane. And I know like. You don't need to buy them for every god. You buy them for the gods that you play. And, you know, everyone isn't going to play every character. But like, oh man, I just...
Yeah, I was very disappointed in the monetization in Smite 2. But the gameplay was great and the graphics looked awesome. Like I was really, really happy with our experience. The game itself was super fun, which we knew because again, Smite was really fun and we had a ton. and fun in there so yeah like it was a really really good game night um but yeah the monetization is is like beyond predatory it's terrible
Yeah. Yeah. Like, as you said, gameplay was super fun. We were constantly catching ourselves like this feels like more of a remaster than. or remake rather like a full remake of smite yeah um and jumping in we played characters that we played a bunch of and there was like muscle memory you know i was playing
Engine is the word I was looking for like 15 minutes ago. Yeah, they rebuilt the game in, I think, Unreal 5. They rebuilt the game in Unreal 5. Yeah, and with a brand new engine. I don't even know what they built it on the first time. It was it was built. I think it came out in like 2012. So it would have been built in like the late. I think it was Unreal 3. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, it would have been built in like 2009, 2010.
Yeah, it was it was old. So yeah, it needed an update for sure. It barely even ran. enough like well enough on my system for me to be able to like go and click the divine legacy thing and be like yes please link my accounts okay i'm never opening you again uninstall yeah yeah it's uh it's It's not great. It doesn't run great, requires a bunch of junk to actually run. It turns out, I guess I hadn't run some older titles on the PC I was playing on, so it took some extra time.
Uh, but, but yeah, like once, once we had that all set up, we did spend a good portion of the day prior to playing, like kind of going back and forth in, in our discord DM being like, so what's this, how does this work? a lot of confusion don't click this you definitely need to download that but don't touch this and don't buy that yeah and and smite was like kind of a technical hazard because i was also trying to figure out like
You know, going through my email, just searching for Smite, like what was going on. I remember there was a whole thing where I was like working with support because like the launcher wasn't working. They've completely gotten rid of the high res launcher. It's all through Steam now or Epic. Yep. So.
And luckily I was worried like, okay, I was worried that because most of it was done in the high res launcher that I was going to have trouble in steam, but like the instructions on what to do while like huge and cumbersome. did work i linked my steam account i downloaded smite on steam i booted it up it took a couple times to like actually load properly but when it did i as you said it hit the divine legacy link boom
Alt F4, get the heck out of there and boot up something made in this decade. And we had a lot of fun. And I think the tech behind... For game night, so for folks who weren't there, we streamed it to our patrons' Discord channel. People were able to hang out, chat with us while we played. Some played with us, some just... Hung out. Hung out and got to watch Thanomatoste at work. It was great.
It was great. Yeah, it was a ton of fun. So if that sounds like something that you want to get in on, we're going to do polls every month in order to pick what game we play. So you can go to patreon.com slash thegamersin to support us and to vote on what our next game night is going to be. Our game night is going to be on Friday, July 25th.
uh in july just because normally it's the third friday of every month but because of some scheduling things and summer being summer it's going to be friday july 25th so again patreon.com slash the gamers in if you would like to get involved with Game Night. I had a great time. It was a lot of fun. I am also having a great time and I'm totally obsessed with The Altars. Completely, utterly obsessed, which is weird because it's sci-fi.
¶ The Alters
And I don't usually get overly obsessed with sci-fi, but... I'm really enjoying this game. I'm almost done my first playthrough. I would have been done my first playthrough if I wasn't totally shit at the game and completely and utterly failed and had to go back and replay the entire final act. Yeah. Yeah, we this is something I was going to touch on. I should have mentioned we weren't here last week. We had to push the show, but I was going to talk about it last week.
uh i had gotten a review code for it so i've been playing it for the last couple weeks and um then josh who was playing smite 2 with us we got talking about the alters because i saw he was playing as well on playstation that's where i said like jocelyn like you really do have to check this game out it's it it's i it's by the studio that made frost punk so yeah exactly which is why i was like okay yeah i'm in
But I had to actually go back and look at our show notes and be like, wait, why did Ryan tell me about this? What's going on? I'm like, I know he gave me a rundown. When did this happen? Game night. That makes sense. And then I was like, wait, have I only been playing this game for a few days? Because I feel like almost done. I'm like, yeah. I can't put it down. It's like all I've been doing is playing altars. It's yeah. I don't even know how to describe it. There's like so many.
interesting pieces to it it's like um you're exploring landscapes to find resources which is really cool there's like Base management, because you have to assign different people different tasks and make sure that you've got all the pieces that you need to succeed in your missions. There's also like... relationship building because everybody's got different personalities and you know like there's going to be conflicts and all that kind of stuff which apparently ryan is like way better at than me
conflict, conflict, conflict, conflict, conflict. Everyone murders each other. Oh, you know what the trick is? Give everyone what they want. And make everybody happy. It's as simple as that. It's so easy. So easy. I feel like I don't utilize movie night often enough. Oh, my God. Those movie nights are amazing. It's ridiculous. Oh, my God. Did you watch this? There's one, I think it's called My Future Ex-Girlfriend. Yes. Yep.
I was like, so you have the option to basically like sit in the social room and watch a movie. And then it actually like places your character on a couch and you watch from like a first person perspective and you watch. movies that they have created that live in the game. And you can hit and hold a button and fast forward and just get the happiness bonus from everybody.
for watching the movie but you don't have to watch the whole thing but why would you not watch these movies because they're like i don't even know how long they are
But I'm just like, this is ridiculous. They're more like skits, and they're full motion video. They are skits, yeah. They all have like a... a similar vibe to them it's it's almost so the idea in the game is is you're a character who's lost in space and you brought a bunch of this um your personal items and they're scattered throughout the maps which includes like
your character being, or one of the characters, I guess, being a huge fan of, of these Chris and Jack film series, but they're really like shorts and they all kind of have that same vibe of like my, my future ex-girlfriend. Uh, there's one about, um, you know, mind wipe or the last thing you'll ever remember or something. And they're very. Oh, I haven't watched that one yet because everyone was really touchy. And I'm like, this sounds like maybe it could be. I think it's always a boost. Yeah.
I think it's always a boost, but knowing me and knowing the way my gameplay goes, we'd watch that movie and they'd be like... Oh, so you're trying to control our minds, eh? Or something. God damn it. It's a good impression of the technician. I think you nailed it.
uh yeah it's it's a really it's a really interesting game and i kind of tried to boil down like what it is like the story is basically like you wake up on this planet you're part of a mission and you discover your whole crew is is is dead and you're the only one left And the whole point of these missions is to discover rare, you know, resources on these distant planets. And you have this base. And the idea of the gameplay is, as you said, it's part exploration.
um i kind of saw it as like a mix of like it's got the frost punk sort of You know, resource management, it's got satisfactory where you're setting up bases and outposts and connecting them with pylons. But it's very basic. You're not building like conveyor belts and, you know. automated machinery you're building sort of like i said just outposts and um little buildings that's on the outside but then there's like the base building which is your sort of giant wheel base and you have like certain
I guess, slots that you can, you can build in and it's like a resource. Yeah. So like, it's, it's like a, almost like it. Oh, what is it? Fallout that you compared it to the inventory management in Fallout. where like everything has a set um like size and orientation and they're all rooms within your base so you have to have like a kitchen so people can eat you have to have a you know dormitory for everybody or you know personal quarters or whatever and you have to have like
a social room and an infirmary and the captain's quarters and storage. And you have to try to figure out how to fit all of those literally square boxes in a round wheel. So there's like...
definitely a min-maxing of your space that can happen there. So yeah, I think it just like, as soon as I get tired of... one type of gameplay whether that's like exploration or base building or whatever it's like there's something else available for me to do because then all of a sudden you have to do like crew management and you have to make sure that like
Everyone is making sure that the ship runs properly and that you have all of the things that you need to have in order to survive whatever the next tragedy or emergency is.
So yeah, you have like, and like I say, then there's also the relationship building part too. So it's like, as soon as you're starting to get tired of one thing, the game encourages you to switch to something else. So I found like I was never getting... bored because there were always different ways to interact with the game it wasn't just the same loop over and over and over yeah and they're constantly adding new layers as you progress through the game as well like other things to collect
other mechanics to sort of avoid or engage with, depending on your risk factor of how much you want to risk. I did really enjoy like act one is like very much a setup, but you are going to make mistakes. And I think the game doesn't really, we were talking pre-show. We're going to keep this spoiler free, but I think the game does a really good job of making you feel like you made.
an incorrect choice but it kind of goes it kind of like evens itself out i think specifically with the minor character like you and i had um a very similar outcome but chose like different paths And and like, I mean, it does really feel like as you're playing through it, like a lot of your conversations and your choices do have an impact. There is like a.
he will remember that type thing where depending on even just in normal conversation, the character will react and you'll see either a red reaction, which is negative or a green reaction, which is positive. And. that directly connects to not only how the character will treat you, but also how...
the character will perform their assignments when you, when you give them roles to do at the base. Uh, and they'll work either, they'll either they'll go from refusing to work all the way to being so happy. They'll work a 12 hour shift, which, you know, You have to be pretty happy to be like, yeah, I'm going to work a 12-hour shift. I mean, it's for your own benefits. You're trying to survive. So it works out. And these other characters that you have in the game we didn't mention are clones.
of yourself but with a different outcome i guess yeah with a different path through life so which i mean they They show you in the interface, and this was another one of the things that I kind of wish they hadn't. Although, as Ryan pointed out in our Discord chat, each... different clone has a different like buffer bonus or like reason why you would choose them. So if it was totally.
obscured then because it's like making a clone is a very very it's probably your most limited resource in the game so you have to be very purposeful about choosing who it is that you're going to create so for that reason i understand why they made it very obvious but um basically there's like moments in your life that had you made a different choice you would have gone down a different path and you would have had a different future and so those branching paths create different clones.
And at first I was like reading through like the timeline and I was like, oh man, okay, the first thing I'm going to try is like this and then I'm going to make this call and I'm going to do this thing, this thing. And then it was like... way more locked down than I thought it was going to be. But now that I've played more of the game, I understand why. Because like...
Now that I've seen how many different interactions there are, how many different conversations there are and how there's like keepsakes that go with each different clone and, you know, like movie preferences and, you know. If you had like one clone for every single possible change in decision or branch, like that would be way too many characters. I understand why they limited to, I think there's like maybe like 10.
clones yeah i think yeah there's around that i think there is 10 you can't uh you can't get them all in a single playthrough you actually can't get um all of the research. So there's a research component to it. You can't unlock all of that either. Like you do have like a. a tech path choices yeah yeah like the game really does you know encourage multiple playthroughs even i i had had to i think i shut the playstation down and and had to boot back into the game and
It'll tell you what choices you made already if you're replaying a certain section, which I thought is a nice touch, that it kind of remembers all of that. Because obviously, if you're playing a second playthrough, like...
I would struggle to make the like, make bad choices. Like knowing if there is a positive outcome is like, why would I, why would I choose the negative? And sometimes it's clear. And sometimes it's not, if it's going to be a positive reaction, you kind of get to know your alters.
and how they react all of your reactions aren't even necessarily always positive or always negative like you can choose a conversation option and it can be both so they might like increase their motivation, but then they get anxiety as well because there's so much like stress on them to perform. So like they're motivated, but they're worried about it. So like, yeah, not every not every conversation option is just straight good or straight bad, which I also found to be really interesting.
And it made the conversations more engaging. So like if I was, you know, talking to an alter who maybe had a personality that already was because they have like almost like word clouds of how they're feeling. And so like if you know. that one of your alters is maybe lacking motivation but is very anxious, then you might try to make conversation options and decisions based on trying to boost a certain moodlet of theirs. It's tricky. It's very difficult. It's a lot to manage. But again, very fun.
so fun that i can't wait to finish this playthrough so that i can go back to act one do another playthrough and not fuck it up because like i'm pretty sure that when my playthrough is over like i did such a bad job and i'm not going to say why and I'm not going to spoil anything or whatever. But I did so bad in this playthrough that I'm 100% sure that I'm just going to get the planet explodes and everybody dies and that's your ending.
The worst possible ending. I think there's a trophy for that. There probably is. I guess you have to do it now. I... I'm about, I'm, I'm near the end. I think I'm on the final mission and then I'll be into the home stretch. I, again, I just really enjoyed the pace of it.
I did find myself like you obsessing. Like it's been a while, but I, I said to Ashley, I said, I'm going to stay up tonight and play some video games. I just, I think I just finished recording another show and I'm like, yeah, I'm not tired. And I haven't played the altars in a bit. So I'm going to play that. And then I was up to like two o'clock.
which I have not done in a lot of time. Not ideal. Actually, the only reason I stopped playing is that Abby woke up in the middle of the night and came down and was like, what are you doing? And I'm like, definitely not playing. playing video games at what time is it? Oh, okay. Uh, let's get you back to bed. Uh, and it's, it's, it is. Again, as you said, it's a game where it's definitely like, oh, one more day. We'll just do one more day. And then you go through the loop of like...
waking up and talking to your alters, then assigning them tasks. You get to set up all the production and assignments. See, maybe this is why I'm failing so hard is like you wake up and talk to your alters. I wake up and I'm like, get the fuck to work.
There's no time for talking. What do you mean you have a speech bubble? I don't care. Start mining. At least we know the management styles here. This is why we're good co-hosts because one of us is... making sure like get the job done the other good cop bad cop yeah bad cop oh not bad cop more just like you know hasn't had their coffee yet cop maybe so it's fine I'll take it. Okay. No, but I, I really enjoyed like the automation of it, which is all done through these, these screens. And.
Being like, oh, I got to make sure my production's all set up and then make sure my assignments are min-maxed and make sure the research has two things queued up for the scientist because he gets cranky when he's not being a scientist. Do you know when I realized that there was a research queue? Uh, no, I don't like, there is a lot of stuff kind of hidden behind like, yeah, yeah, you'll figure it out.
Act free. Oh, gosh. Yeah. And by then I was like, I was so resource starved that it didn't even matter because like I didn't have enough stuff to research anything else anyways. So I'm like. okay, you work in the kitchen now. Enjoy. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, I really did feel like that. And then you can set in the production, you can set like upholds, which basically.
One of the tedious things about the game early on is like, oh, I have to have a certain amount of food. I have to have a certain amount of resources built, like batteries.
drill bits and stuff but then you can just say like okay always have three of this in my inventory two of this in my inventory and then whoever's assigned to the workshop just builds them and keeps them running and like that was super awesome and and again as the game progresses like they they start to introduce um anomalies in the world that you can you can take on for additional resources and that's like more of a
light action approach yeah yeah yeah it was uh it's good the game doesn't overstay its welcome like i i do feel the one thing i think that stands out as like a bit of a negative is the maps are kind of bland. Like it is barren wasteland planet. Um, except for act two, I, or was it, what was the, what was the river? Oh, that's all I'll say. What was that one?
Yeah, that was really good. It was a strong start. And then I think from there on, by the end, by the last act, it's like, this is just a barren, felt like a bit of a barren wasteland. But, you know, the skyboxes are really nice. I can give it that. Yeah. The only thing I wish that you could like set a ping on the map because I got turned around so many times. Yeah, like a beacon.
Yeah, just set down a beacon. Exactly. And I only need one. I don't need to mark up everything. It just it would be really, really nice to be like, hey. this is the climbing thing you're looking for so you don't have to like take three steps look at the map take three steps look at the map yeah i'm definitely guilty of that um and i i feel like yeah that would be a good addition
Just to kind of give even even if they were to say like. Even if it was a consumable. Yeah. Like even if it was another thing that you had to build like five minerals or whatever. And here you go. Have a have a map beacon you can place. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, but, you know, as much as the game does have some little things like that, I really do feel like everything else is part of the package is really well put together. Yeah. The fact that all of the alters.
as far as I could hear, are voiced by the same voice actor, just with different, sometimes slight changes to the accent and the... tone uh depending on their lifestyle but other times you know a whole different accent did you get the doctor yes i did yeah okay yeah when he first started talking i was like wow okay and so he has a he's more of like a laid-back guy it felt like um
To me, it reminded me of like sort of, you know, country Matthew McConaughey style, like a little bit. All right. All right. All right. And the idea there is that that was a split. And right off the bat, when you unlock the. the altar mechanic, you can see all of the branches that you can unlock. Yeah. And where, what the event is that makes the split happen. And yeah, you can't see.
their whole life branch until after you create them basically like creating the altar makes the offshoot path and then you can go and read everything that happened to them Um, but yeah, it's, uh, that was one that branched off. I think the earliest. Yes. That's the reason he has like a different, a different accent. Yeah. Yeah. He, he.
took a totally different path basically yeah yeah and it's it's interesting and i think they do a really good job of like setting up the stories and the characters and the way they react to certain choices while still feeling like all these characters have a common connection and that they are the same. person just with different experiences like even the doctor like there is a shared history of at least like their early years
Well, and there's it seems like there's like shared personality traits, right? And some personality traits are stronger in some alters than in others. But they're all there. Right? Like, they're all kind of competitive. They're all kind of driven. They're all pretty decently smart. They're, you know, like, they have shared characteristics. It's just like...
You can't be everything all the time, so different paths have different strengths and weaknesses as well, right? Yeah. But all the same characteristics. Yes, yeah. And I did think the story as it evolved and sort of unfolded did feel like it was engaging to kind of learn.
what had happened to the mission and what's happening back on earth and, and what's going on with the corporation, but also felt like there was like branching paths, depending on what you chose. Like I think you and I, based on our choice at the end of act two being different.
are experiencing a very different story in terms of the you you have these calls you can make to people on earth that are connected to the story and depending on your choices they will react or give you different information and um you're gonna fail quests you're gonna fail requests like i think early on you were talking to a character and and the quest was like find someone who can you know connect with this character and essentially like
you know, throw them off the scent. And I didn't have an altar that could have that conversation with the character. So I failed the quest. And then as I progressed, I learned like, oh, this was probably definitely the altar that I would have had to recruit or. I guess, create earlier in the game to have that quest follow through, but it doesn't like, it just affects how the story progresses. It doesn't like completely lock you out of, you know, a storyline. Which is kind of why...
I'm really interested in doing a second playthrough because like I want to meet the other characters but also want to know like how different the story actually ends up being. like how much did my, not only choices of like clones, but also conversations that I had with them, like ways I interacted with other people.
like did that actually really change much of anything yeah and again like we're not at the end yet i haven't i haven't finished like i like i say i i got all the way to the final mission completed the final mission but then um was unable to actually finish the game so uh for for reasons for mechanics reasons that will become obvious if you actually play the game but i don't really want to talk about too much i don't want to spoil things but
Yeah, basically. And then I tried to go back a few days to fix my problem slash mistake slash timeline. And then that didn't work. So then I just went all the way back to the start of Act 3 and tried again. So I haven't actually seen how the story plays out after that final mission.
Knowing what that ending looks like, I'll have a better idea of what to do and what choices to make in the earlier acts in my second playthrough. And I'm really curious to see if it's different, if it's all that much different. There were definitely a lot of ways to die in Frostpunk and there were a lot of different narrative choices, but like overall, and that was actually one of my biggest problems with Frostpunk too, is overall the arch was the same.
No matter how you went about it, you always had to go to a place and do a thing because that was what the act was about. I'm curious to know how different the narrative actually is. or how much impact your choices have. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I do feel like once you get through the game, there are some pretty clear...
breaking points that you can sort of map out and be like, okay, I'm going to get different alters. I'm going to do a different tech path. There's lots of options in terms of like the resources you prioritize, which depending on how you want to mine them, like that can. That can differ as well in playthroughs. Like there's a whole automated build as well that I started to like look into later on in the game. So there's definitely a lot there.
And as you unlock the tiers of research, you can kind of look in at what's what's there. And there are like the reason it's limited, because like when you queue up a research, you can just say like, do this, do this and this. And it's just like a time thing. There is also certain research nodes that require a rare resource that is finite in your playthrough. So that's what kind of locks you into a certain path. But I never felt like I...
I never felt like I made a mistake when I was spending those resources. That must be so nice. Well, I thought I felt like it was balanced is what I'm trying to say. I guess I never made a mistake spending those resources because I never got those resources. So therefore, I couldn't spend them. So I mean, yeah, I just ended up basically with, well, basic.
research through the whole game why why didn't you get them like they're they're you must have got one because it's part of the critical path for story right yes yes i got i think maybe three okay yeah i just it's just again it's just a really really really really bad management me not understanding all of the systems and just yeah
really really really screwing up back too and then not having enough like time and resources to explore basically is what it came down to yeah and i really do feel like a second playthrough you'll Yeah, I'll get a lot more out of it, I think. Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, I don't want to talk about it too much more because I feel like we're going to get into spoiler territory. And I really think this game is really, really good with level of discovery. So I don't want to spoil too, too much. But I think overall, both Ryan and I, I'm obsessed with this game.
but i think we'd both recommend it right and i'm playing on gameplay game pass i know you said uh you got a code for it but yeah i'm playing it over on game pass but i think it's available is it available elsewhere yeah so it's on xbox oh yeah you said play you were playing on playstation yeah yeah so yep trophies there's trophies in there and i and i felt like you know it's a it's a fairly um
It's a fairly balanced thing. I don't know what the score is for how easy it is to get the platinum, but I was having a great time and I feel like this is one of those games where the trophies or achievements or whatever... would lead you down the critical path of discovering a majority of what the game has to offer in terms of story and experiences.
I think like in this specific instance, the trophies and achievements would be a good sort of guide to seeing everything the game has to offer. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, yeah, again, that is The Altars. And yeah, we're really, really enjoying it. And we'll probably have an update for you, I would say, probably next week. So get on it if that is something that you're interested in, because I think we're probably going to do our next.
Next time we cover it, we'll be talking about the ending. So obviously, spoilers, spoilers, spoilers. So get caught up is what I'm trying to say. If I can play it in three days, so can you. I do not actually recommend that because I'm pretty sure I've played like 25 hours or something ridiculous. It's about a 30 hour experience. It is about a 30 hour thing. Yeah. So I do not recommend mainlining it quite as hard as I have, but.
Yeah, definitely go and check it out. Also check out patreon.com slash thegamersin like Benjamin did. Thank you so much for supporting this show.
¶ News
Again, we did mention that we are doing monthly game nights now, so that is the third Friday of every month, but it is actually going to be the fourth Friday in July because of scheduling conflicts. Also, we have monthly host specials. So Ryan's is going up this week. And then mine should be up in a couple weeks from now, in July sometime. Go and check those out again. Patreon.com slash thegamersin if you want to get involved in all of this cool extra stuff.
That brings us to the news this week. We are getting a spinoff for Splatoon. It's going to be exclusive to the Switch 2. I'm pretty kind of stoked about this because it's the first thing. Mario Kart, cool. Donkey Kong, cool. I really, really liked the Splatoon franchise. I think another... Splatoon game is like up there for me with Mario and Zelda for things that will make me very seriously consider actually getting the Switch 2. Yeah.
now this is uh it was kind of surprising because like a lot of our stories not necessarily with the donkey kong one but there's a there's a There was an announcement today for another Switch game, the basketball one. They've been announcing a lot of the stuff in Nintendo today, like exclusively, and then everyone picks it up after that.
And this is one of those things where it's just like it was it was just a post in Nintendo today. Like, hey, we're making a Splatoon spinoff and it's called Splatoon Raiders. And it's. They did say it's a ways off though, or at least, um, yeah, they gave the impression that it's not coming anytime soon. So yeah, it's definitely going to be, it's, it sounds like it's next year.
if not late next year, like this is their sort of looking ahead, but they kind of tied it to the fact that they did a, they did an update for Splatoon three to sort of bump it up for the switch too. So, uh, that was a game that um i think i bought for an extra life we played it a couple times and i never did play the single player so like i think the switch 2 does offer like a lot of these opportunities to
dive into your backlog that you might not have finished or started in my case. But yeah, I'm excited for more Splatoon as well. Nintendo continues to do their own thing. They're literally announcing things exclusively on their own app. And look, I don't blame them because social media, they're not on Blue Sky yet. But social media is a bit of a hellscape. So yeah, I don't anybody who says like on Nintendo is so weird with their own app. And I'm like, honestly, it makes sense to me because.
i mean blue sky is nice they should just go to blue sky because honestly that would help me a lot i think i have like a reposter that i there's a lot of these like reposters that will just like take what's on x i think and just repost it to blue sky and it works but i don't know feels like it's feels like like a bit of a hack i guess Yeah, I don't follow any of those because I'm just like, I don't need any of that in my life. And I know that like...
It's rough, man, because I feel like I'm out of the loop in some things, but I'm just like, it's not worth it. It's not worth it. So yeah. Anyways, so Splatoon Raiders, that is coming exclusively to Switch 2 sometime. In the future. I don't know why I did that. That was really weird. Pretend I didn't do that. Donkey Kong Bonanza had a direct. And Ryan, I know you were super stoked about all of this.
does donkey kong look like something you're going to now be picking up i've already pre-ordered it so there you go and an amiibo which you know wow sometimes it happens uh sometimes you you buy Look, I know we were complaining about expensive video games, but I was skeptical. I said this when they announced it. I was kind of thinking about... how i felt about the original reveal with the switch 2 and it just kind of felt like this tech demo of description
uh, destructible environments and stuff with Donkey Kong. And, and he's got this like purple rock following him around. I'm like, I don't know. And I, you know, I had folks saying to me like, no, no, it's going to be amazing. It's going to be amazing. I was like, I, I will. I will wait and see. I would love to be proven wrong because again, I love Nintendo games. I want them to be cool. And with this direct, I think they showed off a lot more about the game.
put it more in line with this being like super mario odyssey follow-up style game uh and you no longer have like a small rock falling around. You have like a young Pauline who's, who's part of your sort of a character, um, your character set. And I think they just showed a lot more and, and made it.
made it seem like a more fleshed out game like there's gonna be tons to do tons to collect the music is like all classic donkey kong sort of remixes and stuff so that it's got that going for it and and uh And yeah, I just, I really did feel like this is what we were waiting for. And, and my original thoughts on the switch to launch of like Mario cart being an end game. I almost feel like they should have swapped it and launched with.
donkey kong and had mario kart be the the end game but but then i also understand like the luigi's mansion thing of like why isn't this a mario title why are we getting you know a spin-off instead of like we want our 3d Mario. And I, I mean, maybe Nintendo learned from that, those experiences previously and, and thought like, let's give them the for sure thing. And then. sell them a little bit later on this like non mario 3d platformer uh yeah i i think it looks really good it you know uh
It looks great when it's running. It looks like it's performing well. They focus less on the destructible stuff and focus more on the adventuring and exploration and finding the banana gems and stuff. I'm looking forward to it. It looks like it's going to be a lot of fun. And I'm glad that I'm glad that Nintendo didn't wait too long to give the full reveal.
Speaking of waiting a while, Bungie has officially delayed marathon. So they've been out in, I guess, is it alpha or beta? Anyways, they've been they've been doing some testing and getting terrible feedback. So apparently. they are now delaying it it was supposed to be out in september i think so like basically like three months from now yes
Yeah, it was supposed to be out in September, which honestly is odd because like that isn't that also when Concord launched? Like, yes, I think so. I feel like they're like really there. I mean, yeah, everything about this really smelled like, you know, this is this is another Concord, like all this negative press. And it's unfortunate that Concord.
is it didn't get an opportunity to sort of course correct. Whereas it sounds like PlayStation is giving Bungie time to, to figure this stuff out. Like, I don't think marathon can fail in a state of like, if it does Bungie. ceases to be able to do anything but but make destiny forever like you know PlayStation put a lot of money into the acquisition and they're not known to be you know well we saw what happened with Concord they're not
they're not known to be very like good with failure. Like they kind of see a failure and like, yeah, let's just burn it to the ground and go to the next thing. So I'm, I am worried that if I'm glad they got it delayed because it seems like it needs serious work.
But to delay it and then have it come out, I wonder what they'll change to sort of address it. I know there's a lot of controversy around it, but I don't know if there was like... specifically was the gameplay bad i thought like there was a lot of talk of stolen art which was was proven to be true like a lot of artwork was yeah they they basically used ai and ai stole a character from a specific artist
and yeah oh wow yeah it was bad so yeah there was there was that and then there were like you say complaints about gameplay and stuff and it just seems like there isn't a whole lot of um positive feedback It like I know that they can't go back to the drawing board considering their game supposed to launch in three months. But yeah, I don't know. Based on the reporting I've seen around the game.
I don't seem to be able to pull out like tease out what is salvageable in Marathon. So I don't know. I mean, this this might be. It feels almost the opposite of Concord in that way because I feel like that one was like really good, but nobody played it. This seems like it doesn't even have that going for it, you know? Yeah.
Yeah. And also because it's based on a franchise that people really enjoy, like Marathon is like a classic sort of franchise for Bungie and bringing it back is like not a first person, you know. shooter narrative game but as a first person shooter i think it's an extraction shooter or a team shooter so like
But yeah, there's one thing that Bungie does really well, is designing these first-person shooters, like the mechanics of the shooting, and it feels really good. That's what Destiny is sort of built around. But it sounded like it just had a lot of... A lot of struggling going around with this one. And they are going to continue to test as they go back to the drawing board, which is good. So hopefully this is a positive thing.
Well, that's the thing. We are always supportive of delays when it means that the game's going to be better and the devs don't have to crunch, right? Very understanding here at TGI when games get delayed. I think for me, it's more that like... In this case, it sounds like they don't know what they're doing. Like, it doesn't really seem like what they've put together.
is going to do well because you know it seems like you know controversy about art aside the gameplay doesn't seem to be getting rave reviews so like if you don't have great visuals and you don't have great gameplay the fuck do you have yeah that's true i mean it is a video game
You need one or more of those. Like narrative, maybe, except this isn't a narrative game. So you don't have that either. Like, yeah, I feel like there's... nothing to write home about nothing to be like oh you have to play this because they they need to fill in that blank and i don't think they have yet so we'll have to see um what they end up coming up with
We're going to cover a couple of Xbox things now, but not to be like, we're also going to touch on the rumored layoffs as well. So don't think that we are going to gloss over that. We're just going to get through the news first before we talk about layoffs. Microsoft has confirmed that they are doing another generation. They've partnered with AMD and they've promised that we're going to have backwards compatibility with our existing Xbox library. So that was kind of the first big news.
confirming what we kind of already know there will be another generation congratulations yeah the the the stuff that i think got mixed in here with with this announcement that that is new is they, they reference specifically the Xbox ecosystem, allowing for multiple stores, multiple digital stores. So supporting.
Other third party storefronts such as I don't know. I think these are examples of what a third party storefront could be, not necessarily a confirmation of what will be available, but they do mention Steam. this article specifically steam epic game store and gog which again kind of makes sense like we're talking about the company that makes windows so there should be you know that At least from like a coding perspective, like they should be the most well positioned to.
make all those things work together considering they make the operating system that those third-party apps already work on. So you would think that between Microsoft and... you know, their Xbox gaming division that they would be able to make things work. But yeah, I think it's... It's good news. I mean, the more it is funny, though, like the more open they make the Xbox platform, the more it becomes just a PC, right?
With like set specs and a set price and, you know, like generations and stuff as opposed to.
being modular and being able to swap things out like you can do in a pc but basically in terms of the actual like software and how the thing runs like it's the same as the handheld like we're just we're getting closer and closer and closer to xbox machines just being windows machines yeah well it's something they say like they're working closely with the windows team to ensure that in their words windows is the number one platform for gaming and um they talk about how the next
generation xbox experience will not be locked to a single store tied to one device so continuing to build on that everything is an xbox campaign including them the medic quest 3s which is the the vr headset right yeah this was announced uh as of this recording like today and it is basically a 400 us
styled xbox headset which is the quest 3s edition and it'll come with um an xbox controller as well as the quest controllers so it's It's just a Quest 3S, but it's like branded Xbox, like a special edition, I guess, with some additional stuff. including three months of Game Pass. And the idea here is that everything can be an Xbox because of Xbox Cloud Gaming, which is available through Game Pass Ultimate streaming.
my Mac is an Xbox because I can access the Xbox cloud gaming. And I mean, like that doesn't sound like it's an Xbox to me, but to Microsoft that allows them to check the box that yes, it's an Xbox. We put an X on the box. Yeah, exactly. Oh, man. All right. Well, let's get into it. So there is a Jason Schreier rumor that came out breaking this morning that next week Microsoft is planning another major cut in.
its gaming division over at xbox which makes total sense when everything's gonna be an xbox then obviously we should cut the people making the fucking xbox but anyways This is going to be their fourth round of layoffs in the past 18 months, which is just bonkers. Whether this is true or not, apparently the Xbox division has been under a lot of pressure from Microsoft because of the Activision Blizzard acquisition.
and trying to actually boost their profit margins given the fact that they spent like 70 billion dollars on Activision Blizzard. So, yeah, they are instead of making stuff and making us want to buy their stuff, they're deciding to cut staff in order to make more money. So fuck them. It's one of those things where like, how can they keep laying off staff? Like, do they have that many people employed on their Xbox teams? Like, is this just part of.
Because remember, it feels like since they acquired ABK, it's just been nonstop, you know? Yeah, they're saying it's more company reorganization. It's like, how many times can you reorganize? What are the people left behind? Like, what is their quality of life? Because I can't imagine after laying off all of these people. Over and over and over again, like every literally three to four months, like the people who still work there must just be so, so burnt out.
Like, it must be so difficult to focus because you're always thinking you're going to be the target of a layoff. And then your just amount of work must be huge because, you know, you're now doing the job of three, four or five people. I don't know. This does not seem to be the way to do it. You cannot tell me that there are that many redundant people after the acquisition. It's no way. I don't believe it.
i think it's 100 profit motive motivated but they're not thinking uh they're thinking short-term profits not long-term success yeah like and this is the thing is there haven't been there haven't been like high profile, you know, uh, missteps from a, from a video game standpoint, like there haven't been like video games that come out and like flop. Like we're, we're traditionally that's how.
game development has gone like usually if a studio yeah that's how people lose their jobs is if your game is bad then you're like okay you get laid off your studio closes whatever or not even bad but just doesn't perform but like this yeah you know This sounds more just like, as you said, they need to cut staff in order to maximize profits again. You can only do this so many, so many times before you just have to. Yeah, you run out of staff.
And I think this is why it is important for every Microsoft game studio to unionize. I think this is where we are going to start seeing. When these announcements, if this happens, like right now it's quote unquote, a rumor or, or is being reported as something that'll happen next week. It'll be interesting to see how this does affect some of the unionized studios that have formed, but.
As we said, a union doesn't necessarily say like you'll never lose your job. Maybe that's why they're trying to trying to do all the layoffs as quickly as they can, because they've committed to supporting unions. So they have to lay everybody off before they can unionize. Gosh, that's.
bleak that's really really bleak yeah um i hope that's not the case but again it'll be really it's gonna be really hard to read like the corporate speak of you know how do we bend over backwards to make this sound not terrible like every time they do one of these rounds of layoff like
Phil Spencer has like a story of like, this really hurts and we want to make sure everyone's taken care of, but we need to do this for the business to be profitable, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's successful. And it just. It feels like the complete opposite of what we were sort of praising Microsoft for doing back when they were, they were kind of failing in the Xbox one era where they were really taking a more positive.
gamer focused approach and and now that they've kind of like found their footing a little bit with well massive amounts of microsoft money and game pass they are able to kind of snap back to this like sort of corporate way of of running a company of like well we need to maximize profit so who do we who do we get this time and the fact that it's xbox again just is like it it boggles my mind
Yeah, so we will keep you guys up to date if we hear anything next week. But for now, I think that's pretty much it. So if you guys want to join the conversation, head on over to tiny.cc slash TGI Discord. Or you can visit us on the web at GamersZoomPodcast.com or follow us over on Blue Sky. You can find me, Jocelyn, at jocplays.com.
Ryan is at ryanmurphy.ca and 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.