[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and does this have the capacity to scuttle the whole deal? Yes, it does. Uhm, obviously Microsoft have already said that they will, uh, appeal. And that appeal, I did read in one piece of coverage that that appeal could potentially take years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, as different approaches to it are taken and different things are argued. It's not, don't imagine that this is going to be resolved inside of like four weeks. Uh, it's that kind of thing that could stretch on for a long, long time. And even maybe parts of the deal are green lit versus other parts would lag behind.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Et cetera. So, uh, yeaah, long story short, absolutely the UK can block this, uh, if the CMA ruling stands.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Etc. was like, yeah, this deal will go through. I think the only skeptics were actually Wall Street, who were pricing, uhm, you know, Activision Blizzard shares.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At a discount versus Microsoft's offer because they were like, nah, we don't think this is going to go through. Microsoft was offering $95 a share and it was trading at $75 a share at the time that the CMA announcement happened. So the market did not believe that this deal was a sure thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even if every pundit was sort of like, yeah, yeah, it's a lock. So this definitely caught quite a few people off guard. Uhm, I think it really caps off a pretty shitty week for Microsoft in many aspects because there was also the reveal earlier that they're not doing as well as they...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bummer, cause I know like PS5 just announced, Sony just announced that the PS5 has sold more units than the PS4 has, or did at the same time in its life cycle. And that is...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is that not right, Lucy? Oh, I don't know, I was shaking my head as if I was like, damn. And that is even given the huge supply constraints the PS5 has had.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's still managing to outsell the PS4 and it shows obviously that the overall gaming segment has grown, but it also shows just how unbelievably popular the PS5 is because you couldn't even buy one for ages and it's still outselling the PS4 in terms of uhm, you know, comparison, uhm, versus, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, I talk about it on my new show as well, and I'm like, oh, I guess we should do some activism blizzard news now. You know, Jim is obviously popping champagne ballers right now because he has lobbied very hard to stop this deal. And everyone's like, oh, you know, you know, Jim had nothing to do with this because he was all about Call of Duty. It's like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She was not just out there hanging like banging on about Call of Duty. He was obviously going to be talking about Cloud as well, especially if he could have smelt some blood, which he was, which he did I should say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So like, obviously his lobbying would have been instrumental in, um, in, in blocking, in getting this, this result. Uh, and yeah, I mean like, I mean that's, that's a pretty big, that's a pretty big win for him. If this happens and he's able to stop this, like that's huge for PlayStation and, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, man, like that's, that's, this is like a stone cold killer, man. Just like stopping a deal this big. You're like a shark. Really? Like for real though, like that's, that's some, that's some serious business right there. And again, I don't have, I mean, personally, I don't care either way if this deal happens. I see some pros.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because yeaah, I think having call of duty on game pass is cool. And also I think, you know, the work culture stuff at Activision Blizzard. Microsoft has a better work culture. It is believed. It is broadly understood. And if they can bring that to that business, that's great. Getting Bobby Kotick out, that would be fantastic. Love that. Uh, but at the same time, yeaah, industry consolidation is not great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep. And that's kind of like the biggest play for Microsoft as well, like they're gonna get Call of Duty and they get all these big core gamer IPs and that's fine, but what they're really getting with this deal is King, which is like the mobile studio who knows what they're doing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But specific to the mobile stuff, like Xbox has said that they are interested in having their own like Xbox launcher or like their own Xbox marketplace on mobile devices to compete with


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nokia? Did they buy Nokia for the Windows phone? I don't think they... No, I thought they like bought it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But either way, Microsoft has basically zero mobile footprint right now. And for a gaming company, that's just not a good idea. If you're going to remain competitive, you have to be competing on mobile.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What do you guys, what do you guys think this means for Big Phil? What do you reckon, if this doesn't go through, do you reckon Big Phil's gonna be alright?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, cause this week actually, um, like Jeff Grubb from Giant Bomb Game Miss. Never heard of him. Never heard of him. He, uh, he was talking on his podcast and he's like, oh, I know for a fact that Microsoft executives are not happy with the performance of Xbox. And that kind of like set off a conversation this week about, you know, how good


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How good a generation is Xbox having? Uh, are they making the right moves? Etc, etc. And I guess this sort of, this deal falling through


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It feels like it would be impossible for Microsoft's executive not to take a good look at what's going on at Xbox at that point, trying to make some big changes there because yeaah, I mean that's, it would be huge. Do you guys, how do you guys feel Xbox is doing this generation?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Console war bullshit aside by the way, none of us give a fuck about console war bullshit. We have all consoles blah blah blah blah blah. It's annoying we have to make that disclaimer, but console wars suck. We hate them. We're literally just talking about our perspectives on it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I mean, cause like last year for example, cause I'm looking at the list of games and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, we had, last year we had Pentament, obviously. Killer. Fantastic game. But, no, by no means a system seller. Uh, Grounded, same sort of deal, uhm, where, you know, really fantastic game from the same studio, finally enough, but not like one of those big chunky


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As Dusk falls, which met pretty mixed reviews and was certainly not a big seller, uhm, that was it for 2022.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's pretty rough. I mean, obviously 21 was better. You had Halo Infinite, uh, which launched strongly and then lost all that momentum, sadly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Forza Horizon 5, we must give it credit. It's pretty, the Forza series is pretty much industry leading at this point. Obviously Gran Turismo is still an exceptional series, but it does feel like Forza has the momentum right now in terms of, you know, like racing fans and its presence and how much we talk about it and whatever else. Forza's really done a huge amount of work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was Age of Empires 4, Psychonauts 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator, that is a big deal obviously in its own way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes and no. But I also think like, Microsoft has not been very smart with how they've managed their announcements and stuff. Like Perfect Dark for example. They're like, we're making a perfect dark game. You're like, oh sick yeah. Initiatives. New studio that we've never heard of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Apparently that was a typo though. Apparently that was a typo. Are you joking? No, I'm serious. Apparently I remember I read a comment that came back to me from one of my videos was, Oh, by the way, that was a typo that just people picked up and ran with. I don't think they were actually describing themselves as quadruple A, but, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But yeah, I mean like that's, that's a game where it's like, well, you don't have anything yet. You, you, you barely have a studio set up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you've got this trailer for Perfect Dark and it's like, what are we doing here right now? You know, and, and, and fable is another one where, you know, you get the sense that that's still really far off. A vowed was the same thing, you know, really early announcement and who knows when that's coming.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, it's just, I don't know, like I, yeah, I get why Microsoft needs to build some excitement, but yeah, those early announcements I think hurt them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, they did learn from that though, with uhm, last year I remember at E3, they're like, oh, we're only announcing games that are coming in the next 12 months.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can't believe that Silksong has been delayed. I mean, it's just such a surprise. You know, who'd have thought? It's so unlikely to take their time, you know, uh, but no, take all the time you need, please. That's fine. Um, so yeah, like it's, I don't know. I think it's, it's, it's kind of rough times for, for, for Microsoft, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, this, uh, episode of the Friends per Second podcast is brought to you by Manscaped, and this is true. Usually when sponsors send you stuff, it's very generic, but Manscaped actually write good, funny copy. Okay, so this is actually what they wrote. Ready?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Gentlemen, if you don't already know, it's tax season in the US. And if you- and you know what that means, it means that Manscaped is here to make sure your paperwork is done and your boys downstairs are having fun. Excuse me. Make sure you-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Make sure you spend your tax return money on the important things this year, like family, friends.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] See, I told you man, they, they write, they like, they know their audience, they write good stuff, I like it. So, I actually also like Manscaped, I use it, I don't want to get into too much detail, but I am satisfied with their product. They put out an excellent product, and it's great, and I recommend it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm jealous. I wish I could grow facial hair. Would be nice. Also, there's someone I should talk to because the box-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and all of that is part of their performance package 4.0, which comes with a whole bunch of stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, it's a really great kit. I have actually two of them now that I've sort of cycled through because the products in them are really fantastic. Uhm, Manscaped, you know them, you might love them. If you don't love them, you should give them a try. Get 20% off plus free shipping with offer code FRIENDS at manscaped.com. That is 20% off, free shipping with friends.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That is 20% off with free shipping, offer code friends, manscaped.com. Uh, don't just get your money back this year, get your swagger back too, with Manscaped.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was, well I think the hands-on session was really meant to be just about an hour and a bit, but the Nintendo people were pretty cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause like I'd flown from Sydney to Melbourne and the flight wasn't for a while. And they're like, man, you could just fuck around for a bit if you like. And so I think I was on there for nearly two hours, you know, just messing about and kind of reloading checkpoints to try things in different ways. Um, but yeah, so I obviously.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Play Tears of Kingdom, uh, was invited by Nintendo. Uh, the demo was kind of divided into three parts. There was like a hands-off bit where Nintendo were showing me the ropes. It was kind of similar to the gameplay showcase that Aonuma did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then there was a hands-on block where I was in the sky aisles, kind of doing some puzzle solving stuff and some exploration, just getting to grips with the controls. And then there was a third bit where I had to kind of like sss, like storm this tower so that I could, you know, just


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Get to it basically. And the guy was like, you can get to it however you like. And I'm like, cool. Let's, let's mess about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uhm, yeaah, that was the opportunity just to kind of experiment with the sandbox and all the different abilities and all that sort of stuff. So have you guys, how up to date are you with Tears of the Kingdom? Have you like watched all the trailers? Have you like crossed it or where you at?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have your old school Zelda games, which are just very classic dungeon exploring kind of games. You know, you get led from dungeon to dungeon, you get your metroidvania power up things, your hook shots and whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then Breath of the Wild obviously very different. It's, it's, it's very sandbox driven and you had Magnesis and Stasis and those remote, the remote bomb, but those abilities that let you affect the environment in different ways and you would combine them to solve puzzles in those shrines.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there were also the Divine Beasts. Were they called Divine Beasts in Breath of the Wild? Yeah. They were, yeah. And they were meant to be the Dungeons, even though they kind of weren't. They didn't really have the distinctive personality of Dungeons. They felt quite different. And so people were, I think many people didn't love Breath of the Wild because they felt like it was too sandbox-focused.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It didn't have enough focus on, uh, you know, like that Legend of Zelda, that quest or the dungeons, all the things that old school Zelda fans really love, right? So, yes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tears of the Kingdom feels like it's quadrupling down on all of those sandbox systems to the point where it does actually start to feel like a bit of a survival game. You are collecting resources that you cook. You are picking up stuff off the ground so you can fashion basic tools so you can harvest raw resources.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There are raw resources just lying around, like wood and wheels and all sorts of stuff you can build with. You are spending lots of time in your menu building things, like you will build cars and hot air balloons and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Gliders and hovercraft and all sorts of shit, right? And it's like, as you're standing there clipping things together, collecting resources, it has a very survival game feel while you're doing that, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Plus not to mention your weapons, which all need to be scavenged and they all need to be fused together with this crazy fuse ability lets you do all this wild shit. So, it absolutely has a lot of survival game vibes more so than Breath of the Wild did. Because that had like a few survival elements, particularly with like cooking or whatever. Uhm, but that question still remains.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How Zelda is this game? Are you gonna, are you gonna give us those dungeons? Are you gonna give us that big, epic, mythic quest?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, you know, are you going back to those, those roots? And I don't know the answer to that because the hands-on session that I did was actually squarely focused on the sandbox. I didn't get to see any cutscenes, any special locations, I didn't get to see any dungeons if they exist at all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, it was literally just like Grand Theft Auto Link City, you know, and me fucking around on whatever I- building whatever I could, uh, and having an absolute blast, you know. And I guess that's one thing I should say, like it was really good, like incredibly good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To experience how flexible the sandbox was and all the crazy shit you could do. Like two hours that I spent with it just flew by. I was loving it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is. I actually, that's one thing I shouted out in my video. I'm like, I'm very certain that a bunch of people are going to look at this and just nope out of it. Cause they're like, this is too much work. Cause everything that I had to do, it's never just push forward and swing your sword. It's,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How much durability has this weapon got? Can I fuse it with this other thing? What kind of armor is that enemy wearing that I need to break? I need to pull out an arrow and I need to-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm describing something in a way that makes it sound bad, but I want to be clear that I loved that. I was like, I had to be so, you had to think through it all. You had to take your time. You had to be inventive and creative. Like I fucking loved it. But a lot of people I know are just going to be like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Can I just swing the Master Sword and get the Triforce please? That would be really nice, you know? And those people are gonna be, I think... If you didn't like Breath of the Wild...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I dunno man, I think it's pretty unlikely you're gonna like this. That's my vibe. That's a total guess.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, I think that's it. I think a lot of people went through that same journey where they pushed through Breath of the Wild and it gets to the point where


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You are always pushing yourself forward on that journey. And you, at some point, some people are just like, nah man, I can't push myself forward anymore. I need to be pulled. And Breath of the Wild just won't do that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and so a lot of people just leave that game unfinished. You know, even though you can kind of confront the main boss in the first like 10 minutes of the game if you choose to. So, so I think, I don't know how that's gonna go here obviously because I was not shown any of that stuff that might pull me along. Uhm, and my hope is that Nintendo


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uhm, I would love it if you could have that legendary, epic, mythic quest of the likes of Ocarina combined with a sandbox like this. Like that is the perfect video game. I'm sorry but it is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That is quite the right word because I would say that uhm, there are so many tools at your disposal. If you smartly use those tools, it's really easy. You know, for example, I was in one section where I was like fighting a group of enemies. They were rolling this giant ball down a hill like a spiked ball.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I'm like, oh no, it's coming towards me, but I have this ability called Recall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I can kind of basically click on this ball and it will then go backwards through time. So it starts rolling towards them instead. So now they're getting collected by this giant spiky ball instead of me. I can pick up giant dynamite barrels that have sitting nearby them and drop them on their head. If they throw boulders at me, I can recall those and send them back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can very quickly get up to high ground by using that ascendability to get me through the roof.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, if I've fused my, my weapons and I've like, you know, if, enemies will drop stuff on the ground, if I fuse it to my weapons, it increases its attack power. Some of that can result in massive increases to attack power. So, this is all me saying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you play smart and you use everything that's at your disposal on the sandbox, it's pretty easy actually, right? But it is about having that creativity, that awareness of what the sandbox is capable of. If you just wanna go in there and swing with a stick, it's gonna suck man, it's gonna really suck, you're gonna find it very hard.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, it is definitely about using the sandbox to its full potential.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Look, I don't wanna, I'm really hesitant to say anything definitive on this. That's fair, that makes sense. I don't know, but like, I haven't seen the full game, okay? I've seen some people say like, oh, it actually runs really well. I don't agree with those people. I have seen enough, based on my own hands on time, to be like, nah man, there's some frame drops here, like it's a problem, okay?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But at the same time, I don't wanna over-egg the pudding and be like, this is unacceptable, game is ruined, whatever else, because...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It definitely reduced my enjoyment when those frame drops happen. And to be fair, and to be clear, they happen mostly when there's a lot of fire kicking in, when there's a lot of enemies on screen, when there's a lot of particle effects popping off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, then, you know, fire, then the frame rate will drop and drop quite considerably at times as well, right? And I've got some footage of that in my video. If you don't believe me, go and see the video. You will see the frame drops for yourself. It's all there, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did that make me walk away from Zelda and go, oh this game sucks? No it doesn't. Because like, it's still a pretty remarkable game in many aspects. But it is disappointing that the performance is as bad as it is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because uhm, you know, it takes you out of that experience and it kind of like reminds you that this is just like a video game, you know, where it's, it's usually such a, such a, an immersive experience. It's so enjoyable. I mean, we all have such a soft spot for Zelda and that sucks, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So uhm, but also, I think we go in wide, eyes wide open with the Switch, and it's kind of like, we know this is an old piece of hardware. The chip that it's running on, it's like ten years old, man, it's like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We know what we're getting into when we buy a game on a Switch. It sucks, don't get me wrong. It would be nice if there was a Switch 2 out, and surely there will be, and this will be remastered, and it will be, you know, playable at 60 FPS, and it's gonna be rad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but yes, I think Switch owners are somewhat at peace with the fact that this is the hardware that they've got.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they just have to deal with it. And then you contrast that to something like Jedi survivor, which we'll talk about later in the episode where, you know, I've got a PC worth like, you know, eight or $9,000.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I can't get like a solid 60 FPS out of that brand new. And then, then, then it's like, okay, fuck that. That's bullshit. You know what I mean? Because there are different expectations for different games, different sorts of hardware, whatever. But with Zelda,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We know we're gonna have some performance issues. There are some performance issues. I do not think they are game breaking, but I think they are disappointing. I think some people will probably wait for the Switch 2 and to play it there at 60 FPS, but I think the people that are very keen to play it now are unlikely to have that experience ruined for them by, um, by the choppy FPS.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some, yeaah. And I think as well, come back to the point of expectation, like we all shit on Pokemon Arceus or like the latest Pokemon games or whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's no fucking way those Pokemon games should run that badly. Like there's nothing going on. Like it's just what? Whereas with this, it's so ambitious with the number of systems that are at play at any point in time. The amount of, I was just thinking about the code base that makes all of this possible. The number of variables this sandbox has to be able to, to,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I don't know man, I don't think that's true. I don't personally wouldn't agree with that. I would say...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nintendo really love their big generational hardware. And I think that the idea of having incremental upgrades would terrify them. They are not a technology focused business. I think they only want to have to worry about it once every six or seven years. And then that's it. You know, so I personally wouldn't anticipate them going down that route. I'd be very surprised if they did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did you guys see that Miyamoto was really positively surprised by the reception of the Mario movie, by the way? He was like, I had no idea it would be this big. And I'm like, yeah, well, it's Mario dude.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was like, I really expected them to just like a hands-off demo thing and I'd just kinda sit in a chair quietly and then say thank you very much. But nah, the fact that they let me play and capture, I was like, is this Nintendo doing this? Like, what's the deal with this, you know? Uh, so yea, no hats off to them for that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, it's time for one of our famous user questions. Thanks to Jake for making that a thing and all the inboxes spammed with user questions now as opposed to listener questions. User question comes from Andrew H. He says, g'day gang.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, I just wanted to get your opinions on both the rumored PlayStation Remote handheld and the ASUS ROG Ally. Personally, I don't quite get remote play for PlayStation handheld. I mean, it's gotta be more expensive than the DualSense Edge 340 Australian dollars.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So yeah, what do you guys think about, first of all, what do you guys think about this rumoured PlayStation handheld thing? Just as a brief primer on this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's rumored that PlayStation is working on a handheld device that will only support remote play. So you kind of need to be in your house while using it. It will just work on your local network and allow you to use your PlayStation via remote play and a handheld. Not confirmed, but rumored. What do you guys think about that? Is that a thing? Should that be a thing?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, well, you like the steam deck and all that sort of stuff. There's also this ASUS ROG coming along. Uh, this is basically like, imagine a steam deck, but stronger, better.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Better specs essentially, and it's going to run Windows 11. Uh, that is, they're doing a showcase of that soon to like reveal the specs, but it's,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I agree, I agree. I'm interested in these devices. I think it'd be great if you could, you know, have a really powerful PC in your hands. I love my Steam Deck, I use it almost every day. But I agree that the ease of use of the Steam Deck, the focus that they've put on support


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that, that operating system and all that sort of stuff. That's actually what I value about it more than anything else, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, because yeaah, I, I, I can definitely see how not getting that right would result in a really shitty experience.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, that's being announced, but I'm hearing rumors that it's, like, they have positioned it to retailers, whoever else, as competitively priced versus the Steam Deck. It's not gonna be as cheap as the Steam Deck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It sounds like they want to operate in the same ballpark, so I think people are estimating maybe 600 US dollars ish. And maybe a higher model for like maybe 800 or 900.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Look, if it's twice as powerful as a Steam Deck, and you're paying $600 for it, or whatever, you know, it's a pretty good deal, you know, uhm. So, yeaah, it's an interesting era. I'm glad that PC handhelds are becoming a thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's cool. It's rad. Like it's, again, I don't play AAA games on those devices, but it's really nice to be able to play indies and AA titles and stuff that isn't graphically intensive. I think it's a really good movement and I'm a big fan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, so the last two weeks has been quite chunky, actually. Uh, Disney Speedstorm came out on all platforms on the 18th. That is a kart racer from Gameloft, the mobile game maker. Uh, apparently it has a lot of microtransactions. Surprise, surprise. Uh, Minecraft- You don't say. Minecraft Legends, actually. I'm interested, cause we... I know Jake, you played that one. Yes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, I want to actually, I want to come back to that because I want to really hear what you thought because you were kind of like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We have that game pass check. Horizon, Forbidden West, Burning Shores. Has anyone played that yet? No? Okay, I'm super keen. We did that before you


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, there was Dead Island 2, which we'll definitely be talking about this week. Uh, Strayed Lights is dropping, or dropped a few days ago. It's like a interesting looking, uhm, action game, very focused on parry based combat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Honkai Star Rail is launched, uh, that is like the next thing from Genshin Impact creator miHoYo, that had 10 million pre-registrations before launch, uh, as you do when you miHoYo. Uhm, the last case of Benedict Fox arrives, what? That's out? What, last case of Benedict Fox comes out? That's coming out today. Oh my god.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I'm surprised that you didn't hear about it, like as in that they didn't reach out to you because you've been like really excited about it. No, nobody emails me.


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[Assistant] Uh, Live Alive arrives on PC and PlayStation after its Switch exclusivity window expires. That happens today. Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak arrives for PlayStation and Xbox on the 28th. And Star Wars Jedi Survivor arrives on the 28th as well for PS5, Xbox Series and PC. We will definitely be talking about that one. So!


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[Assistant] Those are the releases. And actually, Jake, if we don't mind, if you don't mind, I'd really like to, uhm, hear just briefly on Minecraft Legends. What did you think about that?


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[Assistant] They did actually, and I'm actually quite surprised because the reviews are pretty middling and also the Steam reviews I think that was kind of sitting at like mixed, it's still sitting at mixed I think. Interesting. So uhm, yeaah, I really, you know, I think usually


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[Assistant] Most of us can kind of guess how something's going to go, but I actually was quite surprised with the reception to this one. I thought it would get a better reception than it's received. It's 63% mixed on Steam. Uh, and yeah, I'm really stunned about that because I thought that they had something here that is, as I said,


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[Assistant] Far from perfect, it's got some jank, um, it's, you know, makes some big compromises on the strategy front, but I just found it interesting and novel and I'm like, yeah, I'm, I'm down for whatever this is. And I had a great time with it. So yeah, a little, a little, or quite surprised I should say to see it get such a mixed reception.


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[Assistant] Yeaah. I- I- Sorry, Gerard, you gonna say something?


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[Assistant] What, like a million units? I think they said they sold. And as well, it's so surprising.


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[Assistant] Yeah, Jake, you also mentioned on yourself, like Dead Island's really popping off on...


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[Assistant] On like YouTube, right? Yeah. And I would never have anticipated that. I put out my video.


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[Assistant] And I was like, post embargo, and I'm like, ah, this is just a little zombie game. And I'm just like, I don't really have a strong opinion on it one way or the other. That video has gone really large, like bigger than my Zelda video. And I'm like, I'm pissed off about that. I'm like, what, why has that happened? You know?


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[Assistant] Yes, I, I went in thinking these characters are gonna piss me off, but actually, which character did you play as?


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[Assistant] And I think that's why I suspect this will age quite well, as in...


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[Assistant] You know, it's, it's just nailed its fundamentals really well. It feels a little bit dated by today's standards, right? But it's still...


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[Assistant] Very playable and enjoyable, almost, almost like.


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[Assistant] It can make enemies bleed faster than the previous bleed mod could, and that's it. And that's, it's a bummer. You could have gone so much further with that.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and, I mean, my hope is that they make a sequel to this. I would love to see them have another swing at it, no pun intended. And, uhm, you know, if, like, go, do the same thing that you did here, but then go wild with the weapons. And if you did that, I reckon you'd have something pretty special on your hands at that point, because,


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[Assistant] Was a big missing component of this. That would have added a lot of zhuzh to it. Uh, and yea, if they could come back with that, that would be sick.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I mean, you could stick with this franchise, I think. I think if they announced a Dead Island, a Dead Island 3, people would like...


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[Assistant] People would clap. They'd be like, yeah, I'm down for that. Let's go. You know? And so I think it's something they should, they should consider sticking with. I would be interested in another one, uh, taking this foundation and building on it. Yeah. I think this team has done, has done good work for sure, for sure.


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[Assistant] Yeah, they sent, they sent me the kit and it has like a very fancy, did you get the metal canister thing that they sent? Yeah. Yeah. It's very nice. Is that it there? Yeah, you got it. It's very nice. It lives in the fridge. And, uh, yeah. And it's like one scoop a day. Um, my brother is a vegan and he has like a green smoothie every day.


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[Assistant] And I tried it once and I'm like, gross, this is disgusting. There's no way I can drink this every day.


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[Assistant] So I was a bit scared when I tried this, I was like, cause it's a green liquid when you mix it all together, right? But actually, tastes alright, you know what I mean? Like, you know, it's not like it's not like a Dr Pepper or anything, don't get me wrong, but I like the taste of it overall and it makes it very easy to actually drink it every day.


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[Assistant] And yeah, I like just starting my day knowing that I've done something good for my body because I'm usually just going to sit there playing video games for 16 hours, which ruins my body. So it's nice that I'm able to do at least one good thing for it at the start of the day.


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[Assistant] It does. Well, but actually, in Australia, we're geoblocked from basically everything, so...


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[Assistant] When it comes to like Netflix or whatever, like we can't even subscribe to HBO Max or whatever it is because you know, like we just don't have that here.


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[Assistant] Uh, we have to watch it on some very crappy service that we have that runs at like 720p or something. So if you actually want to get proper, like, access to international streaming services, then you need a VPN, then that's exactly what I use ExpressVPN for.


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[Assistant] Yea man, the series is called Star Wars Jedi. Oh wow, okay.


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[Assistant] Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order. Yeah, right. Interesting. Okay. Wow. That is...


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[Assistant] You obviously, as you play the game you unlock a lot of cosmetics.


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[Assistant] It's kind of the main driver of exploration in the game, right?


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[Assistant] There's your main missions, and then there's these big open world areas. And they'll have little side activities in them, like climb up this thing and swing across there and then...


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[Assistant] Use the force to move a boulder and then boom, what do you get at the end of that? You get a new mustache and that's it, right? And it sounds funny to say it aloud, but like that is actually the loop for a lot of this game. And you'd think that that would be kind of lame.


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[Assistant] But it's not, I don't think, because font one, it's kind of fun to just swing around as a Jedi and use the force to move a boulder, like that formula.


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[Assistant] Totally, but that, that is my, I guess that's exactly the point I was gonna make, which is like, I think Respawn understood that Star Wars is cool, and that people who play this game think Star Wars is cool. And so, what there are scattered throughout the world are these crafting benches, and I'm like, okay, cool, a crafting bench. You are gonna give me, and I'm not sure if this comes later on, because I'm only about halfway through the game.


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[Assistant] I'm like, this crafting bench will clearly be used by me to upgrade my lightsaber with new stats and new mods to make my lightsaber and weapons more powerful. Okay? I'm half way through the game. Nope, that's not the case. Nope.


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[Assistant] This is so dumb. Why would you do this? You've got all these benches around. What a waste of time. But now when I'm like around and I get to a new bench and I found some cosmetics, I'm like, yeah man, time to make my fucking light. Let's go. You know, I sit there rotating the lightsaber thing, adding new pieces, changing. I love it. I love it. And I just think it's such an interesting, as I said, it's a fascinating approach to cosmetics because they're all in game, all earned for free.


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[Assistant] They are the central driver of exploration in the game, and...


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[Assistant] How are you gonna get that through customs? I feel like I may have a Star Wars- I'll just hold it up to the be like and go, mate, it's a fucking lightsaber. What do you expect this is? And he's like, oh, I don't know about that. He'll let me.


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[Assistant] Yeah, uh, yeah, I really like- I think that it has such a good grasp of emotion.


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[Assistant] I was very, like, I think the facial animations are fantastic. Definitely has a lot of Guardians of the Galaxy vibes in terms of the video game. You know, I don't think it's swinging quite as strongly in terms of story.


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[Assistant] But I think it's in that same sort of like ballpark and I really, really enjoy every new cutscene and every new character that I meet and that's what I'm really taking away from it more than anything else. And that was the same with the first game really, like that was it for me. I'm a little bit bummed that this hasn't really fixed what I think was some of the core problems with Jedi.


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[Assistant] I was gonna say I totally agree with Shaken that when you are fighting little stormtroopers, battle droids, that when you can do the one hit shit, you know, it really feels


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[Assistant] Because yea, you feel like a badass Jedi and this is sick, but I think the combat really breaks down when anything takes more than a few hits to kill. Not because it's about the immersion factor of the lightsaber, whatever, because I just think it's kind of clunky and awkward and it's like the animation pairing is not great, the hit detection is not great.


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[Assistant] The way enemies move, it's not fluid. It's just, it's not a, I don't think it's a good combat framework. And I think, I think I've become more discerning about this over the years, like as I've been reviewing games and focusing more on this stuff. I think when I played the original, I was like, yeah, it's fine. It's a Jedi game. We'll swing the lights out. We have some fun.


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[Assistant] That is true by the way, like I enjoy the combat, it's a good laugh, like whatever, but I definitely don't think it's good combat, and I think that it's issues are really highlighted during boss battles. I'm not sure what you guys have, if you've done many bosses, I've probably done half a dozen.


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[Assistant] I suck. I really suck. Yeah. Creature battles, yeah. I like the one on one lightspeed.


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[Assistant] Yeah, even then I just feel like it's very easy and cheesy and like it's just super simple to just hit the block button at a random time and you'll probably parry, you swing your sword, the combos aren't particularly interesting, you don't have a broad moveset that really allows you to be expressive.


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[Assistant] There's nothing that really links you between the different stances that you can move from one to the other in some cool combo that there's nothing like that. It's just very functional, very basic.


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[Assistant] And so uhm, I get through combat as something just to get through, rather than something I really enjoy. I love the cutscenes, I love the exploration, I love this world, I love this sense of Star Wars.


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[Assistant] But uhm, the combat is just bleh, and when I get to a boss, I'm just like, ugh, this is annoying. Did you guys, have you guys noticed bosses also one or two hit you? Have you guys found that in some bosses? Oh yeah, oh yeah. Oh man, I'm just like, what's going on here? Like, this is not fun. Some of them were bullshit.


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[Assistant] Alright, I guess I'll just do it again but never get hit the whole encounter and just do it until it's perfect.


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[Assistant] Some games demand that in certain ways, but not this one, and not in this way, and it sucks, you know? So uhm, yeah, I think what this game does is bolt on a bunch of new stuff versus fixing some of the core stuff, which is okay, I think. Structurally, it's really interesting how much this becomes like God of War, Ragnarok, I think.


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[Assistant] Great minds man, great minds. But uhm, no, but it is, it's like it makes that transition into a broader, uhm, you know, RPG epic almost. And I think it's a successful transition because those other elements that it adds, they work.


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[Assistant] But again, you know, one of, God of War is this masterpiece in large part because it's combat sandbox is just so fucking good. Yeah. And this does not hold a candle to that. And if it did, I think, you know, this game would hold a lot more appeal, especially to the, you know, hardcore, you know, melee action and purists and whatever.


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[Assistant] Look, I don't want to lean into this too hard because


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[Assistant] There are patches, okay? Now, to be clear, we played pre-, I played pre-day zero patch.


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[Assistant] And it was very shit, okay, very shit until in terms of like, cause I played on two PCs, an RTX 4090, an RTX 2080 Ti, 2080 Ti in the open world sections, I could not maintain a third, a stable 30 FPS at like 1080p low settings. It was fucked, like it was properly fucked.


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[Assistant] And, uh, in the, in the more linear sections, it's like better.


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[Assistant] Uhm, you know, even turning on fidelity FX does basically nothing, it just massively degrades the image. My 4090 machine, uhm, you know,


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[Assistant] I'm playing it at 4K with like, you know, high settings, no ray tracing on, it can't maintain a 60, a stable 60 FPS in the open world settings. When you're in the more narrow areas, it's like 75-ish. Open your menu and it drops to like 20 FPS, transition between areas, it drops to 30 FPS.


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[Assistant] Uhm, it's, it's fucked. Plus, I had this audio glitch where every single cutscene I was playing, the audio was massively desynced and repeating over and over again. So cut, the characters were talking over each other with repeating lines of dialogue. It wasn't just one cutscene, it was every cutscene. Okay? So that was pre-Day Zero patch.


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[Assistant] And then the day zero patch arrived and EA says, look, it's going to deliver some improvements. And I'm like, okay, cool. Tested it. Did nothing. I still had the same audio glitch. I still have the same poor performance. That is where I'm at right now. And I will be trying the new patch that apparently is going to drop.


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[Assistant] So, it's really, really fucking shit. Like it's, I've never once had a situation, cause I actually review games on the 2080 Ti machine. Because the 4090 is like, hey guys, it runs really well on a $9000 PC, that's dumb, okay. So I try and review it on the 2080 Ti, which is still a strong card by the way.


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[Assistant] But that's the first time I've ever reviewed something where I'm like, you know what? I can't review it on this machine. It's too shit. You know, I just had to step off it. And so I've actually reviewed the half of the game that I've played. I've played on the 4090 and even then not been remotely satisfied with its performance critically.


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[Assistant] I don't know, like again, maybe you're playing this now when this podcast is live and the day's one patch worked a miracle and it runs fantastically well. That'll be the very first time I've ever seen that happen in the entire time I've reviewed video games. I'm pretty sure it's still going to be a massive mess. Uh, and it's such a bummer because I really like this game in many aspects.


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[Assistant] But I'm probably just gonna put it down for now and not finish it until...


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[Assistant] It's, yeah, like, I mean, it's, it's, we actually joked about this recently, where I was like, this is why I'm a PC gamer, because...


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[Assistant] You know, 9 out of 10 ports suck, but sometimes you get a good one and it's all worth it, you know? And uhm, and it's a joke, but it's also partly true right now in the sense that yea, most PC ports seem to really fucking suck. And like, it's just, it's so annoying. Look, and this is the thing, right?


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[Assistant] I'm sympathetic to developers because when you're making a game for one console, that's your baseline. You make it for that one console and you know what it's capable of and you can twist and you can like, you know, optimize it for that one device.


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[Assistant] When you make a game for PCs, you are talking about so many graphics cards, so many, like, hard drive configurations and speeds, CPUs, whatever, so many things that you need to make room for to get a game properly optimized. We always use the word optimization.


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[Assistant] None of us know what that actually means. Like, we don't know what it means to actually optimize a video game, right? But we know that it should be done, and I am sympathetic to developers whose job it is to optimize games so they work properly on PC, because I know it's much harder than doing it on console, for sure.


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[Assistant] Having said that, if it's not optimized, just fucking delay the game, okay? Just say, guys, it's coming out on console on this day, we're not happy with the PC port yet, we're gonna release that in a few weeks or whatever when it's done. The PC community will be like, thank you for being honest with us, we appreciate you. I'm sure some people will bitch.


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[Assistant] Because like, Wild Hearts for example, another title from EA recently, it's actually a really great game, like I really recommend it if you're into that sort of thing.


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[Assistant] It just completely lost all momentum on launch because of its horrible performance and in particular on PC where it was just atrocious and it's kind of like, how much is that worth to you? You know, is that not worth coming out and saying we're delaying the game for six weeks, two months so that you get a positive news cycle when that game launches? Like maybe the, like,


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[Assistant] It's crazy to me how often this happens and also how flagrant it is. It's not just a few hiccups here and there. It's clearly very broken ass PC ports that are properly fucked that they would have been able to see in development and they ship them anyway. And it's kind of like, oh man. Are they all just low priority?


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[Assistant] I understand what you're saying, and again, I'm not a developer, so I can't say definitively one way or the other, but ideally this is essentially, my understanding is that it should be fine


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[Assistant] But, I think you make an interesting point about working with the likes of Nvidia, because this game does not ship with DLSS.


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[Assistant] That is an important thing. Just not to get too technical here, but lately what we have definitely seen is PC games becoming very reliant on DLSS technology to maintain stable frame rates. Running them natively.


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[Assistant] Doesn't go so well, okay, and so to get a game running pretty smoothly, we often have to use DLSS to, you know, get that frame rate up and feeling nice and comfortable. It's really great technology because it does result in great performance with only very minimal degradation of the image, okay?


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[Assistant] But this game does not have DLSS, and as a result, it's like we're just, there is AMD on it, there's AMD fidelity effects, but it's nowhere near as potent, and it also results in a lot more image degradation. So all of this is by way of saying the industry has become quite reliant on DLSS right now, and to see a new release game ship without it, you can feel


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[Assistant] You can really feel its absence, you know what I mean? Uh, so, yeah man, the state of PC...


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[Assistant] Development is not great right now and we shouldn't be relying on third party solutions like DLSS.


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[Assistant] The base product should work, regardless of fidelity effects or DLSS or whatever. Uh, and that's definitely not happening on too many games, which really sucks. So uhm.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I don't know, like I would never give up PC gaming though. I mean, I'm like, ride or die with this shit. Like, uh, as that joke earlier, 9 out of 10 suck, but one's good. But when one is good, it's really good. You know, like I play Destiny on my machine and it's at 120 FPS keyboard and mouse controller, like it's


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[Assistant] Beautiful. And that's, you can't, you just can't get that same experience on a console. And I'm okay with putting up with all the bullshit.


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[Assistant] Uhm, to continue living this PC life, uhm, also now it's partly my job to kind of report on it because...


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[Assistant] You know, already that tweet that I put out about the performance definitely doing the rounds and I'm actually quite surprised to be honest that more outlets haven't called out this PC performance more clearly because it's so problematic and I've read through some of these reviews and I'm like


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[Assistant] No, no, but I mean, I feel like my technical knowledge is like a 4 out of 10, for example, like I just get the basics, right? But then there's like Digital Foundry who really know their shit and I, and I definitely flick people onto them as a lot as well and say, you know, cause they're like that sort of 8, 9, 10 out of 10 level of knowledge when it comes to this stuff.


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[Assistant] And I'm really eagerly anticipating their video on Jedi Survivor, because like, I know that they are testing it, and...


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[Assistant] I mean, they have two eyes like I do, and they have frame counters, and they're gonna be able to see it. And, uh, yeaah, so that's gonna be interesting coverage from them.


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[Assistant] It's kind of like, uh, Oblivion almost where I feel like everyone talks so much about Morrowind and Skywind, uh, Skywind, uh, Skyrim. Uh, but then there's obviously like this other one in between that, which, you know, a lot of people really love as like the thing, as they're like their best thing within that series. Yeah. Yeah. Four is, um, it's complicated.


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[Assistant] That is crazy. I still remember getting a Nez with Duck Hunt in my lounge room when I was like four years old. I remember.


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[Assistant] And, uh, I don't know his last name. He joined the podcast. Um, our previous, uh, editor Jake, uh, he's amazing. Fantastic. Love him. Fortunately, he's just very busy at the moment and he didn't have time to continue helping us out.


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[Assistant] Um, and we also have a producer for the podcast now. His name is Richard. And, uh, yeah, he's joined us to help out because like it's a lot to put the show together actually. It doesn't seem like it is, but.


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[Assistant] Between like, you know, run sheet and guests and sponsors and all sorts of stuff. It's actually really helpful to have someone like Richard helping us out. So, um, yeah, if we ever hear us mention Richard or Stuart, then yeah, you'll know who they are.


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[Assistant] No, no, no, he wasn't. He doesn't see in that episode where we talk, cause the backgrounds that anyone listening is that we talked about like how NFTs anytime you, NFT bots will always just call something a project. Like, oh, I'm very excited about this project. And so, um, on the podcast, in the comment section, everyone was just like, yeah, love this, love this project. Thumbs up the FPS.


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[Assistant] Uhm, I will not be sent a review code for that one, so I'll be reviewing it when it's live. And uhm, yeaah man, I'm very intrigued. I'm definitely...


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[Assistant] Cautious. I'm really hopeful that I can pull it off because they're a studio I really like. I would love it if, but at the same time, I'm also going into it thinking like, ah, I don't know about this one, man. So yeah, we're kind of a bit nervous about RuPaul to be honest. That'll be sometime next week.


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[Assistant] A few years ago, I think, uh, I returned to Bungie, uh, when we were developing Beyond Light. And so I was the assistant game director through the launch of that. And then as that product took off, I took over as game director.


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[Assistant] I really enjoyed, uh, have enjoyed all my time at Bungie and, um, I have, even before working on Destiny, I'm like a guardian before I'm a Bungie dev, so I joined Bungie originally right after Crota's End came out.


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[Assistant] So, before that, I was like, uh, you know, right when Vault of Glass Raider came out. And so, I played the shit out of those, like, original Destiny, you know, uh, I can still remember someone being like, hey, why are you using bad juju? I'm like, oh, cause it's a high level gun. They're like, it is not good.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and, and, and learning a bunch from the game, uh, really early. Uhm, and then even throughout my time at Bungie when I was able to come in and, you know, start being a developer, I've, I've still maintained this, like, love for the game. It's really deep, like, it is both,


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[Assistant] I think one of my greatest strengths are probably my Achilles heel that I just like love the shit out of Destiny.


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[Assistant] And the opportunity to to come back to Bungie and have a have a big, uh.


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[Assistant] Yeaah, so one of the interesting things about Lightfall right now is we actually have more new players coming into Destiny.


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[Assistant] That we've had in a long time, right? And so uhm, generally with the game, it has much history as Destiny. You're talking about, hey, we're getting players that played four years ago coming back. We're getting players that played two years ago coming back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so this is always, I think, been a challenge. We have an onboarding experience called New Light. You go through sort of the original Destiny 1 intro to the game, and this is sort of a


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One hour, two hour tutorial. There's a lot of systems in Destiny, right? And so we sort of throw you in headfirst. Uhm, the problem was after that experience and in a destiny for the last few years.


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[Assistant] Five different campaigns I could go play, which is the great one. There's like seasonal content. And so one of the things that we put in with Lightfall that we're really excited to see the adoption, especially in our early levels, is like how Guardian ranks this new system that we put in. You start as like a level one Guardian and we try to point you at this thing.


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[Assistant] Hey, if you've got friends and they're telling you what to play, great. If you're playing with Ralph and he's like, come do the streak with me, come do the streak with me. Great, go do that. That's, that's always good. If you don't, they're not online.


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[Assistant] There's just this tab and it says, what should I do? And it's like, you should go to EDZ and learn about bounties. You should go, okay, this is actually what season is active. This is the latest campaign because your guardian rank will just tell you that thing to do. And so this is sort of our backbone for when you're looking and saying, oh my gosh, this game is so big.


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[Assistant] 200 exotics for me to go earn. What should I be prioritizing? Would you really think if you like take this track, we will take you from someone that has never been able to like play Destiny before to, hey, I could do raids on the highest difficulty. And all I've done is just sort of like follow this checklist.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We, we look at the onboarding in two ways, uhm, right? The one is the, like, the system's complexity of Destiny. Okay. There's all these things. How do they work? How do I shoot my guns? How do I get better at shooting my guns? Uhm, then there's where is the world?


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[Assistant] What's going on in the universe? Who are these characters? And so really with the launch of lightfall, we're like, okay, let's take the first stab at the systems. What should I be doing? The thing that's next on our radar is.


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[Assistant] How do I catch up with where we are in the world? Uhm, and so that's what we're looking at this year. That's what we're looking at as we go into the final shape, which is, hey, I've maybe never played this game before.


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[Assistant] Who are these people? Right now, what you'll get when you come into the game is pretty good snippets of like last time on Destiny, right? So it's the equivalent of you've never seen The Last of Us, you watch the episode and you watch the recap at the beginning. Okay, these are the things that happen. We have that.


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[Assistant] That's good, but we think we can go a step further. We think we can say, hey, if you want to dive in, here is how you understand, you know, where the story is. And that's that's like coming up on our roadmap here.


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[Assistant] Yeah, what I can promise about the veil is that what it is not is something that we're going to explain on a podcast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So yeah, what's the, what's the worst, what's the worst version of this? Yeah, like if, if we ever have a situation where players are like, oh, there's this thing in the game and I want to learn more about it, which is the situation Destiny's been in before, right? What we don't want is like, okay, well,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Great, they explained it in this out of game thing. And so what we're really, you know, focused on right now is, okay, we have, we have a few elements that people need to know more about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's get that knowledge into the game, into this place where it's not, you know, uh, six months later, you're like, oh yeah, go watch this YouTube video to find out what this thing is. It should be, go play the game and figure it out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, we're definitely excited to learn more about the Veil this year, but sadly not tonight on this podcast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, okay, so I'm, I'm gonna do a thing that's really dangerous on a gaming podcast and potentially go into a sports analogy. So uhm, okay. None of us play sports, by the way. None of us is a sports people, so this is great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everyone is familiar with the game of basketball. It's like an international game. On some level. Yes. Throw a ball through a hoop. There are people that play this professionally. One of the ways I think it's easiest to think about live service and how we take feedback and how we make the game is


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[Assistant] We're like a professional sports team, right? Um, in that every week we have to go out and play basketball again.


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[Assistant] And so, uhm, we don't have this period of, okay, we're in, we're in full, let's all sit back and, uh, lick our wounds and think about, uh, what we're doing. It's really, hey, there's another basketball.


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[Assistant] Next week, let's analyze what's going on. Let's take, take the learnings and then push that into what we're doing next. And I think one of the really challenging things for people coming into development environment like this is that sort of everything that you do every single day.


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[Assistant] Right? And so there's not a way, we don't have this schedule that allows us to be like, hey, you know, Gerard went up and missed a free throw. Okay, well it's like roll back the clock, right? And we'll just like, we'll keep, he'll keep shooting free throws until he makes it. Like that's, that's part of it. And so when we get


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As we understand like is this unanimous feedback or is it divided feedback?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Unanimous feedback is easy, right? We take this thing and we say, hey, we shipped a thing. The players or audience are all saying the same thing.


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[Assistant] Great, okay, that that sort of realizes where we missed here or what we did well and it also allows us to stack rank it pretty well under like how high up in our priority should this be on something that we should be looking at or something we should be doing more of or something we should do less of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, the real tricky one is when people aren't saying the same thing, right? Or they're saying, hey, you know, half of the group really likes this, half of the group really doesn't like this. Uhm, and then that sort of comes into, we start digging into deeper layers saying, okay,


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[Assistant] We get the, uh, when the players are divided, generally internally, we're pretty divided on it too. And so we start looking at other metrics. We say, hey, how has this changed that we made affecting the way people are playing the game? How has this changed, uh, affecting the,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The outcome of what we're trying to do, how is this change going to affect the future?


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[Assistant] And that becomes a really tricky thing to start to align on, to start to figure like, is this a thing that just needs more time in players hands for them to understand it? Is this a thing where like, yes, we should just always expect that some, some of these people, it's not going to sit right, right? I think there's always an element of game design, which is like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you're doing anything that's risky, you're gonna make a game that's not for everyone, right? Like, there are parts of Destiny that I think are super appealing and super exciting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But like, raiding isn't for everybody, and that's okay, right? Like, some people are like, I wish like, I want to do solo raids. Okay, well we've got some great solo content in the game, and we've got these things called dungeons, and you can do them by yourself, and it's like,


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[Assistant] Uh, this whole experience, but like this, this thing has those rough edges on purpose. And so really, I think it's tricky. Not when everyone's saying the same thing. Really helpful for us. That really like helps inform our strategy. It's tricky when they're not.


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[Assistant] One of them, we have a hit feel. We really care about combat hit feel. That's like really obvious to players. One of the other things that I think has been part of the Destiny Secret Sauce, and we've watched other games that come into live service emulate this, is that this sort of like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All of the new stuff is shrouded in a little bit of mystery, and everyone experiences it at the same time.


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[Assistant] And so there is no beta environment for Destiny content. When it drops, everyone's seeing it for the same time. Everyone's experiencing the story for the same time. They're playing the mission for the same time.


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[Assistant] That is really exciting. It makes the world feel like it's evolving to players. It makes them feel like they're all in the bleeding edge and they're not, you know, getting these weird peaks behind the curtain or spoilers. Uhm, what makes that really challenging is we have some of the


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[Assistant] Best testers in the world at Bungie. They are incredible. We have an incredible like test focused mindset.


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[Assistant] Having hundreds of people play your game internally.


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[Assistant] Uh, you know, for months is so different than the first day it comes out and millions of people are playing it. Uh, and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That is part of, uh, you know, the challenge of making a game like this, but I think it's also part of our secret sauce. And so we're always learning how to do it better. Uhm, and yeah, it's a really interesting to see some of the ways things take hold because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're not always what we expect, but sometimes they're better than what we expected and they teach us to like, hey, what this system should be doing.


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[Assistant] We thought this was the goal. We're seeing how players are interacting with it. Let's like chase down this other thing. This is more fun.


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[Assistant] I think that one of the biggest things they're seeing is how the, how the systems game has evolved with some


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What seems like on paper, pretty minor changes. Uhm, so for everyone, one of the things that Destiny did was we said, hair old way that you built your character. So the RPG part of our RPG shooter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was just too complicated. Uhm, and some of that complexity can allow you to do some really powerful things, but we said most of this complexity is making even for our most engaged players. They're like anytime I have to change anything in this game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is like a 45 minute experience and said, hey, can we just like remove some of that mental load? And I think when players first went in there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There were so much new coming at them, they sort of looked at the system and said, okay, some stuff is going on here. After players started to get their hands


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In systems like the new way that you build your character, I think that starts in- WHOA!


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[Assistant] There's all these new ways that I can interact with Destiny now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think that's always sort of players peeling back the onion and there's like, okay, how does all the, how do all the changes of this game interact? And I think for a bunch of it in Lightfall, a bunch of the changes have been really positive for the way that you can interact with the rest of the game. And so we're seeing this crazy new damage type. We have Strand and they're saying,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, do you know that you can like grapple onto a gun projectile and fly across the map? And you're like, oh no, I didn't know that, but I'm going to try that now, right? And then I said, oh, okay, do you know that like you can build your character in this totally different way and it changes the way that you interact with the strike that you've ran before?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, but now I'm really excited to go check that out. And so I think for us it's been a bunch of people peeling back the layers and seeing the new ways to interact with the game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, that your first reaction to anything can be like, hey, well, I know, I know what the future of the game is and I know where all this is going and I know why all this is important. And so my.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I do this thing every time a game comes out, uhm, where I take my schedule for the week and my schedule is a nightmare. Anyone who ever looks at my calendar is like, Joe's quadruple booked at 2pm. And I'm like, and everyone has like some horrific fire they'd like to talk to me about.


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[Assistant] When we've launched a big new release, I go and I say, hey, I'm walking out the whole week and my block just says, it says game director versus game, right? And so I play the shit out of the game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Interesting. And, and I, uh, you know, I'll like talk with people at work or at the initiatives where we're playing, but I'm like, hey, if you pull me into a meeting, I'm playing the game this week. And so like, it'll be like, we're more like we're on Discord than we're, we're having a meeting like, like this right now. And in that process, I'm sort of a,


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[Assistant] But I actually really like to live on my own schedule, so I like heavily frequent a bunch of our LFG communities and I just join people and I just sit back and listen to what they're saying about the game and what they're enjoying about the game.


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[Assistant] Three out of four times I'm completely anonymous, uhm, and almost about, uh, five out of six of those times, uhm,


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[Assistant] When I'm not anonymous, people only say something at the very end. They'll like, at the end of the thing, be like, oh, hey Joe, so thanks, thanks, tell the team, thanks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hey, I'm excited to run King's Fall with y'all. We're gonna talk about King's Fall. You tell me about the game, and I've almost never had an experience where I've had to bail out of a group because they, like, didn't respect that. So, I think even in those experiences where they, they might recognize me, just pivoting the conversation back to, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hey, I wish I could tell you all about the game. I can't. Uhm, so you tell me about the game. You tell me. And then I think they're instantly in this seat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I get to talk to the game director about my feelings on this and they'll like just go off on some random god roll of a gun they have that they think is slightly off for two hours and then I'll listen to that.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so I think the first was we were really focused on, hey, we're hearing all the reactions the first five hours of the game and we start thinking, okay, what are


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[Assistant] How are all of our plans for what we're doing after the final shape gonna make sure that when we get to the final shape.


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[Assistant] That this culmination of the story that we've been telling for 10 years is epic and it's doing all the right things. And so that was the first mindset we were in. We were just like absorbing a bunch of this.


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[Assistant] Talking about, hey, what's right, what's wrong, what are we doing in the next few seasons, what are we doing in the final shape itself to make sure all this is landing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then I think as we sort of got through that, as we start seeing, hey, here's what people are doing with Strand. Hey, here's, here's how the raid is going. Here's how this new content is going.


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[Assistant] I always start to start picking out the things that are really working well. And I say, okay, this is working well, this is working well.


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[Assistant] Are we, are we doing more of that in the next several seasons? Are we doing that in the final shape?


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[Assistant] It is almost impossible to have a game that does everything at a 10 out of 10. Like, there's some stupid Twitter meme where someone's like, so many games, it's 10 out of 10, all those things.


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[Assistant] Ultimately, I think what people are looking for is your game is doing something special.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so what are the things that we are capable of doing that are special? And every time we sort of find out new things about that, and then I want to go back and make sure, hey, are we investing in this stuff that's special? Like, are we, are we doing this? And sometimes we need to be doing things that are special and like, hey, we just missed the mark and this is like a thing that we're known for. And that needs attention too, like, but.


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[Assistant] But ultimately I think it's about like uncovering some of that gold or hey are the things that, the things that were exciting last year still exciting and making sure we're investing in the right stuff, making sure we're focused on that and that we're delivering it. Uhm, you know, no one knew how big sort of the end game content was going to be.


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[Assistant] Okay, the end game of Destiny is so cool, there's a lot, there's like all this activity content you can't find anywhere else in the shooter.


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[Assistant] And we've really tried to be like, okay, but like shouldn't you experience that an hour or two of destiny? Like why is it 20 hours away? And so we're trying to take those things that like destiny does really well and just be like, oh, if you download this game.


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[Assistant] You are going to experience this before you leave, I promise, right? And so, yeaah. That starts to happen with every release and that starts to be what we get to and sort of like looking at that list and saying are we still investing in the right stuff or are we still doing the right stuff?


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[Assistant] Yeah, I, I mean, I, I, I think that building the plane as you fly it, uh, constantly, you know, monitoring the city. I think you could go back to, to sports and say, yeah, it's just like, there's another game coming next week and this is


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The meta of basketball is changing, right? Like, and we need to be able to do these things. This is the kind of team that we're playing against next week. Uhm, this is a really hard skill to acquire. The Bungie's been really fortunate in growing it over this years, and it's still


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[Assistant] It never gets easier, I think is the thing that sometimes people that get into this and they're like, hey, we can make development easy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, you can't make it easy. Um, it's like, it's like being like, hey, I want to get a six pack and eventually working out will be easy. I'm like, it'll never be easy, right? You can, you can make it so you don't get hurt when you do it. You can make it so, um, you're better at doing it.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and, and so for, this is like really close to home for me. I, I grew up on the mean streets of raid design, uh, my history before getting into development was like, I was a super hardcore raider in, in other games, uh, and this was like, I love this stuff. So, um,


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[Assistant] We've seen this, uh, a lot, I think, again, going back to something that we talked about before, which is the, like, how your content hits when a million people play it. There's always a little bit of a surprise. Uhm, and so throughout the years, we've had raids, world-first racists that have gone on.


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[Assistant] Uh, I think back to, so we have this right at the end of Destiny 1 called Wrath of the Machine. I think it's time is time to completion was like 2 hours and 5 minutes or right under 2 hours. And I can remember being in the


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[Assistant] The whole raid team used to get in the theater and watch the world first race. We had a twitch app and we'd all be sitting in things. And we were like, woo!


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[Assistant] That was fast, right? Like that was, that was really fast and, and are people going to be mad about this? And I think initially there was this whole wave of people that were like, oh, this rate is too easy. And you know what, what happened? We just had this other big grade and then.


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[Assistant] That sentiment quickly blew over into this thing that was, well, this rate is so fun, right? And it's like I love to do it every time. And so I think one of the things that we first say is that like we in talking to a bunch of designers that have maybe never seen this feedback before is.


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[Assistant] One thing that we know that does not correlate is the time to beat a world's first race to the longevity, the ranking, how much fun this thing is. And one thing that I think we really like about it is that no matter where the time is,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, what is going on in the Destiny sandbox? What did we like about this experience and what didn't we like? And so this is the exact thing that we talked about earlier when we talked about that feedback cycle and the team was looking into it and they're saying, okay, well,


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[Assistant] What should a Destiny Contest Day 1 look like? How long should it take? How many people, uh, are beating it? Uhm, and so we'll look at those numbers, but we still say...


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[Assistant] Okay, but in the final shape, right, like that name's gotta like going on with it. What should that experience be like? And should it be like this? And so all the team is looking into that and I think they're, they're, uhm,


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[Assistant] Uhm, but I will say they are, uh, looking at their strategy for the year, uh, and I, I think making a bunch of really smart decisions based off that. So yeaah, they're seeing the whole conversation. They're figuring out, hey, hey, where, where are we going from here?


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[Assistant] I think for number one, there's like a, there's an interesting, bungee culture bit where, uh, when we get hit with a tidal wave of like, oh, this thing is really hard.


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[Assistant] Studio is really good at rallying and picking up the pieces and figuring out what we want to do next. And that's like all live service is all the time.


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[Assistant] And so I think one of these things that like is really important for us getting into this is like, Hey, how resilient are you? Because again, we'll go back to the sports analogy here. Every Friday, you've got to get up to the batter's box and like swing at this thing. You're going to strike out sometimes.


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[Assistant] Even a bunch of our peers that we look at that are excellent at this. I think you could go look at their track record and a bunch of it, a bunch of their success stories is


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When they released a thing that wasn't quite right, when they had a really hard thing, they were really resilient about it and were able to bounce back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This it's really hard to launch a live service, uh, and it's really hard to maintain it. So you have to get over that first hurdle.


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[Assistant] And then once you do, once you're like, okay, so this is what it's like to maintain this thing. This is what it's like to like, we just.


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[Assistant] We birthed a baby in the world, now we have to take care of it, right? Like, uhm, you can look at a bunch of people that make it through that first year, it's always very challenging and like, okay, sorta get it now, sorta understand. It's a, it's also, I think, really a thing that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a, it's a hard lesson for a bunch of folks is.


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[Assistant] It's, you work on this thing for so long and no one knows what it is until you, but you, right? And it's the specific thing in your mind. And with live service, it's a living thing after that. And it's a living thing that is shaped by millions of people playing it.


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[Assistant] And I think there has to be this instant like that you give this up and you say,


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[Assistant] Okay, now we're going to listen, right? And we're going to like listen to what folks want this thing to be because it might not be exactly what we thought it was and what we thought is important might not be the important thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think you'll see a lot of the success stories like really growing from a bunch of that. And really, uh, we have this value at Bungie that we call like strong ideas loosely held. You gotta have ideas. You gotta be able to bring things to the table.


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[Assistant] You gotta be able to put them down and you gotta be able to say, okay, I know I thought that thing, I thought it was going to be so good. And you're like, but it wasn't right. And so here's this other thing that people are saying is so good.


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[Assistant] Well, let's go invest in that. Let's go make the game more about that. Uhm, that's really challenging. Yeah, right, right.


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[Assistant] Uh, oh, this is a great industry term. Uh, we consider ourselves data informed, uh, which is different than data driven, uh, right? And so we like to know, uh, what, what all the different data coming from the game is telling us. We, we don't want to be


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[Assistant] We don't want to let the data drive the car, uhm, because sometimes the data can drive the car into a very dangerous direction and, and you are sort of responsible for knowing that. Uhm, I, I think there's,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I mean, I'll say this selfishly that if it is very hard to win in live service and be able to survive in live service, if your team does not love the thing that they're making, if you look at, if you look at a bunch of the things that are being made and being successful year over year,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If, you know, if we were just making X developers version of Destiny, it would look very different. It would look very specific. We'd only be making the things they love. So we need that sort of big, big enough group to understand and, and those people to be getting more opinions and, um, yeah, that really helps. But I think it's very hard.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To come in and service those players to give them what they want.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, specifically talking about Destiny, and I won't try to say too much of our secret sauce, but I think it's pretty apparent. One of the most challenging things about making Destiny that I think is like a really hard thing for someone to come up and take the mountain is


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Many years ago, Bungie set out to make a game that was like, we want an RPG that you can play forever.


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[Assistant] And oh, it also has to have industry leading action game in it. And those two things hate each other. They hate each other. Those two ideas hate each other with every core of their being. And the thing that


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[Assistant] That really makes this challenging. If you go in there, you say, okay, I can make the.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can make the RPG. Okay, great. Uhm, but if you play that game for five minutes and you're like, ah, just like killing things doesn't feel as good on this game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, that's a pretty big moat that we have. And then I think of the opposite if you have like, hey, we've got the hip feel. And then you're like, but I beat the game and I'm done. And you're like, yep. And so I think a bunch of people


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sorry, I think every live service has some combination of these things, these like impossible things that they've decided, yes, we're going to take on both of these. Uhm, and the ones that feel really hard to say, hey, I want to, I want to live in that space too. I think I've taken on some impossible trek that every day is a challenge and every day someone is like,


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[Assistant] I think one thing that is really surprising to me with Destiny is uhm, it's a story of uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A game from, that was not expected coming around and sticking around in ways people didn't think that it would, right? I think people were like, oh, this is going to be Halo. And then it came out and it was not, it was not that video game. And then people said, okay, well then is it going to be a failure then?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, it's not, and it's not because we released this thing and we listened to the community and we learned from it and we made it into this other beautiful thing that can last for a very long time. Uhm, I think we still, I hope that we still have the legacy of like,


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[Assistant] This game is, you know, is approaching its 10th year anniversary and there's still something that is so special.


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[Assistant] About the way that, uh, firing a gun feels and like how you maintain that over a bunch of years and don't feel aged. Like I think one of the things that we all feel really proud of when we have a streamer, you know, coming from some other game playing Destiny for the first time.


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[Assistant] How does this game feel so great to play? Right? And they're expecting because, you know, we didn't, we didn't release a new box last year that that's not possible. And I think that's a real testament to a bunch of the hard work that's been done and, and it's still really, really getting in there. Um, I think other than that, like,


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[Assistant] We gotta let the history books decide, right? And I think that, uhm,


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[Assistant] We've done a lot of things that, that nobody else has tried before and some of them we've landed and people were like, oh, I didn't know you could do that in a game. Uhm, but, but others I think that, uhm, still time will tell and, and we'll learn more. So I don't, I don't want to, uhm, jinx it too much here by trying to predict the future. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I think what we, first of all,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We really still love this thing that we make and we still want to make sure that uhm, hey, if you like this intersection of RPG and shooter,


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[Assistant] Whoa, Destiny is the game that you should be playing and that Bungie is the people that should be making it and we should be providing that for people for a long time.


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[Assistant] I think the plane that we really want to land here and that we want to do is saying, Hey, we've been telling this story in Destiny about it's the pyramid versus the traveler for a long time.


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[Assistant] I think we really want to say like, hey, we can close off chapters of Destiny and then we can show what else this universe has to offer and then we can show what else is going on and that's it.


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[Assistant] That's a hard thing to do, right? You get in a lot of, uh, IP and they just like, hey, we have this thing. We know people like it. Let's like crank it back out over and over and over again. Uhm, I think that the thing that we're really excited about is like, hey, let's give people a satisfying.


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[Assistant] And then let's open a new door and let's say, here's the other thing. How do you feel about that? And I think with that, we're always looking at the system game. We're always looking at like, hey, what's working about this? What do we want the next saga of Destiny to be like? How do we want it to feel?


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[Assistant] Bungee, if one thing is not afraid to take risks and surprise people with how, uh, our games evolve and the, you know, the way they evolve, so...


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[Assistant] Yeah, we're, we're excited for y'all to learn more in the future. Uhm, but I think it will be surprising. I think it will. That's the one thing that we can always say. We do these things as always gonna be a little bit surprising.


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[Assistant] It feels, it's nice to be back on a regular recording cadence.


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[Assistant] And they all smell really good. And they're all so polite as well. And like, I was just very pleasantly surprised because I had no idea what to expect. Everyone was very nice. Um, but yeah, I was in Phoenix, Arizona for two or three days and then I came back. And it was, I mean.


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[Assistant] But it was, it was fun. It was a, it was a, like a, a very cool thing to, I guess, attach my name to. Um, but obviously I was telling people that I was doing it and I told Kurt at work and he just went, you're British? And I was like, yeah, I know.


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[Assistant] I wanna replay Elden Ring, so if you need someone to take you through and help you finish it, then...


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[Assistant] I wanna get my present tattoo! I need to book that. But the woman-


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[Assistant] Uh, well I mean speaking, so I really want to replay Elden Ring, and actually that brings us to our first topic, which is about remakes and remasters, because we are obviously seeing...


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[Assistant] A lot of them recently, we just had Dead Space, the surprise Shadow Drop of Metroid, um, Isshin, which we, most of us, if not all have been playing. Um, you know, we've got stuff like Mass Effect Legendary Edition wasn't that long ago. We've got


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[Assistant] I guess Final Fantasy VII in a way, and upcoming we've got System Shock.


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[Assistant] They will never do that. Uhm, but you know, we can dream. Uh, I mean, I guess let's start off the conversation with what to you guys, where's the line between a remaster and a remake?


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[Assistant] Is, uh, when it was remade, it's like made in the...


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[Assistant] It's a whole day. Do you think then, oh sorry, grow undrawn.


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[Assistant] If you're saying 6 years from 2018, then that's, you know, a good 10 years. It's a different console generation, Last of Us.


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[Assistant] Came out 2013, remastered 2014, and then it was part of the PlayStation collection, and then it's out again, and so it's like, I just haven't had enough time separated from that, like.


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[Assistant] When they did remasters of Mass Effect for Legendary Edition.


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[Assistant] I don't know, it felt like a fresh moment that it was me sitting down to a console for the first time to play it and like, maybe it was because it has a new unified launcher or everything is in 4k, but you know, there was an element of sheen to it and there had been enough time. Whereas when stuff comes out a little too quickly, like Horizon,