TGI 652 - WTF Xbox

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. We're thinking happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. Yeah, we're going to do our best today, guys. It's been a rough week. It's been... I mean, it's...

It's been interesting because we're recording a day late and I think last episode we talked about the rumors of the Microsoft layoffs that were coming. And then yesterday we were like, oh, I was exhausted. And I'm like, let's just record Thursday. Not knowing that today. No, wait. Today's Wednesday. Not knowing. Today's Wednesday. Yeah. Honestly, having the Canada Day holiday on a Tuesday has.

Totally messed up my sense of time. Like today felt like Monday, but it was Wednesday. Like it just, oh man. Anyways, total aside for my brain just being old and 40 now. Almost 41. Oh, my God, Ryan. I'm almost 41. Yeah. Oh, gross. You know what you could do is you could treat yourself to Donkey Kong Bonanza. Yeah.

uh yeah we are not buying anything oh yeah in our pre-show talk with all of my fucking drama i didn't even tell you that we're gonna have to drop about five thousand dollars to fix our car so like i'm not buying anything time soon probably for the rest of my life i totally forgot about that part because the rest of it we have no hot water tank right now This past week has just been a dumpster fire, personally, for me. And then layered on top of that is just the worst.

My feelings towards Microsoft are a little explodey right now for many different reasons. Yeah, we were we almost I mean, we are recording now, but we almost didn't record. I think we were having a conversation where we were playing chicken.

yeah like who's gonna cancel the show first yeah technically i already canceled last night so i thought you know it was whether or not i was gonna cancel it for the week and i was like i can't have that on my shoulders because the people who The people who got laid off at Microsoft. do deserve to have their story told is the way I am feeling. But I'm going to apologize right now because this episode might be a little bit not up to my normal standards of happy and positive.

I really try my best to be fun and entertaining and happy in general. And I don't feel any of those things today, guys. So the vibes are going to be off and I'm sorry. Oh, that's, it's totally fair. And I think that when we were discussing it, and I was kind of thinking about it, I was like, well, like... Everything has been coming out today. It was becoming clearer and clearer as the day went on. But at the end of it all, tomorrow or next week, it's still going to be a reality that we will...

We would always cover on the show because it's too big not to. And as you said, for the 9,000 people that have lost their jobs, complete projects canceled, teams shuttered. It's part of, you know, discussing it is, I think it helps honor those that like did the work and Microsoft just sort of cast aside. I always find that the the CEO mumbling memo type stuff that they got to say something in an email because that's, you know, corporate kind of corporate.

But at the end of the day, it just never reads the way you want it to read. And there are companies in this industry that are doing it. I don't want to say right, but like better than this. And I think that I've said before, like, it's weird. Like you almost feel like not supporting them is just going to make more of these stories happen. But.

This is the fourth major layoff from this company that they've done, and clearly continuing to support them is not stopping them from doing it. So I almost wonder if it may be time to... to hang up the old halo machines and uh you know move on to greener pastures i don't know so like i said i'm multiple reasons to be super pissed at microsoft this week but like very very personally

My like Xbox account is just broken. And I spent like my entire vacation day dealing with their incompetent tech support. And just thinking like, maybe if you hired people that.

could build things that either like didn't break or when they broke they knew how to fix them like just stop firing all your staff because your shit is super broken it's still not fixed but don't worry guys i've been escalated i i am escalated right now let me tell you but like it's at the point where i'm just like yeah like i was planning on buying the handheld this holiday not doing that now i'm planning if

to cancel my game pass like i don't plan to buy the next xbox like i'm just fuck fable i'm gonna be a playstation girlie from now on and they're

Like Ryan said, they're doing the same sort of shit, but at least slightly better. I don't even know. Maybe I'm just not even a console gamer anymore. Maybe I'm just going to be an indie Steam gamer and then... valve's gonna shit the bed like i just i don't know such like a bad mental gaming place right now like but yeah like i am i am done i am done with xbox like i am so pissed yeah and i think that's fair i i honestly i feel like

You can only withstand so much. And I like to think that we're fairly positive people on this show. In general, I think so. Yeah, we don't like it when people... harsher vibes man so like when bad news like this keeps happening it's really hard to i don't think it's like it's always going to be difficult to talk about that bad news but like you just you don't want to be

part of it anymore and i'm not saying like oh we're not going to play video games anymore there's plenty of other stuff to do yeah for me personally i feel like um in general i will give a company a path If you need to restructure and shit is going down and your company's been mismanaged and you need to do some layoffs in order to fix...

like to right the ship, okay, you get a pass. You don't get to fire 6,000 people and then two months later fire 9,000 people and that like on and on and on and on and on because we all know what you're doing. You just want to try to maximize your profits and Extract as much productivity out of your workers as you possibly can in order to like just.

make as much money as possible for yourself and your shareholders and get your fucking multi-million dollar bonuses at the end of the year and like it's just really starting to piss me off not even starting to piss me off but like I am at a breaking point where I can no longer support devs.

and i'm sorry but like i'm not gonna prop up these companies anymore like i'm just like i feel really sorry for the people who still work there and i have friends who still work there And I just can't do it anymore because me supporting companies that do shit like this.

Like you said, Ryan, it's not changing anything. They're still doing this over and over and over again. So you know what? I'm going to try the voting with your dollars thing and you just don't get my money anymore. Fucking shit company. I told you guys the vibes were going to be so off tonight. I'm so sorry. Right. And I think it's important to, you know, it's fine to be upset. I'm...

I'm upset when I read this news and then kept checking in. I'm like, oh, it's getting worse. It's getting worse. Yeah, I feel like we should just let's just we've already talked about it. Let's just we'll just talk about the layoffs now right off the top and then we'll get into everything else afterwards. Because, yeah, so basically, if you.

didn't hear all the news today, there are a lot of projects that have been cancelled. Warcraft Rumble is not getting any more content. They've laid off most of their team. The ZeniMax MMO has been cancelled. Perfect Dark has been cancelled. Rare's Everwild project has been cancelled. And their... I can't remember his role now, but I saw it scroll by in all of the craziness today. The rare...

He was one of the gaming leads, but he's been with the company since 1995. Yeah. He is no longer there. It was unclear as to whether he left or was laid off. But anyways, he's not there anymore. um and 50 of the staff at turn 10 which does uh forza and i think ryan you said they do some halo stuff too uh gone 50 of the staff just gone like fuck you microsoft

Yeah. So I had read that the Rare guy had left because his project, Everwild, was canceled. Oh, okay. A lot of the original... Actually, I didn't realize there was still original... rare talent that was still there uh and i'm guessing that this is this is one of the last few i honestly i saw a photo of that guy and there is like did he start working at two like i think that's a 90s photo

okay i was like oh my god that's a banjo render from from banjo kazooie so i think that's a that's a that's a file photo that's a 30 year old photo okay because i was literally like oh my god this guy looks like Like he's in his early 20s. How has he been already working there for 30 years? What's happening? What is reality these days? I don't even know anymore.

and uh for turn 10 so that's interesting so forza is two teams uh turn 10 is the folks that do the motorsport version which is the more um in my opinion the more niche sort of racing simulator forza technical simulation stuff okay versus the the fun zip zip car showroom game horizon is what uh is what that franchise is called um No, Ryan, Horizon is the game with the robot dinosaurs. Oh, my mistake. But no, Playground Games is Forza Horizon and the new Fable game.

uh that being said there are two studios that are that are very connected and it would not surprise me if if there was some overlap like again right now as of this recording um We don't know all the details and a lot of this is is half hearsay and half like memos leaked. But I imagine by next week it'll be a lot clearer. There are some folks that that have been impacted that still don't know their.

where they're landing or or or how their job is affected like it seems to be well when you lay off 9 000 people across a worldwide um company uh Yeah, we should be clear. The 9000 number is Microsoft. That's not all in the Xbox umbrella, but gaming was heavily impacted. Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. I know I did see some stories out there, like a lot of, so for example, I'm pretty sure Zenimax.

The MMO studio for ZeniMax was unionized, and the Bethesda union had put out a statement stating that... you know while they they can't do much about the layoffs they are working to to help impacted staff members so again going back to unions definitely help but they don't prevent uh situations like this um but they can definitely help for sure help help mitigate the the impact

Yeah, and that was one thing that Phil Spencer did say in his email was that basically people who are impacted by these layoffs are given priority review if they apply to other open jobs in the company. But like, I don't know, I even like take that with a grain of salt because like he also he wrote in this like everyone's getting fired email. Don't worry, because Microsoft's platform hardware and game roadmap have never looked stronger. So it's like you're saying, again, like in one breath.

a whole bunch of people are going to lose their jobs but don't worry because everything that you've built is super great so thanks get fucked like Dude, read the room. It is such a bizarre message. And I know that it was probably meant to reassure the people that are still there.

But all that says to me as an employee is it doesn't matter how hard I work. It doesn't matter how great the thing is that I make, whether it's the hardware, the platform, the game, the whatever. Doesn't matter how good I am at my job. you're going to milk me for all I'm worth. You're going to make me make the amazing thing and then you're going to fire me anyway. So why would I bend over backwards for you? Like, I'm going to show up, do the bare fucking minimum and go home.

Like, very inspiring. Way to go. Definitely not, you know, running Xbox into the ground or anything. I really I feel like. A moment like this that has followed three or four other moments like this in the last two years, it really shows that new leadership is needed at Xbox, not just because... These choices are, you know, one person's fault. But at the end of the day, like you have a very public person. They pay you. They pay you the big bucks.

to take fucking responsibility so explain to me if you are failing so hard that you have to fire thousands of people every few months maybe maybe you shouldn't be the fucking boss anymore yeah Well, I mean, yeah, that's what I'm getting at is I really do feel like Phil Spencer should likely step down because this is I don't I mean, I don't think he should be allowed to step down. I think he should be fucking fired tomorrow.

I don't think him being fired. Like, this is the other thing is like, I really, I look at what happened with this comes up a lot. I'm just really, really mad, Ryan. I know you're mad. It's fine. It's all good. I mean, I just don't see the difference between him being fired and him stepping down. Either way, he...

If he's get fired, maybe if he gets fired, he doesn't get a compensation package. I don't know. I don't know how it works. Maybe either way, he gets a bunch of money for leaving. When you say like steps down, it's like it implies that he has some sort of choice. in the matter like he chose to leave you know maybe you know he did a good job everything is fine but when you get hired it's because you're bad at your job you don't deserve it anymore so get out

Yeah, no, that's fair. Also, laid off and fired are not the same thing. I am not saying that 9,000 people lost their jobs today and deserved it. Just to be clear, laying off and firing, two different things. Bill Spencer should be fired. Capital F. So this pops into my head every time something like this happens. And we always read the memos from the CEO, the corporates.

And it all sounds the same. And I'm just reminded of, you know, with Nintendo when the I think it was the 3DS and the Wii U were both having issues and there was public news that. And I think there is some, you know, some other stuff going on with the anecdote, but boiled down to it, there was news that the CEO corporate level, like management, they took a pay cut.

And over the over, you know, firing people. I think there is like a law maybe, you know, in Japan that requires that to happen, which I mean, hey. You know, maybe we have more laws protecting workers. That may be a good idea. And I've seen a lot of stories going around about that and how Iwata has talked about, you know, before his passing had talked about. how layoffs aren't good for business, for morale, for all that.

That quote pops up every time someone in the gaming industry does layoffs. I mean, could you imagine if like every time Nintendo put out a dud, they're like, well, gotta fire that team. It's like, it's just. And same with Sony. Sony does, you know, some weird stuff they did with Concord. They built a thing for six years, had it out for two weeks and then shuttered the team like they have clear examples on their side.

of mismanagement and blaming developers instead of blaming, you know, the people who make these decisions. But I, I think like Xbox is just, they've shown the worst of it. And i don't i don't think this i don't think we can do it again where we're like as you said like okay like you you did it again you got rid of some like these are heavy projects like a zenimax mmo that's in development for eight years

Perfect Dark that's been in development for six years, high, high budget title, Everwild in development for 10 years, kind of spinning its wheels like these are. You can look at these on paper and say, like, these are big projects. But at the end of the day, like, why spend all that time and effort and money and development and, you know, human resources to just like say, ah.

this is the year. Just, just get rid of it. It does. It doesn't compute to me. Like why not use your Excel money? You're telling me you couldn't spin that into anything else. Like salvage it. Like there are. And I guess I don't get it in that you set up a new studio. Let's take Perfect Dark, for example. You set up a new studio, the most expensive place. in the United States of America to make a game in Santa Monica. You build a brand new studio there.

And you're going to make a new perfect dark, high budget, stealth action, like a game that kind of ticks a lot of boxes to be popular amongst the mainstream. And and then you just you showcase it. looks looks great um you know it it wows a lot of people and then it goes silent for a couple years and all and and you're talking it up like a lot of these projects maybe not the zenimax mmo but um because that i didn't know was a thing

Perfect Dark, Everwild. Phil Spencer's out there talking it up like, oh, they're making great progress. It's all corporate speak for shareholders and to pump consumers up. And I just... At this stage, like you just can't believe it anymore from this company. And whenever they say we hear you gamers and we're going to give you Xbox everything. Here's a new meta quest. Like you're they're making like a lot of bad moves.

in the in it being very hard to trust that company specifically with with your choices uh you know like the fact that they before before we talked about this we had a story about you know um oh xbox hardware is it's not dead we talked about it last week they're gonna have a new generation of consoles i'm like okay i at this stage like i don't think they're i i think they're

Pretty much, you know, not lying, but like saying saying half true. So like, yeah, they're going to have another box that's labeled Xbox, but it's it's not going to be like what we've had before. This is not equivalent of a PS6. Especially when we're seeing the partnerships with outside companies, there's a good chance the next Xbox won't be built by Xbox.

true yeah it might just again it might just be a lock somebody else made that yeah somebody that then they just put the the xbox logo on and call it a day yeah Yeah, and I know Xbox still has plenty of studios under their sort of banner, plenty of games. They are not exiting the industry, but...

But with a day like today, they're starting to like move. And like we've seen it with like Sea of Thieves going multi-platform and a whole bunch of other first party stuff. Right. Like there it's almost like they're moving away from.

xbox right they want to be on pc they want to be on other platforms they want to you know make their stuff available to other audiences like fine then like i'm not gonna have game pass i'm not gonna do like you're making it easier and easier and easier for me to move away from your now possibly non-existent hardware and platform right like

yeah but then i wonder like is that is that um sufficient for xbox's bottom line like if they cut out hardware and go third party am i still going to be enjoying Gears or the next rare game or the fable that's coming out supposedly next year. Like, am I still going to be able to enjoy those experiences? How long before they go there and decide? this isn't working out. Let's just make call of duty and candy crush for the rest of, of our gaming. Yeah. I mean, honestly, like that's.

like when you see how much like oh perfect dark like that's an ip everybody knows that got canceled it feels like nothing safe it's like oh we're working on the next fable are you Are we actually going to put it out, though? Because I'm really starting to doubt that. And honestly, like I said at the top of this whole discussion, I'm not going to buy it at this point anyway.

I am mad at them for so many things at so many different levels that have just happened in the last week. And I just, yeah, Microsoft. I'm not going to say what I'm thinking because Ryan will just have to edit it out of the show. I've got my finger over the mark button. Let's just move on. Let's talk about what we're playing. Let's try to...

this back from the brink of despair and talk about Mario Kart World. Go ahead, Ryan. Tell me your cute story. Alright. I did promise you a positive, uplifting, fun story. And this happened on Canada Day. And I have to give a shout out to Whirlwind who... uh, you know, pushed, uh, pushed our event ads group to, Hey, let's, let's try out Mario Kart world with game chat. Like he's, he's solo parenting it, you know, his partner is working and.

And I'm like, yeah, I'm always down for video games. And he has said like, oh, you should connect, you know, how the Nintendo Switch 2 has the new game chat feature. And they sell you a camera, which is like, I think like. an overpriced $80 stand camera for, I think, what it offers. But the cool thing that Nintendo did is that you can use any. And I only have one, which I've had since the inception of this show, a 720p Logitech webcam, which has been a rock star. It has survived 15 years of...

Well, webcam use, I guess. And I don't know if Logitech equipment lasts this long now, but it is a solid webcam that still works. So I plugged it in. Sure enough, it worked. It's got that little webcam stand thing so I can put it at the top of the TV. And we played Mario Kart World. It's limited to two players because we joined an online lobby.

Um, so, uh, myself and Caden and Izzy were playing. So I let Caden and Izzy play and then whirlwind on his end, his two daughters were playing and then the camera. um now this is early days switch stuff so i'm assuming hopefully down the road they'll they'll sort this out but uh in mario kart world when you set up the camera you basically have a reticle

And then you kind of position it over your face. There's no face tracking. So once you said it, we discovered this, like, kids don't sit still. I mean, you know this. Yes, true. Most people know this. So when you put the reticle over your kid's face.

eventually you realize like that's no longer my my kid's face that's like the couch or uh you know the other kid's foot or something yeah or they're just their forehead you know because they've decided to like you know run right up to the tv that too uh but besides that like it was a really neat feature that like you could you you saw your whole screen and you could sort of place the reticle and then where those reticles show up is um

The proximity meter for your racers. So as you're racing, people see your live camera as they race you, pass you, throw a shell at you. Um, and, uh, and it captures your reaction. Oh, I see. Okay. So like when you said online lobby, you didn't mean like you were just playing with world. You were playing with a lobby of. 10 random people plus the two of you no randos just oh just us like us and cpus because we were we were we were doing game chat so we were using the game chat feature

which, again, worked surprisingly well. Again, going into a Nintendo online thing, you're like, this is going to break. I'm not going to say we had zero issues. OK, so then so you're saying then like if you came near Whirl or he came near you, then your camera would like get bigger.

No, well, it is like a proximity thing. So, like, as you're racing, you see that... player ahead of you there'll be a little like circle reticle over the eraser that shows their like webcam feed and it can place oh okay yeah yeah i remember those uh those screenshots yeah i remember that from all the

But we were also using, um, the game chat feature. So we had underneath our, our, our, uh, gameplay screen, we had our two sort of windows, like a discord chat. Um, and I gotta say like, it's, uh, again. I'm not saying this is new. This is Nintendo playing catch up, but their implementation worked quite well. I was able to set up a game chat, invite world like.

It's the bare minimum, and that's all you really need, and it worked quite well. And we didn't use a microphone. It used the Nintendo Switch 2 microphone, which is like, you know... uh docked near the tv again i was gonna say yeah did that actually work well worked well

Yeah. Based on like all the previews and the, you know, stuff before the Switch 2 actually came out, they were like, oh, yeah, your mom could be making dinner behind you and you can be playing on the couch. And the only thing Nintendo is going to hear is you. And I was like, OK. nintendo well it's it's interesting like um voice recognition sort of cutting out noise has come a long way uh

With the Nintendo Switch 2, they used the microphone on the Switch and it worked really well. Look, there's a lot of cross-chatter with multiple kids on both sides of the game, but when... world and i needed to communicate and we asked the kids just be quiet for a second you know parents are talking so this mario kart thing what's the room code how do we sort this out um we did have to have a room code it was six digits we punched it in

We joined the room. My Switch kept disconnecting, but that could have been a Wi-Fi thing. The cool thing about the Nintendo Switch 2 is it does have Ethernet built into the dock. So I might try that next to see if that helps. the weird thing is i would jump it would kick me out of the mario kart lobby but not the game chat so we could keep talking which is good so we could keep trouble we could just say oh i got kicked out let me jump back in and we just

punch the same code in. I jump right back into the lobby. We didn't have to reset things up. Like again, like describing a situation that sucks because we're having technical weirdness, but. It just kind of works. It's not like, okay, let's reset up. Let's pick our racers, like trying to get four kids to pick their characters and their carts. Actually, I shouldn't speak for world's kids. They, they knew what they wanted to be.

My kids were like, well, maybe I'll be Mario with the cowboy hat this time and I'll ride this robot motorcycle. And it's like, all right, let's just pick. Let's just get to racing. Let's go. Let's go. But it worked out. It was really cool. I mean, honestly, we all kind of squawked that this was like, oh, Nintendo's... you know, building discord into their system. But yeah, I've used the implementation of discord on consoles and it, this is way better.

Like, I'm not comparing it to the PC. That's completely different. If you're on a, you know, a computer or a Mac, Discord is a tool that is fantastic. And, you know, knock on wood, works great all the time. But... on consoles it is basically just another sort of voice chat avenue there's some streaming there but but what they've done here on the nintendo switch 2 with game chat i think is again not a new or novel concept but the implementation

does work the fact that i can plug in a 15 year old webcam and it's serviceable it works i don't have to buy like you know another thing um Just sometimes we don't give Nintendo credit. We just kind of laugh at them for being like, oh, they're doing a Nintendo thing. But the game chat is pretty neat. Now, right now it's free in sort of a trial option. But you will be required to have a Nintendo subscription starting next March. And that's their annual family thingy, right?

I think just the base Nintendo Switch Online. The thing that's going up in price? Well, in Canada specifically, yeah, it is going up in price. But, and, you know, one could... you know, look at their crystal ball and say, Hmm, I wonder when game chat comes out of beta, will they increase the price stating, you know, additional services offered, blah, blah, blah. Uh, the.

The updated pricing is specific to Canada to quote unquote be in line with market conditions. I think this is just a way for them to increase prices here to match. uh you know the performance of the dollar and and then and then when they increase nintendo switch online worldwide we will also see another increase so uh but you know it hasn't had enough increase since launch so Nothing stays the same price these days anymore.

Getting angry at Nintendo for increasing prices. You're going to get angry at everybody. I'm not dismissing it. I think anytime something raises in price, you have to look at it and be like, is this still a value to me? And I think the price increases are like five to ten dollars across the board. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the email I got today was five dollars. I think it was about 40 and now it's 45. And yeah.

Again, like in terms of annual subscriptions, like it's the cheapest one I pay for. So I honestly like all of all of my rage is spent for this week. So I'm just feeling like sleepy now and I just want to go curl up in my bed with a glass of wine and cry. That doesn't sound... So yeah, I have no... I have no rage left for Nintendo and their $5 price increase. That's when they get you.

Yeah, exactly, right? They're like, oh man, you know what we should launch today? Our price increases because Microsoft's going to shit the bed and no one's going to notice our price going up. It is unfortunate. Nintendo has had a lot of news these days about just cost in general. Yeah. And I think we've talked about it before. I think it is. At least it's cost and not employee conditions, though, honestly.

Yeah, I feel like you can have price conversations and you can make choices. Like, I mean, I have not bought the Switch 2. I probably will not buy the Switch 2 in the foreseeable future until there's an absolutely cannot miss title. But like right now I can't afford it.

i'm not buying it like but the switch is still fine like we played mario kart 8 this weekend with my four-year-old niece and she was having a blast so i'm like that's good enough for me yeah we this is literally we have mario kart at home

i mean yeah i feel like i guess um the the nintendo the nintendo news i can make choices around and feel good about my choices and you know like support what i want to support support what i can support versus like the microsoft news where i'm just like i feel like i have no recourse here like it's just it's all bad it all sucks i hate what they're doing like there is no like the choice is fuck you i'm done which is where i am now right like but yeah nintendo like

the news is our product the prices of our products are going up like okay that happens i can engage or not engage but like nobody's being actively harmed the way that like It feels like people are on the Microsoft side of things. Yes, 100%. That's why I'm not raging at Nintendo. If they want to increase their prices, they can. It just means I can't afford them. And I'm sure I'm not alone. No, no, no. I think a lot of folks are voting.

you know i don't want to say voting with their wallet but i was gonna say it's not even voting with my wallet at this point because my wallet is empty like i could throw my wallet at them and the moths would come out and then like be like can i have it now you have my wallet i'm voting with my wallet

i'm giving it to you nintendo it's just empty oh and you don't buy something that's also voting i think but but i understand what you're saying right like you're saying yeah like it's not necessarily a vote i'm abstaining because i'm poor

um what what is it when yeah isn't there like a box you can check in your when you go to vote and it's just yeah i'm not voting it's like well why why didn't you just stay home i was like i don't know i had to i had to vote i needed to tell them that i'm not doing we get if i if i don't tell you that i didn't do something does it really not do i don't know that's social media in oh man yeah okay

Let's move on because I can feel this just getting longer and longer and rambly and ramblier. So let's talk about the altars. Let's put the spoiler tag at the end of the episode. We're going to talk about the ending of the altars because Ryan and I have now both finished the game.

So, spoilers for The Altars if you care about Act 3 and the ending and everything else. This is your warning. We'll see you next week. But The Altars... So, man, there are so many different endings to this game that I find it kind of funny that like ours were like just the same, only different. The main ending I got to the game, I guess, was like the neutral ending where like we ended up with very similar endings, but mine was like.

I didn't follow one specific path all the way through. So I did like a bad thing in act two, but then like. redeemed myself in act three i guess like i didn't continue following that bad path so i ended up with an ending that was like I was on trial, but it's okay because my altars made it home and they were like safe and nobody knew they existed, but they also weren't in like some weird.

lab area being experimented on so like i i got this like neutral thing where it's like nobody really likes me i'm probably gonna go to jail but at the same time I morally did okay. And you got a very similar ending to that, even though that's supposed to be the like... not the most common way to play like it's not the good ending it's not one of multiple bad endings plus there's different endings for your alters as well which i thought was kind of crazy yeah yeah i felt like my

ending when i experienced it all it was like that feels like not the bad ending but not the good ending but i'm not also expecting i i didn't look at all the different endings but i i know you did pre-show and i'm like Is there even a good ending? I feel like this whole game can't possibly end in a good ending. Apparently, if you like... I don't know exactly how to do it, but apparently there is an ending where you reconcile with Lena all of your alters.

Get away. There are no consequences for you back on Earth because like you didn't deal with the corporation and you navigated the Lena conversation in a way that she didn't loop them in. So it's just like you and Lena against the world.

and your altars are free and everybody's happy and like that's like the good ending but i'm like i don't like some of those conversation pieces like even when i had the botanist in my ear like telling me how to interact with her it was like i couldn't get conversations with her right so like i yeah

Lena, I don't know how you get the good ending with her because, man, that must have just been a trip and a half. I basically stopped talking to her because I went with Maxwell's solution at the end of Act 2. And definitely murdered someone. But then I made up for it. Then I made up for it. So it was like at the end, it's interesting because like all your alters are sort of.

present as you're trying to come up with a a plan to basically escape with your you know humanity intact and i think that's one of the biggest things is like everybody in the room kind of agreed like let's not murder anybody and i'm like yeah let's let's not do that i think the options were blow up the ship

or create a sleeping agent i'm like let's go with this oh yeah right at the end yeah yeah you could you could blow them up in the ship or you could uh yeah put them to sleep basically for the ride home so the first time to be clear the first time i put them to sleep the ride home then i reloaded my save and i blew up the ship for the achievement but i will say my ending was um not really all that different and it's because like

blowing up the ship or putting the crew to sleep like isn't the kind of be-all end-all decider like it depends what your relationships not just what your relationships ended up with your alters but like the path you went through to get them that way so like were they happy with you 80% of the time seems to have a different ending than 50% of the time. Even if you end and they absolutely love you, if they hated you for most of the game, you're not going to get a good ending.

Yeah, it was it was really interesting because like I noticed the number of postcards that were there at the end of the game changed. So like in in my one. Ending playthrough, I had three postcards because that's how many alters that I had like rescued. And then in another playthrough, like another ending, I had six because. you know, everybody made it through and made it back to earth somehow and everything was all good. So I was kind of like, man, oh man, like the...

Attention to detail in some of these even like cut scenes is kind of crazy and fun. They're like, hey, guess what? Everybody got out and we all like you enough to send you a postcard from the beach. Different beaches. I think there was like three or four. Different beaches, yeah. Yeah. And I thought that the other option, the other... sort of variances are related to how much rapidium you bring back. I built all five arcs.

Yeah, so that definitely has an impact. And then again, like I said, how far down certain avenues you go. So if you like go all in with Maxwell. then basically you come back to earth and I don't, you can tell me if you don't want endings you haven't seen spoiled. Oh no, that's fine. Okay. Apparently, if you go down the super-duper evil Maxwell path and do everything that he says all the way through, you come back to Earth. You personally face no consequences.

But he basically continues his experiments with all of your altars and puts them in a tiny lab prison. But you personally face no consequences. He shelters you, protects you, whatever. The corporations really know better. I'm pretty sure they execute all your alters because they shouldn't exist in the first place.

um and and kind of like try to cover it up slash blame it all on maxwell uh but both of those are like traditionally like bad endings lena stops talking to you she hates you blah blah blah blah so you basically have to like get your alters through, involve Lena, but don't let her tell the corporation. Like it's very, very, I think having played through a couple of times now.

um i think it would be very very very difficult to navigate that correctly to get a good ending because like the way that i especially my first playthrough the way that i viewed it was like lena was the corporation and maxwell was the the alternative so you had to either you know go down the corporation route or go down the maxwell route and i'm like i don't necessarily like this maxwell guy but also i don't want all my alters to have chips in their heads

Because corporations don't generally have our best interests in heart. And how do I know that those like implants aren't just going to be like a kill switch and explode? So like. The thing I think that overall I was the most like.

disappointed in was like given how many conversations and interactions and stuff that you can have with your alters I wish I could have explained that decision more or better or whatever like it seemed like i was given this information to make me think that like implants bad corporate control bad and the only other option was to

you know, use the blank slate character to synthesize some sort of medication that was going to save them all. Apparently, they're not even dying and you don't have to do anything. You can just like... let the timer run out and then it's really bad it's really hard to keep people's morale up because they constantly think they're gonna die but you can just play through the game and never make that choice like never go like either way like

don't do maxwell's option don't put the implants in just continue on so yeah there there are a lot of paths in this game yeah that uh yeah aren't necessarily obvious because they do i think try to maybe not like and this is the thing like this this all felt very like realistic And there's, like I say, more options than are just presented to you. Like do nothing apparently is an option more often than you kind of realize. But that's also very.

real lifey so it might feel like they're trying to railroad you one way or another but people are always trying to railroad you one way or another so it's always on you to you know choose path a b or do nothing so apparently do nothing can be an option too uh so i did think that that was kind of cool i just wish that i could have like explained myself better

Because like I said, you're given information where, you know, like certain things influence your decision and seem good or seem bad, but you can never really communicate that well, given the dialogue options at that time. And I think they do it much like in Frostpunk 2. They do it because they want the story to move forward. Like they have a set arc and you have to get to the point where, you know, like someone's pissed off at you or someone does.

xyz thing so like there are some moments in the story that are kind of set in stone and you have to arrive at that point one way or another so like you can't necessarily be given free reign to explain your logic behind everything but yeah there are some points in time where i'm like look i'm trying to save you from being controlled by a corporation that doesn't have your best

interest at heart. This is an organic solution, may not be morally great, but all your brains are melting. So maybe, maybe just work with me here.

but also i murdered a guy so yeah morally not great and and this is the thing about the quantum computer and that aspect because i'm like i'm presented the options and i agree with you it's like okay like both of these suck it feels like a walking dead situation was like pick pick the pick one or the other but they're both bad of two things that are equally bad

Yeah, and like you have a quantum computer, you'd think that, because they talk about Repidium as being this, you know, miracle discovery that could cure everything. It just so happens that the womb, which is the thing they use to make the altars, it's capable of reproducing a sheep and a person, but not necessarily like we need... we need this, you know, we need this specific thing, which I think in this case was like a neuro sample or something.

so yeah why couldn't it just make a brain like or just brain tissue because like i was basically thinking of it as like we're just gonna make some like stem cells basically and then all of a sudden like i chose that option and there's like a dude laying on my table and i was like oh no oh what have i done uh-oh pretty wild night at the quantum computer right

what have i woken up to oh what did i drink last night yeah like this is this is the thing about the game is that um it it has these hand wavy moments Where, oh man, we need to manufacture a bridge to move a giant space station ship thing over a river of lava. I know get the scientists to beep boop bop some like laser bridges. Yeah. And that's totally acceptable. But when it comes to this, like our brains are melting.

phenomenon we need to manufacture some medicine and the only the only kind of explanation i can think of that might fit like the in-game canon sure is that rapidium seems to and again i can't explain how you know it wouldn't be able to make a specific body part because you also have the option at one point in time to regrow an arm so yeah but but which you know you didn't have to regrow an arm attached to a whole other human so like

But anyway, I don't understand. Yeah, I don't understand why they couldn't just grow a brain. But anyways.

i feel like the rapidium thing is just like speeds up growth cycles right or like speeds things up but it has rapid in the name right so that was how i was is that like instead of like creating a person and having the whole embryo thing and having to wait the 18 years till they're an adult and they can help like you just beep boop up the quantum computer you throw some rapidium in it and all of a sudden bam full grown man

overnight let's go like it just speeds things up that already exists it can't make things that are new i guess so like you could think of it as like If you had some coal, you could throw it in there with some ripidium and you could make a diamond and you wouldn't have to wait millions of years. Like that sort of thing, right? Like it's something that already exists.

You're just like jumping ahead in a timeline versus something that doesn't exist yet, like the cure for the brain melting that you have to actually manufacture from things that exist. yeah and i mean my in-universe headcanon explanation that makes sense i mean and it does it does relate to like if you collect enough ripidium and you bring back all the arcs that gives you

Yeah, then you can solve hunger because you can grow food instantly. Yeah. Yeah. And I did see that in the news reports. I think I based on this article I'm looking at, I got the good Agatha ending with with stealing the rescue ship. Yeah, see, Agatha, I have no idea who that is. I never met that person in any of my playthroughs. So clearly I'm doing something wrong. Well, no, it's act three. If you go against Maxwell and you go with the neural implants.

get agatha and i was worried that like i'm locking myself into like the corporate ending but they're all kind of They all kind of end... Well, four of the... I think two-thirds of the endings are very corporate. It's either like Maxwell or Agatha. But there are variations on it where...

Like you're you're out in space. You've already been solving a lot of your own issues. Well, through the use of the altars, which is also creating problems for you. But because you and your altars are stuck on this planet. And going through a lot of methods to save your cells, but also allow the rescue ship to land in the first place.

it does leave you with the game does present you with a lot of options. And I did appreciate that act three ending where it was essentially offering you these different avenues and you can do it all. Like you can research it all. You can build it all. Uh, I did not build the bombs cause I didn't want my altars to be, cause I, I swore to them. I was like, look, we're, we are going to do this safely and as humanely as possible to get you guys out of here. And I will take the fall back home. Yeah.

Just in case. Just in case. I just wanted options. They might have popped out of the ship and started shooting. I didn't know, so I built the bomb. Well, there was a specific moment. Where at the very end, the rescues or one of the rescues from the rescue squad are like, there's some bio signs in this Arpinion arc. And I'm like, oh. I don't know what you're talking about. Shouldn't we just get going? And they're like,

And then one of the jokes is like, oh, because of the because of the like lessons that I had learned from my altars, I had like four or five different options at that. So I think I. oh i can't use like humor or something i can't even remember what the lesson technically was but uh basically like i made an alien joke i was like oh yeah a cat totally an infected cat totally jumped in there and now like they're gonna take over

when we get back like I think mine was pragmatism it's like we really just need to go and let someone else sort it out because like the sun is coming yeah that was the thing I didn't really understand is like The sun is coming. Doesn't that destroy the planet? And yet somehow my altars were planning to live there. Well, that shelter supposedly like supposedly that shelter was was heavy duty enough.

Well, but OK, if this sun at the beginning of the game, they say that basically like the sun is coming to destroy the planet. So it doesn't matter how hardcore your shelter is if the planet doesn't exist anymore. Well, that's the interesting part, because this. supposedly just kind of wipes the planet like kind of like starts fresh but there's this interesting phenomenon that you discover if you push the scientists and get through all of his story

I got the ending. I did not do that. So yeah, I got the ending where he basically says like, I want to find the secret to this planet. There's more to mine. And this is at the tail end when you have like literally days to kind of get your act in order. And he's like, let me go off to search the thing. I promise I'll be back. I'll finish everything. Then you let me go. And then and I'm like, OK, yeah, well, we're good here. Like you go. And then he leaves and he's gone overnight.

and everyone's like mourning his death like oh we sent him to his death he's not back no one can survive an evening of radiation and then he comes back the next day and he's like you got to see this and you find this like um oasis

where he discovered basically like life on this planet and he wants to stay and study it. And you basically have the option to be like... like yeah you do you but you know let's finish up here first and then once everything's done you can walk and he just he he accepts your choice and he basically you have a conversation and you say okay we're all done he just leaves

And he's gone and he stays on the planet to research everything. And that's what he wanted to do. And well, yeah, because so I didn't do that. I didn't do most of his story. I found out later. I didn't do most of his story. So when he was one of the people. that i was evacuating with me on the like transport thing and he was so bummed he was like oh i'm just you know i'm leaving things here so unfinished and when i go back like

Even if I try to contribute on Earth, it won't be under my name. Like, you're Jan, I'm not. And I was like... what's your problem dude get the fucking shit yeah you're gonna live why are you so bummed i didn't talk to him enough and Didn't even remotely get to halfway through his story. Yeah.

This is back to the Coral Island issue where it's like, wait, I have to talk to people? You have to converse. What do you mean I have to have interactions? You can't just buy them coffee and hope they'll like you. You gotta actually...

Meet them on their own. You got to play beer pong with them, Jocelyn. Yeah, I guess so. That's something I did in my first playthrough. Yeah, I didn't play beer pong except for when you absolutely had to. I didn't watch movies. I was just like, we have a job to do. fucking do it go oh my god so i'm like it took me into my second playthrough to realize if they had something to say to me they had a little speech bubble next to their like portrait

Okay. Yeah. That's okay. You got there on the second. There is stuff that is kind of hidden behind some UI stuff and you do have to kind of like... you know, scratch away at it. to understand what's present there and i think i don't don't try to make it better for me okay i discovered the entire like narrative social part of the game i was just like Okay, do I have all my organics? Let's go. Okay, someone needs to go and mine those minerals. Go, go, go, go, go.

And I love that they use like the doom guy face sort of UI for whether someone's happy or not. I didn't even know there was a happy face, Ryan. Oh, no. They thought everybody was always like neutral or super pissed. See, Jocelyn plays a lot of Frostpunk and she's just like, wow, people aren't working enough. Emergency shift time. it's crunch time baby let's go yeah i uh it is it is a really

Great game. And I thought that the final act there, while the map wasn't like my favorite of the three, it did present a lot of like narrative. And I think I got to say, like, I think that the more interesting act three is siding against Maxwell with the neural implants. And I agree with you. The game forecasts two bad choices, but.

you know, in reality, like the Maxwell choice sounds like the worst, the worst choice and really in act three, like all the things I was worried about kind of go away because. the whole point of act three is Jan discovering him himself and how to be, uh, you know, not stuck in his ways and actually make, um, make decisions that are like for the betterment of.

your core group as opposed to just like well what would the scientist do what would this person do yeah and it just has a much more positive outcome and i i struggle with that choice because i'm like which one is going to give me the

the more positive because I'm always looking for like let's try to get through this with as many you know uh you know positive outcomes because i just don't like playing like i say that i don't like playing a game that has bad endings i don't like getting the bad ending Yeah, it's okay if the bad ending exists. Ryan just tries to avoid it. We're like...

I'm not worried about necessarily getting a good or bad ending. I just want to get to an ending. I don't want to fail. I don't want to have everybody die and we get game over. So I'm like. I'm less about the journey. I'm more about, like, can I finish the game? Can I get through? Can I make sure that we live? Very, like, practical, maybe? I don't know.

love to be morally good but sometimes ryan you just can't be okay you're giving me too much murder somebody okay maybe not move on what i'm saying is like the way i play this game and a lot of games like it and it does lead to some like obsessive sort of paragon renegade thing right like you want to make all the paragon decisions i do but also like

From a time management standpoint, I know I'm only going to have enough time to truly play this once. I might dabble in a second playthrough, but I will only truly play it once.

And in that regard, I do want to squeeze as much awesomeness out of a video game in one playthrough. I know that if you were to look at the alters and determine that there are three... sort of pass maybe two and a half with some proper save management that you can experience a hundred percent of the game and i know that's gonna make a lot of people uh tune in more for this game like they want replayability but for me it's like

I know I'm going to have time to play it once thoroughly enjoy it. And I'm just looking to get, you know, as much out of it in one place through. And I think that's where I kind of where I landed. And usually that does lead me more towards like, you know, picking something that. And maybe Googling, like, what are the options here? And I did that for Act 2. Okay, yeah, I did not. I wanted to know what was...

Because again, it's very difficult when you're playing to understand where do these two lead because they present as two bad options in a situation that ends in certain death for people you care about. And I think that's where in my brain, I'm like, in some people's brains, like, well, I'll just do this. I'll try one playthrough and then, hey, I get to come back to the save point. You can create a lock save there and come back and experience the other end. But for me, I'm like.

man, I got like maybe like, you know, another week that I'm going to be playing this before something else I want to play comes out. So let's just Google like the optimal path for this specific moment, not spoil the whole thing, but just. And then I quickly determined like, oh, so if I choose the neural implants, I just get to make a bunch of character choices to make this positive again and take control of.

what's happening and the other side of it is basically you lock yourself out of characters because you made the quote-unquote bad choice and I'm like definitely not Yeah, which is what ended up happening to me in Act 3 is that no matter what I did, I fully stalked the other camp and made sure that they'd live and everything else and gave them so many resources, built pylons to connect them to my...

ship and they were like we're not coming back like you killed someone I was like that's kind of fair so yeah I was locked out of half my crew for act three But yeah, I did realize that like you always have to have a technician. You always have to have a scientist. So I made and like favorited a save in my second playthrough where I like min max the crap out of.

like the the prologue and act one and everything else until the point where i had my technician and my scientist and then i was like okay now that i've got you guys i'm saving this day and now i can kind of like make any combo of other because they also act differently depending on who else is on the ship right so um you can make different combos of altars because you can't get all the all the altars and all the stories in one playthrough like you said there's you know a real min max

save scummy way to get it in two and a half but realistically three or maybe four playthroughs to to see everything and all the different combinations uh so yeah i made a save where because i'm like i really just don't want to play through the basically tutorial all over again like i want to get to the point of the game where i'm starting to make decisions so i do have that save point and i will use it for a few more playthroughs i think because

you know the replayability i'm kind of on the fence right like if it's a game i really really really really love like this one then i want it to be super replayable but then there are others that i'm like okay i can play through once and i'm good so you know i'm kind of it depends on the game depends on the narrative depends on the experience but yeah i did really really want to play more altars which then again

is why i was also so mad at microsoft because they just broke my my account and i can't play anything right now so uh yeah i because i was enjoying this game so much is is you know why i get Well, not why I get so ragey, but why I had very little patience than going through tech support a few days ago. Yeah. no it's a it's a really good game and um i i know i don't know i don't even know if i want to bring it up uh it's it's been a it's been a bad news week but there was a news story that

that I guess the game had had undisclosed use of AI and, and 11 bit studios did in altars. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was, um, The I want to make sure I get it right, because it was it was text on a background asset placeholder. And there's like some conspiracy theories out there that like it's not as. It's not as explainable as the company statement made it seem, but essentially...

The company had said it was placeholder text. It was meant to be replaced. It will be replaced. There was also some translation in regards to the movies. that were added late in development that weren't, the translation wasn't put through their localization team. It was done with AI. So there's a lot of mistakes there. They are addressing it. But I think the core issues that people found out and it wasn't disclosed in, I guess, Steam has some AI disclosure requirements.

For the alters? Oh, that sucks. But for their games. They have to stay when there's AI-generated content in them. Yeah, so they are promising updates. It says players at the altar spotted what appeared to be text generated by AI in the game on a screen in the command center. So this is background.

flavor text again no it's not an excuse but it was very it was missed in development it was placeholder in the English language of the version of the game you can see that it's uh the placeholder text has sure here's a revised version focusing purely on scientific and astronomical data so it includes like the prompt and uh revision so um I mean, yeah, it's a shitty situation for what is a great game.

On the one hand, if I had seen that, I probably wouldn't have thought that that was placeholder AI, blah, blah, blah, whatever. I probably would have thought that that was a wink and a nod to AI being in the ship.

in the future sort of thing do you know what i mean like yeah i would have thought it was like an easter egg as opposed to you know an ai actual ai thing um but yeah the the translations on the movies that just that just is you used ai to do a thing that you couldn't finish in time yes that's without without disclosing it to People who were consuming your content for fucks. I just, oh, I do.

I have no energy for this anymore. I'm sorry. No good news. No good news this week. Even the good stuff has bad news. Yeah, you couldn't even just let me have this. It would have came up in Discord, and I just wanted to make sure that I addressed it.

it because um it is not seen that in everything going on i had not seen that so yeah thanks for telling me sorry but i i think it is important to know because again it is keeping companies honest and it's holding them accountable i know ai is seeping into everything and um we talk about we don't want ai to take

people's jobs and in this case yeah they've they've addressed it jobs oh my god like honestly what is my brain doing tonight no i and and like it's it's also late but i really i I think in this situation, yes, I think they should have used their localization teams and the reasoning they use. It doesn't excuse not disclosing it. They could have disclosed it and done a statement right at launch saying, hey, the one thing they missed, like, you know, it's a big project. Shit happens, I guess.

But like the localization of the movies, which was another thing that people had pointed out is like, I guess specifically the Brazilian text is actually there was.

prompts in the subtitles that said, sure, here is the translated text into Brazilian Portuguese. So again, last minute things being done using AI for translations. The studio has... address it as if this isn't a gotcha moment like we always intended to update this you know post-launch with with our professional translation teams this represents i think they said like one percent of the total text

that is in the game. It's a, it's a very small amount, but, but I think it is important. Like when you localize a product to, to treat all localizations with the same respect and. it's uh it is sad i mean because it is as you said as we said it's a great game we really loved it and it sucks when when stuff like this happens and and hopefully hopefully this is uh

This will allow other developers to be like, let's make sure we're thorough. We have all our checks. This is like the Bungie thing again, right? When they had the AI stolen art thing. Yeah. We are still at a stage where we can... point this stuff out we can find it we can hold you know folks accountable and um so i think there's still some i guess there's still some good there that we can like

still point to that it's still, we can still tell when stuff like this is happening and, and companies are like, they, they published a response almost right away, which I was, um, I almost feel like you're better to get ahead of it than, than wait for someone to find it. Cause like the background text, that's one thing, but you knew that you, yeah, you knew about the translation. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's not great, but yeah.

All right. Well, we're going to wrap it here because we're, again, getting long and rambly. So because we kind of jumped all over the place, we haven't told you what's going on with Patreon. So we're going to plug that a little bit here at the end. Go to patreon.com slash the game. in to support the show like Night Vale did thank you so much

for supporting the Gamers Inn as our July patron. We did implement some Patreon changes. That was about a month ago now. So we are doing monthly host specials. June special by Ryan has been posted. uh i will be doing the july special i've recorded it i'm actually really really happy with it just have to do a couple little pieces of editing uh but i think you guys are going to be super stoked and i'm really looking forward to hearing what you have to say about it so

That content is Patreon only. Will be going up sometime in the month of July. We also have our game night. Normally we would do it the third Friday of every month, but because of summer vacation schedules, et cetera, et cetera, we're going to be doing it on Friday, July 25th. So mark that in your calendars. But that is going to do it for us tonight. If you do want to join the conversation, head on over to tiny.cc slash TGI discord, or you can visit us on the web at gamersinpodcast.com.

You should also go and follow us on Blue Sky. You can find me, Jocelyn, at jocplays.com. Ryan is at ryanmurphy.ca. And 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. It'll be better, I promise. Less swears and less rage.