Voxels

Hi, I'm Sadiq. And I think we're both dangerously late at this point. You know what I mean?

It's fine. Have you ever been like... Let's talk about newsworthyness just for a quick moment.

I'm Christian, by the way. Sometimes life happens. And next thing you know,

you're four weeks late to the final shape. And you're four weeks late to Summer's Games Fest.

No, I think you were only two weeks late to the Summer Games Fest. So let's give us some credit

there. We're just two weeks... That's true. That's true. But I do want to say,

I've gotten significantly further in Tears of the Kingdom.

Oh, I did not know you were playing that. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going through Tears of the

Kingdom right now. And I think the reason that it didn't hit the first, when I picked it up,

is because I just finished a playthrough of Breath of the Wild.

Yeah, that would do it. I think it's... But with a few months past, though,

with a few months past, I do have to say Tears of the Kingdom. Here's my hot take.

Just for the fact of the movement mobilities, it is better than Breath of the Wild. And hear me

out. So you know Breath of the Wild, right? There's a lot of puzzle mechanics that sometimes

you'd have to do the YouTube playthroughs. So Tears of the Kingdom has the fusibilities,

the way you can build stuff. And more importantly, it has the... I'm forgetting the name of it. But

basically, you can just climb through any ceiling. So whenever a puzzle is super annoying,

you can just cheese it. And the game's like, "Okay." Yeah, the game... I think that's one of

the things about the game that I did like was that it gave you a lot of flexibility in the

shrines, right? In the puzzle shrines. I felt like they were more interesting, at least, than

the ones in the first game. I think they did a better job with the shrines. I just got bored

after a point. I think I hit a point where I did a few of the big dungeons, right? That you do.

I don't want to spoil anything, but they're like big dungeons that you have to do for the story.

And I did a few of those and I was like, "You know what? I'm fine. I'm good. I have seen enough

of the mechanics and the gameplay." I was like, "I don't know if I'm going to come back to it."

And I did not come back to it. I don't even have my Switch anymore. I don't know if I mentioned

this on the podcast, but I gave away my Nintendo Switch, so I don't have a Nintendo console at

this point. DC only gaming right now. Yeah, I'm only PC. Yeah, I'm only PC. Yes.

But the last thing I think I'll say about Series of the Kingdom, because I'm near the end of it,

I don't think we're going to do a finale on it because I don't think it's worth it.

I'm happy games like that exist because if you... What was the last open world game that you could

say was not infiltrative live servers bullshit? Ghost of Tsushima?

It's coming to PC. Yeah, I was about to say that one.

I'm playing that right now. That's the game I'm still playing. I've been playing that.

Oh, how's the PC port, actually? It's really good. It's all

extremely good port. It's fun to play. It's the second playthrough for me, so it's fun to play it

again. I'm enjoying it. I'm almost done with the DLC. I'm happy to hear that. Yeah, it's good.

But yeah, speaking about games and live servers bullshit, I think we ought to talk about The Final

Shape. Yeah, so Destiny 2, The Final Shape. Is this the final DLC? Not DLC, the big expansion

for Destiny 2? I'm not actually sure at this point. Is it actually the final shape?

Bungie has been non-committal. Basically, what they've said is they plan on making more Destiny

2, but there are no current expansions announced or anything like that. I think what they're trying

to say to us is we'll probably make more stuff, but it might not be coming yearly, which is a

point I'm going to come back to a little bit later. But yeah, so here's the part where...

Crack open a beer. I'm going to just talk about Destiny for half an hour.

But yes, The Final Shape came out. It is the final sort of entry point in the current light

versus darkness saga that's been going on Destiny since Destiny 1. It's supposed to wrap up all the

loose story points, all of that stuff, and put a bow on everything. Now, there's a few angles I

want to tackle this from. The first one is how the campaign plays before we go into weird Destiny

Kingdom Hearts story bullshit. Let's talk about stuff that's grounded in actual reality before

we go into space magic. This campaign, I am conflicted on it because the actual story

missions are fantastic. The main reason being is that Bungie has finally, I think, figured out how

to implement mechanics-based encounters and level design in a way that's not frustrating puzzles,

nor is it just holding X on plates. So for example, here's the mechanic in one of the levels.

The main boss for that level is invincible. During the level, you basically find out that

if you destroy a certain enemy, it shows a shape. It drops an item that shows a shape.

If you shoot that shape in a different room, you get a little buff. If you do that two times,

the boss then goes into a damage phase where you can actually damage it.

That's the entire encounter. Earlier in the level, though, in order to get through certain doors,

shooting enemies and shooting the shapes is how you unlock key cards to actually unlock those

doors. Throughout the entire level, it basically teaches you the mechanics of the final boss fight

in that level. That's pretty clever. I think that's a good—I mean, the whole thing with

the damage phase is not new to Destiny. Destiny's been doing that for a long time,

right? But the rest of it, where it guides you through the mechanics of the boss, is

a pretty good game design, I'd say. That's pretty clever.

Yeah. And then there's another part of it, too, where once you actually get to that final boss

fight, it introduces another new mechanic where certain rooms have poison in them. Those rooms

where you get poisoned are where the actual enemies need to shoot to figure out what items,

what keys you need. You can then find a buff that grants you 40 seconds of invincibility.

So you basically have to get the buff, go to the room, kill it in 40 seconds, survive that

encounter while other enemies are rushing you, remember what side it is, go back to the main

room, shoot it, damage the boss, and then do that a few times. It was actually really fun

because it kept you moving, right? That's the thing. There's another room where, basically,

it's like a strike, but the entire time, it's like the whole "the floor is lava" thing.

When you were a kid, the level keeps changing and it keeps rising with actual

lava that you would die from if you touch. It just keeps you moving the entire encounter while

you're fighting a boss. So there's a lot more of that where they keep introducing these raid

mechanics where you have to manage debuffs, buffs, you might have to unlock certain doors,

you might have to tackle things in a certain order in order to actually progress through

the levels, and it's done really well. What do you say it's harder?

It doesn't make the gameplay more... What's the difficulty curve like? Do you have to have a

group to play it, or is it like, if you're playing solo, it's fine? You can solo these

encounters. Are these difficult? I would say it's fair. Every time I wiped or I died,

it was always because I messed up the mechanic, right? It's like, "Ah, shit, I missed that

jumper. Oh, wait, nope, I shot the wrong symbol. Ah, crap." One of those, right? It was fair. I

never felt like I was... What's the word for it? Purposely just dying because of weird difficulty

spikes? That never really happened. It was always fair, I felt, and it did make the encounters fun.

So I really liked the campaign for that. They had a lot of dialogue. There's many cut scenes

throughout a mission. And the thing is, too, I'm playing after the raid. He's basically up

seven missions, and then it says there's a final cut scene that says, "After the raid,

that is when the final mission unlocks, and you'll be able to take down the Witness once and for all.

The Witness is the big enemy of this expansion." So since I played after the raid, you basically

play one prerequisite mission, which isn't a fetch quest. It's just an actual fun mission where you

go on a hunt. Basically, you have to hunt some weird monster, and you have two other characters.

Basically, they... What do they do? They have it where you do stuff, and then you have to let time

pass. So you basically have a camp base you set up, and the entire mission is doing things, going

back to camp, having a little story encounter, then going out and trying to find this monster.

- So it's kind of like a Monster Hunter RPG-esque... Yeah, okay.

- It's very Monster Hunter-inspired, yeah, where you actually meditate or go to bed to pass time

after you do an objective. - Oh, interesting. Okay, yeah,

that's very RPG game. Sure, okay. - So great story design, and the final mission

is 12 people match made. - Okay. Oh, god. That sounds...

- It's pure chaos. - Okay, it sounds like it could go

really wrong, but I feel like maybe it's fine. - Basically, it's like you've already beat the

campaign and stuff, so basically, it's kind of like Bungie being like, "We just want to make you

feel like a badass, so we're going to give you 12 people in this arena, and you're just going to have

a bunch of buffs and a bunch of free ammo and a bunch of free supers to just destroy stuff."

- Okay, so it's just like a power... Okay, that's fine.

- Yeah, but it's really fun, though, because they do, like... It's you and 12 people,

but they just throw all of the strongest enemy types in the game.

- Ah, I see. Okay, it's like a gauntlet. - I'm actually more surprised there were

no frame drops. - Yeah, I was curious, performance-wise,

how is it... I guess it's not... It's not like this is a big technical change from the

other expansions. I don't think there's going to be any performance problems.

- Yeah. - Necessarily, at this point in the game.

But I know when Final Shape came out, the first day was rough. You couldn't get into the...

You couldn't log in into the servers. - Yeah, that's why I waited a week to buy

the expansion. Because also, I wanted to wait until after the raid. But, you know, story-wise,

I would give it... It's a good campaign. But here's the issue. Even with this game being delayed,

I think from a narrative perspective, yearly expansions... And this is also people who play

World of Warcraft, I think, also have kind of been saying this. Yearly expansions for main

story content, I think, is too little of time. This game needs at least two years in between

expansions. I really hope now that they're done with this current saga, they move to a two-year

cycle. Because as far as I can tell from reading in the Reddits and all of that, the reason this

campaign is as good as it is is because it got six months of crunch with the delay. - So you're

just saying that it just needs more time to sort of build up the quality of the campaign missions,

or just the expansion? - Right, right. Because there are story beats in this. Spoiler time.

This is a spoiler time. But for example, Zavala goes through a crisis. You played the season where

it showed he lost his family, right? You remember that one from way back when? - Yeah, yeah, yeah,

I remember. - So it kind of picks up on that with the Witness playing with him, and he goes through

like a crisis of faith. But the issue is it's only in one mission. Like, it's in a mission and a half.

And it's not enough time for that narrative to develop, really. So those are the kinds of things.

They also bring back Cayde-6, right? And at least he's there through the whole campaign. - I don't

know how I feel about that. Honestly, I'm not particularly attached to Cayde-6 as a character.

But a lot of people I know, there are a lot of people who are very attached to that character.

So it feels weird to bring back characters like that. I feel like you can really mess that up.

- They didn't mess it up, though. I don't think they messed it up. I think it's more of they

used him to help tie some narrative bows on stuff they didn't wrap up, if that makes sense, right?

Like bring him back, and then he sacrificed himself at the end of it anyway, so he's dead again.

- Okay, all right. - We're good this time.

- All right. - He's not like back forever. He dieded.

But let's explain this story, though. Or actually, go ahead, ask your questions.

- I was going to ask about the raid, but I don't know if you actually attempted the raid or

anything like that. - Okay, we can talk about the raid first,

then we'll go to narrative. So this raid, it's so funny. So with Lightfall's raid, all of the

hardcore salty YouTubers were like, "Bungie's falling off. They can't make hard raids anymore."

So I guess Bungie said, "Bet only one team cleared it in 24 hours."

- Yeah, I heard about this. Yeah, yeah. - They had to extend contest mode.

So basically, what contest mode is, is like, that's how the raid begins. There's a special

difficulty mode for the day one sweaty people. They had to extend it by 48 hours, because it's

normally 24 hours, because only one team cleared it in the first day. And the funniest part is,

it was just a team of random people who weren't even streaming it on Twitch, so no one could

steal their mechanics or stream snipe. - Oh my god, that's incredible. So just

like the randos who did, that's... - They were literally in the PlayStation 5

share mode to share it to their friends, so they could have a VOD recording.

- Oh god. - So good. So, so good.

- So I'm guessing the raid is like really difficult this time, like actually like challenging.

- So here's the reason the raid is difficult. So you basically have a mechanic where,

it's called final shape looming. You have four minutes to clear whatever mechanic you have to

clear or else everyone wipes. So what the raid demands of you is perfection. If you fuck up a

mechanic, the entire encounter gets started over in contest mode.

- That's, oh, so that's, so that means you have to just like, it's very, you have to,

everybody has to be on point like all the time. Like it's just...

- Right, and there's one puzzle in there, which I actually think is fucking fantastic.

So it's, I forgot the name of it, but basically it's a room where everyone gets teleported to

their own mini rooms. And the way that you unlock doors to get back together and start the fight,

is there's statues of every person in the raid and you have to figure out who is who in each room

and then tell each other over comms based off of who's at, like, who's person you see in the room

you're in, what they should be doing. - Oh my God, that's so...

- So you have to like, who has this gun equipped or who's using the shader or who has this cloak,

right? You have to recognize the armor that your teammates are wearing, communicate with that over

comms so you can do like, you tell them to shoot something while you shoot something and go back

and forth with all six people. - That's hilarious. That's very good.

I love that. - But no one can figure that out,

though. People got stuck there for like eight hours. - Yeah, I would imagine because it's not

obvious. Like, I feel like that's kind of a new mechanic that they've tried. I don't think they've

ever done that before. - No, it's the first time they tried

something like that. And I think it's fantastic. 'Cause yeah, you like, this raid is probably the

least LFG. You've got someone who's really good at like getting random people to like,

make friends and communicate with each other. But I mean, that's what the raids are for.

I'm here for it. I was laughing the entire way when people were like,

28 hours is when like one of the biggest streamers finished. They had to take an eight hour,

after no, after 28 hours, they had to go to bed for like five hours and they came back to finish

it. - So how is the, so explain what is

happening in like broad strokes, I guess, the narrative right now. So where are we in the

narrative? - So when's the last time you stopped

playing Beyond Light? - You know that season where with the

Zavala stuff? I think that was like the last, yeah.

- Yeah, it's Beyond Light. So yeah. So you stopped playing after all the planets went away, right?

After they removed the content. Okay. So basically what happened afterwards is,

Lightfall, you can kind of ignore it as an expansion. 'Cause basically we go to city

Neo-Muna. We have our first encounter with the Witness. The Witness shoots a hole into the

Traveler, goes inside the Traveler. And we discover something called the Veil, which is

a power we can use to like channel darkness or whatever.

- Sure. - Lightfall and the Final Shape used to be

one expansion, but they split into two for time reasons.

- Is that why like, is that why every Destiny person I know is like, Lightfall is kind of like

a nothing expansion, like nothing actually, like it's not like.

- You can actually tell the first cinematic of Lightfall is like all the main characters

sitting in a spaceship. And the last cinematic is them in that same spaceship, and it shows the

Witness going inside the Traveler. That was probably one cinematic that got split in two

to try and build narrative cohesion between the expansion. But yeah, apparently according to

leaks, Lightfall used to be, originally it was planned to be the last city is where you're

fighting in. Like they invade Earth. And then midway through the campaign is when you go into

the Traveler and where the Final Shape stuff takes place. Which should be clear, would have

been a banger expansion. And this goes back to my main point that if they spent three years working

on that, like that would have actually been fire. 'Cause you know, you like the first part's kind

of mid, but the payoff's worth it 'cause you go into the Traveler afterwards, like you get two

zones in it. Like that, it would have made a lot more sense. I think Bungie would have not

had felt as much pressure to deliver. But so yeah, so we go inside the Traveler, right?

And you're basically fighting through the Traveler. This patrol zone is a linear space.

And what I mean by linear space is you just go forward, right? Like you can explore stuff in

patrol, but it's just all the story mission zones. It's not like an open world-ish kind

of patrol place, which I think actually lends itself to the better story mode. 'Cause they

don't have to worry about this being like a replayable place. You can just, you go through

it once and there's nothing to do afterwards in many missions, but it's just reusing the story

mission zones and that's fine. 'Cause you know, I don't think people are going to complain about

that. But so narrative wise, you go in, you find Cade, Cade's back to life because Pro,

who is Uldren, who killed Cade in Final Shape, came back as a guardian and he wished upon Ahamkara

from Forsaken to go inside the Traveler and bring Cade back to life.

- Oh, hold on, hold on, hold on. So when Cade died, his soul or whatever went to the Traveler?

Is that what is implied? - Well, they're ghosts, remember?

Ghosts, so basically ghosts come from, the Traveler made ghosts and ghosts revive dead humans.

- Right, but like, Cade, isn't the whole thing with Cade's ghost that it got like shot by a big

sniper rifle? - Right, right. So when guardians die

their final death, they just turn into light because they're not actual, like alive. They're

just paracausal beings of the Traveler. - Oh.

- So it's not like, it's not saying the Traveler's like a god where humans die,

where their soul goes. Like you're just a reincarnated shell from the Traveler.

- Right, so you just go back to, into the Traveler when you, like, when you go-

- Right, you're not like, yeah, the person's gone, gone, right? Like whoever Cade was when

he was like a actual human is long gone. It's just the actual Traveler, you know, is light. So

yeah, they go back there, Cade's revived. Ikora and Zavala also go in, RIP to Lance Reddick once

again. The new voice actor did a great job, but you know, RIP to Lance Reddick. So the first few

missions are just finding the gang. You find Qrow, you find Zavala, you find Ikora. Zavala basically

is like, "Fuck the Traveler, this guy does shit for us. All he does is speak in riddles. I'm gonna

go use the darkness." And that's picking up from that thing, because the Witness basically is

taunting Zavala of his dead family, saying that Zavala joins the Witness who had given back his

dead family. So Zavala chases into the darkness. The Witness ends up killing his ghost, so Zavala

has no light. But you do learn from that sacrifice, because the Witness is actually a collective of

people. So the Witness was a society of folks that the Traveler once went to. And when the Traveler

left, basically they decided in order to destroy the Traveler, because the Traveler abandoned them,

that their entire society would just sacrifice themselves to become one mega-being.

But because it's made up of multiple individual parts, you have dissenters in it, right? It was

three factions. Two that were down with the idea, and one dissenting faction. So the dissenting

faction still got basically slaughtered to be turned into the Witness. But those dissenters

are what told Zavala to go inside the Witness, to join the Witness. Because when Zavala went there,

they told Zavala that if you go to the place where we began, where everyone was basically calcified

and turned into this Witness being, that's where you can destroy it. So the final mission at that

point, right? That's up to having to get the gang back together. You're trying to figure out what

you can do. Basically, you storm the Witness's headquarters. That's the last few missions.

And once you get to the Witness's creation zone, the final fight with the Witness in the campaign

is you're basically summoning a way to go inside an Ascendant plane. And if you kill the dissenters

within the Witness, that damages the Witness because you're destroying it from the inside.

It plays really well. But yeah, it was very space magic stuff. Probably the most space

magic Destiny has been. - It's very, very space magic.

I did see that cutscene with Zavala where he's surrounded by all the separate Witness

forms, I guess. - Yeah, those are the dissenters.

- Yeah, so dissenters that he's like... He falls into some darkness, I guess, and dies

or something, I guess. I don't know if he actually... Did he actually?

- His ghost dies in that scene. Yeah, his ghost dies trying to protect him. Yeah,

so he's without a ghost. - Yeah, I saw that scene and I was like,

this is the most Kingdom Hearts nonsense that I've seen in Destiny in a long time. So that was my

impression from that cutscene alone. And I don't know how you feel about this narrative style. I

just never liked the Witness as a plot device. I just don't find it particularly compelling in

any way. So that's kind of my sort of thing with the story is that I just don't really care about

the Witness. It feels weird because it just feels like it came out of nowhere. And it just kind of

feels like... What's the word? Deus Ex Machina? Is that the thing? It feels like a thing that

they have put in the story just so they can just have an antagonist that's just like, everybody's

against it. And also you can have all this weird shit happening. You can just be like,

"Okay, the Witness did that." You know what I'm saying? It's kind of just like...

- Well, it's the Destiny story, right? So basically, the issue of Destiny is the best

story moments are always the small people-to-people interactions, right? And whenever it comes in

overall narrative, and I think the reason is because Bungie... Because it's a live service

game, and they have to quickly write narrative into the game, it becomes messy, right? It's not

like you have six years to make this video game so your writing team can really make sure it's

coherent. It's like you put out this expansion, it's a year and a half, maybe two years of dev

work at most. And you had ideas about the narrative, but then when some seasonal content

comes along, you're like, "Oh, shit, we have to change this." For example, they basically

back-rote Oryx into being a disciple of the Witness from just Destiny 1 to try to make it

more coherent. - Okay, sure. So I don't envy... I do understand why the story is so incoherent. It

is hard to write a story for a live service game like this. It really is difficult with the dev

cycles and trying to figure out where you're going to go years from now is really hard. You have to

do retcons all the time, right? It's just kind of messy. I don't know. I'm whatever. At this point,

I don't actually care that much about the Destiny story. I don't know if I actually care that much

ever, but at this point, I certainly don't feel any investment in it. I think this is my question

overall for the expansion of Destiny 2. What state does this leave the game in? How are people

feeling about this being the conclusion of an era of storytelling and game for Destiny? How are you

feeling about it? - They cleaned up enough narrative loose ends that they could do something

completely different and it would not feel weird, right? They cleaned up the whole lightness darkness

saga where the answers you're getting are the answers you're getting. The story is now done

because the main villain is off, right? So for example, you remember the whole "I don't have

time to explain" thing from Destiny 1? - Yes. Yeah.

- So the soul divisive, right? The Black Garden from Destiny 1 was made by the Witness. It's never

addressed though. It's not addressed. It's not addressed. And the whole entire reason that the

stranger came back in time was to stop you from becoming a disciple of the Witness and going to

the dark. It's supposed to be coherent like that, but it's all done, right? Honestly, what I would

like Bungie to do now rather is don't make a new game engine, right? We can still use the same

Destiny 2 bones in the same locales, but I think it's time for a full FFXIV style reset where we

just do a huge time skip, right? Let's start from zero and a new narrative in the same world.

The bones are fantastic, right? The world design, all of that, the locales. I don't even think we

need new worlds. Bring back all those locations from Destiny 1 or whatever. Use existing map

stuff, right? But they should put dev time into just resetting everything and just being like,

"It's been 100 years since the battle with the Witness and here's the..." Because we have new

alliances, right? The Fallen and the Cabal work together. Even the Hive under Savathun are kind

of our allies, but not really sometimes. So at least in this system... There's some episodes

going right now. They brought on Failsafe. There's stuff going with the Vex. But those all seem to be

mini stories just to give people content while they figure out what's next. And if they did a

whole... If you ever played World of Warcraft, basically World of Warcraft begins a few hundred

years after Warcraft 3, right? And it just mentions the past and says, "You're starting off in this

race. You're starting off in that race. Here's your starting zone. And you can go out and explore

this new world and new stuff." I really think Bungie should just handle it that way. Let's do a

new story and let's do something different. And this whole 10-year saga might have been messy,

but people still like playing Destiny. - No, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- So we should continue... And I think a game like Destiny should exist, right? I think having a

shooter live service MMO style game is a good game to have. It's not like Destiny shouldn't exist,

but we can just do something completely different. Brand new characters, brand new story.

Let's just keep the universe going and use the same game engine piece. Destiny's game

engine is still good. I don't know about on the dev side, maybe if there's dev stuff, but at least

it runs well. The network stuff is... The one thing about Crucible you can say is you don't

really run into cheaters or you don't really run into random network issues in Crucible, right? So

the bones of a good game are there, but yeah, I just want them to move on from this story and

just do something completely new. - Yeah, I'd agree with that. And that

would actually interest me if they just sort of started fresh. At that point, I would feel

like it would not be overwhelming to get back into the game. Right now, if I go back to the game,

I'm just like, I'm behind. I don't even have that new class. I don't even have that shit.

I would have to unlock all that stuff and do all that crap to get it. And I'm just like, I don't

feel like doing all that shit to just finish the story. So whatever they're going to do, I'll give

it a shot. I hope it's good. - I hope they don't continue the main story,

though. I just really want to say that. Because the rumors right now are that we're going to

continue the same characters and we're just going to leave the soul system and go to other universes.

Like, nah, we don't need to do that. Oh, speak about classes. Prismatic, we didn't even talk

about it. - Yeah, we didn't even talk about

Prismatic. So what is this sort of class, multi-class stuff? How does it feel?

- It's really fun, but it is advanced. If you are new to the game, I would not recommend

maining Prismatic because you need to know what combos work well and what don't. Because you can

have really weird builds where you have a void grenade, a solar melee, and they just don't work

well together. So I think for sweaties, for people like me who play too much Destiny, it's really fun

to be like, oh, I think I can make a sick build if I pulled this from this one class and that from

that one class with this jump. But you need to be really into how the game plays, I think, in order

to really get the full benefit of it. - All right. So that's Destiny 2,

the final shape. Let's talk about, we're too, I mean, we're extra late on this one, I feel like.

We're like nearly a month late from the PlayStation state of play. So let's, we'll start with that.

A few things here. The big one, I think for me, is God of War Ragnarok is coming to PC

in September, which, you know, I'm excited for because I actually haven't played Ragnarok

because it was PS5 and I don't have a PS5, so I'm looking forward to that.

I don't understand, this is my question. I don't understand why Sony is making, Sony's so

interested in making like an Overwatch clone. I mean, I know they want to like a live service

game that's like really popular, but like this Marvel-ass look, Marvel-ass game that just looks

kind of, kind of okay. And it's like basically Overwatch, but you're going to have to use

Marvel-looking characters called Concord. I even forgot the name until I had to look it up. It's

like, it's like, it's fine, but it's like, why is this? It's like, I don't know. - I'd actually be,

I actually kind of like the look of Concord and maybe it's mostly because my Overwatch 2 is bugged

right now because I changed Bethesda or I changed Battle.net accounts and every time I open it on

my Xbox, it says I have to link my Battle.net account and when I try to link it, it gives me

an error and I don't know how to fix it. - That's, all right. - So that means I'm going to lose all

my characters in Overwatch. So fuck Blizzard, I want to play a different game. I play Concord.

- Sure, sure. I, and honestly, I might like, sure, I would, I don't know if this is actually,

oh, actually this is coming both to PS5 and PC on August, actually, actually next month,

but two months from now, like it's going to be, it's going to be a, so, you know, I'll give it

a shot, see if it's any good. The other Overwatch sort of clone, I guess, is Marvel Rivals, which,

I mean, it's just Marvel characters, but Overwatch, which I guess, sure. It's coming to PS5

and Xbox and also PC, right? So it is actually coming to Xbox, which is cool. We have Monster

Hunter Wilds gameplay. I don't know if you care about Monster Hunter Wilds, or Monster Hunter,

but you know, there's one new monster. - Did you skip over Astro Bot? Hold on a minute.

How did you skip over Astro Bot? - Yeah, I was going to get to that later, but like, yes.

- Oh yeah, fuck Monster Hunter. Some people love it, but it's not for me. Did you actually like

Monster Hunter? - No, I tried, I tried playing, I think, Monster Hunter Worlds when it was on sale,

and I just couldn't get into like the, like, just the way the characters feel in combat. Just,

I just don't, I just don't, it's not, it's not my thing. So no, Monster Hunter is for me. Astro

Bot looks fun. That just looks like a fun, you know, platformer, like, they're just like,

you know, the Astros played over so successful, I guess, with everybody liked Astros played over

so much, they're just like, fuck it, we just gotta, we're just gonna go all in and just make a,

make a whole ass platformer. It's just like a bunch of, like, Sony franchise characters are

gonna, like, be in it, right? Create all this ALI. - For Sony nostalgia, you know?

- Yes, it's Sony, it's for the Sony fans. - For the Sony fans, for Sony Knights.

- Yeah, Sony Knights. Silent Hill 2 remake looked bad. That did not look good.

I'm not a Silent Hill person, but from, as I understand it, from all the Silent Hill fans

out there, they're not, they're not happy about this. It doesn't look, it doesn't look like

Bloomer Team has done a good job on certain aspects of, from looking for the--

- I'm just watching the animations and the cutscenes and the trailer, it's--

- Yeah, it's not good. Yeah, it's, it's, and especially the voice acting looks, sounds

really bad. Weirdly bad. Dynasty Warriors, I don't think either of us ever, I don't know if

you've ever played a Dynasty, have you ever played a Dynasty Warriors game? Like--

- I played the Hyrule Warriors demo on Switch. - Oh, yeah, Hyrule Warriors.

- And it had 10 FPS. - Yeah, yeah, that was, that was,

so there's a new Dynasty Warriors game. Path of Exile 2 is coming to PS5. Oh, speaking of

games that are coming to PC, Until Dawn Remastered. I, I kind of like Until Dawn,

actually. I remember playing it on the PS4 and like, and I played, you can, you can like,

finish it in one day, basically, it's not that long. But like, I'm curious, like, what, like,

I felt like Until Dawn didn't really need a remaster, per se, like, it, it looked fine,

like, I don't, I don't think, anyways. We're gonna get, we got, at least we're gonna get this on PC

now, so that's cool. There's a game called, this is PS5 exclusive, so I don't actually care,

Where Winds Meet looks like a open world RPG. Sure. Infinity Nikki, I don't,

is this a dress-up game? Is this, is this what this is? Like, I'm not 100% sure.

Oh my god, an open world dress-up adventure? Hold on a minute. Whoa. Okay. Okay, listen.

Listen here. There is a certain genre of influencer personality and streamer

that is going to get rich off of playing this game. I need to, I just need to put that out there.

There's gonna be like a YouTuber that's gonna, gonna make it off of this.

Yeah, like, so this game, I don't know if it's for me or you, but like, targeted, like, like,

targeted marketing, like, on this shit, like, yo, this game's gonna be, this is, this is the

game of the summer. Yeah, I, I mean, it's, it's a PS5 only, as far as I know, so I know that's

unfortunate, but, you know, it's. I mean, mostly everyone who isn't me or you has a PS5, like,

specifically speaking. Yeah, that's fair, that's fair, that's true. Um, Ballad of Anterra looks

like a Souls-like, and I'm just, I am so tired of Souls-likes. Because they're not even good.

Fuck the Elden Ring DLC, I don't even want to talk about it later, like, whatever.

It's, it's not good. You only, you, listen, you only played Elden Ring because you used a mod

that made it easier, so I don't even want to hear it. Yeah, I did, I did, I did, yeah, I know,

I know, and the DLC is actually really hard. It's much harder than the base game. Um, Alien,

Rogue, oh, this is a PSVR game, uh, so, but Sony did not forget. PSVR still exists. Yeah,

that's what, that was what I was gonna get to, is like, PSVR 2, you know, got some, uh, got a couple,

and I, I, I'll be real with you, the Behemoth trailer looked really bad. Like, it looked just

like the most bargain basement-ass VR game possible. Like, it looks, it doesn't look good.

Uh, so that's, uh, um, is there anything here that's really catching your eye? Like, I feel

like the only thing is, like, I care about is, like, the stuff that's coming to PC, but, like,

otherwise, like, I'm not particularly, like, Sony is just kind of, like, you know, kind of

not really doing anything particularly interesting, uh, for me. I've never played Path of Exile.

Is it good? Um, it's a, it's an ARPG, like Diablo, yeah, like, if you like Diablo,

uh, I think you will enjoy Path of Exile. Uh, you know, maybe you should try it.

- What console is it coming out? Let me see what console is Path of Exile coming to.

Uh, oh, well, I'll probably, I mean, wait a minute, I have a, I have Game Pass, I can just

play Diablo on Game Pass. But yeah, that's a Sony event. Um, there's no first-party real big Sony

games coming this year. Um, but apparently a PS5 Pro sometime, which keeps getting leaked,

which I don't know why. - Yeah, I, yeah, I don't, I don't, um, yeah. I mean,

that's not surprising considering that we are like sort of what, like mid,

mid cycle on the consoles. So it's surprising that, I mean, aren't we getting a, okay,

let's get to the Xbox stuff before we talk about the games. There was a hardware announcement,

right? Like they have a, uh, Xbox, like, disc clicks, uh, Series X, right? Like, uh,

no disc drive version coming out, all digital. Uh, right. There's like a, a all digital version.

- Yeah. There's the, so basically there's a two terabyte Series X, a one terabyte with disc,

a one terabyte without disc, it's a little bit cheaper, a one terabyte Series S and now 512

gig Series S. The white Xboxes are now going to be all digital only and the black ones will have

a disc drive. Um, you know what I want to know actually, let me search this shit. Cause Microsoft

said they only, they did minimal hardware changes. Does this shit still have Wi-Fi 5? I need to

verify that. - Is this really what, I don't know if you, I don't know if the hardware's out yet.

So I don't know if you can figure it out. - Well, there's a press release in it. So let's see,

what do we, do we have any text backs on it? - I don't, I don't know if they're going to put

the Wi-Fi details in the press release. Um, this is the, this is the most, yeah, this is, this is.

- Let's see here. Hold on a minute. Hold on a minute. Also, hold on, fuck this PR page. It says

Xbox consoles are better together. If they're better together, why can I not use any USB

headset with an Xbox? Well, let's, let's, let's talk about like choice in the market. Why do I

have to buy Xbox license headsets? No, I'm still going to, I'm going to beef on that till the end

of time. Cause it is a dumb, it is a really dumb like restriction. - That is a silly, yeah.

- Okay. Let's see here. Do I have Xbox? Okay. Let's see. Xbox series X one TV digital edition.

If I can pull up the tech specs page, it's only $50 less too for the disc drive, which is kind

of wild. You think it'd be cheaper? - Yeah. I, I like, I feel like if you're

throwing the market for this, I would just buy the version of the disc drive because I think,

I feel like, you know, why not? Because it'd just be like, um, like, you know,

that you could use the disc drive to play Blu-ray movies. So why would you not get the disc drive?

- Jesus. It's still Wi-Fi. It's AC dual band, bro. Bro. Hold on a minute. Hold on.

- It's hilarious to me because it's just like, I, I, I,

- They upgraded the USB to be 3.1 Gen one. - Yeah. But they don't care about the Wi-Fi, bro.

Like it's fine. I guess. - It's an all digital console.

- I know. - I'm not even asking for 6E.

- No. - Just put 6 in it.

- No. I mean, I guess, I guess they don't, I guess they're, I guess their thing is like,

if you really care about that, you're going to plug it into the ethernet. Like that's their,

that's their, probably their, their goal there. To save.

- Jesus, man. I'm not even, I'm curious too, if it's going to be like a die shrink on the,

on the GPU. - Maybe.

- On a CPU. - Maybe.

- Cause you'd have to think at this point that you could probably get the same performance on

like a cheaper processor or whatever. - Sure. Maybe. We, we will, I guess we'll,

we'll know when it actually comes out and people sort of get in there and see what's, what's,

what's in there. - Fucking Wi-Fi 5. Continue. Yes.

- What happened at the Xbox showcase? - Yeah, I mean, let's get to, um,

Age of Mythology. Um, that's, that's a name I haven't heard in a long ass time, but, uh,

there's new Age of Mythology game, uh, that's supposed to come out in, it's coming out this

year actually. Um, September 4th. Uh, I don't, I don't have any opinions on this because I had

never played any of the Age of Mythology stuff. Uh, only played Age of Empires. So I don't,

I'm, I'm just glad that Microsoft hasn't completely abandoned the RTS franchises that they have,

you know? Uh, I feel like, I feel like that's, that would have been like one of the first things

of the, of the chopping block with, when it comes to like not making them anymore, but I guess not.

Uh, Avowed, I still don't really understand this game, honestly. Like, what is this supposed to be?

Like, is it like, like a RPG? Like this is supposed to be an RPG, right? Um, Obsidian?

- I think, I don't know. I mean, Outer Worlds is great, but like, I just don't know. I don't know

what's going to play. Cause the thing is, so, and this is, Obsidian's a great studio. Cause they,

they make like such varied games, right? Like we went from Outer Worlds, right? To Grounded,

to Pentament, to Avowed.

- Yeah. They're, they're, they're like...

- I don't know how it's going to play.

- Yeah, I know. I don't, I have, I have zero like, sort of, uh, like idea about what Avowed is like

a game. So we got a story trailer for that. It is coming out in 2024. We don't have a date for that

yet. So, you know, that's, uh, oh, exciting news. Call of Duty, Black Ops 6. Uh, uh, do, do...

- It's coming to Game Pass.

- It's coming to Game Pass. Yeah, that's all that matters. That's the only news that actually

matters to anybody at this point is that we're doing Cold War shit again. Uh, we're gonna do,

uh, yeah, we're just...

- No, we're doing, we're doing late Cold War. We're doing the 90s. It's the first time...

- Yeah, it's 90s actually.

- So, I mean, is 90s a Cold War really?

- Oh, no, no, 90s is not a Cold War. What am I saying? I don't even know why I say Cold War.

Uh, I'm still stuck on that Call of Duty Cold War game, I guess.

- It was a good game.

- That was a good game.

- Multiplayer on that game was good.

- Yeah. Uh, but I, um, the only reason I care about Call of Duty anymore is, is like

the multiplayer, I guess? Like, I don't, like, you know, that's, that's all I really care about.

- And people just live in brief zombies.

- Yeah, zombies.

- There are generations who just love the shit out of zombies.

- Yeah, zombies is...

- I'm assuming a huge get for Game Pass, but I have one beef with it.

- Yeah.

- It's not coming to Game Pass Cloud.

- Uh, which means like no X-Cloud, right?

- Right. Why?

- Uh, I feel like X-Cloud is gonna get shut down or, uh...

- Well, it's also Ubisoft's fault too, maybe. Because remember, as a part of CMA,

Microsoft has to license all X-Cloud games, even first party ones through Ubisoft now.

- Oh, right, right. There's some, some shenanigans going on there. All right. That's,

that's weird, but...

- That smells like money laundering, honestly. When you think about it,

the fact that Microsoft made the game, then has to go to Ubisoft and like move money to get it

into X-Cloud seems weird.

- Uh, we're getting a new Doom game. Uh, this is Doom Dark Ages. Honestly,

I'm kind of done with Doom, personally, after Doom Eternal. Uh, like Doom Eternal was, uh...

I mean, we were talking about this, like it, it just kind of felt too much.

- It was the Marauders. That was the only reason we liked Doom Eternal.

- Yeah, yeah, the Marauders were a fucking garbage tier enemy, swear to God. Uh,

worst enemy I've fought in a video game in the longest time. Uh, but yeah, there's a new game,

Doom, coming out in 2025. Uh, this is going to be a theme. A lot of games announced at

Microsoft's event coming out in 2025. Like it's just, it's just, that's how it's going to be.

- Well, Vow comes out this year. So at least...

- Yeah, Vow comes out. Yeah, Vow comes out, like, this year, so, you know. Uh, all right. Now this

is your, your thing. Uh, Fable got a new trailer. Uh, I still don't really know what kind of game

this is. It was just like a story trailer, I guess. Uh, I, I don't know how I feel about this.

Like, I'm just, I was just like, sure, I guess, like we got some good looking characters in a,

in a cut scene. Uh...

- Look, I need to interrupt you though. This is in-game footage. Like, in-engine footage.

- It is, it is in-game, in-game footage.

- On a console.

- Yeah.

- Do you know what engine this is, right?

- It's the, it's the Forza, Forza Horizon engine.

- It's the Forza Horizon engine, bro. So even if we don't know what the game plays,

like, can we just talk about the fact that this is the Forza engine that is making this?

- Yeah, Playground Games is making this, right? With, uh, with, apparently with Eidos.

- I think back when we were talking about, uh, Forza Horizon 3 or 4, I was, I mentioned

specifically these facial animations are really good for a freaking racing game.

- Yeah. I, I feel Playground is surpris- like, for some reason, like, they're good at

really good at racing and also facial animations, I guess? Like, sure. Um, I'm really curious. I

don't, I don't, I don't know anything about, I mean, I'm, I, you, you've told me a lot about

Fable, but I don't really, I don't really have any attachment to the franchise. So I'm just,

I don't, it's coming out in 2025. I guess we'll see, you know, I suppose we'll get

gameplay stuff closer to launch. Uh, sure. Well, I, I'll, I'll, I'll-

- Yeah, it's weird because I know how it plays as a Fable, but you haven't played the old one,

so I don't really know how to tell you how, like, it's going to play. I'm excited for it. Yeah. It's

coming out next year. I need more Fable in my life. - Uh, Gears of War E-Day, um, this-

- Love me some Gears. I'm down for it. - Yeah, I, I, I'll, I'll check it out,

I guess. I, I'm not, I'm not like excited for it or anything, but like last Gears game I played,

of course, Gears 5, right? Um, was pretty solid. I had lots of weird, the story was a bit weird

in some places, but, you know, it was, as a game, it was all right. So, you know, I'm, I'll, I'll be

down. Uh. - And I'm going to keep saying it, Hivebusters is fantastic. You should play it.

Everyone should play Hivebusters. Hivebusters, you do not need to play the main Gears 5 campaign to

play that, um, expansion. And because Hivebusters is the last thing the Coalition did, I'm down for

it. Um, the Coalition is under new management. The prior management went to go run Diablo. So,

this is their first game, kind of, with like a reformed team. - Yeah, I did, I did like, yeah,

yeah. - So, I'm really curious on how, on how this is going to work. And I know, I think it's

probably why they did a prequel, because it's like, if you're going to have like a team of people

who are kind of new or had some big changes, I think testing it on a prequel that might be not

like kind of mid is probably better than the next big mainline Gears game. - Yeah, um, it's Unreal

Engine 5 game. Um, so that's, that's, that's interesting. Um, Indiana, do you care about

Indiana Jones? The Indiana Jones game? Um, I don't, I don't particularly. - Here's the thing

with Indiana Jones, all right? If it plays like the Tomb Raider games or Uncharted, I'm here for

it. - Yes, yes, I agree. I agree with that. Yes, if I, I really love, I played all the Uncharted

games. So, I, I wouldn't be down to play a game like that, in that vein. I don't know, like, I

couldn't really tell, it was not really a gameplay trailer. So, it was just like, kind of like a

story. - Well, it's, there's a little bit of first-person gameplay near the end. But this is

the problem, right? It's because it's made by Machine Games. So, it's probably gonna play like

fucking Wolfenstein. - Oh, that's not gonna work. I feel like... - And the Wolfenstein games were

good, but like, I don't, I really, they really should have done third-person, like Tomb Raider

style game. - Yeah, I feel like this shouldn't be a Tomb Raider or Uncharted kind of third-person

game. I, I really feel, yeah, but it is, it is Machine Games. So, you know, maybe at least the

guns will feel good, I guess. Like, that's, that's, that's all I can say. Uh, Flight Simulator is still

going strong. It's gonna have like new, like new DLC, like new, like new modes. That's cool.

- Isn't this how you, how you like benchmark all new PCs by just running Flight Simulator at max

settings? - I, the problem with that is, Flight Simulator takes forever to download because

it has its own downloader built in. Like, like when you install it from like whatever

store you get it from, it starts and starts another downloader to download. And it's massive.

It's like, it's, it's a problem. It's, it's, it's a massive game. So, uh, it's on PC, it's like

a pain in the ass to actually play. And I haven't played it. I, I don't,

I haven't played Flight Simulator since like Flight Simulator 2002, which, uh, which was a long

time ago. I'm not really a Flight Simulator kind of person. Anyways, uh, and the next, next thing

on the list is, is the one that I, I forgot this existed. I forgot they announced this like, what,

like four years ago? Uh, Perfect Dark got a new gameplay trailer, which looks sick as fuck, but

also I don't trust this trailer, bro. Like I, I, I really considering like the development history

of this, of this title, like it has, it's been very troubled. So I, I, until this game actually

comes out, like I don't, we don't have a release date, so we don't, we don't know when this is

coming out. Uh, probably 2026 at this point. And I, I think it looks good, but whatever, like,

I don't, I'm here for it. Listen, listen, Perfect Dark, you know, you know how they got me?

The Mirror's Edge parkour. Oh, yo, the Mirror's Edge parkour looks so fucked. Like that,

that shit. I saw that and I was like, hell yeah, like give me that, give me that.

Cause it's going to play like Thief versus Mirror's Edge, right? Like that's the whole

idea behind Perfect Dark. I think that's the discussion I've seen is like, people don't

really, I feel like some people are like, this is an immersive sim, but it's not like, it's like,

kind of like a light, there's some light immersive sim elements, uh, but like also kind of like an

action sort of platformer-ish like stealth stuff going on. Right. So it's like, it's usually a

combination of various genres, right? Like it's like Mirror's Edge, Catalyst stuff in here, uh,

sort of like Deus Ex stuff in here and all. It's, it's, it feels a little bit unclear to us to what

kind of game it really feels like. So we'll see in like two years, I guess. Uh, South of Midnight,

this game looked interesting to me until it got to the gameplay. And I was just like, this is the

most mid-looking gameplay I've seen in a minute. Like I swear to God. Uh, because the setting

itself looks, you know, very interesting. It's like Southern Gothic stuff going on.

I mean, it's, it's made by the same people who made We Happy Few. I know some people really love

We Happy Few. I don't know why that game exists. I'm sorry. I just, I don't know why We Happy Few

is good. We Happy Few is not, We Happy Few is not good. Yeah, I, I don't. We got a State of Decay,

State of Decay is just, I mean, I'm not an open world zombie survival person, but.

State of Decay is not open world zombie. Okay. Hold on, hold on.

No, this, this game, State of Decay, hold on, hold on.

This game is-

Okay, someone who played State of Decay 2, I put a lot of time into it. I'm sorry to admit.

It's like open world resource management where you build bases and stuff. It like has tower

defense elements into it. Like, and it has like a progressive like time and day and like time

system and stuff moves on. So, okay, listen, listen here. I, State of Decay is not for everyone.

No, it's not. It's really not.

But it is very fun to fuck around with and like build stuff up with. So like, I'm not,

I'm not, I'm here for you State of Decay stans. Like, you know what?

Yep.

I respect that.

That's, uh, that's fine. Um.

It's a perfect like kind of game pass game, right? Where it's like,

you don't need to worry about sales and stuff because you know, you just have it on game pass.

Uh, is there like, I don't want to go through all the trailers here, but,

uh, is there anything else that stands out to you? Uh, that is-

Let me see. I do, I keep falling in and out of, um, in and out of, uh, what's it called?

Fallout 76. So I'm going to check out this new expansion. Diablo 4, I need to start playing.

I want to get into Diablo 4. Elder Scrolls Online 2, I kind of fall in and out of.

So I'm here for those. Sea of Thieves, still not for us, but hey, people are-

Yeah, people are still, uh, people are still-

People love, it's one of the most popular games on PS5 right now.

Um, and then there's World of Warcraft.

We're getting a, uh, Metal Gear, we had a trailer for the Metal Gear Solid State.

Oh, are you going to pick that up actually? The Metal Gear Solid 3 remake?

I, maybe. I, I, I tried playing the original and it didn't quite work out, but, uh,

we'll see, I guess. I'm hopeful that this one is more, uh, playable.

Uh, but I don't trust Konami, so we'll see. We'll, we'll, uh, we'll see how this-

Oh, Frag Punk looks good actually. Wait, before we talk about Stalker,

Frag Punk looks really good. It's like a card-based shooter.

Yes, it's kind of, it's kind of weird. Uh, I'm not sure how I feel about that, but, uh,

yeah, so, Stalker 2, Heart of Chernobyl, I, not, like, Stalker just never quite,

I was always, like, kind of, like, I never got around to playing it. I didn't play any of the

original Stalker games, they're kind of rough to play without modding the hell out of them and all

that, but, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm, I hope this is good. Uh, Stalker is a very weird and interesting

franchise, so I just hope this is, this is as good as it looks. Uh, I will say, the only,

I mean, we have Ubisoft up next, right? Uh, but the only big thing, I, two big things in Ubisoft's,

uh, announcements, Star Wars Outlaws got, uh, got gameplay footage. Uh, I don't have any

commentary on this because I did not see it. I don't particularly, uh, I'm not interested in

Star Wars, but Ubisoft, so I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, like, really. But it's made by Massive

Entertainment, though, they're the same studio that made Avatar, so I'm kind of here for it.

Yeah, I haven't played Avatar. Yeah, sure. Uh, maybe it's, oh, I hope, like, sure. Uh,

I mean, it's gonna be, like, a lot of Star Wars, but, like, open world mechanics, and I, I think

that's what the Avatar game was like as well. Uh, Assassin's Creed Shadows, now that is...

All right, let me go open a beer. I mean, this, this is the, this is the

Voxels episode where we just, like, yeah, uh, Assassin's Creed Shadows, there's a game,

extended, like, gameplay footage. Uh, dual characters, you play, uh, either as Yosuke,

the samurai, or, uh, Naoi, the shinobi. Uh, so, you know, we haven't done a dual character

thing since Assassin's Creed Syndicate, which was the last of the old-style Ubisoft games,

old-style Assassin's Creed games. Uh, I know you don't like Assassin's Creed, but, like, I think

you, like, you played a bunch of them, like, you played, uh, Origins, right? Or you played, like,

Valhalla? See, this is why I'm a really good hater, because I played this shit. I have bought

the games and played them, so when I say I hate this shit, I say it from the chest, right? Like,

I hate the way it just plays. I hate the way that it looks. I just hate the story mechanics. I think

this, I hate the writing in it. I hate everything about it. It's just, fuck Assassin's Creed. I'm

not buying Assassin's Creed Shadows. I'm just not. I've been burned too many times.

- Real Kendrick moment there with, I hate everything about it. So, yeah, I, so, I think,

I don't think this is gonna be for you either. Uh, I don't, I don't, I don't see anything that's

changed here. Uh, set in feudal Japan, uh, and, you know, we got two characters, so,

I'm excited for it. It's been, it's been a long, I like samurai shit as, as my love for

Ghost of Tsushima, uh, is, is, is, is a lot. So, it's like, no, I'm, it's all the stuff that I

care about in a game. It's coming out in November, uh, this year, so, I'm looking forward to that.

- Is it gonna be open world though? That's the thing I'm actually curious about. Is it, like,

older Assassin's Creed style or is it like, uh, Valhalla style?

- So, the way the gameplay looks is that once you have, when you have story missions,

like, you can switch characters, right? But what, what, what do you, I think you can switch

characters, I did, like, it's kind of implied, like, you don't really say it, but, like,

you can, like, switch characters anytime. But if, except for story missions, when you start story

missions, it'll give you a choice between either character, uh, that'll determine how the mission

plays, right? Whether it's, like, more action-oriented, like, melee stuff with, with the

samurai or, like, stealth-oriented with, with the, with the ninja. I, I, it's, I'm not sure how that's

gonna work, uh, because it's been a long time since Assassin's Creed even did that. So, uh, I

don't know how that's gonna be balanced or, you know, how the progression is gonna be. So, you

know, I, I, it is gonna still be open world, almost like, there's no, like, there's no way this is a

linear game. And we're not getting a, like, Assassin's Creed has never been, like, a linear game. So,

uh, we're not, uh, we're not gonna get that. I know it's almost certainly a open world game. I'm

curious what they're gonna do with side stuff. That's where the interesting storytelling usually

happens in Ubisoft games nowadays, is side quests. So, and I'm curious about that.

- Do you think they'll have a side quest exposing how woke this game is?

- I'm not, I'm not engaging that discourse. That discourse is hella boring. Uh, hella,

hella, hella not, not, not interesting at all. It's, it's, it's bad.

- More importantly, listen, listen, let's, let's take this, no, no, you know, I'm gonna talk some

shit real quick. Let's take this as logical ends. Listen, y'all talking about how, like,

oh, you can have a black character in feudal Japan. I would say, you know what, let's ride

this boat down the fucking stream. Why can, why, why did the French get to make a game set in Japan?

- Hey, listen, let's, let's, let's fight, let's fight, let's troll with trolling, you know,

don't let the French make a game like this. - Don't let the French make a game like this.

Um, you know, it would be cool if this was made by a Japanese developer, but, uh, it is,

it is not. We get, uh, we got Ubisoft. And Ubisoft, uh, is a worldwide studio, a worldwide

sort of enterprise. So there's going to be a lot of different kinds of people making this game.

That's for sure. But yeah, uh, Saturn's Green Shadows, uh, let's talk Nintendo Direct because

I want to give Chosah here a chance to talk about Metroid because otherwise he's, you're not gonna,

uh, you're not gonna shut up about Metroid. So let's, let's talk about Metroid. Uh, what's,

what's, how are you, how excited are you for Metroid Prime 4? Um, what's, it's, it's what you,

- It's what I want. It's what I need. It's just like, literally, like, hold up, like, like,

let's, let's just, let's, let's just be real. Okay. So Retro Studio still has it. Cause this

is recorded on the original Switch. This game was like fucking Halo 5. And I don't mean that in a

bad way. - It does look like Halo 5.

- But this is on the Switch. Like it is all the stuff I want. We're shooting aliens. I'm scanning

shit. I'm scanning shit. I'm turning into a morph ball. I'm strafing and shooting. Like, listen

here. I love Metroid Prime 1 Remastered. This picks up on the story of Metroid Prime 3. It's a

pick that it follows that same storyline. Like this is just people nowadays, right? You got to

make these games big. You got to go out and above. No, this is what I want. I just want a Metroid

Prime game. I just want this shit. Like, so yeah, I'm here for it. Um, I'm, I'm just here for it.

- Yeah. I, I, I, I, I, I mean, I don't know if you have a, you don't have a Switch anymore,

right? Like, can you like, uh, - I have a Switch Lite.

- All right. You know, that's how you play. - I said before, we started getting some

- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. I, for some reason - Listen, yeah, I'm just, I'm, listen,

Ryuji Nix got shut down. I can't emulate that shit on my MacBook Air anymore.

- All right. Uh, so, so you're gonna, you're planning on picking this up, I'm sure. Like

certainly, uh - Of course. Day one purchase.

- Day one purchase. - Day one fucking purchase next year.

- All right. All right. All right. Uh, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm sure. I think it looks good.

Like, I, the trailer looks good at least. So I don't, uh, I'm not really a Metroid person. Uh,

so we'll see. Uh, is there anything at Nintendo? - There's another game that we gotta talk about.

Yeah. Fantasia Neo, Neo Dimension. Fantasia Neo Dimension. So the reason we're talking about this

is it was no longer playable because it got delisted from Apple Arcade.

- Oh, it's, this was a mobile game, right? Like this was, uh -

- So this was a, so no, no, so this was a, Apple ordered it from, this is the people who made the

original Final Fantasy games, came back to make another like top-down RPG. And it was on Apple

Arcade for like a year or so, but it then got, um, delisted so you can no longer play it. So I think

there's a lot of people who never got a chance to play this game and who should. It's come out to

Xbox, PlayStation, PC, all of that. Um, you know, I think, I think people really should, should play

it. Cause they wanted to get delisted. It got delisted. - I think like a couple of years ago,

at this point, like a year or so ago, I think, um, that I remember hearing about this game vaguely.

- Let me see. Is it still on Apple Arcade actually? Let me, I could have sworn that it's,

right? 2021, wasn't it? Or let me, oh yeah, it's still on, it's on Apple Arcade, but still for it

to be on a platform where you can buy it and not subscription only, I think it's still,

um, still totally worth it. So I'm excited for that game to come out as well. We also have the

Zelda game where you play as Zelda. Do you want to do some more woke discourse? I'm just, no,

I can't, I can't, I can't troll this hard. Um, so put aside the fact that people are like, well,

why can't she hold a sword? Um, I think with Tears of the Kingdom, like Nintendo's done making old

school style Zelda games at this point, each new Zelda game is going to have some weird gameplay

mechanic and I'm here for it. So I'm excited to play it because I like top-down Zelda games.

I like the fact that you finally get to play as Zelda and the mechanic looks fun where you like

fight, you summon enemies to fight for you. I don't know. Did you ever play Overlord? So

Overlord was a game back for like the 360 where the mechanic was you were an Overlord. So you

wouldn't fight. You would have all your minions fight for you. And it has really strong Overlord

vibes. So it's like a mini, like a mini, like where you, like a God game where you like,

like control, like, I mean, this didn't look like that. This looked more like you use Zelda to like

summon things that would fight for. Yeah. Yeah. No, you summon people who fight for you. Yeah.

It's not like Overlord is like that to the extreme, but yeah, like this whole like one

mechanic, it's like the fuse thing from Tears of the Kingdom. I I'm really excited for it. Like

it looks like it'll be a fun game. And once again, like, yes, please let me play as Zelda.

Like, you know, I'm done playing as Link. Yeah. Um, there, I mean, we also getting like a Hyrule

edition switch, like a gold, gold, uh, switch light with this game. That's ugly as color.

Yeah. I am not like a huge, I like the crest, like the Zelda logo on the back, but like,

uh, the Hyrule crest on the back. Uh, but like, other than that, the color is kind of,

kind of, kind of mad. Uh, but it's a piss yellow.

Uh, do you think that Metroid Prime 4 is going to be a dual launch where it launches both on

the current Nintendo switch and then whatever the next iteration of the switch console is like,

is this going to be like a, it's going to be like a breath of the wild situation where like,

it's going to launch on both console on like the current gen, the next gen console. And like the,

all the, all the console, like only if it's not backwards compatible, if it is backwards

compatible, then I think it doesn't need to, but to be clear, it should be backwards compatible.

Because here's the thing retro. You don't got to worry about performance. Metroid Prime one ran at

60. This game's going to run at 60. This game's not going to run at 30. No, no, listen, retro got

a 10 AP 60 shooter on the original week. Like it's really like, we really don't have to worry about.

All right. All right. We have faith. We have faith. We have faith in retro. That's, that's,

that's, that's the, that's the, uh, is there anything else before, I guess we should, we

should wrap this up. Uh, I don't know if we could get to the other devs, but let's just like,

let's wrap this up. Um, yeah, I think that's it for, for basically the Nintendo one. Yeah. Yeah.

It's just other Nintendo games, you know, people buying weird, weird cozy games where you just put

farm and people have like nothing but game libraries full of it, which I respect. But

yeah, so we have day of the devs last, um, uh, there's a lot here. There's a lot of things got

announced today. I don't want to, uh, there's a, um, um, I don't have anything particularly that

comes to mind that I want to, I want to shout out. Oh yes, actually there's a, looks like a

sort of narrative focus game called after love EP. Uh, it's like a narrative game with like dating

sim and like rhythm elements. That's like about grief and love and, and, and stuff like that.

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's also interesting because it's like developed by an Indonesian

developer, uh, set in like, uh, I think it's set in like in Jakarta. So that'll be interesting.

I'm, I'm actually, I put that on my wishlist because I occasionally, I like to play like a

sort of narrative focus game like this sort of, you know, not really gameplay oriented, but you

know, that's, uh, that's the way dating sim and rhythm elements. I'm gonna check this shit. Yeah.

It's about a music, like the story is about a musician, uh, who hears the voice of his girlfriend

after she dies. So it's, it's like, you know, it's doing that. Like it's, it's like an exploration

of grief and love and music, I guess. So, uh, after love EP it's, it's on, it's going to come

out in October this year, uh, hopefully, uh, PC switch PlayStation and Xbox. I know it's on all

the platforms. Go, if it sounds interesting at your own PC, go put it on your wishlist. It does

actually help the devil out. Uh, anyways, uh, that's, uh, that's our games discussion for a

little late to the party, but you know, uh, that's fine. It's not like, it's not like we really missed

anything or, but not like we do this with the SEO. So it doesn't actually matter. Um, we're probably

an open eyes day based at this point. Let's be real. Yeah. That's to be clear. Cause, um, I never,

uh, I never took the, did you, I on shades of brown, did you ever block AI from the robots

that he actually filed? Cause I forgot to do that for this pod. Um, I think I did. I think I added a

robot, a TST file, all the sites on my server that all that server that she had to brown is on. So

it might be, I haven't checked. Uh, but it might be, was it before or after chat? GBT came out

though? Probably after. Yeah. Oh, who knows? It's it's whatever. I know. Uh, as always you can find

the show notes on foxholes.fm. You can email us. What's the email of feedback@voxels.fm. There we

go. Bob. And you can find me on mass Don at Packet Cat at 10 forward, the social, I don't know,

websites, static, safe.com. Go check out my blog, no router dot space. And Christian, where do

people find you on the worldwide web? You could find me not talking about NFTs anymore. I'm on my

new grief. I'm a grip. I'm grief in a new way right now. I'm thinking, you know, there's an AI

power social network where just AI post all time. Um, I think that's the new wave automate social

media so you can automate it for yourself. That's, that's the wave. Uh, you can find me not doing

that though. I'm asked it on low five carats at MSDN plus and my website shows find a website.

But yeah, until next time, uh, first and foremost, fuck assassins creed. Goodbye. Bye.