[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I think on that, on that note too, like, I think that even applies to good games, uh, not having fun. Like, there's a game, uh, that I haven't beaten yet, uh, uh, what was it? Star Wars, Star Wars Jedi Survivor. I've not beaten yet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I realized, like, the way it was running during that time, just like, was hampering a bit of my enjoyment. And then also, I got the code in for Zelda, and it was like, alright, peace out, I'm sorry Star Wars, I got a job to do, and I started playing Zelda. But then, uhm, last week,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, like as I've been talking about, right? Like the video game releases have slowed a bit out of the barrage of video games that we've just gotten. And so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was, I thought, oh yea, what a better time to boot back up Jedi Survivor, and I started playing it, and I realized that like, I just wasn't having fun, and that's not because it's a bad game, maybe a year from now I realize that it was bad, and I just come to that conclusion, but I don't think that's a bad game, right? I think that's more so just,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What am I in- what am I into right now? What is my mood? Like what is my vibe? Is this fitting my vibe? And-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't, it just wasn't, right? So I went back to playing more Street Fighter. Uhm, you know, like, and I think we just have seasons as gamers sometimes of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really speak to what you want to play and don't make yourself play things because you want to keep up with the catalog of releases.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, I've, I'm still on that Street Fighter train. Uh, I've been super hooked on it. This is my...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, it's not my first Street Fighter, but this is the one that I've been into the most. And this has been the one where...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've been trying to be all in on it because typically with fighting games, I am more of a Tekken person, I am more of a Mortal Kombat person, I am more of a Dragon Ball Z person when it comes to fighting games, uhm, but this Street Fighter was the one that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From the get go, I was like, oh, this looks really cool. And I played the open beta or I played the betas last year when they were going and I really enjoyed those. And so I was like, okay, I'm going to actually do this. I'm going to play Street Fighter. I'm going to hopefully like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Get good at it and play online and do all that stuff and it's been such a gratifying experience playing and actually feeling myself getting better at the game and slowly rising up the ranks. Like I'm not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Super high ranked or anything, like I have my, uh, two mains, uh, I've been playing a lot as Luke, who is the, sort of the main character that they've introduced in this one, like the new face of Street Fighter that's not Ryu or Ken.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, he plays a little bit similar to them, but he has his own flair as well. And he's like more of this jock guy with extremely large forearms. And he says, let's go a lot. He's that guy that you like, he's that guy from high school who you're like, oh, this guy's an asshole. But the more you get to know him, you're like, ah, actually he's kind of cool. Oh, he's a himbo.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, he's a himbo and he's my himbo because he's in gold rank 2 right now for me and I've been


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Man is this game fun and it just doesn't stop being fun and it's gotten to the point now where, like I mentioned earlier, I went to Seattle over the weekend and I was sad to be leaving my home that had Street Fighter in it to go hang out in Seattle and while I was in Seattle I was like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was thinking about Street Fighter and thinking about like mechanics I was trying to learn and I'll scroll on TikTok and I'll come across Street Fighter TikToks and I'm like, oh, that's neat. And I'll, I'll, uh, bookmark them so I can come back to them later. And now that I'm going, I'm about to go to LA for a week. I'm like, fuck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's, it's more so the, uhm, the, like, online ranking. Like, I wanna do that on my PS5 console, cause that's like my home console. And then also, I don't have ethernet for my Steam Deck, and so,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think, I think though that it might be a fidget spinner situation where I'll just mess around with Street Fighter. Yeaah. On my steam deck when I'm away from home, right? I'll just hang out in the training mode and just like try combos or whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's not gonna date, but also I think EVO's coming up and I can see something happening at EVO. Oh yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, well first, I want to, real quick, yeaah, to the fighting game thing, I've been eating dude, like yeaah, tree fighter has been great, moral combat 1 looks incredible, and that's coming out this fall, and then yeaah, Tekken, like I said, I'm usually more of a Tekken person, and that seems like it's gonna come out sooner than later, I would hope next year, I don't need it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and old as in like it's two years old, right? It's not like super old or anything, but it's old to me, right? Cause I played, I...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I played it first when it came out, uhm, and I played only a few hours and liked it, but then, uhm, fell off of it pretty quickly, and then I went back to it a year ago, played it, and fell in love with it, beat it, did all that stuff, and uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lately I've been talking to my friend Sarah, who's an artist, uh, and like, we've been going back and forth about this idea to make a card game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And like, I've just for inspiration, I was like, oh, let me pick up inscription. Cause inscription is like one of my, at this point, one of my favorite card games. And when I tell you that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] God, it hooks it into me, like right back into me and pulled me right back in. And now I just can't stop on the inscription train where, uh, of course, if you somehow missed out on an inscription, it's a card game, rogue light. Um, it has, it's also like kind of an escape room as well, right? Like you go into this game and it's very spooky and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're playing cards with this, uh, game master and then like you can walk around the room and there are card game elements that then interact with the escape room elements and vice versa. But then it's also a rogue light. Like it's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what I've been doing, and the further you get through Casey's mod, like every time you beat the Roguelite run, you then unlock new modifiers to make the game more difficult.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've been really enjoying that aspect, uh, I've been playing through that for the first time, and man, has it been fun, and man, like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Kinda curates for those moments a bit and then also just the vibes are so good man. It is so spooky. It is so like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is drenched in atmosphere and vibe and it does such a good job of pulling you into its world. And I've been, I've been falling in love with it, um, over again. So much so that I'm like, dude, inscription must be a top 15, top 10 game for me at this point. Um, but yeah, that's what I've been back to doing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Going through this game world, you're making the decision of what the next thing you should do is between like, do I want to go to this symbol, which will then let you power up one of your cards, or do I want to go here, which will let me pick a random card or do whatever. And with each of those movements, you are making a decision to power up your deck and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Every run is different and like, I think the thing that works about it so well is that it almost asks you to cheat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like to cheat the game. You know, like you have opportunities to make a card that is just OP.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it is so satisfying when you get there when you're like, okay, I have this thing and if I take like this effect that lets me like go around other cards to hit the other, the opponent directly and then combine it with this other thing that like gives me plus three attack and then combine it with this other thing that like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, if I want to play this card, a copy of it gets played in my hand, like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, like I, it's such a satisfying game, game to play, and I don't know if I'm ever gonna, at this point, put it down. Like I think it might be that game that I come back to whenever I get bored. I'm like, you know what, let's do another round of Inscription. It's starting to feel like that for me. And I highly recommend, yeah, like get back to it, dude. Like if you have the chance, uh, get back to Inscription.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I played it when it came out, and I really liked it when it came out, and then I picked it up again last week, cause for that same reason of wanting to get inspired and wanting to get into another card game, all my progress was gone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When I was playing it, I'm pretty sure it had fully launched. Okay, okay, that's weird.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, cause like, there was like a battle pass that I was going and all of that. I have no idea. I didn't get a new phone or anything. I just had to boot it up in months. And so yeah, I booted it up. Everything gone. Maybe if I get through the tutorial, it'll let me log in, but it's just weird. Like it's making me...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't feel like going through all those matches. Uhm, and I've tried looking it up. I couldn't find much about people having the same thing, so. Yeah, okay. I don't know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you're, if you're out there and you've had the same thing happen to you on Android, uh, and you have a solution, at Blessing Junior.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's not, it's not my kind of game. Yeah, I got, I really wanted it to be, um, cause I hadn't played a Diablo before and I've heard so many people talk about it. And then I started it and it was like, alright, I respect this so much, but my brain just doesn't work with this kind of game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you want to save some time and play a similar sort of RPG that won't take you 70 hours, there's this game called Live Alive that came out last year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I fucking loved Live Alive. Uhm, obviously like, same art style, right? It's coming from the same team, but Live Alive, the new one is a remake of the Super Nintendo game. And...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It, like, it has such a quirky, interesting energy to it that reminds me of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A caveman story that you can play that's like an hour and a half long or there's a space robot story that you can play that's like a similar amount of time, right? Or there's a samurai story and there's a handful of them and they're each they're each of them are pretty fun and like really quirky and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have a good sense of humor. Fantastic soundtrack. The composer was, um, Yoko Shimomura, who did, um, yeah, who did like Kingdom Hearts and yeah, and he's done, she's done plenty of stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, yeaah. Uhm, and yeaah, like, a wonderful game, and for me, similar as you, I was kind of looking for a JRPG that brought me back to sort of that classic vibe, and it got the job done, dude. And so, if you're looking, and it's like, what, 30 hours long? Yeah, right. A bit shorter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I did. I did a dedicated TikTok on it. Yeah. Oh, okay. I saw something from you. And at the time, at the time, I think I even said it was like it was a game of the year contender for me. Like I liked it that much.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It looks like it came to PlayStation this last, uhm, April.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] See, Lawbreakers would have been my answer for a game that I felt in the way that the, uh, what was the writer's name? Bubsy Wubsy?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, I really liked the lack of gravity mechanic, right? Like being able to float all over the place and having these different, uh, characters with different abilities. I thought that game was really fun, and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, like, it's a bit foggy in my brain, but I want to say it was a similar thing as Battleborn, where Overwatch was still the hotness by the time Lawbreakers came out, and it didn't, uh, find its footing. Uhm, but yea, like, that's a game that I wish could've


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lived longer, and I think that's similar to Ralph's point about Battleborn. I think if Lawbreakers comes out today, maybe it stands a bit more of a chance than it did in, what, like 2017 when it came out? Uhm, but yeaah, that's a game that I thought was pretty fun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I feel like only certain video games do get preserved. Like I feel like only the most really important ones get preserved.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I'm down to two and I'm trying to, can I give a shout out? Might love to do a shout out. Yeah. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, shout out to Metal Gear, releasing in Japan 36 years ago, the original Metal Gear game. But my choice for uhm, this week and in the past, I forget what this segment is called. I want to shout out Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories that came out on the Game Boy Color.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, 23 years ago, it's a bit of a deeper cut, but it's one that means a lot to me. It was one of my, uh, first Gameboy games and I was obsessed with it. And I think it kind of comes full circle with like me talking about how much I love inscription, right? Like getting to play and me playing inscription on my Steam deck actually.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Me getting to play Yukio Dark Duel Stories on my Gameboy Color and being very obsessive about like building my deck and really getting into my bag of like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, like, what is the strategy I need to go, uh, need to do here, and then getting to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you can find me over on youtube.com slash kind of funny games at you kind of funny games daily, which is our video game news show. Uh, and we, I also, I'm also on a PS love you XOXO, which is our PlayStation podcast. But if you want to follow me, I'm on Twitter at blessing junior, but more importantly, I'm on threads.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There are some things you can only acquire in-game such as like housing artifacts, so housing being one of the social systems, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's just kind of in our DNA, so if you like, you'll probably like this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, you'll have a, just an interior space. You can have friends come over and decorate it. Uhm, hang out there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Stuff that's in is polished and should feel like a game. Like it's not like, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, we weren't aware that we definitely should prioritize this for like, you know, future patch. Uhm, and it, it helps us, like, know where to, to focus our efforts. Uhm, and even, like, in, in game modes too, like, we have,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like it's not a JRPG, but it is. Like it's kind of like, let's take the essence and do our own thing with it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Feedback as efficiently as we can so we can react to it. Like we... I know it's like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's nice to be, yeah, nice to be back. I hope everyone's been well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm a good, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I did. Well, I mean, cause I did because I'd already played it, do you know what I mean? So it didn't bother me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Never seen it on this scale before, because the level of interest in this title is just so massive, and it's so odd.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hopefully, uh, you know, if you've wanted to avoid the spoilers you have been able to, uh, we certainly won't discuss any spoilers in this podcast at all. We'll keep it very clean. My review, which went up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, exactly right. Thanks Jake. I just said we weren't going to spoil it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sounds like a pretty rad episode, can I say? If I was a user, I would stay for the whole duration of the show, just saying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At that point, I was so done with the game. I was like, please let that be it. No, because I was on the first map and I didn't know that there was a second map.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Four more bosses or something plus a second map. I'm like, Oh my God, please no, please no more. I can't handle this. Um, and then eventually I just didn't end up finishing the game because as I said in my review, I'm like, well, if a developer can't be bothered to finish their game, then why the fuck should I? Do you know what I mean? Um, but so yeah, I mean, look, did you get, did you play it by the way, Gerard? Right. No, I was, I was pretty good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, there's no question at all that these characters should not have been designed that way. They, you know, if you'd have combined all character kits into one character, you would have had


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He has a raven that can mark targets and later on can also damage them, which is very contradictory and it also can turn invisible and he's got like a sniper rifle that he can pull out as like his ultimate or whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's his whole kit. That's all he's got. It's so boring. It's like, what is going on here? You know, and the, and the, the skill trees don't do anything to augment that either. So clearly they had envisaged that you would be playing this game co-op and leveraging all of those abilities together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, uh, I wouldn't want my friends to play this. I like, I usually, I usually play co-op games with some guys that I play Destiny with.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And as I was playing it, I'm like, nah, man, I'm, I can't, I can't inflict this on them. Like, I just can't ask them to come and play this. That's too, that's no, I'm not going to do that. So I didn't, I haven't played a single second of it co-op because I, you know, I'd seen one too basically.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I want to, I want to say this in the very respectful terms, okay, because I really do genuinely respect Arkane. I definitely respect the work that game developers do, and I definitely try and put that out there as often as possible. At the same time,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like Redfall feels so amateurishly designed, like it really does just feel like a first pass effort at these ideas with no effort to actually playtest them or finesse them, refine them, whatever, and it's kind of like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If this was from a small indie studio having a first crack at a game like this, I'd be like, yeah, okay, fair enough. I see you've got some ideas. But like, this is one of the best developers. It's, they are known for how, how sophisticated their games are, how


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Polished and refined they are, it's like how do you go from that level of quality to this making such basic obvious mistakes? Like, and I guess my point with all of this is certainly not to, uhm, to, I'm not targeting people, what I'm saying is clearly there was some systemic


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The behind the scenes development story of this game would be so fascinating to read. I don't know if we'll ever get it, but it would be fascinating because this team worked for what, five years on this game?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like, yeah, that's, that's very puzzling. That's very, very puzzling. Does that make sense what I'm saying?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that's it. But I, well, I think it's especially sad as well because I think we've had like flops like Anthem or Fallout 76 or whatever. And I think a lot of those games were very cynically driven in their motivation. It's just like, it's pretty clear that they wanted to have, you know, a looter shooter in Anthem that they could monetize with battle passes and skins and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was it. And so it was kind of like, well, we don't have a lot of empathy for that kind of thing. Fallout 76 was obviously a similar thing, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I think with this, I mean, maybe there was earlier in its development the vision that this would be some kind of, you know, like live service cash machine for Bethesda. I don't know. But certainly towards the end of its development, it wasn't that. It was just an honest game that doesn't have any microtransactions at all. It's just trying to be a fun game to play. And it, I think that also makes it


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's sadder and, you know, it makes it harder to- cause it's always like, well you tried to make just a good honest video game and it didn't work out and that makes it even more of a bummer, you know what I mean? So uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Definitely. And I think that's something that I'm very self-conscious about when I, I don't know what it's like for you guys and how you approach it, but I'm very self-conscious about that when I review stuff because, you know, I, I don't, cause people are like, Oh, you shadow over Redfall. You tore that game apart. I'm like, well, that's not,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I definitely want to try and couch criticism in the right way. I think there is a way to thread that needle. It's tough. I've definitely got it wrong in the past on many occasions, and I'm sure I will again in the future. But it is something that I try and keep, you know, in my view as I do stuff. I don't know, do you guys approach it the same way? Yes. I mean, yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, it is definitely. Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely something I think about a lot. And also you think about more about as your audience gets bigger, you know, and, and, you know, you think about how, how am I using my platform? And that's something that I've definitely become way more aware of in the last, you know, as, as, as I've sort of grown as a content creator, my audience has grown or whatever. I think it's, that's very important to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pivoting back to Redfall specifically, do you guys think that Arcane should stick with this, build it out, get it humming, or do you think that they should move on?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, I have re-reviewed stuff in the past, like the Wastelander update for Fallout 76 for example, and I'm like, look, I still think this game sucks, but this is a decent update that adds some meaningful stuff to it, there's no doubt about that, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, similarly, you know, if, if Redfall was to go through a big development thing, and actually I haven't, no, I haven't re-reviewed No Man's Sky, I've only done that once. But like, yeah, if it was to go through a big development roadmap and arrive at the other side of it, absolutely, I'd take another swing at that. But I, but similar to when I encountered Anthem, I was like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People are like, oh, this is really, you know, you just need some updates and it's gonna- and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Anthem is so far gone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not there. It's just not, you know? And to get it to the point where it is there is gonna take like two to three years. It's not gonna happen because AA is not gonna have the stomach for that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And sure enough, they didn't, like they, they flirted with the idea, but then they moved on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, No Man's Sky, it's like, it had this concept that was immediately so like, yeah, absolutely, we need to, and it had some ideas and things going on, like, there was some stuff there, you could see how it might get there eventually, you know what I mean? And so, full credit to the team for sticking with that as well. With Redfall, man, I just feel like there's just


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, I feel like, I know it almost seems like an exaggeration, but I just think there's nothing worth salvaging within this experience. Really don't. And I just, that's a bummer to say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, this is like a 4 out of 10 game. Maybe Arkane could work for a while to get it to like a 7 or something. But even that would be a massive amount of work. This game, it feels like it's still in like it's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I cannot see this game needing any less than two to three years of work to get it to be something, you know what I mean? And so I really hope that I can just move on from it. Phil Spencer has said that they plan to continue to work the game and build it out, and I'm like, okay, fair enough.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I mean, I just, I don't see that personally. I just think it's time to cut losses, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I actually don't, it's one thing that I'm quite proud of, uh, like I feel like I hold onto things, but yes, I do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's right Jake, they've got features like, uh, noise isolation, custom ear tips, water and sweat resistance, and they have up to 8 hours of playtime. Personally, I like them because they stay in my ears.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I like that they're, they're little capsules small as well. Cause some of the other stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That I've used. They're like really large, but those actually fit into your pocket quite nicely. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was the week to do it. So big props to him, but also big props to kind of funny, I should say for like, you know, because I think Phil obviously trusted them to be able to handle it correctly, which they did. And I think, yeah, the way that they actually asked questions and drove that conversation forward, like I think they really nailed it. So yeah, big shout out to kind of funny for that. I think they really crushed it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like, but will it though, like, cause again, if, if the British don't approve it, it doesn't go through. And it's like, they have made clear that they don't want it. And they've, and Microsoft has worked in its current format. Microsoft has signed multiple agreements with cloud service providers around the world, 10 year agreements.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They've really gone to like meet regulators as much as they could, it seems, on the issue of cloud, and it still has not been enough for them. So I, again, we've, I think we've all predicted for a long time now, oh, it will go through.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I think, I don't know, I don't know that it will. I'm not saying that it won't, I'm just saying I don't think we can really predict either way because, you know, it just seems like the British really have a, yeah, they have a being in their bonnet, as we might say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, well, that's right. Exactly. And so, cause what he was saying then was that they were showing 60 FPS PC gameplay when they knew that they were going to be shipping 30 on consoles and they should have told people that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's like, okay, cool. Yes, absolutely. For sure. Absolutely. But at the same time, we still don't know whether or not Starfield is going to be 60 FPS. And like, it shouldn't be...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A thing that we're excited to find out, like, woah, I can't wait for the big Starfield reveal, are we gonna get 60? You know what I mean? It should just be a thing where they fucking say, this game is gonna be this. And Phil and his team would know that at this point. And it's like, you're holding this in suspense while also, uh, saying, oh, we shouldn't have held you in suspense about that. Do you know what I mean? That part I didn't like at all. That was not great.


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[Assistant] Exactly. I mean, he could have, he could have sidestepped it a bit, but I think if he'd have done it any different, he would have looked kind of like a dick. And, but also I don't really think he's acting. Like I think a lot of people think Phil Spencer


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[Assistant] He's just like a performer and you know what I mean? Like he just tugs at heartstrings and whatever. But like, I think Phil actually cares about video games. I don't really think.


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[Assistant] Like Bobby Kotick gives a shit about video games, you know what I mean? Like I really genuinely don't. I think they're an investment vehicle for him. But I think, you know, Phil Spencer, like you see him talking about this industry. You see him out there. You see him playing games. Like, you know, like he's out there. You see him getting all the achievements in Mumpire Survivors. On Xbox Live, getting achievements. Do you know what I mean?


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[Assistant] Uhm, but you know, he genuinely cares about video games, I think, and uhm, yeaah, it is a bummer to see him sort of, uhm,


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[Assistant] He did own it, he did own his part in it and he did sort of say look we need to do better.


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[Assistant] I know, I thought one thing that I thought was really interesting was that they said they did mock reviews for Redfall.


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[Assistant] Personally, I think it's important to context- I have a view on this personally, right?


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[Assistant] I think that overall, I'm a fan of where, where Xbox is at and what it's doing. I'm a fan of its strategy. And I think in particular, I've been a fan of its releases for the last of the while. I mean, like Hi-Fi Rush, Grounded, Pentament, uh, obviously, Forza.


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[Assistant] Yeah, absolutely, like there's, there's some, there's some really, there's a consistent track record of solid releases there. Obviously they're not AAA bangers, they're not the system sellers, whatever else, but there's a consistent track record of quality, and I respect that, right?


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[Assistant] I think the problem with Redfall was that it was just such a cataclysmic failure of quality control and design and clearly like so many things were not lined up correctly to


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[Assistant] Is a different category of, failure is a strong word, but like,


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[Assistant] Halo has stumbled post release, whatever, due to its update cadence, due to a variety of factors. It's not quite the same. It's, it's no any of the same as something like Redfall, right?


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[Assistant] Seeing all the good work that Xbox has put in and seeing all the successes they've had, I think the problem with Redfall is it's just a confident shaker because it was just, it was that level of bad that you're like, well, what's really going on? If this can happen, like, are things really as good as they think, as we think they are? Kind of to your point, Jake.


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[Assistant] Was that what, yeah, that's, yeah, how are you hearing it? Because I've definitely seen some different interpretations around the place about that quote and some people are like, he's throwing in the towel. Some people are like, that's not what he's saying. How are you sort of interpreting it?


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[Assistant] I think that Phil and his team like have a vision, uh, I think it is about more than just the console. I think that's the point he was making in that video, uh, in that, in that interview. Uhm, I do think there's been a lot of people sort of


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[Assistant] I don't s- I think this guy's also been talking about the importance of great video games for a long time now, and people really seized on this quote where he's like, you know, if we just focus on great games, then that's gonna move the needle, and he was like,


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[Assistant] Well, that's again, that's a great grab if you just focus on that. But the broader point was that great games alone will not be enough to keep Microsoft competitive. And that's why they're doing the zig, as everyone's zagging, as Gerard said, right? They're opening up new methods of playing and new approaches to ecosystems.


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[Assistant] So I like it. I like Phil. I hope that he rallies after this and like, you know, stays in the chair. Cause obviously people are always like, Oh, what's going to happen with Phil? I think you'll be around. I think you'll, I think he's delivering and, um, hopefully Starfield really, really crushes it. Cause I think if Starfield doesn't,


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[Assistant] We're in for a long period of discourse around Xbox and whatever else, but if Starfield is really great, I think it's definitely going to make people very happy, make them feel very comfortable and be like, okay, cool, great. I really feel vindicated by my choice to invest in this ecosystem. But in absence of that, it's, there's going to be a lot of hand rigging, I think. So.


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[Assistant] Yeah, that's, that's very, that's very fair. Totally agree with that. For sure. For sure.


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[Assistant] We have a radio host, we have a radio host in Australia called Ugly Phil. We promise we won't call you Ugly Phil at either, but that would be nice.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I will actually, um, cause I played, I played the beta actually before the original beta cause they did like a closed whatever for content creators and media.


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[Assistant] And uhm, I'm actually just really optimistic. Optimistic is not quite the right word. I'm hopeful for Diablo 4 because I think obviously there's lots of reasons to be skeptical about any Blizzard release these days for a variety of reasons, but I really love Diablo. Like I really do. It was one of the most important games for me growing up. I used to sit there.


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[Assistant] Yeah, Diablo was very important to me and I really do love it.


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[Assistant] And I'm, you know, just hopeful that they manage to land it. I'm also interested in the idea of like a live service Diablo. Uh, you know, obviously that comes with a lot of risk on the money side of things for sure, but there could also be the upside. Like if they don't take the piss with microtransactions and they manage to deliver a good cadence of new content.


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[Assistant] Then that's good. That's, that's great. I'm okay with that. You know, Diablo just feels like a great series fit for that kind of, you know, game, uh, update style, update rhythm. So yeah, man, I'm keen. I'm like, I'm, I'm excited. Are you guys playing this weekend or just waiting till full release or what?


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[Assistant] It's basically an open beta and they're inviting everyone to log on at the same time and they're like, please break our servers because as you would remember, Diablo 3.


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[Assistant] Mirror34, not quite loose, but if you google that you will find some interesting errors.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so look, any online game is going to absolutely shit the bed when it comes to day one, like whatever. The question is, do you shit the bed on day four or five? Because if you're at that point, then there's a real problem, right? It's just, it's always going to take one of those opening days for things to wash through.


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[Assistant] Uh, but if they manage to pull off a totally silky smooth lodge and everything's happy, then, you know, fantastic. Love it.


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[Assistant] That is gonna be so fun because there are so, like there are lots of games that are fun to watch while other people play and or to play, you know, like


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[Assistant] BOOM! Nailed it! You are the better host. First time ever. It's only, first time in what, 18 months? No, 12 months we've been live at that inbox. First time someone has managed to remember it other than me. This is, this is huge. This is massive.


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[Assistant] Uhm, alright, so mine's a bit different, like, I would say, it doesn't really fall into this category, but I would just say,


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[Assistant] We're never going to get a Guardians of the Galaxy game sequel. We're just not, okay? And it's so sad, right? It is so sad that that is never going to happen because that was such a fantastic game. I mean, obviously the game side of it, people had mixed opinions of, but the way that was written.


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[Assistant] Tears of the Kingdom, oh my god, you did not do that on this week of all weeks.


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[Assistant] I'm trying to do a thing here, Luce. I'm trying to shout out our good friend PayPal Honey. Okay, can I please do that, Lucy? Please, please. Okay, thank you. Alright, this podcast is brought to you by PayPal Honey. Uh, you guys probably already know what Honey is. It's been around for a very long time now. I discovered Honey years ago, well before they approached us for a sponsorship.


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[Assistant] Uhm, it is a browser extension that allows you


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[Assistant] To find discount codes instantly, right? So you know how you go on a website and you go shopping and there's a little box that says discount and you're like, oh, I really wish I had something or I wish there was a website or something that had a big list of discount codes that were active and I could just drop that in, get some free money, boom.


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[Assistant] Honey is essentially that, but without having to go to a website to find the discount code, right? So, if you have Honey installed in your browser,


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[Assistant] You literally just like click one button. Honey will automatically search for coupons. It will drop it straight into that discount box. It will apply the discount and that, and that's it. If there's a discount code available, obviously, but it's super simple.


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[Assistant] And uh, it has saved me hundreds of dollars over the years. Cause when I do online shopping, I just click the button and then honey's like, Oh, by the way, I just saved you 50 bucks. I'm like, wow. Thanks. I guess.


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[Assistant] What's the catch? No catch! Because it's a free service as well, by the way. So, I dunno. I like honey. What do you guys think? Do you guys like honey?


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[Assistant] Yes, it is. It does feel like you're like hacking when you actually manage to find. It's like, it's like a, it's like a hitting the jackpot, jackpot, like pulling the slot machine lever and then saying, and you're like, yes, save 50 bucks, let's go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That is the power of Honey to be able to do that for you. Uhm, it's free to install, free to use. Uhm, if you'd like to check it out, please visit joinhoney.com forward slash f- forward slash FPS.


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[Assistant] Uhm, that's joinhoney.com forward slash FPS. There will be a link below in the description as well. Uhm, and yea, just start saving money straight away. It's honestly as simple as that.


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[Assistant] Well, I hadn't actually heard of it before they reached out to us, uh, cause, I dunno, I just hadn't, but then...


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[Assistant] As I said earlier, my brother is really into the whole green smoothie thing. Cause he's like a vegan and whatever. It's a whole thing. Uh, and I was like, ah, green smoothie is a bit much for me, man. I don't know. But I respected the routine. Um, it's just that I really couldn't handle doing a green smoothie every day.


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[Assistant] So I tried athletic greens, which is just basically giving me many of the same nutrients that that green smoothie would have.


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[Assistant] And I'm really liking it, like it's basically just part of my routine now. I'm not gonna tell you that like I feel a million times better, but I just like knowing that I've started my day, cause it's the first thing I do before I like eat anything. I have it first thing in the morning. I just like starting my day knowing that I have done something good for my body, given that I'm probably going to spend the rest of the day


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Doing something very bad for my body, just sitting around playing video games all day, right? So it's nice to do at least one good thing, uh, and tick that off at the start of the day.


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[Assistant] Yes, uh, lately, uh, last two weeks in terms of releases, we've had Age of Wonders 4 on PC, which I've heard very good things about. I've had lots of people actually message me and some people even email me.


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[Assistant] That's when I know a game is really good. That's a big deal. When I get some people specifically emailing me, now I'm worried that actually what's going to happen now is a lot of people are going to email me about games. But no, people are really passionate about a game and they really wanted to get more spotlight. They emailed me and they're like, please review this game. And I'm like, I would like to, but I only have so many hours in the day.


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[Assistant] Uh, it's selling great guns as well, so it's definitely a very triumphant return for that series. Uh, there was Redfall, which we have all spoken about a lot. Uh, Hogwarts Legacy arrived for last gen consoles. I haven't checked the digital foundry.


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[Assistant] This one's for you, Luce. Lord of the Rings Heroes of Middle Earth. It is an EA published mobile game, uh, that seems to be one of those gacha games, I think, maybe with Lord of the Rings characters. Can I interest you in that? Are you, are you down or what's, what's, what do you think?


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[Assistant] Uhm, and the only other release this week is a little known title from a small developer by the name of Nintendo, and they're releasing this thing they're working on called Legend of Zelda Tears of the King.


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[Assistant] That is out right now. And as I said, people are probably just playing it right now while listening to us bang on. So I appreciate it. Hopefully we are enjoyable second monitor viewing for you during your adventures through Hyrule.


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[Assistant] Yeah, well, first of all, I guess we'll say, gonna play it really close to the chest with spoilers, and uhm, there's a lot of stuff that I would, I just want to talk about now, even though I'm sure a lot of others, other reviewers will spoil it.


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[Assistant] Again, I don't want to say they're spoiling the game by the way. I think it's perfectly fine to talk about a lot of this stuff within the context of a review.


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[Assistant] Um, but when it comes to games that are as special as ones like these, I always am very cautious and very like, just err on the side of caution. So I'm going to sidestep a lot of things that, um, that, you know, I think you should discover for yourself. So.


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[Assistant] But, you can, oh shit, you can build pretty much anything else you want. I mean, it's, I saw this TikTok of this person who made this giant statue, and like, you, cause you hit things in, uhm,


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[Assistant] In the game to, uh, make them go, right? The zonai devices, you hit them to turn them on. It was this statue, and it was like a big mannequin going like left to right like this. He had this massive dong.


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[Assistant] No idea what is in store for them, uh, when it comes to people's imagination for building lewds. Uhm, so, yeaah, no, look. Put, uhm.


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[Assistant] I don't know what the exact number of my playthrough, how many hours my playthrough was, but it was at least 70 hours to get through this, right? This game is so unbelievably massive. Cause I think an average playthrough for Breath of the Wild was like, yeah, 50 hours or so.


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[Assistant] But yeah, definitely all the reviewers that I've spoken to, no one's getting through this in less than 70 hours. I've definitely spoken to some reviewers who are about like 80 hours plus. And even then when we finish it, everyone is like,


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[Assistant] There's still so much that we haven't touched like so much of this world. We haven't explored so much. We haven't seen so many side quests undone, like still not finished. I spoke to one reviewer who was being pretty thorough and he said he had like over 40 side quests just in his log unfinished. And that's after he'd done a whole boatload of them as well. Right? So.


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[Assistant] Unbelievably Massive was not ready for it. Biggest game since Elden Ring.


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[Assistant] And uhm, just really remarkable. Like just, man, I can't wait for you guys to play it. I can't wait for everyone to play it. It's just incredible. It really is. Like I, I don't know, it's hard to really sort of talk about it here and just like, just talk endlessly. Yes, questions is going to be probably a good way to drive it. Were you compelled by the story?


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[Assistant] I actually was quite a bit more in fact than I was in Breath of the Wild. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't want to like hype it up too much. I don't think structurally it's told in quite the same way, right? It is, it is still about flashbacks and it's about like, you know, you see some cutscenes and whatever.


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[Assistant] But I do think that the framing of it all is far more mythic and some of the revelations are so much more exciting. At one point I like literally screamed at my screen when there was like a big drop and I was like, Oh my God, are you fucking kidding me? Cause it was just that level of like, I can't believe this, you know?


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[Assistant] Um, it definitely has the power to move you.


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[Assistant] Both through, through its core storytelling, but also the way that it just tugs at those like Zelda heartstrings. Like it knows, it knows the things that you really love about this series and it knows how to use them correctly within the context of this story that it's telling. So again, I don't want to hype it up too much. I don't think it's like.


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[Assistant] Vastly different than Breath of the Wild in terms of how it's told, but I do think it is a better story. Yes, for sure.


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[Assistant] Well, not really. Again, it's not really a spoiler to say that, like, Link's not really a feature of those cutscenes, you know what I mean? Because again, it's him sort of viewing events that had happened.


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[Assistant] Let's say one thing that's really important to know about Tears of the Kingdom is it's still, it is absolutely Breath of the Wild 2. It's very much a sequel.


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[Assistant] I had wondered whether or not this would be kind of like Majora's Mask, right, which was a real remix and it felt very different to Ocarina. This feels very similar in many core aspects, uhm, but it feels


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[Assistant] Almost all of the aspects have been enhanced, improved, made better, made bigger. With the exception of stuff like combat and quality of life.


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[Assistant] So combat is still the same. It's still the same sort of weapon styles and move sets. You can fuse items to weapons now, which definitely adds some strategic aspect to combat where it's like, oh, this enemy is weak against fire. I'll put a flamethrower on my shield and I'll stand there and just burn him down by blocking. That's cool. But when it comes to swinging a weapon, it's the same. You know what I mean?


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[Assistant] And I never found combat in Breath of the Wild to be particularly good. I don't think it's good here. Same goes when it comes to like bosses, you know, uhm, some of the boss battles are really great, but only for how novel they are and how inventive they are with their mechanics, not because it's great to fight the boss. Do you know what I mean?


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[Assistant] So yeah, quality of life is another big challenge. Like, you know, the cooking system remains the same.


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[Assistant] And that was a major pain point for me. Uhm, you're just having to go into your menu every time to pull out the thing, hold the thing, put it in the pot, stand there, watch the thing. Okay, now I've got one thing. Let's do that all over again. 15 times to make myself, you know, a fish pie or whatever, right? Uhm.


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[Assistant] So that stays the same. I think weapon durability remains a major bug there, and I still


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[Assistant] I firmly believe that this is a worthwhile system that Nintendo have not dialed in correctly. And I think it's actually worse here because now, yeaah, cause I thought the fuse system would allow you to like, uhm, make weapons stronger so you would churn through weapons less. That's not true.


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[Assistant] The Fuse system lets you make weapons do more attack damage, but they don't become that much more durable. And so you're still churning through weapons so often and it's just, it's annoying. I'm sorry, but it is like, I'm all for this system. I'm a fan of this system, but it's just like, take the edge off it, man. Come on.


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[Assistant] And not the case, man. You are still burning through weapons so fast. Whenever you're fighting, you know, you'll probably get-


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[Assistant] But in, but in, like I said, that's all the stuff that hasn't changed and that sort of is a bit of a frustration still, but the scale of this world now is so much bigger and the density of it is so much, oh god, you cannot go 50 feet without finding something to do. All of the puzzles and stuff that was shoved into the shrines before,


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[Assistant] They're now out in the open world, and it's just, this entire world is this puzzle box. And I would actually liken it to Elden Ring in a way, right? I think if you took the scale and the sense of discovery in Elden Ring, this has that.


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[Assistant] But take out the good combat and the boss encounters of Elden Ring.


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[Assistant] And replace it with just wall to wall interesting puzzles and little things that you can find along the way.


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[Assistant] If you just swap those things out, you have two experiences that are actually, funnily enough, very analogous to each other. If you could make, combine the perfection of Elden Ring's combat and boss design with the perfection of Nintendo's open world puzzle box design,


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[Assistant] We'll have the perfect video game. Uh, will that ever happen? Probably not. But, uh, it's still, it's still pretty rad, so, yeaah.


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[Assistant] I definitely had that top of mine as I went in.


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[Assistant] Because I, at the start I was like, oh, this is much more Breath of the Wild than I thought it was gonna be. I hope this holds my interest.


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[Assistant] Yeah, without giving some things away, yes, it is nominally, but don't forget there's the Sky Isles, which is this whole other landmass or archipelago above you, right? So uhm, I went in there thinking, is this gonna be enough to really keep me interested? But I found myself so much more engaged with this, and I enjoyed Breath of the Wild, by the way. I liked it, finished it, of course.


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[Assistant] I found myself so much more drawn along by this world because it was so much more dense. There was so much more to discover and the way you can interact with it at all times was so much more interesting.


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[Assistant] Before you kind of just had to run or get on a horse and that was it, right? But now it's like, well, I feel like flying and I'm just going to build a fucking rocket ship and you just build it and then you go. And it's like, you can do that at any point, any point, anything you see, you can go there by some.


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[Assistant] It's not always like, where should I go? You're always thinking, where should I go? But you're also thinking, what would be a fun way to get there? And that just activates a completely different part of your brain that I found so fun and that really pulled me along. So uhm.


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[Assistant] Yeah, no, I was like the whole way through, man. I was feeding it every hour. And I'm like, I'm, I'm gonna go back and play more of it. I mean, I don't think I'm gonna get 100% on this, but I definitely wanna tick off the major thing. I'll do it, I'll do it.


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[Assistant] I mean, the idea of getting all the korok seeds and all that sort of shit sounds like absolute hell. Yep. But uhm, no, I definitely plan to finish most of the things because of how much I really, really love this for sure. Can you make a gun?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, you could, you could, in a way, make a gun, if you took some logs, for example, or some beams, and then put a rocket on the top of it, and then fired, and then managed to somehow activate the rocket, it could be a gun. Yeah, you could definitely do that, absolutely, you could make a gun.


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[Assistant] Yeah, look, I would say this is one of the most sophisticated video games ever created. The sandbox that exists is so flexible, so breakable at all times, but Nintendo has utter confidence that anything you can do


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[Assistant] It's, the game will still hold. Like, there are these abilities, for example, there's an ability called Ascend, which lets you go through the roof, okay?


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[Assistant] Nintendo's level designers have had to work so hard to make sure you can't use this to like skip stuff you shouldn't be skipping and whatever else. But trust me, you can always find a way, right? You can always find a way to use that ability to like skip shit.


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[Assistant] You can just, that's what you can do, and that's what I did very often, cause I was like, I wanna see how far I can push this, how far can I break this game, right?


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[Assistant] And the fact that Nintendo, that the game still holds and still works at all times. At no point did I ever go up and ascend through the ceiling and I clipped into some terrain and then I had to reload my save. At no point did I ever feel like, oh, this game is too easy because I found the shortcut thing that lets me do this and it's really cheesy and it's too-


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[Assistant] It all holds together despite giving me more flexibility and freedom than any other sandbox has ever given me in any actual video game outside of like, you know, like Gary's monowire.


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[Assistant] It's, it's remarkable. It is like, the creativity that people will be able to bring to bear on how they solve puzzles in, you know.


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[Assistant] Temples, Dungeons, Divine Dragons, whatever they're called, I won't spoil it. The, the, the freedom you have to explore this world.


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[Assistant] All of it. You are just, no one is ready for just how flexible this sandbox is. It's, it's, it's genius. It's absolute, I have no idea how Nintendo pulled this off.


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[Assistant] Breath of the Wild had a very flexible set of tools that were interesting to use. They're nothing compared to this. They are nothing. They were like,


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[Assistant] They, they gave you three or four different options to approach puzzles in each way, right? But this is like giving you an infinite number of options to approach the entire world however you please. And that is the real genius of this, that uhm, I think it will take time for it to dawn on people, but when it does, they'll be like, wow. And I would say as well, one point that I make in my review is,


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[Assistant] You can copy the vibe of Breath of the Wild. The serenity, the space, that kind of, that feel of what it's like.


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[Assistant] You can copy the scale of these worlds, like you can make like a really big world that you get to roll around in, right? I just can't see any developer copying.


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[Assistant] The sandbox that Nintendo has created here. Unless they spend all the fucking money in the world. Like, the amount of money to be able to recreate this in this way. I can't see anyone emulating this. Not for the next five to ten years. I don't think anyone's gonna be able to do this in the same way.


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[Assistant] Uhm, yeaah, they built, the moat that they have built around this game by virtue of this sandbox is vast. Yeah, man.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I agree totally. And I actually put myself firmly into that category. I'm not someone who likes to fuck around with sandboxes. I'm like, no, give me the quest. Give me the objective. I want the efficiency. I want to get this done, right?


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[Assistant] But I find this game just draws it out of you. It just because it's so fun and flexible and it's easy to use to a point. I will make the point that it is finicky. Absolutely. Like there's lots of buttons to press and rotating things and clicking things and it's finicky, but you do get to grips with it. And after a while you're like, yeah, cool. I, you know.


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[Assistant] You feel comfortable enough with it. Uhm, so I just found myself drawn into that creativity in a way that very few games have ever drawn that out in me. You know, it really does.


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[Assistant] What did I do man? I just tried to make you a good game. You know, I worked for six years on this. Um, but yeah, it, it, it, it really does. It just, it draws that out of you. And for other reasons that I won't spoil, there's, you know, some parts of the game where your imagination is really, yeah, just


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[Assistant] It just awakens, I find it just awakens that, that part of you, even if it's not something that is, is native, is, is natural to you, I would say. It did for me at least. Okay. So, yeah, yeah. Exciting.


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[Assistant] Yeah, but I think, I'd be very surprised if people don't really love this. I mean, I think, uh...


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[Assistant] You know, I don't score games, but if I did, this is a solid 10. I am very strongly recommending this on my channel.


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[Assistant] Uh, it's literally like the third game I've ever very strongly recommended along with, uh, Elden Ring and Resident Evil 4.


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[Assistant] It's just, it's, it's remarkable. It really is. And as I said, it's 16 gigabytes. The file size for this video game is 16 gigabytes.


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[Assistant] That is like the save file of a fucking, you know, of a triple A game. It's like, you want to download a new skin for like Modern Warfare 2. That's like 20 gigabytes, you know what I mean?


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[Assistant] This whole game could fit into one of those USB sticks from back in the day. Uh, it's madness, you know what I mean? It's truly madness. Actually, that's one point we should talk about, performance on Switch.


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[Assistant] I would say on the whole- Did you play on a OLED? Yes, of course. Okay.


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[Assistant] Uhm, I would say that on the whole, it runs really well. Okay? Definitely get some frame drops here and there.


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[Assistant] Particularly when you're building, when stuff becomes translucent and you're panning the camera around, the game will slow down, absolutely.


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[Assistant] I would also remind, because I think a lot of people are going to be like, it's disgusting that we have to put up with frame drops, or it's hypocritical that you would ping Jedi Survivor for this, but not, and then give a pass to a Zelda game. I'm like,


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[Assistant] Dude, this computer here is like a $8,000 machine. It's got all the top of the line things. Whatever. And if that can't play a new release game at a reliable 30 FPS, that is a different thing than if my Nintendo Switch cannot play a game at 30 FPS.


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[Assistant] That's old man, that's really old. This thing fits in our pocket. This game looks so beautiful. The draw distances are out of this world, like when you fly up in the sky to like, um, to survey areas. The horizon is there man, you can see all the way to it.


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[Assistant] The fact that the story for this game technically is not, oh it's such a shame. The story for this is, it is a fucking miracle that this runs on the Nintendo Switch. Like a genuine miracle that they have managed to squeeze this game into this hardware and get it running as well as it does.


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[Assistant] Uhm, because yeaah, you'll see when you play it for yourself. It's crazy. It's crazy.


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[Assistant] Anyway, that's my little rant about the technical side of things. I'm sure that's going to get clipped and spread about like, uh, but I'm like, yeah, okay. It's fun to make fun of the Switch. I do it all the time, right? But you gotta give credit where it's due. And here, Switch is proving itself to be a remarkable workhorse for, you know, for this game, for sure.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I think a lot of people will go into this thing like, eh, I don't know, I didn't really like Breath of the Wild, but I think that they will be like, I didn't like Breath of the Wild?


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[Assistant] But I really like this, you know, I think, and I've already seen some of that as well because I know obviously the league's out there and people are already playing it. A lot of people are already saying that, you know? So I suspect we'll see a lot more of it.


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[Assistant] Since respect had all that kind of like ethereal trancy kind of stuff going on, right? Is it the same sort of vibe?


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[Assistant] That is totally my jam. That is 100% my music genre right there. So that is great.


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[Assistant] That's it. Yeah. I, uh, I'd really look forward to this one as well, actually. I'd like to play it straight after Zelda. I think it looks really rad and yeah, just an interesting concept. I'd like to try it on PSVR 2 as well because, uhm, you know, it's one of the first


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[Assistant] Bigger, not big, it's not massive obviously, but like it's a title that people are interested in and one of the first, um, PSVR 2 releases after the launch of the hardware. So, um, yeah, that's, that's super cool to know that it's good. I'm pumped. There's no co-op, is there? It's just single player?


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[Assistant] Yeah. It's nice. It's a good PS Plus lineup this month. I think it's like Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart. Plus that, plus something else that I was like, oh, that's also good. It's a pretty strong lineup for me. I can't remember what the third one is, but it's good.


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[Assistant] No, no, no, no. I'm talking about the, the, not that tier. I'm talking about like the free tier, like the basic tier.


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[Assistant] No, okay, I've got... Oh, that is that, that what it is. Okay, you're right, actually. I misread, you're right. It is the premium tier that has those games. Okay, right, got it, got it, got it, cool.


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[Assistant] Cause I think obviously those sorts of games, but then they got acquired by EA, if I remember correctly. Correct. And then it just changed everything. And it was, that's, it was such a bummer after that. So, yeah. Cause they really tried to make a go of Planes for Zombies, like make it a whole franchise and all that stuff. Garden Warfare was fun.


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[Assistant] I never played it. I just, no part of it really appealed to me. I, cause I played some, I played the Plants of a Zombie 2 on mobile, right? Was it 2? And I was like, woah, this sucks. Like I just remember.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I remember playing another mobile game, I'm not sure if it was, but I think they started doing all this extra stuff and stuff in the microtransactions or whatever. I'm like, nah, this blows, man, I don't want to play this game. And then I just played more of the first one. So yeah, you're right.


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[Assistant] There were such a studio back in their day, like Earthworm Gym, they did, um, Sacrifice, one of, like a truly revolutionary third person RTS that, like, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No one really followed art in its wake, uh, and they did that. And then they eventually got bought up by something and eventually that got bought up by Amazon, I believe, I think, at that point.


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[Assistant] Wolfenstein 3D, man. The first person shooter that began all of the first person shooting. That was just, that was the beginning. That was, that was where it all started. And like, I still remember, do you guys ever think about this?


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[Assistant] That's how I got it. Now it's obviously like they're on like kids are on TikTok and you know, they just download free to play games and whatever and game discovery is so easy. But back then, man, I don't know how I got Wolfenstein, but I played it. I played it very early and I just played the shit out of it. And I just was a shooter fan ever since after that, like every.


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[Assistant] Every shooter really just played them all as a result of my time with that, so.


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[Assistant] I, I don't think I will because I think I'll just play it as like a single player game to fuck around with and experiment with and be like, here's how Street Fighter exists now. So I understand what it is, but I am way too scared to go online and just get trucked over and over again by people. So I'm just, no, the beta, the beta is not for me.


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[Assistant] Yeah, me too, man. It's gonna be so, it's, I'm very, very pumped for it. Very pumped. So.


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[Assistant] I'm looking forward to Summer Games Fest as well. It's going to be great to see you guys. Spoiler alert, we are going to do a show there. We're going to be recording, uh, in person, uh, where not the, the location is still to be confirmed, but we are going to do a show together.


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[Assistant] Anyway, point is, uhm, we're going to Summer Games Fest and, uhm, we're going to be recording a show there. And, yeah, we're very, I'm just very excited about that. I think it's going to be super rad. Uhm, see, can you just see what, what kind of show Jeff has put on?


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[Assistant] Uhm, I mean last year was quite small. Hopefully this year's a little bit bigger. But uhm, I'm just, I'm glad he's putting something on. Like it's, it's nice that he's like, that he's...


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[Assistant] There's gonna be something there. The idea that we wouldn't go to eat, that make the annual pilgrimage to LA in June, that's a sad idea. So I'm glad that he has stepped up. Out of the goodness of his heart. That's right, of course. The charity in his heart. Thank you, Jun.


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[Assistant] Yeah, yeah, I still don't, I, I saw it, I, it doesn't, it doesn't, I think that stuff isn't hitting me as hard now as old school, but like you can look at it and be like, yeah, this was well put together, this is a good time, but definitely it's, it's hard cause like, you know, that, that old story arc, the old infinity saga is still, you know,


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[Assistant] That was the thing. And the other side of it is not that thing anymore, you know, so yeaah.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's done. Well, yeah, I'm free up. I'm still going to mess around with it just for fun. And I'm going to, um, play Diablo service slam.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm going to mess around with humanity and maybe review it. We'll see how I go. I'll see. Um, and then there's also some other stuff coming out this month as well, which I just want to shout out briefly because I know Planet of Lana is dropping this month.


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[Assistant] Which is a little indie, looks really nice. Golem is, uhm, looking very interesting. Shout out to Golem. Shout out to Golem. And, uh, System Shock went gold, and that's out at the end of the month as well. Wow, finally! Yeah, yeah, that's it.


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[Assistant] And uhm, LEGO 2K drive actually is another one which I am quite interested in. Does that look very fun? I reckon that looks very fun. I'm down for that.


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[Assistant] Very brave of them to launch it so close to thing. But whatever, it's a different category, I guess. I dunno.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it was a great game, wasn't it? It was cool. It was really good. I really, I really love that. Uhm, so no, I'm actually, yeah, excited for LEGO 2 Go Drive. Uhm, and also, new season of Destiny, baby. Oh, here we go. I'm excited. 22nd, I think it is. 23rd, maybe.


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[Assistant] And, uh, I'm actually doing a charity stream for that as well. By the way, doing a charity stream, um, partner with Game on Cancer in Australia to do, um, they do fundraising for cancer research and yeah, the kickoff event that we're doing for that is, um,


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[Assistant] Is, uh, Destiny Stream, haha. And we're gonna be giving away this bad boy. Where is he? This guy, this, this is Gijalihorn, right here. Not actually him, cause I have another one that's boxed. But, it'll be, yea.


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[Assistant] And if you come along and give lots of money, you could have this maybe, okay? That's the deal. It all goes to a worthy cause, so I hope everyone gives generously. So that's it! That's what I'm doing.


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[Assistant] I've been playing one and it's so good and I want you all to play it.


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[Assistant] Yeah, you want to be recognized that, you know, the thing you did for four years was like worth a damn. And I think, you know, the fans have shown that it was and you know, that was, I felt like we were done that night. This is for other people that are interested in those kinds of things.


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[Assistant] Day one in the industry, you know, like, stupid like 23 year old me, like, moving here from Ohio with like $1500 in my bank account, sleeping on a floor with a sheet for like two years, you know what I mean? Like, it was like, it was everything.


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[Assistant] I remember the first day they sat me down at the company I worked at and they were like, here, we're making this X-Men fighting game. And I was like, oh, this is amazing. You know, cause I didn't know if they were going to do a sequel or not. And, uh, they're like,


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[Assistant] There's Wolverine. Like that's your first thing to do. As being a giant comic fan and you're just like...


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[Assistant] And he, but he doesn't do anything. And then you're in the scripts and you figure all this stuff out and then you hit the square button and you see Wolverine schnick jab and you're like...


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[Assistant] This is it. This is the dream. Like this is what I get to do all day, every day from now on and they give you money for this. Uhm, so that was absolutely amazing. And then, you know, meeting Cory there and a lot of other people like Bruno.


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[Assistant] It was just these incredible talents and they're still here at this studio now and we all, you know, came together to make this. So it's like, Ragnarok is just like another step in that story of us just making things together. And, uh, yeah, it's just really special.


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[Assistant] Uhm, I can tell you, so, for me personally, like, Street Fighter's always been, like, my go-to, you know, like, when, anytime I got any extra money, it was like,


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[Assistant] Ass kickings can you hand out on $1.50, right? Like that's a mentality when you're like 14 and that game is there. Uhm, and it was just always there, you could go. The arcade was always open, you know? Uhm, so that was always an amazing thing.


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[Assistant] To translate that into games and the people I met through that, like traveling to New York. I remember going out there because the Tekken 3 community was really big with some friends from Ohio. We drove all the way out there and played with them, stayed with some random people that you met at an IRC and then fly away to California.


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[Assistant] It's just been this amazing moment of coming together, but in Street Fighter I always play Zangief, that's like my favorite character. Yes, let's go.


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[Assistant] Kratos is kind of a grappler. He is. A little unknown story is in God of War 1, his grab is based on Zangief's grab. Well, in the code, there's a, like when he goes to grab, there's like little spheres that detect if you're going to hit, but there's one.


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[Assistant] You know, and me and Derek Daniels and Jason McDonald and Adam Poole and a couple other people just all knew that game and were just, you know, borrowing. Cause your career kind of goes in these like three phases. You're like, you know, imitating, you're emulating, and then you're innovating.


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[Assistant] It's just you. So it starts off as like, no, none of you. It's other people's stuff. Then it's a mix. And then it's you. So that time, like, out of World 1 and 2 for us was us doing a lot of imitating and then learning how to emulate so we could come up with our own ideas. But it was all based on this, like, fighting game background, you know.


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[Assistant] It all just grew from that and we had this huge knowledge, but I never forget this, like me and Derek were trying to like get better at designing and there was no like handbook. So we used to go to boarders books like on Wednesday nights and with the decker cards and we would just make games with cards that had like fighting game-esque mechanics.


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[Assistant] And then one night he was like, you know, we should try to do something to just make sure our memories stay sharp on the history. And we went through every Street Fighter game that Capcom made, like with the new mechanics that were introduced.


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[Assistant] You know, so I was like, alright, yeah, World Warrior, and it's like, well, you can fight, you know, like, they have combos and stuff like that. And it's like, what was new in CE? And it's like, oh, well, you can play mirror matches now. And then like,


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[Assistant] Hyperfighting, it's like faster, but there's new, it starts to break Ken and Ryu down, and it's like, ah, when supers come online, but we did like a...


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[Assistant] From memory, chronologically. He still has it on his blog, you can go look at it, like the-


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[Assistant] And having a good time and still being friends, like 20 years later people are still friends. And it's amazing what games can do in that way.


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[Assistant] Well, I think there's always room to go once you get there. And I think you don't ever stop borrowing as well. It's just how much of it. I think it's like a percentage of slider where you are, you know, you might be at 50% innovating, maybe 30% emulating and still 20% imitating because you don't, you're still learning things. You don't know every, nobody's ever fully formed in that way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I would say, you know, speaking for Cory, I think he was definitely in the reboot at the place, you know, cause he used to say it all the time. He's like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're gonna start over because we know the rules, so we can break the rules. And so that even with the Comet, it was like, okay, like maybe we can do that as well, you know, cause


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The landscape was shifting, you know, like the soul stuff was starting to come in and it didn't all have to have combo meters and all this stuff anymore, like the stuff that was almost arcade-y influenced, like you could go for a different route and then we were like, well, how do we carve out our path with inside that? And so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, Jason McDonald, our, uh, lead combo designer on that game in God of War 3, and he's been here since day one. Uhm, design director on Ragnarok.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But do we want to have a new identity? Do we want to have something that's our own? And then because we were going to have the range stuff with the projectile, like if you, that pull.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's too hard sometimes that distance. So we wanted it to stay like where you always felt like you're right on a shoulder in the pocket.


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[Assistant] And some people still to this day will be like, that's not good, but that's, that's subjective. Cause it's a lot of people play it and it, they love it. So, and for Kratos being that, you know, hulking, zangief-esque thing, like that, we never got away from that. We wanted to be in there in the pocket with him and you feel that crunch. So.


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[Assistant] I think it's always funny when people are like, just like, you know, like, you know, they use the kids terms, like they stand one game or one genre. It's like, why? Why would you limit yourself to that? That's like silly. Like play everything and like, there's always something good somewhere.


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[Assistant] If you choose to look for it, if you just look for negative stuff, of course you're going to find it. That's all day every day, but yea, we play everything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's not great, right? He stretched the imagination. But there was only two of us that built, like, all the characters. On the design side was me and a guy named Adam Poole. And then we had some help from some other people that came in towards the end. Uhm, but, uh, yeaah, it was just...


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[Assistant] It was, you build a lot and you did a lot, and it was like reps, it was like doing push-ups, it was like you're cranking through like hundreds of animations, like setting up the hitboxes, all this kind of stuff. And that's what builds you up to get ready to do something like God of War 1. You need that in your, in your, in your, in your bag, so to speak. So uhm.


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[Assistant] Yeah, that game was, like, if I can go back in time and fix that game? Oh my goodness. Like, knowing what I know now?


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[Assistant] I think I have too much still joy of playing it. And once you get in and you start working on them, they kind of start to pull a little bit of that away from you. So I think I'm cool with just letting it be what it is. But I'll be honest, when I saw Street Fighter 6, I was like, damn, missed out again. Cause one of my good buddies Seth Killian, you know, he worked on Street Fighter 4.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, yeaah, I mean Seth is awesome like that. If you remember his like, his old Domination 101, like, it's amazing.


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[Assistant] Gamers are maybe wanting these big steps all the time and it's just, it's a different time period of making games. You know, the hardware is never going to be these big leaps anymore. The games will take more


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Artistic and design oriented directions, but they're not, I don't think they're gonna make these, these big leaps. Now I could just be,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's happening though. I mean, look at project L. I mean, the cannons, I've known those guys forever and they're putting that squad together with the right backing, with the right IP. And I think they're going to build something special. I mean, look at Tony, uh, with multiverse, you know, Tony was, he was awesome. I loved working with that dude and see him up there last night.


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[Assistant] I don't think we talked about everything, but uhm, cause we, we did probably lose some stuff along the way. It was mostly me to be honest, cause I've just been with the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I have like an intimate history with like what went on, how we got there, you know, why we made these decisions, why things changed, why maybe someone took it this direction when we thought it was going that direction. So for me, it was just like,


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[Assistant] Hey, did you know about this? And they're like, no, that's great. Let's put that in. You know, and the writers like would clam onto it. So I think just having some, it was almost like a,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then, you know, Rue taking over and building the PSP for the first time that looked just as good as a PS2 game, which was wild. And then, you know, my boy Dana.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just with Ghost of Sparta that was, me and him always got along and it was just having that connection to me and him just running that game was just one of the most special experiences I ever had making a game. So having all that in your back pocket and then 2018, you just kind of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's do a little nod here, let's do that. And then, but for fans, they see it from almost a different point of view. They're like, no, like you said, it's history, it's lore. And us, it's almost like internal being turned into the art side. And so it's just a weird amount.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, and it was important because it showed that they were the same. They're having the same problems. Like one of the magic.


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[Assistant] If they wouldn't make these other decisions, that character would have ended up that way. And it's almost like cautionary tales.


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[Assistant] And so I think that's why people can really connect on that human level because they can kind of see themselves in their own decision making process or something that they did and they're like, I wish I could have did that over again or I wish this person in my life would have did this or I wish I could have been there for that way. And cause you see what the result is now and, um,


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[Assistant] It's, it's one of those I think just magic moments that you can put together. But again, like when you can connect the old lore.


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[Assistant] And I'm like, yeah, I do. He's like, dude, send that to me. You know what I mean? So, um, but yeah, it was one of those where, uh, we have an official person that does that now and you need to cause it's just getting so big and it's stretched like taffy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not officially, like you're saying, like we run into each other, obviously, like we'll talk about stuff, uhm, but, uh.


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[Assistant] You know, I want all games to be good. When all games are good, that means there's more gamers. That means we're having a wider reach. And that means that more people are playing, which gives more opportunities to make even more wild stuff. You know, like an old buddy of ours named Gary that runs Annapurna. You know, like the fact that he can get stray made.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because he's there. You know, but he started here as a level designer in God of War 2. You know what I mean? It's like, in all, like, you guys love Marvel movies, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The visual arts, like, head guys are all ex-concept artists from here, like Charlie built the thing over there and then, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Andy and uh, Ryan Minerding, like they do all that stuff over there, all their head visual development, you know, so it's like we have this history of like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I just do me, you know, and whatever other people are gonna do, they're gonna do them. And I, you know, you can't be mad at it because there's so many different ways to get where you need to be. So if you think you know the one way or you're doing it as some more righteous version, that's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, like everybody has their own path inside of them and they'll find their way to do that. And sometimes like, you know, maybe the way that I approach it is, is not good for the next person because I haven't created a big enough platform. You know, that's something that weighs on me at times because I'm not on social media and this kind of stuff. But you know, like I said, I'm, I'm going to take my path.


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[Assistant] This is something I want to put to rest because there's some stuff that people were saying like maybe we were taking shots at Cory. Like, Cory's like my brother.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The way that me and Cory always operated was like, he is a true creative.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, that's the way his brain works. And I'm more like, how are we gonna get this done? And that's why it works. Cause he'll come to me with some crazy problem, like, hey, I wanna do a hunt. And that's how we're gonna kick off the game. I'm like, okay, like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because he challenges me in a way that I challenge him back, and that's why it's fruitful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's the way I look at it. Because I know, I know how I am. You know, my bar is like here. And I'm not going to settle for anything less than that. And, uh, that can be stressful for people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so I, so I have a really interesting setup with this though, because I only officially worked on God of War 1 and 2 as an employee, then I became a consultant, so I could work on many different things, so even though I had God of War, I was also working on like Darksiders and Spider-Man and,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Warhammer, you know, Space Marine, and all these different games, like, so I could almost like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My brain would ping pong around and I didn't feel like I was like in a rut, you know what I mean? It was just doing God aware. So I've had a luxurious way of still staying connected, but also being able to explore and do different things at the same time, which I think has been part of it. Um, but then I look at like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like that, I don't know if you ever see that in the NBA again. Like somebody that's like just signs up and stays. Maybe Steph, right? And I think Steph's going to do that too. And that's, there's a legacy there to that. Um, you know, I.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I love the New York Yankees. I know that's a hot take that some people be like boo on him. But you know, what I like about some of this stuff that they do is like, you know, there's no names on the back of their jerseys. You have to make the number count there. You don't just get, I'm on the team and you put my name back there. It's like, no, you're number two.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then if you can make number two amazing over 20 years, then people always remember who number two is. And I think that's something that's kind of lost this like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Loyalty, you know, but as you know, number two says Derek Jeter, it's like loyalty one way is stupidity. So you also have to, the people you're working with, you have to trust that they're going to take care of you, that you want to spend all your time with them. So, you know, Sony's, Sony's been good about that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The fights in the game are kinda like pop quizzes. You know, it's like, oh, did you remember, like, this is how the fire gates work, or this is that you're gonna need to do this, but now it's a test. You're gonna need to put all those things in action and we're gonna score you. You know, the score is, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You live or die. And then uhm, when you get to the, you know, the final, like the king or the queen, Valkyrie, those are the final exams.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So like, everything that is, they're building you up so when you get there, you don't hit a brick wall. So if you hit a brick wall here, just know it's gonna...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So if you can't get past this, it's going to be a long day, right? Which you found out. So that's kind of the way that they approach the design. Now on the mechanical side, I can't speak to that as much because I'm a little bit farther removed than I used to be when it comes to that stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're, they're very methodical. Like nothing they do is, you know, cheap. It's like once you figure it out, you go, oh, okay, now I get it. You know what I mean? There's some things that, you know, you have to learn and they,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm making progress and then he starts doing this and then you figure that out and he starts doing this other thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then once you get like through his tests, then you have to play him. Now you're playing him and then you get destroyed all over again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's where the beauty of these games come if you dig deep into them. You know, it's like whenever I see somebody say like, well this game's shallow or all you do is like dodge and roll. It's like, dude, you're not playing the game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like you're, you're, you're choosing to want to do it on your own terms and that's not what it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't look at it like that because everybody steals from everybody. It's just if you can see it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I like to play quote unquote bad games. Uhm, and I'm giving away my whole design philosophy here. I'm outing myself. And cause you're always going to find something good in there. And if you borrow from that and then you take it from whatever it was into something that's good, no one will know where you got it from. But if you go to the best game in the genre and you take


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's, it's just one of those things, like it's, it's like the Picasso quote, right? It's like, good art is copy, great art is steal. But the difference is like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To steal means you actually have to know what's going on. Anybody can copy. That's easy. And they're just like, it's blue. Like this, right? But they actually know the exact reason why the brush stroke or that type of blue and how much paint was used and so on and so forth to make the stroke correct. That's a whole different thing. And that means you have to get into the why.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's why you see knockoffs and things like that, but the why is the most important question. But to answer that without asking the actual person who did it, that takes like a leap of faith in your head to be like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think I exactly know why they did this without ever speaking to them. That's a really difficult thing to believe in, right? It's almost like you have to have faith in your own deconstruction of that idea. Uhm, but uh, our team seems to be quite, quite good at it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But see, when I look at the game on the surface, I see the perfect marriage between, without playing it by the way, just looking at the trailer, stuff like that, they were inspired by us and they're inspired by Doom, and they folded that stuff together. Now, little known fact, yeah, well yeah, why not? Cowboys and vampires, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and there's nothing wrong with that. Like, they're making a game that's just fun. Like, what's wrong with that? But to get back to it is like, so,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of the designers down at Doom, this guy Kurt Laude, he's not there anymore.