Hey, what's up, everybody? We're back. We're back. We're back. Back, back, back, back, back, back, back, back. We've been gone a little while, but we're back. It's me. It's Brian. It's my... It's Freddy. I don't know what I was about to say there. It's my Freddy. And, you know, we're bringing this podcast back. We honestly didn't mean for it to go away. However, you know, it was Christmas and whatever. There were so many things happening at that point, and we were, like, kind of so far behind.
We kind of made the decision to rehash this bring it back do some things differently as you can see with like some of the way the graphics look in here too just just just just upgrade it we got to upgrade it and then we were like you know what it's january let's start and this was january 1 and then freddie freddie got the rona and then so we post oh man i wrote my rona i i survived four years of not getting the rona and then it just came in with vengeance and just kicked my ass
so you're looking good now dude you look like you feel you're alive great yeah i lost weight you know thanks for the rona a little covid weight droppage yeah my taste buds are still kind of a little place are you still taking the the antiviral though oh no i stopped that stuff was so bad dude oh yeah the metallic taste is the i think it ruined my tongue i couldn't taste coffee, I had to like burn coffee. Coffee is all I have. And they took it from me.
But yeah, man, I mean, it's a lot has happened since. It has. The last time we did a podcast. So yeah. And these are still going to follow the same kind of format. Nothing too much crazy is changing here. A lot of it's still just going to be like, we'll kick off with the intro. Let you guys know what we're doing. And then we'll have the dad advice. We'll talk about one game. We'll probably always have like a game of the month or game that we're playing and then cover industry.
Industry industry-wide to entertainment because i realized like when i'm hanging out with freddie you know we just don't discuss video games and i don't think the podcast just be on video games either it's also called like the ogs the opinionated gamers which means we have opinions on everything and not just video games true that so i need about everything man yeah and you guys are gonna get to hear it hear all of the opinions i guess i should
say gals too because you know or guys and gals either way and and and now the all the yes and then everything in between so yeah i'm happy i'm happy to do this again this should be weekly every friday still all the same stuff as usual we're back we're back at it hopefully we won't miss any time here yeah man i mean so, i'm so like obviously breaking news today i mean we're we're a day behind but microsoft laid out They did 1,900 layoffs for that.
We're going to cover that. We're going to cover the Microsoft developer insight that just happened. I'll probably drop some stuff on Suicide Squad. That's the game I'm looking forward to and more. So make sure you guys like and subscribe if you're on YouTube. Subscribe and I think you can like as well if you're on Spotify or iTunes or whatever it is, wherever you are and wherever you're listening. Five stars. Yes. Just enjoy it. Sit back, relax. Get ready. We will be right back. Music.
This is the hot new intro i think i'm talking over it. Youtube i hope you enjoyed the really weird staticky electric sound that just played in your eardrums freddy has no idea what that was but yeah so that's kind of the new intro it kind of screwed up there for anybody who's watching on youtube if you're not and you were listening and you probably heard some weird audio sounds i'll get it sorted but in general that's that's the new open it's pretty dope and now we have me and
freddie right here on screen and in your eardrums and i love your ears and yeah i like it it's cool you know there's gonna be like some weird weird things along the way because i gotta figure it out i run this all actually through a like a like an obs system like as if we're live streaming nobody cares just i know about things Things they care about, Brian. I know, I know. Fine, fine, fine.
Well, then, you know, we always start this off because we're both dads now and we can share our insights of all things fatherhoods. So how was it having COVID with a baby? It was, first off, a shout out to my mom and dad because they came in and came in boss, like boss style. They came with gloves and masks and all the sprays. Mad suits. Yeah. For people who don't know, I'm Middle Eastern, so you know my mom is extra clean. So she came and sprayed all the couches, Clorox, everything.
It was me, baby, and wife. Completely COVID. It was weird. It was awful. My daughter actually had something called a fibrosis seizure. Basically a seizure caused by having a very high fever. Incredibly terrifying. It was, I was, we were in bad EMS came. It was, it was awful, but you know, everything, she's fantastic. She's just got her third tooth already. Which one? Yeah. She had the two, two top ones and then one bottom. The adorableness.
And then, you know, the, I got to, we got to hang out a couple of weeks ago and, you know, we live pretty close together, but we're just so busy. We don't, we really don't get to see each other.
So or the family so we did that and it was a lot of fun yeah we went to treaty oak had hung out yeah my daughter's just obsessed with dinosaurs not much has changed still have all the toys behind me i have a five-year-old and two-year-old still you know yeah i got her i got her that set of like a billion dinosaurs dinosaurs yeah, And she's in the age of all, all questions. So what is, what is death? Oh my God. It's when you play a video game and then you run out of lives.
Then you run out of lives and you don't get to respond. Yeah. I can, I can feel you on the sickness. I was, I think I had told you actually before your daughter got COVID, I was making fun of you because you were like, I'm going to avoid putting her ever in daycare because we're going to avoid the sicknesses. It's like you jinxed yourself. And I was like, you can't avoid it. It just comes with the territory. I was ready to just call it, you know what? I had a good life.
You want to give up? I'm done. Yeah, sickness with kids is awful. It's just awful. And it takes the whole house out. And then it's even worse too because it puts you against your wife where you're either not on the same level of sickness or they're sick and you're not or you're sick and they're not and you just loathe each other. You're just like, I see you over there. So she's not around. I expect you to do everything. You should be cooking my pizza or something.
She got the same COVID, but all she had is a little itchy throat. And I was so mad at her. I'm like, I feel like death. My body hurts so bad. She's like, yeah, my throat really hurts too. And I'm like, it's not the same. We're not the same. It's just funny.
Like whenever Stacey would get real sick when she got sick and I'm watching the kids, you know i'm like looking at her like you need to get better now you don't even want to but it just comes with it just comes with it man kids make everything so weird i couldn't eat i couldn't eat because i like i just didn't have any appetite and she's like eating kolaches next to me and i'm like you're just like i'm gonna stab you but yeah right it was what about you how about what about
your your kiddo device that's it i mean my adventures are just literally all questions now now she's playing a paw patrol game she got for christmas it's actually pretty fun um it's really easy it's just like three buttons and sienna is got she's got 16 teeth and about to get her two-year-old molars so that's been that's been a blast and yeah she didn't really ask questions someone doesn't ask questions about games anymore she's so used
to it now and now like either we watch a movie together or i just put on you know some disney movie for the 15 000th time and then go play like you know pal worlds which i was trying to play pal worlds with summer she likes pokemon and then she was asking me where matter mace i don't even know the main character pokemon.
She's like where is he like i don't know he's not in this game it's power it's not ash yes ash i was like ash isn't in this it's it's pal worlds and then she was like well where's pikachu and i was like there's i was like okay i know i told you i was playing pokemon but i'm playing something called power world and then she was just like well this is stupid i want to watch pokemon.
So that was the end of that it lasted all like 10 minutes, yeah that's well it's your fault you you brought up pokemon and pikachu is literally pokemon i know which is like a good segue into video games too actually because i wasn't even thinking about talking about this but what i mean pow world is actually that's pretty that's pretty crazy and now poke supposedly pokemon actually just came out too i should pull the tweet up i won't be able to find it essentially saying they're gonna
review pow world but really what it read like is them being like please stop emailing us to sue pow world we don't have a case yeah well i hate to remember so like people think nintendo actually owns pokemon they don't it's they have a partnership with pokemon pokemon it's an its own entity right so they don't and it's also it's also like the creative license licensing there it would be really hard to sue because it's not a one-to-one it's an inspiration in which
pokemon is like supposedly an inspiration on a couple of other things like it's all just inspired by something yeah i mean like yes i think the if you wanted to take them to court you can take them to court for likeness because they do the color schemes are very similar the animation is similar but the game is i mean there is no game.
There's no pokemon game even close to what this is well yeah outside of outside the there's a one or two mechanics right the throwing the pokeballs to catch yeah the cow balls and you catch them yeah right so that's really it but talk about a phenomenon talk about good for microsoft to jump on on this thing early i mean it's it's apparently it's a console seller especially it's yeah it's done really well like really well i mean somebody posted something about numbers and it was astronomical
and then you know on steam it's sitting at like two million like it's crazy yeah so um it's for a preview too not a not a live game. I mean, it's a live game, but you know what I mean. Like, it's... Well, yeah, it's a preview game. They made $20 million... $200 million already. $200 million, yeah. Off of a preview. And then the crazy part was just, like, reading on X what people were saying. Some devs were like... Some really envious devs were like, this seems like this game was made by AI.
Yes, I saw the AI thing, and I don't understand that. They're like, well, you know, this doesn't seem like a real game.
This seems like somebody told chat gpt to build a game similar to similar to pokemon but add guns and slavery right like a valheim it is a survival game though i mean it literally is like a hodge podge of a whole bunch of stuff so it's like survival with pokemon with guns with like all all sorts of crap base building yes for me like first off i saw a couple weeks ago and i was like what is this game so i gave it you know i wasn't i wasn't hyped about it and anything i just it was like
okay well i'll try this out and i ended up playing a couple hours worth so i mean i'm not oh yeah i got a shared server with with tain with our buddy like it's a chill game i mean we've got got like a whole base like we're like level 30 we got i mean i got i got pal slaves everywhere.
Well the fact that you can make a factory where they build you like ar-15 it's a cool game one that just like breathe that this literally keeps your stuff cool i'm like yeah stay on this fridge keep blowing air on it you can't take a lunch break it out of here, here i'm gonna feed you oh you're a lamb here i'm gonna feed you some lamb chops some lamb chops, you are a cannibal now yeah i mean it's an interesting phenomenon and then at the same time
i think it actually might have just gotten pulled off of the top spot like for like a day because enshrouded came out yesterday another game preview which is another survival game which just that definitely seemed that seems to be like the new like live service hit of a decade ago is now like the survival hit like there's all these games coming out now they're just doing really well that are all based around this core concept of start butt naked cut trees.
Build clothes build house and then like you go out into the world fight bosses or whatever and you have this sort of rpg mechanics built around this sort of like base building crafting game i think it's one of those fats thing the fat similar to like oh it is it is and it and anybody coming out like i i just read microsoft just canceled a blizzard survival game because they it's the writing's on the wall like people are not going to continue five years from now you're not
going to be like i can't wait to do this again i think the reason pal world does well is because the the pacing right we talked about pacing before yeah the pacing is great it's really good because you can start off with nothing and then boom within a couple of minutes you can right would do x y and z and then catch your first well it's the wrinkle inside of it right And Shrouded is doing good because it's got actual RPG elements on top of it.
So it's like... You can have the structure of a survival game, but then you have to add in things that are new and exciting, right? We talked about live service, right? Live service, why we think that the Justice League game, not just the Suicide Squad. Is because obviously they're changing. It is a live service game, but they're giving you 15 to 20 hours of actual linear gameplay and then also adding...
You know life service elements right without the the the having the score or having that that absolute nonsense of fomo to make you come back yeah i love the fact that we talked about this a couple days ago how they'll let you play older seasons and get the gear from all the seasons without having to feel bad about missing out you know we talked about diablo and how diablo, season by season you lose those you know you lose the vampire you know the it's not you lose
is the season the season's gone like once the season's over whatever was happening in the season that uh that that that made the season like it's it's it's like gameplay element is gone from the game right and maybe brought back in in a gear piece later but like the general gameplay loop leaves well and that's i mean that's same to like what the destiny did a long time ago yeah they still do it like right i mean sort of in a way it's but it's not as bad but yeah destiny
still does that too yeah that's what i'm being yeah that's why i'm really excited for susan squad Yeah, I think I think it has the most potential to be successful. The second iteration of life service where it's not this mad rush to get the gun so that way you have an advantage in whatever case it's mad dash to beat your friends or have the highest score or get to the second story. Every season is a new story and you know we talked about how dc has a plethora of.
Fantastic stories specifically for the non-meta humans right right um and actually the the players that are the characters that are you know characters that are not necessarily heroes right the joker is definitely not a not the biggest either right not you know right yeah that's what's running right now so there's like recently this insider just came out insider three and that's what I've got playing. And...
And this is the one that showed off like elseworlds and the ability that you're not going to miss out on seasons and you know you know i mean you say i get excited about everything but i try not to you get so you watch this like for me i look at a game at all i do consume do and i'm like if i'm gonna say through movies if i'm gonna buy this game regardless.
Or i watch a movie regardless i am watching one trailer or play the beta or the alpha and then and boom i'm done i'm gonna get the game i'm gonna enjoy it this guy and this guy goes i was no okay in my defense remember i wasn't a fan of this yes yes but you go so far you go from one side and this one i had to though like if you remember like what a month ago i was like i can't believe rocksteady's making a looter shooter
that's third person on top of that i was like what like i was actually didn't even dive into this game until i played the alpha, and then i was like oh that was actually really fun right and i don't disagree with you that notion of it cool we're gonna like it we're gonna talk about it but now you all you talk about is this game i get it i went from like i don't think this is gonna be good to like wow they actually are doing like every single turn every single video i was like
okay yeah the alpha is actually really good okay the gameplay loop could be really cool and and rocksteady's known for their.
Campaigns so i bet that'll be that'll be that'll be fun it'll be worth playing i'll check out this next insider video whatever and then the next insider video comes out and i'm like oh my god like are they actually going to get because for me as a post avengers guy and a destiny guy whose destiny's fallen off avengers died like i don't really have a live service game right now like diablo is the only one i play and i like season two but i don't like season three so i was
like i mean i was so on the fence about like well what's going to happen post game how are they they even gonna do this how is this even gonna work like this like how i just i didn't i fundamentally didn't understand how this was gonna work and then every time i watched the video i was like holy crap and they answered every single question and issue that i had when did you buy the deluxe version of the game. Oh, well, I bought the deluxe version after the alpha because I like the alpha
a lot. OK, so that was it that you should have shut up after buying the. I was really curious about what happens next. If you bought the deluxe already, you already are going to get everything that you do know or don't know you're already going to get. So there's no point of just going. I need to know. I needed to know. I needed to know how are you going to do live service and do it right? And, you know, we don't know if it's going to if it's going to play out that way or not.
But on paper and through their developer insider videos it the way i look at it the way i look at it is if it gives me 15 hours of just story i'm happy with seven yeah see that's how you look at it i wanted to know like can i play this game for the year that was my next question right so like but my thing is tiered right so like for example i get to play like that's why i really loved, Outriders, right? First off, Outriders was free.
Thanks for Xbox Game Pass. But I still wouldn't have bought it even if it wasn't. Same, same, exactly. Well, that's not true. You don't know about it. It's hard for these new games to just show up. Actually, you know what? You're probably right. I probably would never even heard about it because that was super... They didn't have a huge marketing push. People Can Fly wasn't a big publisher, right? Or a developer. But anyway, so that game had a great... a good story. Not great.
Graphics were okay, but but the loop afterwards was good. It was really fun. It wasn't live service. It had live service elements. It did, but it wasn't live service. It only had one DLC. I think they didn't, I think, first off, you blame, you know exactly who you blame. Square Enix is a trash publisher. Oh, no, I know who to blame here, but I'm just saying, like, they weren't set up, like, in that vein.
It had the elements that I liked, though. It had the elements of, like, this could have easily been a live service game and run its, you know, that they had a good idea of how the loop should have been, right? Well, see, the difference between me and you is you're fine with waiting to play Suicide Squad to see if you get that. I wanted to know. I was like, I want to know. Is this going to fill that thing? And then I got more excited. You already bought the game.
Now I'm like, I think they did it. I mean, look at all this stuff they're showing, too. It's incredible. I mean, like, it's just ridiculous. Great, but you bought the game already. You know what? You bought the game. I will come over to your house and punch you in the face. Anyways, let's move on. Fine, fine. We'll move on. What do you want to hit up? Well, let's just talk about current events, and then we can go back to the developer deal.
So, obviously, Microsoft, after the acquisition of Blizzard Activision, 1,900 employees have been let go. Oh, and the president of Blizzard's gone. Yeah, president. I saw that writing on the wall. Oh, yeah, right. Everybody did. Yeah, Microsoft's basically revamping the whole studio structure. But, I mean, I looked at a lot of people that got let go were community managers.
For different stuff and i think those jobs are not necessarily developer jobs right those are well i'm sure they lost some developers yeah but again like these layoffs a lot of times are their qa right and they're they're community managers and then some like high level folks that are being replaced or yeah you know have their golden parachute i can probably pull it up too what you're talking about yeah but still 1900 is is a significant amount of people and our hearts to go out to them.
I'm sure they'll find new jobs. There's a lot of developers hiring. There's actually a lot of developers hiring within Microsoft. It's just, I think, Blizzard, Activision, obviously with an almost $70 billion, transaction, there's going to be... Oh, wow. I am like bright white. Bill said it's been a little over three months since the Activision, Blizzard, and King. What the heck is King? I don't know what King is. King is King and he crushed.
Teams joined Microsoft as we move forward in 2024, the leadership of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business. Together, we've set priorities, identified areas of overlap, and ensured that we are aligned on the best opportunities for growth.
As a part of this process, we have made the painful decision to reduce the size of our gaming workforce by approximately 1,900 roles out of the 22,000 people on our team. So there's 22,000 people, essentially, I think that they just inherited in 1900 that got laid off. The gaming leadership team and I are committed to navigating this process as thoughtfully as possible.
The people who are directly impacted by these productions have all played an important part in the success of Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax, and the Xbox teams and they should be proud of everything they've accomplished and you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He goes on and then ends it by saying looking ahead, we'll continue to invest in areas that will grow our business and support our strategy of bringing more games to more players around the world.
Although this is a difficult moment in our team, I'm confident. You know, typical.
Nice things to say i wasn't terribly surprised by this there have been a lot of layoffs lately and i don't think people i haven't seen enough articles i need to like whatever i'll just be bright white i haven't seen enough articles on the fact that i i think i talked to you about this, i think some of this is tied to covet i mean like when we were in covet and everybody worked from home there was a giant increase in infrastructure and
like you were saying q a and at home devs to to kind of like carry forward these games for two years and figure out this whole work from home thing. And now that we're kind of, you know, we're clearly back in the swing of things. We've had it, we had a record year in terms of video games and the quality of those games. And I think, I mean, I think now, I mean, they're just sitting there like we don't need all these people anymore.
Well, yeah, I mean, you, you over, I mean, it's the same thing with, you know, how the stock for Amazon went through the roof during COVID and went down. It's like, well, yeah, you had a massive demand for stuff.
And then it teetered off and same thing with with development right you were so behind the eight ball because of this transition of work from office work to home that you needed to add x amount of people to make sure you still at least have the quality you know microsoft has several misses obviously with quality but oh yeah the quality of work is you know on par and so across the entire entire industry, we've seen layoffs, especially when it comes to QA, you know,
the community managers, et cetera. I still think there's going to, I mean, if you go look, Microsoft has like 15,000.
Open positions specifically for you know dev positions developer positions and a lot of these are not developer positions microsoft needs all the developers under under the sun to get what they're trying to do for for triple a games a year every year for the duration so not super surprised think that's it's going to be standard i'm sure all these folks you know they'll find their a role somewhere else but you know i feel bad oh it sucks yeah but
before that happened they did drop that developer insight so i'll just i'll run this right now this is the first thing we can talk about i'm going to play in the background here this is the trailer they released for the indiana jones game so this grew on me okay before you start oh you did i i immediately hit with freddie f when this was over and i was like something about the game just didn't sit with You hate it. No, no, no, no. Don't underplay.
I didn't hate it. I said I wasn't a fan. I wasn't a fan. This name looks terrible. But there were two reasons. And a lot of people ended up agreeing with those reasons. One was the first person aspect of it. And an Indiana Jones game didn't make a whole lot of sense. Like, it was very unexpected for me. And then the second one, well, the second one was just me.
And that was like, I also didn't expect them to do a hair. I didn't know anything about this game, so I didn't expect to see Harrison Ford and not hear Harrison Ford and then have it be canon. But once I settled in on all of that and rewatched the trailer a couple of times, I think, I mean, it could be good. It clearly might be a very good narrative game.
We'll see what they do here. I still think the first person aspect of an Indiana Jones game is really weird because we're just used to third person, right? Between Tomb Raider and Uncharted. Well, I think that's, so I was reading a lot of comments specifically on like this. You know, I mentioned it looked very much like like in the same vein as Uncharted and Tomb Raider, except the difference really is that they went with a different direction, right?
Third person, everybody, every single type of game like this is always in third person. So making it first person changes the experience. And I think obviously it's a little off putting at the beginning because it is different, but at the end of the day, it may actually work out. It may be more immersive.
It could be. and then it cuts to the third person when it's doing the narrative story right or when you're on you know when you're doing like i think some of the traversing and stuff climbing it'll pull back and it's troy baker too so that's who's doing the voice which is you know he's incredibly talented guy most people didn't even know it wasn't harris ford honestly like i was reading the moment he started talking i was like that's well yeah well because obviously like now
harrison ford now sounds like a year old man i'm wrong you're off my lawns i knew for enough there's no way he would do the voice sitting down and doing voiceover for a video game for 60 hours yeah it's not gonna happen no i still think it's weird that this is canon i don't think that was needed i don't i think it was very unnecessary to put this in between the second and third movies but whatever i mean it's an easy thing to get over but it's just like it's just a weird i.
Well it gives it gives them a plot you know a story plot and it might be something that disney was like hey we want this to happen this way yeah i mean clearly i mean you know it's lucas arts so i mean like they could have been like yeah dude this is this is what we're doing here i'm gonna pull up the day too and then this is the big thing too that came out of it right 2024 so it's gonna be game pass day one game and it comes out this year it's crazy first that is
to me that is the craziest part is it's coming out this year which means because they only showed the preview what but two years ago. Yeah. Right. Like not, not even a preview. They just showed like, Hey, it's happening. This was the first like real look at it. Yeah. And then, you know, the other side that we forgot to before all this, the other game that I thought was out of the blue and a weird studio to choose to do a game like that is blade.
We, you know, we never talked about blade blade, another IP. And that's our, it's, it's a, what's what the studio is. Arcane France, right? Right, the ones who did Deathloop. Yes. So, you know, those are two games new IPs. I just don't talk about that one because that is so far off. That game's like 26. But the thing is, you don't know that. That's the thing. If Indiana Jones was done and they talked about it, this had a bigger preview Blade did than Indiana Jones.
I know, but the developer himself just hit Twitter and was like, don't expect to hear from us now for a really long time where development is starting like so it just was, it just seems like that one was was far but who knows i could be right could be 25 but that i don't think so i don't think we i don't think we see blade again until like end of 2025.
Oh wait i'm giving it two years for sure right because that was the end it was at the end of 2023 yeah it was at the end of 23 that we saw it so but yeah i mean like i i mean i i mean i i am i am cautiously optimistic on and then hellblade hellblade is coming out this year too yes hellblade is going to drop this year too and then what was the third one there's three i'll play i'll play the third one yeah so the third one well before
we before we jump over though i do want to say too so if you didn't already know too the people making indiana jones is machine games and machine games is a wolfenstein that was like their bread and butter which is also explains why it's in first person and when you go back through and you watch some of this gameplay you can kind of like see the a lot of stuff in here that feels like wolfenstein and i also thought that was kind of funny too that they picked that dev since wolfenstein's
all like wolfenstein's games are literally you killing nazis so yeah i think it's very fitting like hey do you guys know how. So that's exciting. It's going to be called Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. But then the other game is this bad boy here, which a lot of people have gone back and forth on because of how different it is than the original gameplay release. And that's Avowed, which we have both also been like, I don't know about Avowed. OK, Avowed looks cool. I don't know about Avowed.
OK, maybe Avowed will be cool. And I still kind of sit there. I'm still like sitting in that space. I can't decide like how good or bad it's going to be yet.
So it's okay so watching the old trailer from the original reveal of gameplay it's still so this one, well no no no not the original one not the the like the crazy one well so the thing is i re-watched cgi one and the problem i think why people are the way they are is because remember in the cgi one you pick up the sword and then it'd be and it made it gave it this look like oh this is gameplay play yeah exactly and it wasn't it was cgi but mathematically it it doesn't even line up.
No it's not they made it first off the trailer the the teacher trailer made it look like it was like this like dark fantasy like yeah not just dark fantasy like the fact that it looked like it was built on unreal six and it looked the lighting the magic like covered your whole hand and then yeah this one is just a wand and i was like that's not at all what you showed well i i really think that it's so looking at the second trailer the one was like really cartoony remember that
one oh i do i do i was like what the hell and then you watch this one it hasn't this one doesn't even look anything like that video either now that video was this game's clearly changed a whole bunch oh yeah and i think that by the time it gets released it's going to have all the the i i think they're rushing to get people's eyes on it but that developers are good developer right they have never, obsidian has always had a very polished game so I think once it actually releases
once it gets closer it might be much more polished I still think that this version of the game is way like when it comes to the look and feel way better than the trailer they showed for sure. That one looked like it was a PS3 game. And they're doing something different with these kind of games, too, that, I mean, could be really fun. And that's that, like, quick, like, the focus on the combat and going from, like, sword, shield to wand, like, instantly.
And you don't have to, like, lock yourself into that, which is something none of these, like, sort of games have done before. Usually you're either all in on magic or you can only pick a sword. So it'll be interesting to see, like, how you can easily swap between these damage sets. That's my biggest thing if it's a talking sim because obsidian is really big on like if you remember like outer worlds it's a really good game with a hell of a lot of talking so just.
Which you know which some people really like and then some people i mean it's fallout it's a fallout format right it's the same format they did for vegas uh new vegas you don't have a voice you lock in and you and you got that like motion capture happening in front of you and you choose you choose to what you want to say to them yeah hey at least they're the the characters that you're talking to actually talk yeah oh yeah voice acted and
everything so my biggest thing my hope for the game is for not to be too big i hate games that are just too big i know people, blasphemy but like make it at most 40 hours oh yeah right not some like 200 hour yeah man no i don't want to do all that i want to have a start and middle and finish i want to be able able to play 40 hours of fantastic story fun i mean the fact that i can go shield and wand and then wand and sword and and you know shield and wand and and there's
guns guns you know and then we don't know what other attributes you might have like i think it could be a very cool game i think that i just the i mean i am also just looking back at the the cat or the the. The games that are coming out and that are in development, I just don't see how... Microsoft has just too many games. It's like the opposite of what it was for the Xbox One. Well, they have so many developers now, right? Insane. 30 developers. 30. Yeah. So we'll see.
And that's the four hits for now. So they opened January, saying in 24, you'll get about Indiana Jones.
Jones then there was like there was indiana jones hellblade hellblade and then there were two other games i can't remember because i'm not big on square enix there's a square enix game and something else oh yeah that square enix game and then also the games are already pre-slated from third party is that flintlock which i actually saw some gameplay they have a little looks fun it does look good and then the other one is that uh that survival shooting game what was it called um oh Oh, yes.
I was going to say Tarkov. Oh, crap. The Ukrainian game. I can't remember the name of it right now, but that one is slated for September. I know the date, but I don't know the name. Stalker. Stalker. Yeah, the new Stalker. Stalker 2 or whatever. They already are set up for what feels like a really nice 2024 with a wide variety of games too, which is really cool, right?
So you got the RPG, like Hellblade is going to be this very cinematic experience, to, you know, your survival games all the way to a story base. I bet Indiana Jones would probably sit somewhere around 18-20 hours. Yeah, I think so at least. And then I think also you just look at the. We don't know anything about Blizzard and Activision, what they're doing with the Microsoft ecosystem or how they're going to be embedded. Diablo will hit Game Pass soon.
They haven't put a date, but it will come to Game Pass. It's an inevitable. Yeah, I think that's a huge thing. You never know. Sony still has to, I'm sure at some point, Sony just cannot rely on God of War and Spider-Man. I'm sorry. They have stuff coming. They've been rumored that Ghost of Tsushima 2 will be announced soon.
Soon i'm i can see why they're waiting because it's so similar to that like rise of the ronin game that's coming out soon so that'll probably drop well before we hear about ghost of tsushima 2 they've got the new final fantasy game coming out that everybody's really hyped about the rebirth and those are just what we know about they will definitely be on something like a naughty dog is working on something like some guy posted it
on his linkedin that he was working on the new naughty dog game so i i honestly think wolverine is probably from the leaks the videos and stuff i think the wolverine is probably closer to being a 2025 early 2025 i think wolverine's probably 25 for sure but they need some i don't really see a nice for 2024 this year i don't really see a ton of big titles that are going to be console sellers not that sony will be huge i mean that's just a big game it's a big game like the first like
like the first remake of final fantasy 7 like they're just.
Those are just big games for a certain group of people i don't disagree but but we don't know they will have something i have no doubt that there's not one there's probably some game coming out this year oh that that just ended here i'll play all the i'll play all hellblade 2 while we keep talking enjoy the whatever ad this is and i think that they will also have what was it oh they're probably also looking at whatever money they're gonna pull because like today they
just released a trailer for the pc release of horizon so that and that's coming out in march i just the problem for me if when i look at pc sales for sony is this three year window the sales are not great especially when you put you know third some third party to port your game over you know like it's just not a good plan i think i think that they're smartening up and i think they're going to do day and day on pc i don't think there's a reason not to especially and
they're already doing it right you look at the games they're creating. High buster is that what's called the one with the oh yeah it's supposed to be a big game too hell divers hell divers one was a top-down game here i can pull that up for y'all i remember i remember that game it was like some sort of i never played it but it was like some sort of top-down game. And it wasn't a Sony exclusive either. It was super popular.
And then like why i guess why people are so excited for this hell divers 2 is because they now made it third person like it's the biggest change to this whole formula is it's actually a third person game now so but it was cross-platform too and it's cross-platform i think it's just pc and playstation but it's just pc and playstation yeah yeah to me honestly this just feels it feels like starship troopers to be honest i'm looking at it again and it's so starship
troopers is it's 100% they should have just called it that I don't know why they make this game world is a Pokemon this game is a Starship Troopers 100% and then obviously they have Marathon which is also I think that one's truly cross platform yeah I don't think that'll be a so I don't I don't know about that and then that's really all I know when it comes to what's coming out, Suicide Squad but I mean that's not.
Their excuses are just some cosmetics it's nothing crazy crazy i mean it made you buy it on playstation i mean i'm still i still bought it on xbox i like well so i bought it on playstation just because usually when i see that kind of crap i'm just like and then you watch like the insight videos and they're all playing with playstation 5 controllers so i'm just like this is probably going to play the best on the playstation because it feels like that's
where they did all their dev work you know so that's what that's what made me do yeah i mean i played the alpha on so yes right the perception that somebody paid for to be like use a playstation control on all these videos it worked on me i was like oh man they're using and a PlayStation 5 controller and like, I guess I got to buy it on PlayStation. And so I did. Yeah, but you probably know they're not playing on PlayStation,
right? They're probably playing on PC. Oh, I know they're playing it on PC. Yeah. But visually, I can't look at it and be like, oh, clearly this game is made
for PlayStation. Yeah. So, I mean... I i truly think sony needs to they need to buy more studios that's or they need to have i think they waste so much money on those live service games at this point and now they're trying to figure out how they're i guarantee you there's a scramble at sony right now whenever whenever they lost the activision lawsuit i'm sure there is because they can't compete with game pass in the long run like five years
from now this is what i've talked to you about like short term they're probably still going to own the market in consoles because they just have the games but long term at least when you're looking at it right now it doesn't look like it I'm like you know I haven't even beat Spider-Man 2 I'm not saying it's a bad game but.
I'm like oh yeah I'll get around to it but they just haven't so the reason I am, I have both consoles I love video games I play most of my games on PC anyway, the variety of games on Xbox is just enormous and i think that what i'm getting sick or tired of and they're not bad games by no means they're just making remakes remakes of remakes of remakes i get it it prints money but like at some point you have to have come up with something new right you can't make the same game over and over
again and expect the same people to come back i mean it doesn't make sense to me so new ip has to be i mean ghost of tachima was a new ip fantastic right so good days gone was actually a good game not sure why it was a really good new ip and they killed it they killed it was a fun game it was a lot of fun the the zombies were different right the horde type thing, and you know and then it had a hard it had a hard launch though that one just
didn't hit yeah that was like another game that hit during a time where there were so much zombie stuff and then everybody was like another zombie game but it was actually like the best one to come out during the time, I think they I think Sony misstepped there and should have waited a month or two to release that game I think it would have been a big difference but then after that.
It's spider-man spider-man god of war god of war horizon horizon yeah and last of us last of us and then they you know a couple a couple of likes like ratchet clank which was a great game, wasn't a console seller but it you know it was a good game and then yeah it's a big one for them yeah return it was big that was new so i mean it was new that was a new type e again but it was a smaller game where are the other games right where
are the other let's talk about real quick i'm we're talking about variety what about that weird reveal by what's his name the guy who made, metagear solid yeah yeah i have no idea what that is people think it's it's because it's there's a game called i know that stranding 2 is being made so yeah that's to be exclusive, it is exclusive but you you ever see that stuff called like the video or the game that he made yeah and that was all that was silent hill and and then
it was up and then it was like the most most downloaded demo of any game ever and then they pulled the demo and then people pirated the demo because everybody still wanted yeah i know all about that well the door in in the in the trailer of that game is the same door they're using for i'm not surprised that's just what he does this is the whole thing is so weird and he combined it he combined with he got what's his face you know peel yeah peel it's gonna be a horror game for
sure but yeah that makes that See, that's exciting to me. I don't know what it is. Yeah, dude. I feel like there's I feel like Sony has something up its sleeve I mean the one thing that really disappoints me is that they're supposed to make that Star Wars game there's some coming, there's some sort of Star Wars game coming some sort of new, game I know but Sony had the rights to I think it was called something Knights or oh I have no idea they were making a Star Wars game I don't know dude.
Anyways i don't know but i can tell you what i am like so happy we're doing this again hey can we talk about your tattoo you know people didn't know you got a tattoo nobody knows nobody on here even knows but yeah i did i did i got one over over the break for my girls and i love it it looks so cool i but i now i haven't had it that long but i've had it long enough that i forget about it now i'm like oh my god
what is that all right man well i mean that was the it was a good That was good. That was fun. That was fun. Coming back, coming back pod. So let's talk about the last topic before we end. We have a couple of minutes. What do you, what do you got? What do you? Yeah. So what am I playing? What am I? I mean, I don't even tell you. I'm waiting. I'm in, I'm in stasis until Suicide Squad Monday at 11 PM.
That's what I'm most excited about. So the next pod, you will definitely be hearing about that game. Oh yeah. But I mean, if you've made it this far, we are back on the schedule that I like so that we can always make sure to bring you guys videos.
So we will always be essentially like one week behind not that anybody cares but yeah so you know recently suicide squad for me yeah so so but have you finished the game in the last what's the last in the last two months i did i did i started going back and replaying things to close off things i hadn't i had started and never finished and so i beat dragon's dogma because i wanted to be ready for dragon's dogma 2 incredible video game
yeah and i beat what is it i was just playing Oh, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. Oh, wow. I haven't played that. Is it good? No, it's goofy. I forgot that Andy Samberg is a main voice in there. It's goofy. What does it play like? It's Borderlands. It's Borderlands, but with fantasy. You have spells and stuff. That's an old game. So what I played was Far Cry 6. I beat that. I saw that. It's not as good as the other ones. Thanks for watching! The main bad guy isn't, you know, he's forgettable.
Yeah, I will say that Far Cry in general has terrible AI. Like, the worst AI. It really does. Like, that game made me so mad. I would be, like, behind a truck or car, and these guys are sniping me with a rifle and a pistol. Like, these, like, AI is insane. That's why I couldn't finish Avatar, because the AI, it plays like Far Cry, and I was like, I can't, I can't do this.
I mean it was it was a fun game you know it was one of those i like the far cry kind of concepts i beat most of them i was on game pass too so it was on game pass, detroit trying to call me cheap huh i am huh i am no i'm just saying you were like you know what it's time to try if i was gonna play far cry 6 that would be the way to do it but i yeah, i'm playing uh resident evil 2 on game that's supposed to be really good it is fun it's it's It's hard as hell, but it was fun.
Pal world. I've been playing a little bit of that. And then, you know, I bought, you know, I had Bahala on disc, right? And I hate putting the disc in. So now it's on game pass. So I just play the, so I'm, I'm already like 60 hours into that game. So, but I picked it up. What's your, what's your hot take then as well? When you're playing, what's the hot take? What's the, what's the Indian hot take? You got one. My hot take is that... Pre-Palestine. Oh, Jesus Christ.
My hot take is going to be, I think my hot take is that... There goes the podcast. I'm going to get raided. We're going to be, no. I will say, I think the gaming world is about to change significantly in the next five years. I think that gaming is going to, it's already big business, but it's going to be a, right now it's a multi-billion dollar industry. I think in the next five years you're going to have games that are going to make a trillion dollars.
I think Grand Theft Auto that Grand Theft Auto 6 is going to be a trillion dollar game. I'm going to have to talk to you about that in the next podcast. I want to talk to you about AI and games. I want to talk to you about if gaming is too big like movies now where you see a lot of rehashes because so much more is on the line because it's so expensive to make them. Can you even take risks? And then also discuss something else I just had in my mind that I lost.
But my hot take, as you already know, is Two-Side Squad Justice League is going to be like the next live service phenomena. And now, there you go, folks. He just jinxed it, so it's probably going to be an Anthem-type game, where it's just going to crash and burn. Anthem. Yeah. Dude, I had so the hopes and dreams. That's where I'm at with Two-Side Squad. I mean, like, so. So EA does not know how to make games, man. I'm sorry. EA, somebody needs to buy you out and gut the leadership.
Honestly, you have too many good IPS and they're all about to be replaced too. And like, and a better state, like they were, they were there and they canned it.
Yeah they gave it to a proper studio in austin and they're trying to fix it like if y'all would have seen what we could have done and they just was like you know what i know you've already spent two years trying to fix this we're canning it it's like we're literally about to release it and it felt the the mac i think it was just the story and then they oversold it and oh yeah well and then i mean it took years for people to catch up on like what what it actually takes
to make a live service game yeah what it actually takes which is the entire studio all you do until you close the doors until you until you close the door on the game or you make it separate you know support studio that all they do is that that's i mean that's what i mean you look at call duty right call duty has six studios yeah i mean the only reason destiny works because that's just just what bungie does like destiny is bungie's game
like and then they have small sets of groups that go to work on the other ips but the majority of the studios on destiny yeah i mean they're so they're so terrified that they delayed the game to add a whole bunch of new features that we're all going to hear about in april because if destiny goes under that's it bungie goes under.
Well and then sony loses its shirt yeah they lose their ass on it on the money i mean so i know we're we're we're at the time but my big my big takeaway honestly is like you look at games that are really good that failed and then that the studio was sold you look at what's that square enix sold off oh my gosh i can't i'm blanking what's the crystal crystal dynamics which they made that real or whatever it was that made uh guardians of the galaxy guardian guardian
of the the galaxy was a perfectly polished good narrative such a good game oh my god it was so good and i don't know how square enix botched that game it was marketing marketing was bad and just not i don't know i played the shit out of that game i always thought it was well done it was a lot of fun dialogue was really funny and so you know i think that's the other side is like you make a game a new game even with an ip and you're not attached to a studio that has the pockets,
you might go under yeah you're dead in the water if it doesn't it doesn't work so but you know what.
That's it for today y'all thank you so much as always ready i'm brian make sure you guys like subscribe follow along if you're on youtube feel free to comment and if there's something else you want us to cover if you made it this far and you're like i really like this i'd like to hear hear more about blank by all means type that in the comments below and i will put it in the next podcast yeah and look for us on spotify and apple music and anything anywhere you can
listen to podcasts we will be there all right thanks guys till next time see ya peace later. Music.