Starfield sucks, Lies of P deserves more credit, and "Flute Guy Goes Hard Again." Join us for a conversation about our favorite games of 2023 and our reactions to The Game Awards.
Starfield sucks, Lies of P deserves more credit, and "Flute Guy Goes Hard Again." Join us for a conversation about our favorite games of 2023 and our reactions to The Game Awards.
In this episode, we share our Game of the Year picks and react to the announcements and winners at The Game Awards. To no surprise, Baldur's Gate 3 received the attention it deserved. Hello Games introduced Light No Fire—a new adventure game we're all excited about, and Hideo Kojima announced his new project called OD. Both games look great, but we were disappointed The Game Awards spent so much time on those presentations. We would have rather seen more award acceptance speeches on stage since—you know—it's supposed to be an award show. ANYWAY. We also discuss bangers like Lies of P, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Alan Wake II, Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, and Spider-Man 2. Overall, 2023 was an incredible year for video games, and we're looking forward to 2024. Thanks so much for listening to us this year, and special thanks to Christopher Judge for publically slamming the length of the newest Call of Duty single-player campaig...Please Wrap It Up - Geoff Keighley.
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
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00:00:00
[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Willie: The thing that at the very end that I noticed, it's one of my favorite parts was the person playing the flutes just fucking getting after it-
Joseph: Oh. Oh, dude.
Willie: -in the orchestra. In the game awards orchestra, they do for the last thing, they played the... some themes from all of the Game of The Year nominees.
Joseph: There's like a medley for the Game of The Year category.
Willie: Right, yeah, that's a better way to concisely say that. So they're playing that. And he's switching out instruments the whole time.
Joseph: He went the fuck off.
Willie: Or they're switching out instruments, like picking up new, new shit, and it switches from [Taylor laughs] like a little pan flute to like a big ass contra flute that's like, I don't know, six feet long. [chuckles]
Taylor: The first video that came up when I looked that up was Game Awards flute player. The first thing that comes up is Flute Guy Goes Hard Again.
[all laughing]
Taylor: Pedro Eustache.
Joseph: That's a great title. Dude, Meg looked him up cause I was like, Oh my gosh.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Meg looked him up and he like makes his own instruments and like plays a billion fucking instruments.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: The way I thought about it when we were watching, I was like, he's like the interpreter.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Oh yeah, those legendary interpreters.
Joseph: Dude, he's like the music version of like ASL interpretation for the audience, but he's doing it with the, with the instrument. He's not even playing, he's not making any sound. He's just like interpreting with instruments.
Taylor: You'd be deaf and watching that guy and you are hearing the music.
Joseph: Yes, exactly.
Taylor: You are hearing exactly [Willie chuckles] what's going on.
Joseph: Dude, yeah.
Taylor: Oh my gosh, he's playing like a bassoon or something.
[Alienated by ELFL fades out]
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica]
00:01:41
Joseph: What's up, welcome to Berries and Blades. Thanks for tuning in for a casual conversation about video games. My name is Joseph. I'm here with my friends, Willie and Taylor, and we're just three regular guys impatiently waiting for information about the Elden Ring DLC, but I digress. So what's new?
Taylor: I'm just hoping that they're gonna have, uh, a GTA 6 and Elden Ring crossover before it's all said and done.
Joseph: Are there melee weapons in GTA?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Oh yeah, they got the bats and all, all kinds of...
Joseph: Hmm.
Taylor: I saw a confirmation there was a chainsaw. In the same article, it said that there was a chainsaw confirmed in this one. And also a child that you could play as.
Joseph: Oh, woah.
Taylor: Yeah. I didn't see anything about that in the trailer, but we shall see.
Willie: Somebody just talking about some unconfirmed-
Taylor: For sure. [Joseph laughs]
Willie: -leaked stuff now. [chuckles]
Taylor: For sure. That's what it sounded like. I didn't see a hint of either of those in the trailer, but left the mind wandering.
Joseph: Willie, do you know anything about the Elden Ring DLC? I don't know shit.
Willie: Uh, not really. No, I mean, I think people were really expecting something to be shown at The Game Awards that we're going to talk about today, but that didn't happen.
Joseph: That's what I was hoping. And I don't know.
Willie: That's definitely the biggest disappointment of the whole thing, I'll say right out the gate is not getting anything, like not even a hint.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Was Elden Ring, but that was, is that's a 2022 game?
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Okay. Okay. So it would have just been that. Okay.
Willie: There were a lot of people who were speculating, Oh, we'll get something the day before The Game Awards because that's what happened last year-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -was a big Elden Ring update. The whole Coliseum like update happened-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -the day before or the day of The Game Awards like the trailer dropped the day before and then the next day there's a big Elden Ring update. People were hoping for a similar pattern this year, or at least a like trailer drop
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: The Coliseum is that that place towards the end? Like the giant Coliseum shaped building that you get to that has the big axe bowls outside of it? Or is that...
Willie: I don't remember what's outside of it. I think that's where you... it's 1 of the buildings that um.
Taylor: It was right beside the giant tree where you're going up the huge magical tree.
Joseph: No, you're, you're thinking about something in the Haligtree tree, but-
Taylor: Right.
Joseph: -I don't, I don't think that's it.
Taylor: Okay.
Willie: No, it's, it's definitely on the main, main sort of, it's not even, that's not a different area, but Haligtree tree always seems like a, I guess it is in a different place-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: The Coliseum is more a part of the like continental map. [chuckles]
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Continental part of the map.
Willie: Yeah. You go there and you fight umm, is there a big Alexander looking pot there that challenges you to like fights? Isn't there like uh three champions you have to fight-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -or like three rounds of three champions that you have to fight or some shit?
Joseph: Yeah, there was one of those big fucking robot golems, that where you're talking about? You're like on the way, there's this big golem shooting arrows at you and then you get to the jar and then you have to fight the three-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: What do they call them in the game? Shit.
Taylor: Right? It's been a long time now.
Willie: Uhh.
Joseph: They're like invaders. I forgot what they're called though.
Willie: They're invaders, but there's like a, is it recusant?
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Willie: I can't remember the word.
Joseph: That's it. That's it. Yeah, you fight three of them. Dude, I'm slacking on some Elden Ring shit because-
Taylor: Oh, I didn't even know that any DLC came [chuckles] out, so I'm slacking about as hard as it gets on there. I need to go check that out.
Joseph: Well, there hasn't been. I think Willie's just talking about like patch updates.
Taylor: Oh, okay.
Willie: Well, that one was a like, they, I think they're, that is a place that people do PVP stuff too.
Taylor: Oh.
Willie: I'm pretty sure.
Taylor: I never got into the PVP aspect.
Willie: There's like uh...there's a whole big thing about it. I don't know enough because I didn't also play much since then.
Joseph: I have been eyeballing that game because I keep seeing it in my library on Xbox. I'm like, man.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: And I see there's like a 20 gig update or something. Like, I guess my game has just never updated because I haven't played it in like a fucking year or something.
Taylor: Huh. I wonder why so big. Like if they, uh, they added stuff or-
Joseph: Games a fucking beast, man.
Taylor: -upgraded. Yeah. Yeah, it really is.
Willie: The Coliseum thing, just like a quick note on it is there's three previously inaccessible Coliseums.
Joseph: Mm. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Willie: One in Limgrave, one in Caelid, one in Leyndell. And then, players will be able to access them to engage in battle in new and diverse modes. Duels, free for alls and team fights are many of the modes available to Coliseum for up to six players.
Joseph: Oh shit.
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: Free for all sounds pretty fucking fun.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Sounds like they're taking on, um. What was that other game that was 3v3? Warrior battles. Uh, it was big for a while.
Joseph: The game we almost played? [Taylor chuckles] Ninja style game?
Taylor: Maybe.
Willie: What ninja style game?
Taylor: No, no. This one was where you could choose different factions. You could be barbarians or you could be samurai.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: I forget. It's... EA maybe made it. Or oh my gosh-
Willie: No idea.
Taylor: I'm totally blanking on the name of it. For Honor? Is that what it was called? For Honor?
Willie: For Honor is a game, but I don't think that's what that game was.
[everyone laughs]
Taylor: It's like a war game or something, right? Well, fair enough.
Willie: No, it's an old school, like medieval thing.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Willie: But I don't, I didn't think there was...
Taylor: No, that's the game I'm thinking of, but it's 3v3. Yeah.
Willie: Is it? I didn't even know that it was 3v3, I guess there are three people on the cover, so that makes sense to me. [Taylor chuckles]
Taylor: Yeah, I mean the cover says it all.
Joseph: Oh shit, I didn't even remember that, three people on the cover.
Taylor: I didn't have a good time with it.
Willie: I'm looking at it now.
Taylor: I downloaded it once and it wasn't my thing, for sure. Got owned very quickly.
00:06:48
Joseph: Taylor over here talking about Chivalry 2.
Taylor: Yeah. Hey now.
Joseph: Remember that game?
Taylor: Yeah, Chilvary-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -was amazing. Don't dis on it. Did it win any awards?
Joseph: That shit was fun, man.
Willie: Played that for a little bit.
Joseph: It's pretty hard too.
Taylor: Yeah, it was.
Joseph: I like the duels. I like the duels. Like the one v. one. That shit was pretty fun.
Taylor: Oh, you one v. one 'd people on that? That's crazy.
Joseph: Yeah, dude. It's awesome.
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: It's tricky though. The combat is tricky because of like the reach of the different weapons and the timing.
Taylor: Oh, yeah.
Joseph: To not get got.
Taylor: It was all timing on that game.
Joseph: Before you get.
Taylor: Get before you get got. Man, that's a good-
Joseph: Get before got.
Taylor: -slogan. Keep that. That's trademarked. Nobody take that.
Joseph: TM.
Willie: I haven't played any of that, obviously, Elden Ring stuff. So it's like. I just was never into the PvP.
Joseph: Yeah, same.
Willie: But it was obviously a big update for a lot of people who kept playing.
Joseph: Mm hmm.
Willie: I've also been eyeing playing it again. I like almost wanted to buy it again on PC just so I could play a modded version.
Taylor: Really!? What kind of interesting mods do they have for that? Or have you scoped any out yet?
Willie: I talked about this a long time ago that there's a, I don't know if I talked about it on here, I guess, but there's a, there is a co op mod that's a seamless co op
Taylor: Right.
Willie: That I really wanted to play with y'all.
Taylor: That's right.
Willie: That was like, you don't have to drop out of the game after every felled enemy, you know, like every great felled enemy or whatever.
Taylor: That's so cool. What a, what a nice mod to just be able to play through the whole thing -
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -as co op.
Joseph: Cheating bastards.
Taylor: Yeah. [Joseph and Taylor chuckle] Very cheap. For sure, but excellent, but we would have to be playing on PC as well, right?
Willie: Yeah, yeah. The thing is, it'll scale based on how many people you have in the game, too. So that it becomes harder.
Joseph: Nice.
Willie: Enemies will have more health, or, uh, in some cases, like, if you get a randomizer, you can make it so the enemies are just harder all around.
Taylor: Did it increase the amount of co op players as well? Am I remembering that correctly, or it was still just three?
Willie: I think it's still just three-
Taylor: Okay.
Willie: -but I'm not, I'm 100 percent certain. And then the other big one. Is, uh, Elden Ring Convergence, is like a new mod that everyone's been thinking about lately, or been like talking about lately. It just adds a shit ton new weapons and spells and stuff to the game, and new enemy types I think as well.
Taylor: That's cool. Kind of like they do with Skyrim and a lot of other RPG games. That's, that's a, always a welcome improvement.
Joseph: Oh, dude! I remembered a second ago. There are videos on YouTube called, like, Elden Ring Tournaments. Like, Limgrave Tournament.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Oh, nice.
Joseph: And it's just the, it's just the enemies, the different types of enemies go into battle against each other to see who will win.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Whoa, that's fun.
Joseph: It's fucking super cool, dude. I watched, I watched one, and it was like 25 minutes long, and I was like, let me check this out. I watched the whole fucking thing.
Taylor: I want, I want to combine that with some Skyrim, like drop in 20, 000 wheels of cheese on them and, and just make the, [Joseph and Taylor chuckle] add an element of physics to the battle.
I wonder when people start doing that with, um, with Starfield, because the, that has a really good physics engine, you know, story aside and all that, like the gameplay is really good, but also From videos I've seen, it has a really good physics engine and pretty decent AI in it. I'd be surprised if somebody wasn't already hosting their own gladiator competitions in there.
Joseph: Yeah. All right. [Taylor chuckles] Well, before we jump into a [chuckling] conversation.
[Taylor and Joseph laughing]
Willie: That tells you what, what Joey thinks about Starfield.
Taylor: All right. Okay.
[Joseph laughing]
Willie: I do think the physics engine is good in that game. But uh...
Taylor: That's about the best thing you could [Joseph and Willie laughing] say about that game [chuckling] physics engine. Those are the videos I'm watching now. I definitely ain't watching nothing that pertains to story or...
Willie: People stacking fucking decks of cards.
Taylor: Yeah. Or, uh, dropping giant amounts of things out in space is really cool too.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: If you've seen that one.
Joseph: I like, I think the coffee mugs look pretty good, but that's about it.
Taylor: Yeah, the [Joseph and Taylor laugh] decking out the interior of the ship is all I cared about.
Willie: That's all I was going for at first, but never panned out.
00:10:41
Joseph: All right. All right. Before we jump into a conversation, we want to thank everybody for listening to us this year. We are now 24 episodes into this podcast and we've been having a blast talking about video games, sharing our thoughts with all of you. So thanks again for every minute you spent listening to us this year.
In this episode, we're going to share our favorite games of 2023 and talk about some of the results and announcements from The Game Awards. I think we should start with THE Game of the Year, according to The Game Awards. But first, I'm curious, were both of your individual Game of the Year picks actually in the list of nominees?
Taylor: Uh, I think, I mean, I don't know if we all agreed, but Lies of P was definitely my game of the year, and it made it into Best Art Direction, at the very least.
Joseph: What about you, Willie? Is your game of the year in there?
Willie: Uh, no, I think it's the same. I think it's close. Even though I didn't play much of Baldur's Gate, I still think that that's, that is, uh, something that was close for me. But I do think that Lies of P was my game of the year, not on that list of nominations.
Joseph: So what did you vote for, Willie?
Willie: Uh, I did vote for Baldur's Gate 3.
Joseph: Baldur's Gate 3.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: So you're part of the problem.
[all laugh]
Willie: Well, in the player's choice, I did vote for Lies of P for the first round.
Joseph: Word.
Willie: And then the fucking website wouldn't let me vote for round two or round three, so I didn't even get to do anything.
Taylor: Oh.
Willie: Every time it was just like, bad connection or timeout error or some bullshit.
Joseph: Oh, the bad gateway? Bad gateway error?
Taylor: That doesn't seem suspicious at all.
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: For sure.
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, dude.
Taylor: Rigged.
Joseph: That fucking rigged ass show.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: They were changing all the votes. Or just deleting them.
Taylor: I wasn't mad at Spider, Spider-Man 2 being in there really, um, I thought that was a really impressive game. I had a little beef with the length of it.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: And a couple other things, but overall, tech wise-
Joseph: Oh!
Taylor: -it was incredible.
Joseph: Oh, so real quick, the Game of the Year nominees at the Game Awards were Alan Wake 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Resident Evil 4, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom.
The one I have beef with is fucking Resident Evil 4 being in there.
Taylor: What that 12 year old game or- [laughing]
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Taylor: -how ever old it is being in there. Yeah, sure. I agree.
Joseph: What they need is a remake category.
Taylor: Yes.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah. Completely isolate that off.
Joseph: Yeah. Like this is a game that's been made, man. Like, what's it's doing in there.
Willie: I mean, I think a lot of people liked it. A lot of people are awaiting it. I think you're right though. Like having a separate category for remakes or reboots-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Exactly.
Willie: -would be much better.
Taylor: Yeah, it deserved acclaim.
Joseph: Yeah. And you can put all the fucking, you can put all 50 of the Final Fantasies in there since they're all fucking remakes and nobody knows anymore.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Put all the Call of Duties in there since they all have the same fucking names.
Taylor: Yeah. That, that one, I mean, Resident Evil 4 deserved, it deserved to like get a shout out and be in something. But... Yeah. Game of The Year, that was a super weird choice to me as well. Because if you think about it, it's not like they had to embellish the story, change the story.
They did put a lot of work into making it graphically on par with anything else that exists right now. But it's not like they completely reinvented the wheel for it or anything.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: I disagree with that one being on there.
Joseph: I think I came off a little harsh because I don't really hate it. Like, I don't really hate that the game is there. I just think it belongs in a different category and it probably shouldn't have been in the running, even though everything I've seen about the game looks fucking great, especially the graphics. And I would probably enjoy playing that game.
Taylor: It was originally an enjoyable game for sure, but I agree with you. They could do a remake section, an entire category for that kind of stuff. You know, there's enough of it that comes out to be able to fill that and be able to have some good candidates.
Joseph: Did it end up in one more category?
Willie: It ended up at least in one or two. I think it was like, uh, here, let me just check my notes real quick.
Taylor: That was in best VR, AR game-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -which cool. That's, that makes sense because that's a complete overhaul for that.
Joseph: Yeah, but that's a different game, right?
Willie: That's, that was seven or eight, sorry.
Taylor: Best audio design. Oh, that's right. That was Village. My bad.
Willie: It was Best Audio Design was the other one I was thinking of.
00:14:45
Joseph: Oh, it's in Best action slash Adventure Game.
Willie: Best Action Adventure as well. Uh-huh.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Also weird.
Joseph: Is it really, is it an Action Adventure game? I thought it was just survival horror.
Taylor: That's what I was mentioning earlier.
Willie: No, that's, that's the first one that's like not, right? That's... when we talked about Resident Evil and its switching genres over the years.
Joseph: Oh.
Taylor: Mm-hmm.
Willie: It's like, that's the first game that people were like, Oh, this is a little different.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Five is the one that completely broke from that. But I also think that the updates that they made to the game for now, for the audience now puts it less in survival horror and more in action adventure.
Because just of the ability to like parry and stuff in a way that you couldn't before.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Really? So if somebody's swinging at you, you could throw up a parry and block it out, not lose any health.
Willie: There's a thing that you can do with a knife that you can like parry stuff away from you.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Huh.
Joseph: Even I, man, now thinking about that, it being in Best Action Adventure game, there's such a big range between what Alan Wake 2 does and something like-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -Marvel's Spider-Man 2 or Star Wars Jedi Survivor.
Willie: For sure.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: And Tears of the Kingdom. But anyway, best Action Adventure game at the Game Awards was Alan Wake 2, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Resident Evil 4, Star Wars Jedi Survivor, The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. Which, that game was my pick for game of the year. That's what I voted for. And I think it also slightly edged out Lies of P for me.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Even though they're like, pretty much dead even. But Tears of the Kingdom. I just can't get over how they evolved the different abilities in the game. In such a seamless way that it created the infrastructure for people to build the most insane shit in that game and for it to all work, it is ridiculously polished.
I probably played 150 hours, 170 hours. I don't remember a single fucking glitch in the game. I don't remember a single crash.
Taylor: What was the craziest thing you built?
Joseph: I didn't build any crazy stuff because I was just enjoying the...
Taylor: Really?
Joseph: Yeah, I didn't.
Taylor: Dang.
Joseph: I finished the game, but I haven't done all of the, there's probably still months, months of game time, gameplay that I can spend playing that game because I didn't complete all the shrines. I didn't find all the Korok seeds. I didn't really explore building a whole bunch of like really cool stuff-
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: -like people on the internet are, so there's probably easily like another hundred hours of gameplay left in that game for me, which I intentionally was just kind of like pushing it off since it'll probably be a while until we get another Legend of Zelda game.
00:17:05
Joseph: But the reason this game edged out Lies of P for me is because Tears of the Kingdom, there's a moment in the game that almost made me actually fucking shed tears.
Taylor: Mm.
Joseph: Got super fucking emotional and like I just had this like, this gamers response to the game-
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: -where I was just totally, totally just, um, captivated by the story and the way they pulled it off. That didn't happen in Lies of P for me, even though I really fucking enjoy the action in Lies of P and the combat system and the weapons and the fucking mix ups and timing.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Fucking Lies of P is delicious, man. I fucking love this game.
Taylor: The emotion, I think, was more in the music for Lies of P than it was in the actual story.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Like, the story was compelling, but yeah, it didn't make me want to cry. It made me want to get away from Geppetto, G-pedo.
[Taylor laughs] [Joseph laughs]
Joseph: Yeah, I wish it had a little bit more emotional impact.
Taylor: It had all the components there.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: I think it's the delivery of those components in a game like that. It's similar with Dark Souls, there's a lot of heavy content and heavy emotional component there and writing. It's all there, but it's like the way that it's delivered and click a to move forward and all that stuff.
It somehow breaks that down like still carries weight, but it's not gonna make me cry. Like, a Dark Souls has never made me shed a tear-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Whereas, Zelda, yeah, the original one also on the Switch, that one was carried a pretty good amount of emotion as well so.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. My feelings need a footnote because this is also 30 years of gaming-
Taylor: True.
Joseph: -30 years of emotional connection to this franchise. And that definitely played a role in the way I feel about this new game. And some of that does come out like in the, just seeing the interaction between Link and Zelda.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: That is like a lot of buildup of emotion over the last 30 years. And-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -the storytelling got fucking way better in this game and the voice acting, I think is also way better.
Taylor: Maybe Lies of P 2 will be the tear jerker. We'll see.
Willie: It's going to be ridiculous if the second one ends up being Lies of D..
Taylor: Lies of D. [All laugh]
That's exactly what I was thinking. I don't see why it wouldn't be.
Joseph: Oh my gosh, I would fucking love that. Oh, gosh, that would be good.
Willie: Yeah, I think to talk about the storytelling in Lies of P, I think it's there, but it's, it's more mysterious in the way that it reveals itself. So it's more like a, the impact is, was for me even a little less emotional than, than anything else. Even getting like "the good ending," you know? It's more, you're just pissed. You're not sad in the same way, just because like, you feel betrayed more than you feel like, sorrow, I think, in that moment.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: Also, you just spent 40 fucking attempts trying to beat the Nameless Pupplet, so, like, you don't have any time to come down off of that rage.
Willie: Yeah, it's more of a sense of relief.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: And like, this motherfucker just made me do all of this work.
Taylor: Yeah, when you're standing up with your controller going, yeah, motherfucker, take that.
[Taylor laughs]
Joseph: Yeah, exactly.
Taylor: It's hard to get sad in that moment.
Joseph: Right, yeah.
Taylor: You're missing half of it where your heart is just beating out of your chest.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, that's a good point.
Joseph: Back to Tears of the Kingdom for a second. What's amazing about this story is that they're able to create a lot of emotion for a character that doesn't even fucking talk.
Taylor: That's true.
Joseph: Even though Zelda, Zelda is like, I mean, Zelda is even more important to the game Tears of the Kingdom than Link is-
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: -but Lies of P also has like a main protagonist that doesn't talk and doesn't speak. I wish they could infuse, like Taylor said, the emotion you get from listening to some of those songs in the game. I wish some of that, those feelings were in the story of the game. And the narrative from the story, or the narrative of the game actually made you feel a little bit more of that.
Taylor: That's why I felt like, um, as you're, as you're playing through the later parts of the game, they would have really done a serious service to the emotion if they would have put in. Say you're battling one of the later bosses, right? After the, after the shit hits the fan and, and it completely rearranges the map, you know? Start throwing in, Hey, you're, you're playing one of the boss battles and suddenly Feel kicks in, you know, and, and you start actually getting that emotion from the music in the battle itself.
I feel like that would have definitely, I don't know, it would have just combined those things together, you know, making that tapestry of emotion and gameplay become one, that would have been sick.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: So hopefully they will be able to play on it like that in the future, just knowing how much people loved that music.
Willie: Yeah, I think the music is definitely a vital part moving forward. Like that part has a lot to live up to, but the gameplay itself was just really fun and really rewarding. And and for me, there is this story that is, it's it's not. That is more of a mystery to solve of what's going on in this world that's crumbling.
And like, how did, how did we get to this place, is the, is the like meat of the narrative. So like, I don't know if it's ever going to, it could, there are stories that do both that like hit emotional notes and are mysteries in that way. So I think the key here is, the sort of twist for me. It wasn't a twist, it didn't feel like to me, because I felt a certain way.
Throughout the entire game, I felt like I wasn't getting the whole truth of everything.
Joseph: Mm, right, right.
Willie: So by the time I get to the end, it's like, yeah, that's what I thought. Versus, like, feeling betrayed, actually.
Joseph: Did you feel lied to the entire game?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Your P was lied to.
Willie: You know, the other thing that I want to say real quick about that before we move on, because I don't think we discussed it in the Lies of P episode, it's a little bit of that emotional stuff, but not really, but you gain humanity throughout the entire game. And one of the coolest parts that we, I don't think we talked about is Geppetto's puppet is a silent protagonist.
By the end of the game, if you have enough humanity, like you start hearing his like grunts and stuff-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -as he's swinging or like taking hits or dodging. And it's interesting to just like start noticing that more and more as you get towards the end of the game.
Taylor: I didn't know that.
Willie: Yeah, because it only happens after you get enough humanity. It's not there the whole time.
Taylor: Hmm. So you're slowly evolving even beyond the player's perception for the most part, unless you're really, really paying attention to it.
Joseph: Mm hmm. The subtlety of that is fucking brilliant.
Willie: Right.
Taylor: Just like the shadow, same kind of thing.
Joseph: Yeah, exactly.
Taylor: You could absolutely play through 200 hours of that game and never notice that shadow.
Joseph: But that kind of subtlety I think is fucking, it's fantastic. The undertones there, I think are really great.
Taylor: It's special.
Joseph: But the game is full of sorrow, man. The game is full of deceit and sorrow and sadness. But you don't really feel any of that. I think the game could be better if you felt more of that, since it's very much a part of the story, but the game is still amazing.
Taylor: But the question is, is it, is it inherent to a souls type game?
Joseph: No, I don't think it's even what they're trying to do. Like, I think they're trying to do what Willie's talking about, and that's a real slow build into the story and like how it unfolds.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: It's more of a mysterious vibe, and that's what they lean into, is like, hey, we're, you're slowly discovering this as you move along. And the entire time you're asking questions about what is even happening.
That's just a completely different approach to the game. Which I think is why there isn't a lot of that kind of like emotional stuff, which I would want to feel from this world that's super dark and fucking dreary-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -and full of sadness, but I don't think it's their intention with the game.
00:24:26
Willie: Joey, was there a, a difference between like the Game of The Year award and the Player's Voice Game of The Year award for you?
Joseph: Oh yeah. Player's voice was Lies of P for me. I wanted to see that get all the way to the end and win that award. Since it was not there, I voted for Tears of the Kingdom.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And, uh, we should probably mention that the winner of both of these categories, Game of the Year and Player's Voice at the Game Awards, was Baldur's Gate 3.
Willie: Which I think is, like, well deserved.
Joseph: Oh yeah.
Willie: There was a lot of shit that happened right when that game dropped and everyone was like, not only was it like, everyone's like, this game is amazing, but like, this is the game that we want to see. It's a single player story, but can be played multiplayer, but there's no, and this is where we get into tricky shit, because there's no microtransactions, there's no, like, there's none of that battle pass shit tied to it.
It's just like a good game with a good narrative. That's a certain type of game and those other types of games. I don't think those other types of games shouldn't exist. They're just not for me in most cases.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Whatever, however studios can keep doing their thing and like actually producing the content they want to produce, go for it. That being said, obviously those things are cash grabs in a lot of ways too, right? We keep seeing the same Call of Duty games every year-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: -with minor updates and stuff and-
Taylor: See where that's going
Willie: -kind of a shitty model for things.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: See how that's led.
Willie: That's kind of a shitty model, obviously, but Baldur's Gate 3 just came out and is like a great package of everything you want in an RPG. A lot of choice, which is like the thing that, you know, when people talk about playing a game where you can just kind of do anything, this feels like a game where you can kind of just do anything, like with the choices that you make.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: The number of lines of dialogue that are in the game is astounding.
Joseph: That's super impressive.
Willie: Just the sheer number, you know?
Joseph: Just the, the ability to make so many choices, I think is what everybody is impressed with and has enjoyed in general. And there's a lot of replay value in the game to go back through, design another character, choose a different class, and then make different choices to see how things play out.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: I know Meg really enjoyed the game. Meg, that was her Game of The Year. She voted for that and played multiple characters in the game and probably will still continue playing. I watched maybe a few hours, like over like a two month span, just kind of watching her play different boss battles and it's a good looking game.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: Like all the cutscene graphics look really good and then just the world itself. I think the design is, it's pretty fucking awesome. I don't remember a game that has had more of a fan following than this one in quite a while. It just seems like the community was like, I mean, this game kind of like set the world on fire.
Willie: Yeah, it's been a while for sure since something has captured everybody like that. So it's a game I still want to play and I could easily see myself putting hundreds of hours of time in and I just haven't done it yet. Like I've started the game, but I definitely have more hours in early access because I've been playing it for, you know, close to two years already when it came out.
So I have more time in early access just playing the same beginning stuff over and over again than actually playing the, the full release. And that's just because I didn't have time when it came out and then other stuff came out and then got fully invested in Lies of P for a while. And yeah, ultimately I just haven't had a chance to go back to it yet.
Joseph: Taylor, how long would you say Spider-Man took you to complete?
Taylor: About 20 hours, maybe somewhere between 15 and 20.
Joseph: Is that like the average length of that story too?
Taylor: Yeah, now I did, I didn't do many side quests, um, because I, I played through it mainly on story mode. So everything was pretty manageable, even without getting a ton of upgrades and all that.
But I will say there was a lot of side activities if you wanted to do that. But just for me playing it as an action adventure game and having fun going through the story, that was about how long it took. I'd say I unlocked, pfft, at least 40 different outfits.
Joseph: Oh, damn.
Taylor: Because you're playing as, yeah, you're playing as two different characters, Miles and Peter. Not only that, but there's the element of, um, Venom in there. So you get like a lot of the outfits are... include that kind of aesthetic too. So they did a really good job of hitting that balance of not forcing you to do a bunch of chases if you didn't want to and still get a lot out of the game. I really enjoyed it.
I thought the tech was really neat.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: One of the things I was most excited about was one of the most kind of, I don't know, basic map design, which was being able to look through the windows and seeing people actually living in their apartments and doing things. But like most things, [chuckles] once you saw that for a few hours, it wasn't as big of a deal anymore, because if you zoomed out just a little bit, you could see that a lot of people were doing the exact same [laughing] stuff in their apartments.
You know, three guys are all doing push ups in tandem and the, [Joseph chuckles] you know, six window span that you're looking through and one person is working on the computer and another person is working on the exact same computer and it was still really neat. That was definitely my choice for game of the year if I had to choose, but.
Joseph: Oh! Yeah, like out of the actual nominees from that category.
Taylor: Yeah.
00:29:33
Joseph: Word. Uh, Alan Wake 2, released pretty late in the year. Won Best Game Direction, Best Narrative.
Taylor: People seem to love it.
Joseph: Fuckin Remedy, dude. They make great games.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: I mean, Control? Fuckin one of my favorite games of all time, man.
Taylor: Yeah, with the chops they've gotten from making some amazing games along the way, it seems like they implemented all of that into Alan Wake 2, so I'm excited to play it in the future.
Joseph: The storytelling is fuckin fantastic. It's by far the scariest game I've played in a while.
Taylor: Really?
Joseph: I've only played, like, ten hours of it. But it is, like, creepy, creepy scary.
Taylor: The first one was scary. Just the shadow monsters-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -that attacked you and the way... It plays on that classic fear of darkness and-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: -being in the dark and you've got a flashlight and you've got to use that flashlight to protect yourself.
Joseph: The lighting is what does it. The lighting and then the, the shadowy figures. But also the, the sound design, which I thought it could win that category. I didn't think it would win Best Score And Music, but I thought it could win Best Audio Design for like the sound effects and stuff like that. I mean, the music is good in the game too.
There's a lot of good tracks, a lot like Lies of P where you have like music that's, well, I, I guess that's not the case for Lies of P but the songs are specifically written for Alan Wake 2-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: -which is pretty fucking cool. And uh, I like how you experience the songs in the game, but-
Taylor: How did that work?
Joseph: -I didn't feel like it...uh... So, like, it happens after scenes-
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: -but there are also radios in the world that you can come across and, like, the radios are playing music and different, like, radio messaging that you can collect. A lot like, Lies of P, like you collect music in the same way, but the way they present the songs is really cool.
Taylor: Did they still play on the TV tropes that they had in the first one? Like they had a lot of TV shows that were-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -similar to Twin Peaks, things like that happening. Very nice.
Joseph: Yeah. There's TVs and stuff. So you like basically collected like TV videos as another collectible. And that was in Control too. Like in Control, they had a lot of fucking weird and really fun shit on TV screens.
Taylor: So cool.
Joseph: The way all of these, well, the whole kind of remedy And like the way everything is tying together is fucking brilliant, man, how they tie it again, like across Alan Wake, Control, and then back to Alan Wake. I think it is really nice and like just how it all feels very connected and a part of the same universe.
Taylor: Did they bring any, any elements of Control into Alan Wake 2? Did they have, I don't know, just subplots or anything that touched back on Control the way that they did from Alan Wake to Control?
Joseph: Mm hmm.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: You find things that are like FBC branded.
Taylor: Oh.
Joseph: You see like control panels and then they're talking about AWEs and like different world events and like it's very-
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: -You come across notes and stuff that talks about experimentations being done by the FBC, so like to see the logos and stuff and like to see some of the control panels that look very similar to the stuff in Control, like it's fucking cool.
Taylor: That's huge. It's, it's little details like that that really tie people in-
Joseph: Exactly.
Taylor: -that are fans of the whole, just every piece of work they do. That's great. Sounds rewarding.
Joseph: It is. It's super fucking cool to see. And like, it just feels like you're in the know. I love that feeling. It gives you like, man, I know what that is. Like-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -Whoa, that's fucking cool. Like man, that's Control. Like I remember that from Control and like, that's really good feeling.
Taylor: That's really cool. Makes me more excited to play it.
Willie: I think that's why it makes sense that it, it won Best Narrative Design, right? That it has built a world that you just live in for a little bit. If you know that other stuff, it's even, even better.
Taylor: That's cool. So it's like a long time in the making, [Taylor and Willie chuckle] basically like years and years-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -to get them to that point and position to be in that category. That's neat.
Joseph: The visual graphics are really good too. The lighting, like you shine your flashlight into the trees. I was kind of blown away with like how realistic the fucking trees look.
Taylor: Does it use ray tracing as far as you know? It's...
Joseph: Yeah, I think so.
Taylor: 'Cause...
Joseph: I think you have the option to leave it on or turn it off.
Taylor: Okay, I remember Control. That was a big deal, was ray tracing on the glass and things like that.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: It really blew my mind.
Willie: When I first actually got a PC that was good enough to play some higher quality, like, graphically advanced games, uh, that was one of the ones that everyone's like, this is one of the five games you need to play-
Taylor: Right.
Willie: -on PC because of the ray tracing and because of just the graphics in that game.
Taylor: That's cool.
Joseph: Man, I think Control, I think Control is so good, it could be in this year's Game of the Year fucking nominees, dude.
Taylor: I'm surprised they haven't done a remake of it already.
Willie: How long, how old is that game now?
Joseph: Maybe like, uh, two, three years.
Willie: Why do I feel like it's longer than that?
Taylor: Yeah, I felt like five. Yeah.
Joseph: Well, maybe it's, yeah, maybe it's 2020.
Taylor: 2019. So it's, it's right in there.
Joseph: Okay. Wow. Yeah.
00:34:10
Willie: There's all kinds of stuff we could talk about in all of these categories. There's a couple that I definitely, now that I'm thinking about it, that I do want to talk about some stuff that I feel like, obviously I feel like Lies of P should have been in some more categories.
And one of them is the music. What is the actual title for that one? Not the Audio Design, but the Best Score And Music. I felt like Lies of P should have been in that one. But one of the other ones that felt weird to me was, uh, the Best Ongoing Game category that had Apex Legends in it, Cyberpunk 2077, Final Fantasy 14, Fortnite, and Genshin Impact.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: While I know Cyberpunk is a good game, it's what Won the Best Ongoing Game category. And I was just like, I don't, I don't understand. They've definitely made improvements to the game since it first launched. The launch itself, you know, lots of people were hating on it then and like they've changed the way the game works, you know, with the most recent update before Phantom Liberty came out.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: So like, it makes sense that it's got like ongoing support, but Apex Legends has been around for a while. Final Fantasy XIV has been around for a while. Genshin Impact, I don't know how long it's actually been around, but I know a lot of people love that game.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And obviously Fortnite is something that continues to get updated.
Taylor: Do you think with Fortnite, maybe if they would have come out with their sub games that they just released a week ago, [Joseph laughs] I wonder if they would have done that a month or two months ago, if that would have locked it in for them?
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Cause for me, I think-
Willie: Probably.
Taylor: -I think Cyberpunk or personally without, you know, being completely invested in it, I would attribute a lot of it's winning that category to the fact that not only did they improve it, but they also added VR support for it, or maybe that's, that might be modded or something, but I feel like that was a giant amount of players jumping back into that and playing it not only with the new and... fixes and enhancements.
But playing it in VR, that seemed to be an absolute game changer, because it made you feel like you were really inside of that city in a way that completely blew people's minds.
Joseph: I didn't even know that was a thing.
Taylor: I don't know if enough people would have, would have played it in VR to vote for it on this category, but, I mean, if I would have played it in VR and it looked as good as it did, just to even in the, in the original playthrough that I had, I would have been hella impressed, because that was, that was one of the best things about being first person in that game was looking around at the massive size of that city-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -even though there was a lot of buggy stuff going on inside of it right around you. There was that element of looking up and being able to look around while you were driving your car and just feeling like you were in some crazy Blade Runner city, this futuristic world.
Joseph: I think the biggest factor was them dropping Phantom Liberty when they did.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, like just before, like, there's just sort of this recency bias sort of going on.
Taylor: That's true.
Joseph: Because outside of that, like, how is it ongoing outside of that? I don't really know.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: I don't think it's the best choice for this category, even though it recently dropped that DLC.
Taylor: Yeah, I'll say it's weird to say the least.
Willie: It doesn't seem like I, I just don't know if it's gonna have the same sort of retention overall, and that maybe that's not a fair way to pick this, but like, those other games are meant to be continued to played for a long time, and I feel like eventually Phantom... like very soon, they'll be talking about a new Phantom Liberty game, not a.... or new Cyberpunk game, not a new DLC like Phantom Liberty, you know?
They'll be just a whole new game, but maybe I'm wrong, and they have plans to continue living in that world for a long time that I just haven't been keeping up with. I think it especially struck me because [chuckles] later in the, in The Game Awards, there was a, uh, there was a trailer for No Man's Sky, and like the ten years of stuff that has gone on in No Man's Sky, and the number of updates is ridiculous.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: Oh, that fucking blew my mind, dude.
Willie: Watching all of that? It's like, why is this not the Best Ongoing game
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: From where it started to where it is now? How doesn't that qualify for this category? And why is that not the winner? Cause like, look at what they did. They clearly turned a game that people thought was cool idea, but not well executed-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -into something that a lot more people started playing. Even, especially after like, after Starfield sort of bombed for lots of people, there were a lot of people who were like,
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: I'm just gonna go back to play No Man's Sky.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: Like that's... that's the better game.
Joseph: Yeah, a 10 year old game.
Taylor: And that game is years old.
Yeah.
Willie: That's wild to me. And it wasn't until I saw that trailer of like, here are all of the updates and here's what's coming next, sort of stuff, that I was like, man, why? This is an ongoing game and I never really thought about it in that way.
Joseph: Right, right.
Taylor: Oh, it's super ongoing, man. Like they are hyper aware of what the community wants with that game. Like even to adding-
Willie: Exactly.
Taylor: -even adding the giant sandworm to like-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -make good on that original promise of their first trailer-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -that featured a sandworm and then people played hundreds of hours and were like, there's no giant sandworms in here. Why did you do this to however many years later, six years or however long it was to come out with that one specific thing that people really wanted from the, like, they didn't have to do that.
They could have added any other kinds of, you know, giants or anything, but they did that like just to make good on it. I thought that was, that really said a lot about how, how much they love their own game.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: I thought that was really cool. And how much they appreciate the community to make good on something like that.
Joseph: I had no idea there was that many pieces to that game dude that that really did blow my fucking mind. I had no idea.
Taylor: Was that something that was shown at The Game Awards? I didn't I didn't catch that.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: It was like a recap video. It just quickly flipped through all the different installments and expansions and just additions to the game and it was like, fucking title after title, after title, after title. And I was like, what? Like, I've never even heard of any of this stuff.
Willie: And that's like, even within this year, there were two or three drops-
Joseph: Right. That's insane.
Willie: -that changed the way the gameplay works. It added like, you know, one of the more recent ones was like adding freighter combat and the ability to like be a pirate basically between freighters and like hijack stuff, I'm pretty sure. It's just like, watching all those was like amazing to see back to back.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Now, if they could just get, you know, your friend's enemies and your enemies [laughing] at the same point.
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah.
Taylor: That's literally all I need to go spend another 50 to a hundred hours in that game. As if they could fix that at, I will call y'all. We will be playing that immediately.
Willie: Syncing that better would be good, but I also, so all of that was a lead up to them talking about their next game, which was, is definitely one of the things I want to talk about that's exciting.
Taylor: Woah.
Willie: I feel like...
00:40:57
Joseph: I think that's one of the better announcements.
Willie: Yeah. I just wrote a bunch of random quotes down and maybe these are like paraphrasing, but like you know, they wanted to create something bigger than Earth, or like, like Earth, but bigger than Earth was the thing, and they wanted, like, a truly open world game.
I think he said this is the first real open world game, and what he meant about that is, like, there is a world that you're on that's inhabited, you can go everywhere. Instead of traveling the universe to find new places, you're just on this world-
Taylor: Wow!
Willie: -and everything is accessible. You can go everywhere.
Taylor: So using the macro of their tech, like the giant universe-
Willie: Right.
Taylor: -but condensing that to a world that is-
Joseph: Yes, dude.
Taylor: -whoa, that wow.
Willie: I think just that phrase, the first real open world, like-
Joseph: I think they said open Earth.
Willie: They might have, yeah.
Taylor: That could be incredible because that, that was what I got from that was that, okay, you've created some amazing tech here that, you can't argue with how incredible it is to be able to go across the universe, and see all that alien tech and everything but to but to bring all of that in reign it in make it nice and tight Into a single planet.
Whoa, that could be incredible.
Joseph: Mm hmm, dude. It's a fucking great idea, dude
Taylor: That is.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: It's a great idea.
Taylor: I'm already sold. I haven't seen anything about it, and I'm absolutely...
Joseph: And it's a multiplayer game, dude.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: It's multiplayer, it looks like, you know, you're, it's like, it looks like a survival, like, sort of game, like Ark, but better, I think. In the sense that it's truly, like, the biggest map that you'll ever see, cause you can just go around this entire planet looking for stuff.
Taylor: And they've proven their dedication.
Joseph: And there's verticality to the game, dude. There's verticality to the game, so you can fucking fly on animals.
Taylor: Oh man, so very much like Ark.
Willie: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Taylor: They would already have me sold because of all the goodwill that they've gotten from all the work that they've done on No Man's Sky.
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Even without being someone who has played it religiously or been a fanatic about it, just knowing how much work that they put into it and how much love they put into it. I would immediately buy the new game.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: I would say, okay, well, that's, that's something I need to play. I need to have my hands in that. Just based on that, not even cool trailers or things, you know, that they claim are in it. You just know you're going to get amazing support on it for the next five to 10 years.
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah.
Willie: Yeah. And it seems like they're trying to build something that's going on for a long time, too. Because I think they said something specifically about that.
Joseph: Like for the next 10 years or something.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: I would expect no less.
Willie: I think what Joey pointed out is it's multiplayer, and we know that because in the trailer, there's obviously multiplayer stuff happening, but also it says, like, the best thing about the trailer is that everything was in game footage of a multiplayer game.
Taylor: Mm.
Willie: Taylor, you didn't see it?
Taylor: I didn't. No, I didn't. I'm gonna have to watch it.
Willie: It's called Light No Fire also, so for anybody who hasn't seen it, go look up Light No Fire.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: That's worth checking out.
Taylor: Did it happen at the end? I see that he's talking to Keighley for a while after they show the kind of-
Joseph: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Willie: Right after they finish talking they'll like go and he's like, Oh, you want to show off this new thing? And then they do it.
Taylor: Oh, man.
Joseph: It looks really fucking cool, man. Like in this.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Like Taylor was talking about, take all this work you've done, but instead of trying to build something so expansive. You fucking bring it in tighter, and you just focus on one planet.
One planet, you just make that thing super fucking explorable and huge, and there's all kinds of shit you can do with your friends. Like, it sounds amazing, and it makes me hate Starfield even more, which I also love.
Taylor: Yeah. Starfield is the exact opposite of that. It's the-
Joseph: Exactly.
Taylor: -we're going to copy paste, you know, a thousand planets so that we can claim to have a thousand planets. That sucks.
These guys made it into an algorithm. They made it into, we want it to be randomly generated. If you hit that planet, you're the first person to hit this new planet and it's going to have randomly generated shit on it.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: That is the true essence of exploration versus we've made a thousand planets and we clicked the copy paste button so many times, like I could care about that the least.
Joseph: Well, their, their defense is if you landed on a planet out in the universe that is unexplored, you wouldn't find anything there.
Taylor: Right. No, I know that they had all kinds of defenses to it and, uh, yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, I got time for that. So my favorite thing of The Game Awards actually is that Starfield was not nominated for more categories.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: That's literally my favorite thing about the awards.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: I'm happy it did not win best RPG. Uh, obviously, I wanted Lies of P to win, but that was no real contest with Baldur's Gate 3.
Willie: Yeah, against Baldur's Gate, [Joseph laughs] it felt like it was never going to happen.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: I'm surprised Bethesda didn't just have their own game awards [laughing] that featured only Bethesda games.
Joseph: Yeah, Starfield won everything.
Yeah, they're, uh,
Taylor: Morrowind, uh, was second place. [Willie chuckles]
Joseph: The only category I was actually disappointed about was the Best eSports Event, not being Evo.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: That's the only one that kind of disappointed me. I wasn't even as disappointed in Mortal Kombat 1 not winning best fighting game. But for some reason, Evo, I really wanted to win that category.
Taylor: What did win?
Joseph: Street Fighter VI.
Taylor: Oh, okay.
Joseph: Or that, that won Best Fighting Game and then Best eSports Game was like League of Legends or something. I don't really know.
Willie: Yeah, League of Legends.
Taylor: Wow, League of Legends. That game.
Joseph: Which, I mean, they got fucking money, dude.
Willie: Yeah, people are still playing that game.
Taylor: Talk about another game that has gone forever.
Joseph: Yeah, they got, what?
Willie: Yeah, that's huge.
Joseph: A decade of mega fucking eSports event experience under their belt.
Taylor: Oh my god. I'm watching light, no fire right now. And the fact that somebody just took off on a giant hummingbird. I'm sold.
Joseph: That's what I'm talking about.
Taylor: That got me.
Joseph: Looks great.
Taylor: And the fact that there's sailing ships, I don't, you know, I don't want to derail our conversation, but man, that's, that's exciting.
Willie: No, there's some good shit in that trailer.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: I like pulled it up to you while we're talking. Oh, I pulled it up because I had a note in my notes that I didn't see earlier, that's like check out the HUD. And there was a reason I think I wanted to look at the HUD that I don't remember why now, because there's like not a lot of stuff in the HUD that you can see but-
Joseph: Oh yeah, I didn't, I didn't even see any of that.
Taylor: It's got a little leaf, um, above the stamina bar, maybe it's... The HUD looks as alien as anything they've made without having context.
Willie: And it's very minimalistic was the thing that I was just like-
Taylor: Oh, it's got temperature.
Willie: -I wonder, yeah. And I think maybe that was sort of why I was like thinking about it. Cause I was like, Oh, like maybe you do have to worry about being clothed like an Ark or something, or, you know, something like Legend of Zelda, where that actually has an effect on you.
Taylor: Which makes sense. It's so smart because then, then you could kind of gate areas of the world without having to gate them.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: You could, you could basically gate them in natural ways. Like, okay, if you want to go to the top of the peaks and summits that it's below zero, you shouldn't be going up there in a fricking pair of underwear.
Wow. Oh, that's a highlight, for me, and the rabbit people. What?
Joseph: Yeah, that looks cool man.
Taylor: Aw.
Joseph: Fucking black rabbit brotherhood up in this bitch.
Yeah. Okay, I'm sold. Okay. I'll move on from that. But that is very neat. That's exciting. That just got me... got my gamer bone in the soup pot. I don't know if that's a saying that people say but [Taylor and Willie chuckle] that's a It will be now. That's pretty cool.
00:48:31
Willie: Joey mentioned a disappointment. I think my only disappointment was obviously Lies of P not being up for more stuff that I feel like it should have been, but in the things that were up, I felt like Best Game Direction, which went to Alan Wake 2. I also felt like that should have gone to Baldur's Gate 3.
Even though they already won a bunch of stuff, I think that-
Joseph: Game Direction, you said?
Willie: -Uh, yeah. Game Direction, I felt like, should have been Baldur's Gate 3, just because that guy who leads that studio has done so much for the community and, like, been so on point with, like, everything. Every time he's talked about the game, he clearly has a team that wants to do something together and is obviously a good leader.
It felt like I don't know. I don't know enough about the team at Alan Wake, at Remedy to know, but that just would have been my personal favorite just from seeing him over the years talk about Baldur's Gate and the way his team talks about him.
Joseph: I feel like, I don't know because I haven't played Baldur's Gate 3, but I feel like what, I don't know if they're really game mechanics or what to really call what's happening in Alan Wake 2, but I feel like that is what sets the game apart as being different from others.
I don't know if Baldur's Gate 3 did anything that felt innovative in the way that Alan Wake 2 handles their narrative. And I wonder if that's what kind of pushed people over that, that fence. Because it does some really cool stuff with like, rewriting the story that you're actually playing, like while you're playing it.
Willie: But does that speak to more of like, best narrative versus Best Game Direction? Like who's the actual best? Director of a game, who's the best head of studio or developer?
Joseph: Oh, I didn't, I didn't really read the category that way.
Willie: Oh.
Joseph: Best Game Direction awarded for outstanding creative vision and innovation in game direction and design.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I think Alan Wake has, Alan Wake 2 has more of the design innovation than Baldur's Gate 3 does as a video game, but I wasn't even thinking about the team, the studio, like in the, the role of a director. I was limiting all of my thoughts to just the game itself. And like, how innovative does the direction in the game and the design of the game seem?
But I think that's why Alan Wake 2 kind of shines. I mean, I haven't gotten all the way through the game yet, but like, from what I've experienced, I was like, okay, this is this feels innovative. It feels like something new. Definitely for me.
Willie: I will say, oh, we sort of talked about this. We didn't actually talk about this, but you mentioned the transfer of Baldur's Gate to Xbox and how you felt about that. And just like wondering like how that will work.
Joseph: Wait, wait, wait, say that again?
Willie: In, I think in our text message thread, you said something about like, you were wondering how, how Baldur's Gate 3 will transfer to Xbox.
Joseph: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Willie: Like how they handle the UI and stuff. And I feel like, sort of speaking to what you're saying, I actually don't, I don't, I don't think it's that big of a deal to transfer to Xbox because I feel like it's not that, while it has a new take on a lot of stuff, I feel like it's very similar to things like Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic or Dragon Age and the way that it handles combat.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Uh, and the way that it handles your, the things you can do at a glance at the bottom of the screen and your party on the left. And so, like, I feel like it's not really that big a deal because those games have been, those games have obviously done pretty well on... on Xbox. So I, I, I feel like UI wise, Barbara brought this up that a lot of games that transfer from PC to Xbox or console and in general, unsuccessfully, it's because the UI is just not scaled in a way that's visible from a distance.
When you're sitting, looking at a PC screen, the UI text is usually smaller. Unless you've made it bigger yourself. And so when a game fails to do that on Xbox, to scale the UI in a way that makes sense, then it's hard to see.
Joseph: So in the Xbox version of the game, does it still have the like encyclopedia of a fucking menu at the bottom of the screen like it does on PC?
Willie: I think so. Yeah.
Joseph: That's what I was mostly actually trying to say is like does that stay the same and then like how you just kind of cycle through it with the d-pad or the joystick.
Willie: Uh huh. Yeah, I think so I mean, I think that's the same way that um It's not the same as something like Minecraft because Minecraft has less slots at the bottom.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: And so does like Knights of the Old Republic, but lots of games have done that before with less stuff on the screen.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Willie: So I think to that point. Yeah, you might be right. Like, I think, to the other point, I think making sure it's at a scale that you can see is important.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
But I haven't seen, I haven't watched anybody play on Xbox, actually, since it came out.
Joseph: If it's less clunky than Tecblonica, then I think it could be easy to play.
Willie: I gotta admit, I've been watching someone play that game recently.
Joseph: Seriously?
Willie: And now I'm like, man, I should go back. I should play that game now.
[Joseph and Willie laugh]
Joseph: You should just play Baldur's Gate 3 instead of Techtonica.
Willie: Yeah.
00:53:10
Joseph: Taylor, did, so, you didn't know about Light No Fire.
Taylor: Right.
Joseph: Do you not know about a game called OD?
Taylor: No. No, I don't.
Joseph: Not seen a trailer for it? A Hideo Kojima joint?
Taylor: Whaaaaat? I did not know about that, I'm gonna put it on while we talk about it, okay.
Joseph: The teaser's not fantastic, in my opinion.
Taylor: Okay.
Willie: No, not at all.
Joseph: I felt like I needed a little bit more, dog. Like, come on.
Willie: I will say that's another disappointment of mine about The Game Awards is just that we spent so much time talking about nothing there.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: And specifically because it took time away from people to accept awards.
Joseph: That's the whole fucking show, dude.
Willie: That's the thing that's shitty about The Game Awards this time around. It's like, I understand it's a trailer for all new stuff. Like, that's that way every year. But it felt like that came at the expense of people getting to talk for more than, like, 45 seconds about their-
Joseph: Yeah, dude.
Willie: -for their acceptance speech.
Joseph: And like, put more people on stage.
Willie: Right.
Joseph: You know, like, trim Anthony McAnee, uh, Anthony, Anthony McAnee? [Taylor and Willie laugh] Anthony Mackie. [laughs] Trim that shit out where Anthony Mackie is like fucking talking shit to the crowd, you know-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -or like trying to manage hecklers or something. Like that shit was awful.
Taylor: Huh? Really? Were they had some hecklers there?
Joseph: I don't know if they were real.
Willie: I think they were and he doesn't know how to handle himself maybe. I mean, I feel like he should.
Joseph: It was just like it.
Willie: I don't know why.
Joseph: It's like it's just a cheap ass bit.
Taylor: Huh.
Willie: It was a cheap ass bit I think and it was just a joke cuz he was just like there were people... he was like... somebody yelled something out and maybe It was real or not, but he was like, you can't yell all of my catchphrases at me. And more people kept yelling shit out. You know?
Taylor: Oh yeah, if you, if you poke the bear, it's gonna...
Willie: Exactly. And eventually he was just like, shut up.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Willie: Like just shut up. And he's like trying to read and he's like, shut up. It does feel like a bit that just goes on too long.
Joseph: Right. That's exactly it.
Taylor: Sheesh.
Joseph: But yeah, to Willie's point, like this is like games con dude. It's game con, it's games con with awards being read off, on screen. More than it is like a game show, a game award show.
Taylor: So the actual awards are taking the back seat to like...
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Hey, I'm Geoff Keighley. This is my show. And here's a bunch of stuff you've never seen before.
Joseph: Exactly.
Taylor: Mm.
Joseph: I saw it in September cause it got shared with me, [Taylor laughing] but you're seeing it for the first time. This is a world premiere, but I've already seen it.
Taylor: Uhh.
Willie: Yeah. Someone broke down the times and man, I wish I should probably, before we're done, try to go back and look it up. Cause someone deserves a lot of credit for breaking down-
Joseph: Wow, yeah.
Willie: -the time of like how much time was spent on everything. And if I'm remembering correctly, and this person is being truthful, which I don't have a reason not to believe them.
It was like 11 minutes on awards and like an hour and 28 minutes on trailers or something like that.
Taylor: Oh my god.
Joseph: That's insane man.
Taylor: So basically like E3, like it's E3-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: -and let's cram in a little bit of re...awards here and there. Whoa.
Joseph: That's why I was talking about games con, dude.
Willie: And it makes sense that they could just rebrand if they really want to. If that's going to be the focus, then just be honest about it.
Joseph: Yeah, it just has to be better balanced.
Willie: I think it's an overcorrection from years past too. A lot of the things that were wrong. We sort of changed subjects, but Hideo Kojima getting like I don't know how many minutes-
Joseph: 10 minutes dude.
Willie: -to talk about a game-
Taylor: That showed faces.
Willie: Upwards of 5 minutes probably close to 10-
Taylor: It looks like it just showed the faces
Willie: -to show some stuff to talk about something, but we don't see any, we don't know anything about the game.
Taylor: But that's very Kojima. Like that's such a-
Joseph: Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: It is. But like, do we really need that-
Taylor: No.
Willie: -when other people don't get to accept their awards? Like...
Taylor: No. No, no no. I think that's a bad call.
Willie: I think some people weren't present, so maybe that's why they just get their names read off and they just like move on to the next thing. I guess just be honest, I think it's an overcorrection for last year because the other thing that really upset me was the amount of people that they played off with their music.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: You know when they're like, oh you're going too long, which was like 45 seconds.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Like literally not more than a minute had they been talking to accept their award and then they're being played off.
Joseph: Mm hmm. Gotta get back to trailers, bro.
Willie: And on at least two occasions, people were saying really heartfelt things and they're being played off.
Joseph: Wrap it up box. Wrap it up box.
Taylor: That's an awful look. That's a bad look. [Joseph chuckles] Real.
Joseph: Wrap that shit up, B.
Willie: Well, and did you see the wrap it up thing? The wrap it up sign? Did you see any of the controversy around that?
Taylor: No.
Joseph: They had a wrap it up box?
Willie: They had a, [Joseph and Taylor laugh] they had a wrap it up sign that was on the back.
Taylor: That's awful. It sounds like they're trying to be the Grammys or some shit.
Willie: There's a countdown timer on, in the back on a huge fucking TV and it says, please wrap it up. On the, like, when it gets to zero, but people were paying attention to that during Larian Studios accepting the Baldur's Gate be... Game of The Year award.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Literally the last-
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: -the last award of the night.
Joseph: And what about it?
Taylor: And people are looking at the screen and watching the countdown timer go. And the head of the studio is talking about how this game is, it's been a hard game to make because they've been working on it for six years. It's been in early access, it's their COVID game. So they, and they've lost a number of their team over the course of the year.
Oh, right. They were building through three years of that. Oh shit.
Willie: Yeah. And most importantly, like, or, you know, lastly, I want to say like. The one most recently, I forgot his name, so I'm sorry about that, but like, they lost this guy-
Joseph: Guess what? Wrap it up. Wrap it up.
Willie: He's trying to say this, and the screen is like flashing wrap it up at him as he's talking about their co worker that died last month.
Taylor: That's like a perfect fucking, like, if you wanted to wrap up the entire games industry right now into a nutshell. It's like what's wrong with it.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: That's an encapsulation of it right there is, is the... I think that every time I watch a trailer on IGN and they, even though I pay for YouTube, it still forces me to watch two fucking commercials, like two ads during it.
It's like you're already being paid by me, to watch this and then you want to be paid even more. That's a big problem. I feel like with the games industry right now. Is like figure your shit out. Don't take it out on the people, like on the fans, on the people that are, already supporting you don't fucking force them to support you more like that's your job to figure that shit out.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: That's disgusting to me, man. That's gross.
Willie: I will say at the very least, they didn't like play him off with the music-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: -because they had earlier in the night, like been playing people off so like they were trying to say something and there's just music swelling into the background. So at least they didn't do that. But it's like come on just, it's the last award of the night There's no reason to rush to get this guy off the stage at this point.
Taylor: No.
Willie: Another 30 seconds and he would be done.
Taylor: And it's an internet show. [Willie chuckles] Like what are you not even meeting, like standards?
Joseph: I know dude, like you're worried about broadcast length, broadcast time.
Taylor: Yeah, you're not on a broadcast.
Willie: And that goes back to the original point, that I think it's a, it's an overreaction to last year.
Joseph: When you said that, I started thinking about Christopher Judge, talking for like 8 fuckin minutes-
Willie: Right.
Joseph: -and homeboy at the end, whoever that kid was that was talking about, who was it like fuckin Bill Clinton or something?
Willie: Bill Clinton, yeah.
Joseph: And that, was that the, was that Elden Ring, Game of the Award?
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: Game of the Award, what? Game of the Year Award? That's what that reminded me of when you said it was some kind of overcorrection, but-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -damn, like.
Willie: Yeah, they just didn't want anybody to speak for eight minutes again, or seven minutes and 59 seconds, so they were like, everybody gets less than a minute.
Taylor: That's crazy.
Joseph: I don't think that's the answer. You know, there's some gray area-
Willie: No, I don't think so either.
Joseph: -like there's a better middle ground than that shit.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: And, me as a gamer, if I'm a huge fan of a game, I want to hear part of that story, you know, it may be-
Joseph: Exactly, dude.
Taylor: -maybe not a 30 minute, you know, uh, everything that we went through, but, hey, five to 10 minutes if you lost people along the way and it's been a six year journey and like, that's something that I want to know about. I want to hear about.
Joseph: I feel the same way. Like, even for the games I haven't played, you know, like I still like to hear from-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -the people that fucking create these games, man 'cause....
Taylor: Might make you want to play that game even more bring you in.
Joseph: Exactly.
Taylor: That's just, that's the kind of tone deaf shit that really gets on my nerves.
Joseph: After the show. I was like, this sucked, you know, I was kind of like, man, this kind of sucked. And I was like, there was nothing like. I didn't feel like there was anything announced that was truly groundbreaking, even though there's some cool shit like Light No Fire and-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -I mean, I really love the trailer for Tales of Kenzera. The guy that came out and was like, super heartfelt in his messaging about a game that he created for his dad. You remember that Willie?
Willie: That was great.
Joseph: That was fucking awesome.
Willie: I want to play that game for sure.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: Tales of Kenzera, I think.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: I don't remember how to say that exactly, but.
Joseph: Yeah, it's like Tales of Kenzera: Zau.
Willie: Yeah, and Zau is the main character.
Joseph: Yeah, that game looks fucking great.
Willie: A great, like, Metroidvania style-
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: -platformer with, like, a good narrative.
Joseph: Yeah, I was like, hell yeah. Uh, there's some other cool stuff too, but mostly I felt like it was more of a games con than it was a game award show.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Just because there's a lack of focus on the actual awarding of shit to the people that have spent years and fucking countless hours working on these games that we all get to fucking enjoy.
It's the one moment that they can be on stage and be recognized for what they do. And we get to put a fucking face to the names and the fucking studios. It's non existent for half of the fucking list because Geoff Keighley is just reading them off-
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: -on fucking screen.
Taylor: It's one of those things where to spend so much time on Kojima, you know, to spend so much time on Kojima. It's like, we know who the fucking Kojima is. Like, we've seen that dude. We know. That's unnecessary.
Willie: Exactly. At the expense of all that other stuff is what I was saying. And that's the thing. Like I'm excited about that.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: He's well known.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: We know there's quality stuff that he puts out. He's working with Jordan Peele, which is an interesting thing and other people.
Taylor: Oh, that's cool.
Willie: It's going to probably be really fucking cool, but I don't need 10 minutes of nothing about it. I'm glad they're having fun making it.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: I'm glad they're working together.
Taylor: And even Sean Murray, if like. If No Man's Sky wasn't up in, in the awards, why are we talking to him for seven minutes or however long it is like, make that quick, wrap that up a little bit.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Like, I want to hear more from the people that are in the awards and I want to hear about their journey. Yeah, I totally agree on all that.
Joseph: At least with Light No Fire, we got a little bit more context.
Taylor: Right.
Willie: Right.
Joseph: And what the game is and we saw visuals so that we know what to expect. And like, we didn't get any of that from, you know, Hideo, which that makes sense for him.
Taylor: And their journey. That was very cool.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: That was really cool to see. And it's a good reminder of, hey, they haven't just been, they didn't just whip out three DLC packs and that was it. Like they have been working their asses off.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: This isn't Call of Duty.
Taylor: Yeah, oh god.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: You know, where we spit shit out like fucking a PEZ dispenser.
01:03:57
Willie: I will say about the Kojima stuff, there has been some people who have looked at that and said, uh, that there's some nods to Silent Hill in there and P. T.
Joseph: What is P. T.?
Willie: Taylor may be able to describe this better, but P. T. was, uh, I forgot what it stands for now. Do you remember what P. T. stands for or what they said it stood for afterwards?
Taylor: Para... paranormal something or other.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: I don't, [laughs] I don't remember.
Willie: No, it's not anything like that. I think they just called it like a playable test.
Joseph: Pfft. [Joseph and Taylor laugh]
Willie: It was a thing that Kojima was like working on.
Joseph: Taylor making shit up.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Well, so it's a paranormal game. It's super like, everyone thought it was going to be the next thing in Silent Hill, working with Konami and Hideo Kojima. But they put out a demo on the PlayStation store and then it went away unexpectedly after Kojima and Konami had a falling out.
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: Which was so unfortunate because that was amazing.
Willie: Everyone was like, this is going to be fucking amazing. This is going to be the coolest thing to ever come out. And then it just didn't happen.
Joseph: Damn.
Willie: And it went away. And no one actually, I don't know if anyone actually knows what P. T. stood for, but like everyone takes it to be called. It's just a playable test, which is funny because people have been riffing on OD is like something demo.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: I forgot what people said. The like, we know it's called Overdose, but people are like, OD is going to be the like official demo or something, you know, instead of the playable test.
Right, right, right. [Willie chuckles] [laughs]
Joseph: It's called, that stands for Overdose for real?
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: Oh, I saw somebody made like an interesting theory comments on a YouTube, maybe the trailer for that game, but they were talking about it being Latin for the term for like, um, eye test or something like that.
Taylor: Oh right.
Joseph: And then they were combining that with the presentation of the, the monogram or the logo for the game-
Taylor: Huh.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -where it looks like it's like shifting the macular lenses in an eye test or eye exam.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, and then they had that. The light on their eyes the entire time.
Joseph: Yeah, and like a scene reflecting out of the eyes.
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: So there is a lot of focus on, on the eyes, but...
Willie: And so the other thing that was a tie to like Silent Hill or PT was that there's, uh, I don't remember the details 'cause I wasn't that familiar with the game 'cause I didn't have a PlayStation at the time.
But there's, um, there's like letters in their mouth when they open their mouth in different parts of their mouth. You can see letters spelling out stuff.
Joseph: Oh shit.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: Uh, and it definitely ties to the Silent Hill world.
Joseph: Wait, wait. In the, in the OD trailer. There's letters in the mouth?
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: In the OD trailer. Yeah.
Joseph: Oh fuck.
Willie: There's like an A, a T, and another A, and something else. Like it's, it spells something I forgot what it is though.
Taylor: Spelling out my last name.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: About time, Kojima, [Willie chuckles] that you gave me the recognition I deserve. [Joseph chuckles]
Willie: Anyway, I am excited about that, but it doesn't need that much time.
Taylor: Yeah.
01:06:31
Willie: But I will say there are a couple of other like highlights that I want to talk about before we wrap up for sure. One of them is just fucking ridiculous, but one of my highlights... well, let's get the one that everyone noticed at first, which is Christopher Judge coming out swinging at Call of Duty.
Taylor: Ooh.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: If you didn't actually read that Taylor or see that-
Taylor: Mm.
Willie: -I know you saw the messages between me and Joey or in the chat, but that was Christopher Judge talking about, he just said like the new Call of Duty campaign is shorter than last year's... last year's acceptance speech or whatever.
Taylor: [laughs] Damn.
Willie: That's paraphrased, of course.
Taylor: Damn.
Willie: But he said that shit and I was like, oh damn.
[Taylor laughs]
Willie: But my first note, my first note in watching this was Christopher Judge comes out swinging at Call of Duty.
Taylor: Pfft.
Joseph: Like, a good fucking shot taken too.
Taylor: Yeesh.
01:07:16
Willie: That was obviously first thing that I noticed. The thing that at the very end that I noticed, it's one of my favorite parts was the person playing the flutes just fucking getting after it-
Joseph: Oh. Oh, dude.
Willie: -in the orchestra. In the game awards orchestra, they do for the last thing, they played the... some themes from all of the game of the year nominees.
Joseph: There's like a medley for the Game of The Year category.
Willie: Right, yeah, that's a better way to concisely say that. So they're playing that. And he's switching out instruments the whole time.
Joseph: He went the fuck off.
Willie: Or they're switching out instruments, like picking up new, new shit, and it switches from [Taylor laughs] like a little pan flute to like a big ass contra flute that's like, I don't know, six feet long. [chuckles]
Taylor: The first video that came up when I looked that up was Game Awards flute player. The first thing that comes up is Flute Guy Goes Hard Again.
[all laughing]
Taylor: Pedro Eustache.
Joseph: That's a great title. Dude, Meg looked him up cause I was like, Oh my gosh.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Meg looked him up and he like makes his own instruments and like plays a billion fucking instruments.
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: The way I thought about it when we were watching, I was like, he's like the interpreter.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Oh yeah, those legendary interpreters.
Joseph: Dude, he's like the music version of like ASL interpretation for the audience, but he's doing it with the, with the instrument. He's not even playing, he's not making any sound. He's just like interpreting with instruments.
Taylor: You'd be deaf and watching that guy and you are hearing the music.
Joseph: Yes, exactly.
Taylor: You are hearing exactly [Willie chuckles] what's going on.
Joseph: Dude, yeah.
Taylor: Oh my gosh, he's playing like a bassoon or something.
Willie: It's a Contra Flute.
Taylor: What!?
Willie: That's the thing that I was like, I like, I was watching and my note is like, is that a Contra Flute? And I like had to go look it up cause I was like, it's a Contra bass flute.
Taylor: That guy is an instant legend. I'm watching right now.
Joseph: Flute guy goes hard.
Taylor: Flute guy goes hard again. [Joseph and Willie laugh]
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: We need to put him in touch with Andre 3000, dude.
Taylor: Wait, so why, why did it go immediately to a video of Timothee Chalamet looking like [Taylor and Willie laugh] a Lies of P guy, what?
Joseph: Here's the thing. Well, it's weird that Timothee Chalamet is like the, the person presenting that award. But why didn't they at least make a Lies of P joke or something and like introduce him as Geppetto's puppet?
Taylor: They didn't? He looks like he... [laughs]
Willie: No.
Joseph: No man, I feel like that's a It's a huge missed opportunity.
Taylor: What? He looks like he stepped right out of Lies of P right there.
Joseph: Dude, yeah, he's from, he just stepped out of Krat.
Willie: What I thought was really funny was people on the Lies of P subreddit being like, "we did it" or something like that [Joseph laughs] because they're like showing, they're showing the guy from last year, the kid who stood up on stage-
Taylor: Oh, yeah.
Willie: -who also has curly wavy hair like that. And now Timothee Chalamet at the end of this one. And they're just like...
Joseph: You're talking about the kid I was talking about a second ago, right?
Willie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Taylor: That kid was wild.
Willie: But they like have a side by side of those two people next to each other on stage at the end of The Game Awards, and people are like, just like, "we did it." [Taylor and Willie chuckle]
Joseph: That's hilarious. Dude, yeah, I feel like Geoff Keighley should have been like, and here to present, The Game of the Year award, Geppetto's Puppet.
[Taylor laughs]
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: You know, and then Timothee Chalamet walks out, you know.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: I mean, he looks so much like him.
Joseph: Oh my gosh, if they would have put him, if they would have put him in a Lies of P costume, dude, and did something like that.
Taylor: Oh.
Willie: Yeah, it would have been great.
Joseph: That would have been the talk of the whole fucking show.
Taylor: Yep.
Willie: That would have been the reason to actually have him be the one who presents that.
Joseph: Exactly.
Taylor: I thought for sure when I saw this video starting and he was on it, I was like, that's it.
Joseph: You're like, yes, yes, yes.
Taylor: He's got to be announcing Lies of P [Joseph and Willie laugh] or something because he's killing it. Oh my god.
Willie: I do want to say one thing about Lies of P real quick before we start wrapping up with our final thoughts. But um, I don't know if you'll notice, but there is an update for Lies of P that came out yesterday.
Joseph: Really?!
Willie: I think yesterday.
Joseph: Nah, I missed that.
Willie: Yeah, there's some new outfits. There's a, there's a Christmas hat, a red and white hat.
Taylor: Alright.
Willie: There's a Rudolph nose.
Joseph: Get the fuck out of here.
Willie: Some antlers.
Joseph: How do you get them? Do you know?
Willie: You just log in, just log in and update.
Joseph: Oh you get to...oh, shit!
Taylor: Oh, that's cool.
Willie: And then it's in your, it's in your equipment.
Joseph: Wow, that's great, man.
Willie: So you can get some antlers if you want for your next run through.
Joseph: I hope they keep the little, the little updates like that going just to kind of like keep us on the edge of our seat waiting for the next shit to fucking drop. That's cool.
Taylor: Ruby red shoes is what's next. You're going to get some February, uh- [Willie chuckles]
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: -Valentine shoes and they're going to be sparkly red slippers and you have to take them off of a witch whose feet curl up when you take them.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: She's caught under a house.
Joseph: Dude, that'd be sick. You get a broom as a weapon.
[Taylor laughing]
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: That'd be great. Time to sweep up these streets.
Willie: A bucket of water. A bucket of water [Joseph and Taylor laugh] that you swing around.
Joseph: Oh, there's so much opportunity.
Willie: There was some other good stuff about The Game Awards, but I know we're going a little long now, but I think maybe in some future episodes, we should talk about some stuff we're looking forward to, especially as more trailers drop.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Because again, there were some good trailers. There's some stuff like that Tales of Kenzera that we were talking about. That looks really cool. I'm looking forward to the Prince of Persia game, The Lost Crown, when that comes out.
Joseph: Oh yeah, we're about a month away from that.
Willie: Yeah, that's close, man.
Joseph: Hell yeah.
Willie: There's some other cool stuff in there that I think we would talk about for way too long if we got into it-
Joseph: yeah, for sure.
Willie: -that I think, I think we could just get into another time. I will also say Blade.
Joseph: I'm excited about that.
Taylor: That's Bethesda, right?
Willie: There's a Blade game coming out. Yeah, it's Bethesda with Arkane Lyon. Is that how they say it?
Joseph: Yeah, I think that's right, yeah. Like a French studio, right?
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: Yeah, that's gonna be good.
Taylor: That's very interesting.
Joseph: I have no faith in anything Bethesda right now, so...
Taylor: I don't know. I think weird shit they nail, but the like classic Bethesda stuff like-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: -hey, this is a Fallout type or Skyrim type. They somehow dropped the ball on that constantly. Like, I feel like...
Willie: Well, I think it's just because it's they're publisher versus being the, like in charge of the whole thing, you know?
Taylor: That's true. So Wolfenstein, Is not necessarily-
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Taylor: -so things like that. Cause I thought they destroyed with Wolfenstein. They did such a good job. Whoever did that, like the studios that did that, but yeah, that's unfortunate.
Joseph: The stuff Arkane has done seems good though, so that definitely gives me hope.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Absolutely.
Joseph: And the trailer looked cool, man. The trailer look cool. They... just the idea of this game is fucking rad.
Taylor: That's cool.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I like it. Exodus also looked really cool.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And then some other shit that I didn't even write down just cause I think that's, we already talked about the best of the best, I think from...
Willie: Exodus was cool, Rise of the Ronin felt very Tenchu Z to me, it was a Team Ninja game.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, that was interesting, I don't know how I feel about it, I need to go back and rewatch it, cause Meg was like, hmm, this looks like something you would like, and I'm like, man, it's got swords, it's got fucking...I was like hell yeah. [laughs]
Willie: There's a couple things in there that look like shit you would like, so I think we maybe talk about those in a whole nother episode, cause there's like, five games like that in there.
Joseph: Right.
Taylor: Maybe just a trailer episode entirely. That would be cool because we've got GT6-
Joseph: Yeah, Black Myth too.
Taylor: -GTA 6, which is by itself worth really delving into, but we could make a whole episode out of all the cool stuff that's coming out next year.
Joseph: That is an interesting idea. Do our own version of games con.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, but where we-
Joseph: Just talk about like multiple, multiple trailers in one episode.
Taylor: Yeah
Willie: Yeah, we could do that.
Taylor: And we'll talk shit about Keighley between each one.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah, yeah..
01:14:20
Willie: Are there any other highlights or low lights from this you want to talk about before we wrap up?
Joseph: Low lights? Uh, I, I hoped that Star Wars Outlaws was most anticipated game.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I wanted that to win that category. It was one of the Final Fantasy games.
Willie: Yeah, Seven Rebirth, which I am looking forward to actually, but I don't have a PlayStation so there's that.
Joseph: Is there anything else, I appreciated that Super Mario Bros. Wonder won Best Family Game.
Taylor: Yeah, that's a good family game.
Joseph: I almost think that should have won Best Multiplayer over, Baldur's Gate 3.
Willie: It definitely has some cool, it adds new cool mechanics to a game that's been around for a while.
Joseph: I was happy to see them in, uh, Best Game Direction. Cause I feel like that was, that was innovation in like the series and that 2D platforming Super Mario Bros. game. Like they did, innovate on that existing format, I thought in a really, really fucking clever way. That's a great game. We're not done with it, but it's a great game.
Taylor: And that's what you're looking for nowadays is like, not just building on systems that already exist, but making new stuff. And it seems like it's harder and harder to do every year because so many games come out and they're iterating and adding. So it takes a lot of effort and a lot of team and a lot of work to make something that people have never seen before.
Joseph: Call of Duty, bruh.
Taylor: Yeah, Call of Duty campaign. That's what I've been saying.
Joseph: Last two things from me, besides all the other bashing of the game awards I've done. Cocoon. I played Cocoon last night.
Taylor: Oh.
Joseph: It's on Game Pass.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: It's fucking good.
Taylor: Really?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, I'm not disappointed that that won in the, what was it, Best Independent or...
Willie: Yeah, one of those two.
Joseph: Yeah, Best Independent. Yeah, I played maybe 50 percent of the game in like three hours. You can get through it really quick. It's pretty fucking well made and clever.
Viewfinder looks amazing.
Willie: Yeah, [chuckles] I was like, when I was watching The Game Awards, I was like, damn, I meant to play that game. Or when I saw it on the list and I was like closing tabs on my phone because I have way too many open. I have like 200 something tabs open on my phone right now, which is stupid.
Joseph: Holy shit!
Taylor: It get's ridiculous.
Willie: It's not, it's not good.
Taylor: There's no button to just clear those at once, right? [Willie laughs] Like that-
Joseph: [laughing] No.
Willie: I think there is, I think there is.
Joseph: Close all tabs?
Taylor: Get them out of here.
Willie: Yeah. Yeah. There is. But it's funny, cause I was looking back through it and like months ago I had a tab open for Viewfinder. Cause I was like, don't forget this game. Like go check this game out. And I never did it. It's in the first 40 tabs of those like 200.
Joseph: Right, right.
Willie: So it was a long time ago-
Joseph: It got buried.
Willie: -that I opened this and I just never got around to it, but I'm like, no, I need to go check that out.
Joseph: I saw the trailer for the first time, or I watched like a seven minute review yesterday. Cause I was like, Viewfinder, like, what the fuck is that? I'm kind of blown away, dude. That's innovation in a fucking game.
Taylor: Yeah, they're playing on that, what was the other game? The PlayStation game that came out? Jax or like where you could open wormholes and go through them. And then you're suddenly in a, in another world. Instantly. That was like the major PS5 title.
Willie: Oh, I'm not sure.
Joseph: I don't know. That was the first thing I was going to mention. The second thing-
Taylor: Ratchet and Clank. That was it.
Joseph: Oh, really?
Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. That was a big part of that one was that they were showing off-
Joseph: I didn't know that.
Taylor: -how fast the SSD on the PlayStation 5 was because you could rip open a portal, go through it-
Joseph: Mm.
Taylor: And you were immediately in another world. No loading times or anything like that.
Joseph: Yeah, that's sick.
Taylor: So that's just another one of those things that not a lot of games have played on, but it's there and it exists. And if you do it well. You should get rewarded for that.
Joseph: But get the fuck out of here, dude. You can take a picture and turn that...
Taylor: It looks cool. I like the retro camera look too.
Joseph: And the Viewfinder, perfect name for this game.
Taylor: That's cool.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: I love, I just love the concept, man. That was the first thing I was going to mention was Cocoon. That game is definitely worth playing and it's on Game Pass. Viewfinder, I think, is only on PS5 and PC. The next thing I was going to mention is now I forgot it, so I have to look for it.
Taylor: GTA 6. I got you, bro.
01:18:17
Joseph: Oh, it was Hi-Fi Rush.
Taylor: Oh right.
Willie: Mm. Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: Hi-Fi Rush that won Best Score And Music. I watched the trailer, or a review on that game, and it's like you It's like performing combat to the beat.
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: And like music is infused through the game. But also the animation looks fucking great.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And I think that's on Game Pass too, so I might try that just to get a better peek at the animation in the game.
Willie: I thought that game would probably be pretty good when it came out. And I, like, knew that it was coming out because of Robbie Damon, who's in it. He was, like, very prominent in my mind at the time because he is a voice actor who played with Critical Role for a little while-
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: -and is friends with them and was in some other campaigns. And then he voices their books that they put out.
Joseph: Oh, nice.
Willie: So, like, I was very aware of it when it came out, but I was playing Metal: Hellsinger at the time.
That's what I was trying to remember the name of.
I was like, I don't care. I got some metal music over here to listen to and play that type of game. And what I'll say is I'm not very good at that game for whatever reason. [chuckles]
So I was like, I don't, I don't need another one that I'm not very good at.
Joseph: Mm.
Willie: And I think I might be, but I, it might just be the style of music or whatever.
Taylor: The multi formatting that they have going on on Hi-Fi Rush looks like that may keep it interesting throughout the fact that it can go from a side scroller to a 3d, third person kind of switches between those.
Joseph: Uh-huh.
Taylor: And I don't know if it's seamlessly or between the levels, but. That always helps, especially in something like a rhythm game-
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: -as opposed to being the same thing over and over, mixes it up really well. You're right, the animation on it is gorgeous.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: It looks great, man. The stuff I heard online is that the voice acting is good, but also the story actually has some really like heartfelt moments and like the story is good too, so like, okay.
Willie: Definitely worth checking out then.
Taylor: Huh.
Willie: Just very quickly, there were a couple other like indie games. It's like Venba, Terra Nil, Tchia. I don't know if that's how you say it. I can't remember. T-C-H-I-A.
Joseph: I think it is Tchia, yeah.
Willie: And then Chants of Sennaar was the game that I did play a little. I played the demo of this year-
Joseph: Hmm.
Willie: -that it was up for an award. And I do want to play that game for real at some point soon. And then obviously Baldur's Gate, I need to get into.
Joseph: Word. Man, I want to try Baldur's Gate 3. I just felt like I would enjoy it on console more than PC, but that means I have to purchase a second copy of the game.
Taylor: Ooh.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Since we already have it on PC. I don't know if I want to do that.
Willie: Uh, you can. We'll talk about this offline. I think there's a very easy way to stream the game to your thing. I know it's not the same as playing on console, but like if you just wanted to play on a big screen, you know, I know that's not the only reason.
Joseph: Yeah, the monitor size isn't a problem at all. It is more of the, the performance on our PC.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: It's definitely not an easy game to run for our PC, but I think it's more that than anything, but also keyboard and mouse versus playing with a controller.
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, I'll be looking out for a lot of this stuff to come out on sale at the beginning of the year because you're going to have those beginning of the year and spring sales now that The Game Awards have passed that are probably going to start featuring these things, a little bit cheaper.
Feel like Baldur's Gate. I will pick up either if it's on the game pass or it just goes down to half price or something. I'll be interested in checking that one out. It's gotten too much acclaim not to.
01:21:23
Willie: Yeah, all right. Well, uh, we'll come back at some point and talk about all these trailers, what we like, what other games we're looking forward to in the new year.
Some of these are really long ways away. Some of them are coming up. Actually pretty quick in January and February. So if you made it all the way here to the end with us, thank you for listening. We appreciate it. Especially getting to episode 24, like Joey said, up top, we really appreciate every minute you spend with us and, uh, we'll be doing more of this in the new year.
Joseph: Thank you everybody. And also Happy New Year because this is going to drop right before January 1st. So we hope you had great holidays. Happy New Year. We'll see you in 2024.
Taylor: Yeah. And if you made it to episode 24, you're officially what we call a Jack Bauer fan.
[all laugh]
[Outro theme begins to fade in - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Joseph: I've never seen that show.
Taylor: That's dumb as fuck. But you know.
Joseph: That was dumb as fuck.
Taylor: [laughs] It was real dumb, but you better put that beep, beep, beep right after that.
Joseph: Oh, I need to, I need to hear what that is because that doesn't make sense to me.
Taylor: Yeah. It's a countdown timer. Yeah. Yeah.
Joseph: Oh, okay.
Willie: It's just a countdown timer.
Joseph: But it's like a specific sound effect from the show?
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Yes, absolutely. And it was the, at the end of every episode, right? Or something like that.
[Outro theme continues - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
01:22:32
Joseph: Berries and Blades is an independent podcast created by Joseph Bullard, Willie Garza and Taylor Garratt. Thanks for tuning in, and consider subscribing if you enjoyed listening to this episode. You can also support us by telling your friends about the show, and we hope to see you in the next episode of Berries and Blades. Until then, thanks again.
[Outro theme fades out - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
[Countdown Timer From 24 Sounds]