PodQuest 318 – Microsoft Buys Bethesda, Pre-Order Mayhem, and Tacos
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Hey everybody, it's episode 318 of PodQuest. Hey! Wednesday, September 23rd, 2020. I am Chris, with me is Walnut. Hello. Druten. Hello. And we waited all that time for the cooking to be done and there's still a bunch of clatters. Yep. Just can't win, can we? Nope. How are you guys doing? Uh, work sucks. I'm over it. I'm over it.

I'm over this working. That's not how the line goes. It's work sucks, I know. Well, no one said the I know. No, you're supposed to say it. That's the song. I wasn't singing the song. Oh. So, I was just saying work sucks. If somebody else wanted to say I know, then that would have been pretty good. I'm just saying, man. Yeah, but besides that, nothing else. Well, that's good. That's always good. Yeah. How about you, Drew? Eh, mostly the same here. That's good. That's good.

Sure am.

I could go on about how much I'm frustrated with work right now, but no one wants to hear that. No, you're right. Nobody cares, including us. There's a lot of shit that happened over the past week. Oh, you're fine. But you are right. A lot of shit did happen. Two days ago, Microsoft purchased ZeniMax Media, the owners of Bethesda. Yeah, that's some wild-ass shit, huh? Yeah. Yeah, that's... It was double-wild.

what Disney paid for Star Wars. I didn't realize that. That's nuts. Disney spent like $3.4 billion, I believe it was, for Star Wars. Microsoft spent $7.5 billion for ZeniMax Media.

Mm-hmm. Which that includes... So that gets Bethesda Softworks, which is the overarching company that owns all of the studios. Bethesda Softworks is the publishing name, I believe, if I remember correctly. Yeah. But then that breaks down into, like, Bethesda Game Studios, Arkane, and id, and...

Tango Gameworks and all those other ones. They have eight or nine studios, I think. And I believe I saw... I don't know if you guys read any of the different posts. Xbox or Microsoft had a blog post up from Phil Spencer talking about it. And then Bethesda had two up. They had one from Pete Hines and one from Todd Howard. And it's...

In the Microsoft one, they mentioned something about 2,500 employees across all their studios. So, they've got a lot of people. Yeah. I'm interested to see what they decide to do with games. You know what's even more interesting? They've got two Sony console exclusives. Or at least launch exclusives coming up soon. What are those? Ghostwire Tokyo and Deathloop.

I don't think either of them are a console exclusive permanently, but they're both at least launch exclusives. And like they said, they're honoring those still. I feel like it would be the wrong move for Microsoft to say, now you can only make games for us. Well, I mean, beyond those games, I don't know that it would necessarily be a quote unquote wrong move.

Yeah, because, I mean, it's the move to get Bethesda fans to buy your hardware. Or at least subscribe to Game Pass and play on PC. Yes, but...

I mean, I don't know. Like, the games were already gonna be going out on the Xbox and the PC. Like, it would be... They might not have been on Game Pass. Is Skyrim not on Game Pass? Um, I am not sure if Skyrim is or not. Elder Scrolls Online is. Yeah. Well, I mean, who cares that they're...

seven-year-old game that's released on 18 platforms is on Game Pass? Well, then Fallout 4, okay? No, so the only Bethesda games on Game Pass right now is Elder Scrolls Online, Fallout 76, and Fallout New Vegas, probably because that was Obsidian, and they own Obsidian.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I'm sure, I'm sure a lot of that catalog is going to quickly be there, but you figure they are not going to stop selling games that are already on other platforms. They're not going to stop selling fallout four or Skyrim on PlayStation. Yeah.

But Fallout 5, Sky... Elder Scrolls 6, whatever their next game is, probably not going to be on PlayStation. I would not be shocked. The only thing I could see is them keeping the Bethesda Studios games multi-platform. But some of their more... I want to say niche, but they're not...

Not necessarily like your Dooms, your Dishonoreds, stuff like that. Like making those exclusive to the Xbox ecosystem. Yeah. Because you figure if they can go, hey, you can come play Elder Scrolls 6 or Starfield for a Game Pass subscription and have access to all this other stuff and play it with game streaming or play it on PC or like wherever you want to play it with this subscription. Yeah.

Or you can go spend $70 and buy it on your PlayStation. Like, they're making money either way. Yeah. And that's why I think it would more so be, like, kind of a bad move on their part to not let these games be released on PlayStation as well. Because, like...

You're gonna be making money either way, and, like, I, me personally, I'd be less interested in getting, like, I love these games, but they're not console sellers, and I don't think they ever have been. No, they're not, but that's so many studios now that make games that Microsoft doesn't make.

Like, Microsoft is, Microsoft has been doing a good job about acquiring studios that don't make games that they already make. And, like, to be fair, they don't really have a lot to, like, go with to begin with. You know, they have first-person shooters and third-person shooters and car games. Like, that's their bread and butter first party, for the most part. Now they're getting companies that specialize in immersive RPGs and more. First-person shooters. Yeah.

Well, I mean, yes. Like, it does that too. But you know what I mean. Like, I mean, frankly, Doom and Halo are two very different style games also. Yeah, I mean, Doom's an arena shooter. Halo is not. Yeah, exactly. And, like, those are completely different styles. Even though they're both first persons, Doom is a completely different style than Halo. Yeah. But,

But yeah, I don't... I wouldn't expect many of those games to be on any other platforms. Like, why else purchase them unless you're trying to bolster your first-party catalog? Yeah, I agree with that. It's the same reason Sony first-party stuff is never going to be on Xbox. And honestly, with the way Sony is with a lot of this stuff, I could see them not being willing to work out a mutually beneficial deal. Like, the thing...

The thing that's on my head right now as well is, like, I think more people got these games on PC and Xbox than they did on PS PlayStation systems. Mostly for the modding. Yeah, so, actually, the... Well, PC, yeah, for sure. Well, Xbox was the first place that they did mods for Fallout. Or not the first place for Fallout, but Xbox was the first console to allow mod downloads, and that was Fallout 4. I don't...

I don't think PlayStation allows mod downloads at all. They don't. They don't. They have a very locked up ecosystem for that sort of thing. But one of the things that they mention in... I want to say actually all three of the posts from the three different guys is Bethesda was one of the first companies that Microsoft brought in when they were...

Beginning development on the original Xbox back in, like, 99, 2000. And it was to help... To get them to bring Morrowind, Elder Scrolls 3, to the Xbox. Because at that point, Elder Scrolls 1 and 2, strictly PC. And Morrowind was also going to be strictly PC. Yeah. But, you know, they convinced them to roll with it and...

The only console place I think you can still play Morrowind is on Xbox. Yeah. I don't think it ever released for, like, a Sony platform. Yeah. Uh... I'd have to look that up. I'm not sure. I think Oblivion released on PS3, but I'm not sure. I know... It did. I know it was more prominent on Xbox 360, though. Yeah. Between the consoles, at least. So, yeah, like... I think Xbox and, like...

the Elder Scrolls Fallout sort of area of Bethesda definitely go hand in hand a lot more than PlayStation. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Like, it's just... I...

I don't really like it because I'm not getting an Xbox, but I'm also planning on building a PC. So, I'm not buying the Xbox Series X or whatever stupid naming conventions they're going to do from here on out. I would much rather just build a PC and just continue buying my PS5s. Or PS5s, 6, 7, all the way up. Like, I'm

I'm not getting an Xbox system anymore. Because Game Pass is on PC, and the games that I want to play on PC, I need to upgrade my PC? I'd just much rather do that than buy another console. Do just remember, though, that PC Game Pass does not have all the exact same games that Xbox...

Xbox games. But I think Microsoft did say that their first party titles will be on both. Yes. Which is probably more what you're looking at, Rich, is like you want to play the first party stuff and... Yeah. I don't care about anything besides first party on the Xbox systems. I have a PS5 or PS4 or whatever for that.

It's the first party stuff that I might be slightly interested in that, like, I mean, I don't really need to get an Xbox to play the next Gears of War because I don't really care about it anymore. But, but I, I would like to try it, try the newer ones out. And if it were on Games Pass, cool. If not, whatever. But there is some decent stuff on Games Pass. Yeah.

Yeah, and so, like, on the opposite with that, like, I would much rather spend the $500 on the Xbox than $2,000 on a PC. I mean, the new video cards are far less expensive than the last round of video cards. Oh, yeah, the, what is it, the 3080 is, what, $500, I think? It's $500 or $600. Like, it's insanely affordable. Which was, like,

Yeah, I think... What is it? The 3090 is the, like, $1,200 or $1,300 card this time. But the 3080 is totally affordable, and that's cool. But, like, when you take, like, that $500 or $600 plus, like, your processor, your memory, your motherboard, your case, your hard drives, like, that's already more than the console. And I don't have... Like, we talked about this before. Like, I don't have a setup where I can put a PC in my living room. Mm-hmm.

So, I'm not sitting up in the second bedroom and playing on my shitty monitors, and I'm not buying, you know, $300, like, widescreen monitors either. Yeah, I mean, I wanna use it more than just gaming. Like, I wanna start doing video editing and stuff like that. I wanna, like, practice around with that shit, as well as maybe streaming and shit as well. I got a MacBook.

Yeah, you got a MacBook. I'd rather just have the powerful PC and whatnot. Yeah, no. Like, I have thought a couple of times about, like, building a PC. And, like, not, like, a crazy high-end one or anything. Like, something, like, middle of the line. Like, just to have, like, a PC that can do things. Mm-hmm. Because, like, I don't. Like, I said, I have a MacBook. Like, if it's not Apple-friendly, I can't fucking do it. Yeah. Um...

But then it always comes back to, like, do I want to spend $1,200 to $1,500? And also, like, how long has it been since you guys had to build a PC? Like, five to ten years, right? Yeah. It's been close to ten years for me, if not more. Yeah, same here for me. And it's one of those, like, thinking about building a PC is just like, oh, that seems like so much work. I'm, like, I'm just going to buy a pre-built one. That's fair. Like...

honestly, like, if Origin stuff wasn't so expensive, I would buy one of those Origin PCs, because those things are super nice, but... Like, my plan is to buy a pre-built one. Yeah, I'll probably wind up paying, like, roughly $100 more for the exact same parts, but then I also get warranties that I don't get if I buy all the parts and... Oop, fucked it up. Guess what? Now I have to buy all the parts again, and...

I'm shit out of luck. Yeah, and there's so many weird things that you can fuck up and not realize it until it's too late. If you don't get all of the little mounting screws underneath the motherboard set up rightly, it can cause a short... If you don't put in enough thermal paste or if you put too much thermal paste, it can cause issues. If you don't have enough fans or the airflow is wrong or...

Yeah, that is not the worst idea. For me, when I think about it, yeah, I need a motherboard, I need a processor, I need RAM, and I need a graphics card. I already have a decently working, or a working, like, thousand watt power supply. I don't really need that. I don't really need a new power supply. My power supply works fine. You might. So...

it's not so much the wattage of the power supply, it's how, like, what sort of connectors it has, how many connectors it has. Yeah. Especially with some of the new video cards, like, they need multiple of their own power supply, like, power sources. So, like,

Like, you might not actually... But power supplies aren't expensive either. Yeah. And, like, the things that I don't think I need to upgrade aren't expensive. Like, the things I know I need, a motherboard, processor, RAM, and graphics card, are expensive. But what I'm thinking right now is if I get a top-of-the-line motherboard that should last me a couple of years, and piecemeal, like, slowly just get what I need for now to play the current games, and then...

Hopefully my motherboard is good enough to where I can just swap out the video card in four or five years. Yeah, like, if you get a good motherboard and a good processor...

processor you're you're good for a while because then yeah it's like in three or four years you know you buy that you buy a new video card there are tons of people that are still using like the 1070s and 1080s because the the 2000 series it just it added some of the features that people wanted like it added like ray tracing and 4k support and shit like that but they're not powerful

They're not any more powerful, really, than the 1070s and the 1080s and stuff. Yeah. So, like, it's the 3000 series that actually takes the features people want and also...

up the power. Yeah. So, like, you get one of those and then, like, yeah, like, maybe five years down the road you get, like, the 470 or 480 or whatever the next one is and, you know, throw in some higher speed RAM if your motherboard will support it. Yeah. It's like, right now, I just know I need to throw out all the money for the motherboard and the processor. Everything else, like, I can, like, work

wait some time to get the best stuff. Which is why I'm more interested in the PC than just getting the console or the pre-built PC. I just don't need it right away. The first game that I want a PC for will be the next version of Monster Hunter World. That's probably not coming for at least 2-3 years. Yeah, I mean, honestly, like Drew said, the pre-bought one isn't a bad idea because you're not spending that much more than you would for... to, like, piecemeal it. And...

you're far less likely to have, like, I mean, I remember, I remember you talking about, um, replacing the, the, the thumbsticks on your switch controller. Like, doing shit inside of a computer case is fucking worse half the time. Eh, maybe. I don't. Especially with, like, the, the, the,

the thing I hate the most is a thermal paste. I don't know if you guys have ever really dealt with that. Cause like there was a period where like processors kind of like you could get away without it. Cause like a lot of the, um, the heat sinks and stuff like snapped onto it or like built into them. Yeah. But like now it's, it's, it's not that. Yeah. I wonder if my hydro cooling would still be usable. Is your, is your case water cooled? Uh,

It is internal water cooled, so it's an entirely internal system. I never had to fill it up or anything, but it is, like, hydro cooling. That's kind of cool. I didn't realize that. Yeah, the thing's pretty cool, too, because it's just, like, two tubes and a thing that goes right over the processor, and I guess internal, like, intake and outtake of the water that, like, circles around. I don't know. It's cool, and I don't know if it'd still be usable, because, I mean, the thing is 10 years old, but...

But my PC doesn't burn out. With what you'd be putting into a new PC, I wouldn't necessarily take the chance just because most of those parts do get much warmer than they used to. That's why these video cards now take up three slots and require their own six fans. Yeah, it's not...

Yeah. PCs are crazy. Like, I like the idea of a PC more than I like the idea of actually having a PC, if that makes any sense. Yeah. Like, I think, like, games on PC look cool and all that, but the idea of, like, having to sit in this hot room with nothing but, like, a monitor on my desk to play with, just, it's like, no, man, I want to go sit on my couch. Yeah.

And like lay down and fucking be comfortable on my 60 inch TV or however big it is. I mean, that's why I have my office set up where I have a couch right in front of my 32 inch TV. Yeah. 32 inches is still too small. I mean, I'm only like, it's not really.

5 feet away from this TV. Yeah. If you're like 45 feet away from a 32 inch, then yeah, it's too small. But like 3 to 5 feet away from a 32 inch, you're fine. No, I mean, and honestly, because developers don't take into account people sitting more than 3 inches away from their screens, playing on PC at a monitor means you can actually read all the text.

Yeah. Because everyone just makes their fucking games with text based off of where they're sitting when they're fucking developing it. So, you know? Yeah, so, to circle back, yeah, like,

Microsoft now owns a whole bunch of studios that make popular games. Like, whether we all like them or not. Like, I know you guys are into the Bethesda Game Studio stuff. Yeah. I think what id does is really cool. Yeah, I mean, I still haven't played Doom Eternal. In first, it was so good. Neither have I, but there was, like, a little, like, tease that it might be coming to Game Pass, which makes 100% sense. So I will probably try it out when that happens. Yeah.

But yeah, even like the Arcane games, like Dishonored and Dishonored 2, they were super cool. I'm bad at the whole first-person exploration sort of thing, so I'm just not good at them, but they're neat games. Yeah, I played Dishonored 2. Yeah, that's true. Go ahead, Bonnet. No, I was just going to say, I think I played Dishonored 2. I can't remember. I might have played the original Dishonored. I don't know. They're very cool games. They're those like...

Like, here's what you need to do. Just figure out a way to fucking do it. Yeah. Kind of like the Hitmans, but in, like, this cool steampunk Victorian setting. Yeah. And, like, I do eventually want to go back and, like, try them again. It's just... Those sorts of games and, like, your, like, From Software games are the sort of stuff where I want to like them so bad, but I am also just so fucking bad at them that...

Like, the interest in them versus the fun I'm having playing them just aren't even close. Yeah. It's kind of like Hades. Like, I really want to try Hades, but I also don't want to spend $20 on a game that I'm probably going to be bad at and play for five minutes and never touch again. That's why I was actually asking you the other day if you'd tried it out at all. Yeah, no, I didn't realize it was out of early access. Although, I mean, it came out of early access last week. Yeah. But yeah, I have not tried that.

People are saying all sorts of good things for it, and they released it on Switch. Like, I think it's only on PC and Switch right now. I think so. Yeah. But, you know, like, if I ever see, like, a $10 sale on, like, the Switch, which... It's not a Nintendo game, so it's possible. Like, I might grab it and just, you know, give it a shot. But $20.25 is a little more than... Like, a lot more than I can justify as, like, a...

Let's see if I hate this. Yeah. I'm super interested in that game. I do want to try it out. It looks super cool, and...

And, um... Ah, fuck. Is that Supergiant? Supergiant, right? They've made, like, cool games in the past with, like, Transistor and Bastion and stuff, so... Yeah. And just, like, the style of that game looks really cool, and people have been saying all sorts of good things about it all over the place. Yeah. And to circle back again to the Microsoft thing, one thing that I picked up in one of the articles I was reading about this, CNBC was taught... had an interview with Phil Spencer, like, the day it happened, and

And they asked him about making any cuts or changes to the staff or to the studios. And his response was, our plan is to leave it alone. So, looks like these studios are still going to get to just do what they're doing and make the games they want to make. For good and bad. I don't know about you guys, but I would hope that Microsoft will put a little bit of, not pressure, but oversight on maybe the game engine and all for these studios. Yeah.

specifically for the Bethesda game studio stuff, just because their engines are the thing that people complain about the most. And you know, they have Microsoft money now. Like maybe they can, maybe they can fix that engine up a little bit for this new hardware. Maybe the dragons won't fly backwards. Exactly. Maybe they will only fly backwards. You know what? I,

I'd be down for that. That would actually be okay. Maybe when they breathe fire, it's actually just them farting at you. They just, they had some really hot Mexican food. Exactly. Exactly. They had Taco Bell. Taco Bell is mild.

Depends. And they took all the good shit off the menu. I'm so mad at that. Like, I used to be able to go and get Nacho Supreme and tacos and then, like, a tostada. Now there's no fucking tostada, no Nacho Supreme. I'm like, what the fuck, guys? Do they do corn tortillas? The hard shell only. Okay, but those are corn tortilla? Yeah. Or do you have to request a corn tortilla? No, those are naturally... Generally, hard shell tacos are...

Generally, hard shells and nacho chips are always corn. I never realized that. Yeah. It's... The flour tortillas don't really fry the same way. But, yeah. So, generally, when you're having, like, tortilla chips or, like, hard tacos, you're eating corn. Oh, okay. I mean, that does make sense because, frankly, like, corn tortillas, like, soft corn tortillas, have a very...

and almost, like, crumbly texture in a weird way. They're super brittle unless you warm them up the right way. And even when you warm them up, you still gotta, like...

two or three ply them to, like, have, like, a taco with them and have, and not have everything just blow out of the bottom when you fold it over. No, I've, I've, I, no, no. I, because I eat exclusively corn tortillas, it's, like, if you warm them up on, like, a skillet or just right on top of the fire, they warm up better and they, they shouldn't blow out unless you're just overfilling your tacos. Yeah, that seems like a lot of work. Hmm.

It is. Yeah, so we normally do. I mean, especially because you figure if we're having... If we're doing, like, our own tacos and it's not, like, in a meal kit, and we... So for whatever reason, like, I don't know... I don't know why this is, but, like, Wegmans, you can only get corn tortillas in, like, relatively small packages unless it's, like, the giant burrito-sized tortillas. Like, the little taco ones, the flour tortillas are always, like, a hundred stack of them. Oh, you're saying... Okay, flour, yeah. Yeah, and, like, we...

We only need, like, six tortillas. Yeah. So, like, we normally buy the corn just because that's the smaller package. You can buy the 30-pack. And, like, I know a lot of people who would warm up their corn tortillas in the microwave. Don't do that. No, I mean, that's what we do because we buy the corn tortillas. We're going to have, you know, three tacos each and warming up six tortillas in a pan while we're trying to, like, cook...

We only have one big pan, too. So we have to cook everything, clean out the pan, and then put the tortilla in it. Hear me out. There's two options here.

Option number one, the oven. Wouldn't that make it hard, though? I mean, you're toasting it in the oven. That's what you need to do with corn tortillas is toast them. You can even put them in the toaster. You toast them. You're not, like, warming them up does nothing structurally to them except make them soggy. If you toast them, they get less soggy and they hold their structural integrity. So either A, put them in the toaster,

Put them in the oven for, like, probably 350 for the amount of time that it takes you to cook it. Just make sure they don't burn. Or, and this is the best investment you can ever make, get one of those, like, tortilla warming or holder thingies. Warm up the tortillas first and put them in there and then put that in and just hold that. And they'll stay good. And they'll stay warm. What about the little metal racks that, like, restaurants put?

tacos in when they bring them out to you? Like the brown plastic things. Brown plastic? I don't know what you're talking about. It's got a lid and you just open it up, it seals and you just put the tortillas in. Oh, like the thing that Don Pablo's used to bring out with the tortillas for fajitas. Yes. Just get one of those. They're great. Man, I don't know how many times you make tacos. We make tacos like once every six months.

Well, maybe if you had these and knew how to do corn tortillas, you'd have tacos more often. I mean, like, I like tacos, but I don't like tacos. I like going out and getting a taco more than I like making a taco. The problem is, getting all the ingredients to make tacos, it's fucking expensive. It is, and you also figure, like, I'm gonna want, like...

like, chicken or steak or something like that. And then we'll have to also buy the fish and, like, cook, like, we have to have, like, two pans and...

I mean, it's not even, it's like getting the meat, the cheese, the lettuce, the tomatoes, the whatever, like all the fixings, you add all that up, it's like, you know what, I could have just gone to Don Pablo's and gotten five tacos for less than this. Yeah, exactly. I don't know, I kind of disagree with that whole thing.

statement right there. I feel like tacos is one of the cheapest things you can get at home. I mean, I think it depends, like, what, like, what sort of ingredients you're buying and, like, what quality to. Because, like, there's certain things that you can't buy in small batches. Like, if you're trying to buy cilantro, which I know, Drew, you wouldn't buy cilantro, but, like, if you're trying to buy cilantro, like, that shit only comes in, like, a bushel. But that's, that's generally 99 cents a bushel. I mean, you're right, but that was just the, that was the first taco ingredient I could think of that only came in, like, a bushel.

But it's like, say you, if you want to make your own pico, well, you're going to need to get about three or four tomatoes and at least one red onion and some cilantro if you're, if you want that. You're going to have to chop all those up and three tomato, three or four tomatoes, that's going to cost you five, six, four or five bucks. The red onion's probably not going to cost you more than a dollar. Um, obviously...

So avocados or guacamole is generally extra, so I'm not going to add that to it. But the package of cheese is two or three dollars for the Mexican blend cheese or whatever. I mean, the proteins, too. Like, you figure, like, for us, if I'm getting, like, say I'm getting, like, a skirt steak or something like that, like a thin, like, beef, like, that's anywhere from five to eight dollars, depending on, like, the quality. And then, like, Erica would usually do, like, shrimp, which is probably another...

$8 to $11, depending on, like, how many shrimp. And at that point, yeah, like, meat alone is now more expensive than just the... Granted, like, yes, you can save that and have more tacos the next day or taco-related things. You're gonna get, like...

like 10 tacos out of what you paid $20 for all the ingredients on 25 where like you go to like a Don Pablo's like five tacos $12 and not anymore because Don Pablo's closed but like you can go to um oh my god I always forget the name of the fucking place out in Lindenwald

La Esperanza. Yeah. Like, where, like, it's real good authentic, like, Mexican food, and it's not super expensive, but, like, I'd rather get those tacos than whatever shitty tacos I'm gonna make at home. Because, like, let's be real, like, I'm bad at cooking. Well, that's fair. Yeah. If I don't have, like, the Blue Apron or Home Chef, like, menu in front of me, like, probably not coming out real good. Um...

And that's why I like, like, the Home Chef stuff, because, like, we'll get tacos from that, and I follow the instructions, and they're a decent, you know, three tacos for each of us, and it's enjoyable and easy. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But you know what? Enough about tacos. Where were we? Right. So Microsoft isn't going to make any changes to their, to the Bethesda stuff. Hopefully things get a little bit better with, you know, that engine over there. It...

It looks like Bethesda is still going to technically be publishing their games too. Weird.

So I guess it'll be like one of these things where it'll have like the Microsoft Game Studios logo, but Bethesda will be doing like all of the legwork for it. Bethesda Softworks, anyway. And the only other thing that I kind of saw about this whole deal that I thought was actually kind of cool, in Todd Howard's blog post about this, he was talking, I guess, I don't know when this was, but at some point he got the Lifetime Achievement Award at GDC, and it

In his speech, he made a joke about he wondered how many achievement points it was worth.

And I guess he was joking around with some like friends he knew at Microsoft, like at GDC after that. And like a few weeks later, got emailed a code for a game that was locked to his account. He is the only person that could download and play this game. And as soon as it was named, it was his name. And as soon as he installed it and launched it, it just gave him one achievement for a thousand points that just said lifetime. And like, he's the only person in the world that has that achievement.

Nice. Yeah, I thought that was actually kind of cool. Um...

I will say about this Bethesda stuff, congratulations to the PS5 for being the first system to exclusively not have Skyrim on it. I saw that tweet from somebody. I can't remember who it was. I saw a few people saying that. I also saw... I don't know if you guys saw any of this. People were pointing out very quickly after this purchase that Bethesda

New Vegas 2 could happen because they now own Obsidian and Bethesda. Interesting. And somebody tweeted at Obsidian and Obsidian just did, like, the, like, shrugging shoulder, like, emoji sort of thing. Yeah. Like, who knows? So... I think that is, like, the most liked of the Fallout games is the one that Bethesda didn't make. So, you know, take that for what you will. But, like...

Microsoft is kind of getting themselves by buying Bethesda and already having Obsidian, like, they're definitely putting themselves in a position that they haven't been in a long time with RPGs. Like, 360 had a lot of weird RPGs on it. Like, wasn't, um, Eternal Sonata and... Eternal Sonata, um, uh,

Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, I think, were all exclusive to them. Lost Odyssey and Last Remnant. Oh, right, Last Remnant. I forgot about that one. That one just released on Switch, didn't it, too? Did it? Yeah, I think that just got ported to Switch. You know, I think it did. Not just, but...

But, like, it was... As far as I can remember, those four were all Xbox. Yeah, and, you know, they had varying degrees of success and praise. I actually didn't play any of those, though, because I really didn't play a lot in the 360 era on the 360. Yeah, Blue Dragon was great. Last Remnant was great. I didn't play Lost Odyssey, and Eternal Sonata was fucking fantastic. But, like, the unfortunate thing is, like...

The West isn't that big of an RPG area. So, like, that's where the Xbox sells more. So, like...

People don't tend to focus on Xbox RPGs because RPGs are more for the East. And so... Not for the East, but, like, there's bigger RPG fans and a wider number of RPG fans, like, in the Eastern Hemisphere than there is in the West. And I think that was true during the 360 era, like, your mid-2000s. But I think that's changed a lot over the years.

over the last generation of console um just because you have games like like the personas and xenoblades and even like your monster hunters which have like a role-playing aspect to them without the story that have gotten huge in like the u.s and other like western countries yeah um that like i think i think microsoft could actually do pretty well if they could do more of those

I mean, like, all these studios do very, like, American RPG. Yeah, I was about to say that the Bethesda RPGs are a wildly different thing than, like, JRPGs. Yeah. But, like, if they could license some, like, JRPGs, too, like, I think...

I think they would actually see at least a moderate success with them. But, like, Sony has a lot of that stuff kind of on lockdown. Like, I believe, like, they're going to be the console launch exclusive for Final Fantasy XVI. Like, they have the exclusive deal for all the Persona games. Yeah. So, like, Microsoft... If Microsoft wants some of that, they'll have to, like, find a... Probably have to find a smaller studio that's doing it and...

get in with them. Or just throw a whole lot of money at Square or Sega to get some of that shit released on their platform. I mean, I would kind of wonder if Sony is now thinking about throwing that money at Square or in the meantime to counteract what Microsoft has been doing. That would be a bold move to send it over to like Square. So I've actually seen a lot of people speculating that Microsoft, or Microsoft, that Sony should

should or could or would, um, purchase Bluepoint or, um, from. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. And kind of lock those down. Okay, yeah. From would not surprise me at all. No, not me either. And, like, Bluepoint would actually probably be a good one for them. Because, like, they already use them for a bunch of stuff. I'm not sure what they make. I knew it two minutes ago and then proceeded to immediately forget it. So I actually just brought up their thing. So, like, they did PlayStation Battle or PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. Oh, okay.

They're actually the team that's doing...

That's right. Okay, fuck. So they do a lot of the collections and ports and everything. So they did the God of War collection. They did the Ico Shadow of the Colossus collection for PS3. The Metal Gear HD collection. They did the Nation Drake collection for PS4. And then Shadow of the Colossus for PS4. And they're doing the Demon's Souls remake for PS5. Okay.

And they're co-developing that with Japan Studio. Yeah. But yeah, so like, they do a lot of that stuff, and a lot of those are Sony games. So like, it would make sense. In fact, actually looking at the games they've done, they've only done two games on Xbox. And that's the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection and Titanfall. But that was the...

Excuse me. Sorry. They ported Titanfall to 360 from Xbox One. Because why the fuck not, right? Yeah. That is a thing I forgot even happened. Yeah, because I forgot Titanfall came out that early in the generation.

But yeah, I don't see Sony... I don't know, Sony's been in such a weird place lately, like we were talking about before. I don't see them dropping huge money on a studio like Sega or Square. Particularly because, honestly, Sony doesn't have Microsoft money. I mean, you're not wrong. I don't necessarily know that they would go and entirely buy out a Square or a Sega, but I could see them throwing...

a large chunk of money to get some level of exclusivity with... Like, hey, maybe they go and go, uh, nope, Final Fantasy XVI never coming out on an Xbox. It'll only be PS4 or PS5. Yeah, it makes you wonder, like, would Square even do that? Like, would they risk that relationship? Because, like, you figure Microsoft funded Rise of the Tomb Raider. Yes, because that game's so well...

I'm not saying it broke the bank or anything like that, but I'm just saying they've at least had a history with Microsoft enough with some of their other franchises that would they let Sony just commandeer full franchises from them? I mean, probably. If the money was right, why wouldn't they, right? I mean, they already do timed exclusivity and some entire limited exclusivity, some things on Sony platform, which...

Hitman is timed exclusive on PS5 or has timed exclusive content. But that's not a Square Enix game anymore. Oh, right. I forgot they got rid of IO. Never mind. I see what you're saying, though. Marvel has a Sony exclusive character. Yeah. Final Fantasy is already a timed exclusive.

on PS5. They probably sell kind of shit on Xbox anyway. I mean, this generation for sure, because so few people own Xbox Ones. But I mean, like, did people... I'd like to see the difference in sales numbers for, like,

Final Fantasy 13 on PS3 versus... Yeah, no, I mean, you're probably right. Like, honestly, PS3 probably sold far more of those. But like we were saying before, I feel like the PS... Sony is where you go for JRPGs. Xbox is where you go for shooters. Like, that's kind of been the divide in those two. Yeah.

At least in my mind. Like, that's kind of how I look at those two platforms. Or Bioware. For whatever reason, I associate Bioware with Xbox. Because Mass Effect 1 didn't come out on the PS3 originally? I mean, that is probably part of it. Plus you had, like, Knights of the Old Republic was also over there. But I think the only Bioware game I've ever gotten that I didn't get on Xbox was Dragon Age. The first one.

Okay. But, like, yeah, like, all the Mass Effects I purchased on Xbox, um, KOTOR, I, was obviously Xbox, so, I don't know. Um, but yeah, so that, that's a thing that, that happened, and I'm sure we'll see more of it. Um, just real quick, I finished, um, Tell Me Why. Tell Me Why. Uh, it was good. It was good.

It was very much like any of those episodic games where the first chapter is really good and the last chapter is really good and the middle chapter is fine. It wasn't bad. I felt like some of the stuff drug on a little bit more than it probably needed to. And honestly, chapter 2 is the one where I'm like, fuck, what did I even do in chapter 2? Whereas chapter 1 and 3, I very clearly know this was what happened in those chapters.

Definitely didn't expect the game to go the way that it did. At the beginning of the game, my entire mentality was like, oh wow, their mom really sucked. And as the game goes on, it's like, oh man, their mom had a really rough fucking go of it. She still wasn't great, but by the end of it, you're like, oh, huh.

Well, that certainly, you know, changes some of my thoughts on her and the people in this town. The, like, quote-unquote villain of it, if that's what you want to say. Oh, shit, that was on Wednesday last week, wasn't it? Yeah, just continue what you're talking. Sorry, I got distracted by you highlighting things. Yeah, like, the quote-unquote villain of the show was... Or the game, I did not see it coming. I didn't expect them to go the obvious route with it, but...

I just, the person that it ended up being for whatever reason, I just never fucking thought it was going to be that person because it just seemed so sort of unimportant overall. I think that probably the biggest complaint I have, though, is, and we talked a little bit about this last week, like, I don't really know much about, like, LGBT, like, communities and, like, kind of how all that stuff goes. Just, like,

I don't make new friends. Like, I don't know anybody that is in those communities. So, like, I don't really know what it's like for them other than what I see in, like, other media and on the news and stuff. And, like, it looks rough. And people seem to really suck. And, frankly, like, judging by every other thing people do, most people do fucking suck. And everyone in this, like, weird, small, remote town in Alaska seemed just too accepting. Um...

I don't know, it's like a weird complaint, and I'm sure they were trying to do that to not... to try and, like, give, like, a positive experience. But, like, one of the side characters in the game is gay, and he's pretty...

He's pretty clear about that. Like, he's not hiding it. But you have a discussion with him, and he basically tells you, like, that town, like, it's hard to be gay in that town. Like, people definitely treat him differently and stuff. But all these people that you're seeing as Tyler, who, like, you haven't seen since you were 10 years old, like, are just, they very quickly accept that, like, he's trans and that they're fine with that. And, like, I think that's awesome, but it also doesn't seem realistic. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I haven't played it, so I can't say for sure, and you don't know what the developers' intentions were in the background, but it could also be like, they're like, alright, these characters are going to be initially accepting, but behind the scenes, quote, even though they're, like, these characters are just zeros and ones, behind the scenes, they're not accepting of it, but in face-to-face, in face value, they are accepting of it, type of thing, get what I'm saying? Yeah, it's just, even...

Even, like, little things. Like, nobody ever... And, like, this is... Again, this is actually a good thing. It's not bad. But, like, nobody ever, like, second-guesses him on his gender. Like...

These people that, like, knew him as a different person when he was a child, like... There's, like, one person that, like, says something stupid, but it's not even... It's bad, but it's not that bad, if that makes sense. But, like, there's one woman who... She's incredibly religious. Like, I think I mentioned it last week, like, she was trying to convince their mother to send him to conversion therapy camp. But, like...

Yeah, no, I agree with that. Yeah, I get it, yeah. And, like...

I think it could have been done... I think that whole thing with everyone... Everyone that was kind of like quote-unquote family to him when he was a child accepting him, I think that could have been done fine this way. But I think it just needed a little bit more exploration leading up to that. Because you don't have a ton of interactions with some of these people before they're just like, oh yeah, I fucked up like 10 years ago. I did a nasty thing. But the nasty thing I did had nothing to do with...

with you. So, like, can you forgive me for that shitty thing I did? And, like, we'll just be cool and friendly again? And, yeah, like, it's just... I don't know. Because, like, a lot of times, like, the woman that, like, they're confronting that's super religious, the things she did had nothing... Like, other than, like, the conversion therapy thing was shitty, and she claims... And, I mean, this is how it's written, at least, that, like, at the time of her recommending that, she didn't actually know what it was. Like, she...

She knew what it was, but she didn't know, like, what it actually was. Yeah. But, like, the shitty thing she did that has them mad at her, totally unrelated to that. Like, has nothing to do with that part of it at all. So it's just... That's the only thing that seemed weird. Like, if they were in... If they were, like, around here or, like, in another, like, you know, modern, urban, like, populated area, I could get it. But, like, they're in this...

tiny-ass little town where, like, there's one store and one fucking restaurant, and the same person owns both of them. Yeah. Um, and, like, to have, like, the gay guy basically telling you, like, oh, yeah, no, it sucks around here, like, no one kind of gets it, like, you did, I get fucking stares and stuff, and then to see his experience with a similar community be just completely the opposite is, like, that just doesn't seem to...

Yeah, that's, it's weird. It's, it's weird and uncomfortable. Yeah, but, like, the, the story was still super cool, um, definitely, like, by the time you get to the end of it, you're just, like, it was one of those where, like, I, like, something happened, I, I read the text, and, um, I just, I literally just went, oh, shit, and, like, even Erica looked over, and she's like, what? I'm like, this thing that just happened, like, holy shit, I didn't see this coming, um,

The whole game, there's puzzles that you have to solve, but it's not like your average game puzzles. Like those sort of games where it's like, oh, you just have to find the right way to turn the water on or whatever. They're legitimate puzzles because your mom was kind of crazy, but also super artistic and creative. So she did all these things that in order to open something or to get into something, you'd have to solve a puzzle.

And most of the answers to the puzzle are in the storybook that you and her wrote when you were a child. Yeah. Um...

And it's, like, all these really detailed stories about, like, these characters and, like, it's super interesting the way they do that. But the end section is you're actually unlocking, like, a bunch of different puzzles that, like, each time you complete one, the next one unlocks. And it's all about... It's basically telling you about your mother that, like, you just didn't know because you were a child when she died. And, like, you're reading some of that, you're like, oh, holy shit. Okay. Like, that's where this is going. Um...

But yeah, I definitely, I think it's on PC. I'm pretty sure you can get it on PC Games Pass. And it doesn't look like it's that intense of like a game that like your PCs wouldn't be able to play it. Like if you have like eight hours to kill and you want like just like a really interesting narratively driven game, I'd give it a shot. Yeah, it's available on Windows. Yeah, it doesn't look like it's available on Game Pass for Windows. Oh no, yeah it is. Never mind. It is.

It's there. It's just, it's, so Game Pass is a little weird on the phone. Some things show as like, some games show as separate for PC. Others just say plays on console and PC. This is one of the ones that is two separate items. But yeah, no, it definitely is. But yeah, it's definitely like, I would definitely check it out if you guys have the time and you're not opposed to like those quote unquote walking simulators. Yeah. So, well,

Oh boy. Oh boy. Last week we were talking about this a little bit while we were recording. Sony, there was all sorts of pre-order mayhem. Sony was a disaster. It's not entirely their fault. I wouldn't even say it's not entirely their fault. I don't think it's their fault at all. I'm going to say that. I'm going to stand by it. I don't think it's their fault. Obviously it's not their fault that scalpers are shitty.

and use bots to just gobble up pre-orders. Like, that's gonna happen regardless. It happened with Sony and Microsoft and the fucking, um, the NVIDIA cards. Like, the same thing happened with them. Yeah. Um, the thing that Sony fucked up with was they told us months ago that one of their executives said very clearly, we will tell you exactly when and where you can get your pre-orders. When and where. Exactly. We

We didn't get any of that. We got a tweet from somebody that doesn't work at Sony telling us that pre-orders would go up the next day at some point at verified retailers. That's all we got. It was also on their blog post of that night where pre-orders will open up as

As early as tomorrow at some retail. And that's the thing. As early as tomorrow at some retailers. That is not exactly when and where you can pre-order. That is not either of those things at all. That is the vaguest way you can possibly fucking say that. Sure, but...

But, I, I, just because somebody said three months ago, we're gonna tell you exactly when and where and what and blah blah blah, and they turn around and they do it like this, I don't blame them for what the fuck happened. No, I'm not blaming them for the way that, like, scalpers purchase systems. I'm blaming them for bad communication. Like, I like Sony, but like...

all of their communication on this has been very bad. Their whole thing when... So, Jim Ryan kept saying, like, we believe in generations when people were asking about backwards compatibility with, like, older generations. Like, that was his tagline. PS5 is not backwards compatible with anything but PS4. Not a huge deal. Like, I don't personally care, but it's

It's one of those, it's like, don't answer your question about backwards compatibility with we believe in generations to not actually give people access to multiple generations. Like, just say, we're looking to see where it's viable. That's the fucking answer. Um...

It's a non-committal response. Or, we believe in generations as in we believe separation of generations and this is a new generation and we don't think necessarily that backwards compatibility is needed. I'm not saying... But then that's not what they say. Like, he just kept saying we believe in generations. But, like, that... Yeah, miscommunication... Misinterpretation and communication and that, you could be... You could interpret it two separate ways. But, like... I...

I don't know, this whole pre-order fiasco, like, I don't blame them for them saying it'll be available tomorrow. Like, I don't blame them for, like, the quick, like, some people are gonna get it, or some retailers are gonna get it tomorrow, which was Thursday. I don't blame them for that, because, like you said, scalpers and people who have time can set up bots and figure things out and figure out how to cheat the system and get X amount of systems when they...

and upsell them for $1,000 a piece and whatnot. But that happens with everything. That happens with sneakers. Every time a new set of Jordans comes out, that's what happens. It's shitty, but that's the way the market works. They need to put fucking captures on things so that people can't use bots, but retailers don't care because they're getting paid either way. They don't actually care about the consumer, they just care about their profit.

And therein lies where I sit here and say I don't blame Sony for any of this. Because what if their press release to retailers was, here's relatively how many you're going to be getting or whatever. Don't start pre-orders until such and such time on such and such day. Let your consumers know. Like...

Maybe they were trying a social media campaign where they let everyone know, like, pre-orders are coming out, and then the retailers are like, look, here's when we're gonna have them, here's when we're gonna have them. It's...

it's the whole Walmart thing that fucked everything up. Yes, Walmart tweeting out the we're not waiting, here's your pre-orders thing, and then every other company just fumbling to get their things ready. Pretty much turning around saying, we didn't know we could do that. Let's do it. But,

At the same time, if Sony had come out and been clear on it, even if they had done it in the fucking direct... Not the direct. They're not Nintendo. In the state of play or whatever they were calling that thing. Instead of waiting for a blog post that, like... Not everyone knows to go to the fucking Sony blog to read about that stuff. Which is where, like... I didn't even know there was a blog post about it. Yeah, so if they had... So...

If they had said in that blog post, pre-orders happen on Monday. And this was Wednesday. Or even Friday. Friday. Let's say Friday. If they were like, in this blog post, pre-orders will go live Friday at 9 a.m. Pacific time. Or like 9 a.m. local time. Or however it would work out. Cool. Like...

Like that's a day for it to kind of get out there. But for them to just go, it's going to go live tomorrow. That means, you know, it could be live at midnight. It could be live at 9 a.m. Like that doesn't give anybody a chance other than people with bots that can just set their shit to keep refreshing to get one. Like there's no way anyone can even try at that point. Like I'm not going to stay up till midnight and just sit there all night refreshing Walmart's page to see if I can preorder a fucking PlayStation. I'm just not going to preorder one.

Yep. Yeah, but, like, I don't know. I don't put this on the retailers. I put it on the retailers. I don't put it on Sony. But Sony also didn't do anything to stop this either. Yeah. What could Sony do? After they put him up, Sony sent out a tweet. Hey.

stop putting them up or call them up, all their systems were sold out already. You can't stop that. When you send out the press release telling them when they can put up pre-orders, you set strict embargoes on it.

If they break those embargoes, they lose quantity. Yeah. Like, that's what Microsoft told them. And, like, you tell them that ahead of time. Like, Microsoft told them if they break embargo, they will get less. It's the same way that, like, when a game releases and it has that red tape on it that says do not open until street date, if somebody from, if one of the reps comes into a GameStop and sees that that box has been fucking opened, that store gets fined.

Like there's a monetary fine that goes against that company now because a store broke street date and there's a chance that they will not get copies of the next big game from that publisher.

And do you know if Sony set an embargo or not? No, that's what Cobb is saying, is they should have. But do you know if they did or didn't? They obviously didn't because Walmart didn't give a fuck. Yeah, if Walmart did not give that much of a fuck about this, there was clearly no rule about it. Look at it this way. Microsoft did tell them this.

Walmart did not put their pre-orders up until like 10 minutes after 11 o'clock Eastern time. And the time for pre-orders to go live was 8 a.m. Pacific time in the U.S. I also wound up hearing all that was a clusterfuck, too. It was for a variety of different reasons, but also the same reasons. We'll get into that.

Look, Rich, I agree with you. It is not entirely Sony's fault. The retailers fucked this also, and scalpers fucked this. But I think Sony dropped the ball on communication across the board. Yeah.

Like, I will admit, yes, maybe they should have either said when pre-order date was going up either on Twitter or on the thing. The fact that it was on a blog post, kind of BS. But also, the fact that they relied on Jeff Keighley, kind of BS. But at the same time, I honestly, when you give me the information, here's the release date, I'm not expecting pre-orders to be ready the next day.

I was honestly expecting a couple days away. Like, the thing that actually kind of blows my mind is that PlayStation did their own pre-order lottery system that I was a part of, that those pre-orders didn't go live until Friday. Yeah, and those actually worked. It went so smoothly. I clicked in right at 1 o'clock Eastern Time, which was 10 o'clock. Right?

10 o'clock West time. I clicked in right at 1 o'clock, got me right into the store, and I bought my thing. Whereas Eric apparently clicked in at 12.59 and then was given a 45-minute wait. So I clicked in a minute after him but got my system before he did. Yeah, I mean, that's dumb. And I saw a lot of people manage to get systems. There were a good amount of people that still didn't manage to get systems. Yeah.

Me, for one. No, but did you actually get a link to Sony? Oh, you mean just through the Sony thing? No. Yeah. I didn't even get an invite. Yeah.

Yeah, so, like, I went to the thing and signed up for it, but did not get, like, an invite link to try and purchase one. Yeah. So, like, I didn't even get to see that shit. But, like, yeah, that went smoothly because it was locked to your account, so you could only buy one as yourself. You couldn't sell that. You couldn't, like, you couldn't do jack shit with it. Like, you got it, you could buy it. Limit one per person. One system per person. I don't know about everything else, but one system per person. Limited. Like,

I think that was the only thing super limited. Yeah, everything else I'm sure you could have bought multiple headsets, multiple controllers. I'm definitely sure multiple controllers. But one system per person, and after you made your purchase, if you wanted to go back in and say maybe buy another system or whatever else, you had to re-enter the queue. Anyway.

And honestly, I don't think you could even buy another system. I think it was, like you said, it was one console per person. But you were allowed to go back in to purchase peripherals and games pre-orders and stuff like that. Yeah, because after I bought the system with the disc tray, the headset, and the charge station, I was like,

after I bought all that, because I was like, I don't know how much time I actually have, and, like, if they get sold out before I make my purchase, so I quickly bought those, and I was like, maybe I'll do it on another controller. I went to go in to buy the second controller, and it put me into the queue, and I'm like, eh, I don't need it. Um, but also, Eric had a 45 minute wait, so I just wanted to go back into the queue to see, like, where it would... If you could get in there again before him? Yeah, where it would queue me, and, like, I jumped in, it was, like, 25 minutes, but it

went up for the 30 seconds I was in there, it went up, like, a couple of minutes, so I'm sure it would have gotten higher than 45 minutes by the end of it. Yeah, because the consoles were still, like, first-come, first-served. So, like, the smart thing to do is honestly, like, jump in there, grab the console as quickly as you can, and just check the fuck out. I think, like, once you're... Yeah. Well, that's the thing, Eric, but...

Yeah.

Went to go buy all that stuff. They were all sold out. He's like, fuck, and had to go back in, wait in line, and buy all his peripheral. Yeah, and so Sony, obviously, like, it's theirs. So I think... So they obviously... I don't think they sent, like, a drastically...

expanded number of those invites compared to, like, the allotment that they had for themselves. Like, they definitely over-sent them because you always have people that maybe don't actually go to buy it, and they want to sell out of them, obviously. But, like, they also had the most availability for...

compared to everyone else. And I think a lot of people were going to Target for peripherals because there was like a discount on that stuff. Versus like... So I follow... Do either of you follow Wario64 on Twitter? Yeah. Although I don't work at Twitter much anymore.

So, Rich, you should follow him. He tweets all of the deals on games. Okay. Yeah, that is that entire Twitter account. It's just, here's this sale going on right now. Here's this sale. Yeah, so I turned on, like, actual notifications, so I get alerted when he tweets stuff, and, like, he just all fucking day. Oops, sorry. All fucking day that I'm getting...

shit from him pop up. But, like, in those couple of days, like, between, like, Wednesday night and, like, Friday, um, there were a lot of alerts of, like, hey, such and such has PS5 controllers or headsets or whatever. So, like, those things were kind of cycling into stock a little bit more. Um, the consoles, um, I think Walmart had one more round of them on Thursday. Yeah, it was Thursday at 9pm Eastern Time. Um, they

They put consoles up. Those consoles were gone by one minute after. I don't know how many they had. I got as far as clicking purchase. Like, literally, had all my information entered, hit purchase, and then it refreshed to, sorry, we're sold out. Yeah, I had...

everything in, I clicked checkout and it just wouldn't load the checkout screen when I was doing it on Best Buy. Yeah, so Best Buy, from what I heard, Wednesday night when everything happened, Best Buy was actually the worst place to try and get it because their site was just fucked. Amazon Target and Walmart were actually far more likely to grab

But I was only looking at Best Buy because I wanted to be able to physically go pick it up. Because, A, I don't... Amazon's not getting it to you on the 12th. Like, it's just not happening. They've even sent emails out telling people they're not getting it on the 12th. Did they? Yeah, so Amazon sent basically every single person that pre-ordered a PlayStation 5 through them to let them know that due to high demand, they cannot guarantee a delivery date. And, like, Amazon in the last...

has just become abysmal at getting things on release date to people. That...

makes me think maybe it's more so that they sold more copies, more than they actually got, and not as much that they're definitely not going to get people the console. Like, people will get theirs on Wednesday. But, like, I have a feeling, because Amazon is such a shitty company as well, they probably just sold over the amount they're getting, hoping that they're going to get more. Yeah, I mean, that's entirely possible. Um...

But also you figure, depending on the area and how many distribution centers they have, they literally might not have enough people to deliver these things in November. Maybe. But...

Walmart just cancels pre-orders all the fucking time. Not necessarily. I haven't heard about PlayStation 5 pre-orders being canceled yet, but tons of people were just expecting, like, I got one at Walmart. I'm waiting for them to email me that it's canceled any day now. The thing that pisses me the most off about Walmart is somebody tweeted at them at 11 o'clock at night, like, looks like you're sold out of your PS5s, and they had the fucking audacity to turn around and be like, actually, it doesn't go on sale until midnight. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Like, are you fucking kidding me, Walmart? Like, you, which, which kind of brings me back to the, I think Sony might have done something to them, which is why they had that additional come out on Thursday at nine o'clock. But it's, I mean, it's possible, but like I said, like Walmart sucked, but like Sony, Sony's communication with it was just poor. Because again, like Walmart said midnight, who's to say that other, like, like we,

We didn't know it was supposed to be midnight, even though it wasn't. They just said sometime the next day. That's bad communication for consumers. Especially because...

I think GameStop may have been one of the only places that was allowing in-person pre-orders. Because when I went to pick up Super Mario 3D All-Stars, somebody in front of me was asking about the play... Not asking to get a PlayStation 5 pre-order, but asking what sort of shit show the store had been. And the guy at the desk was just like, we're not doing them in-store.

Like, you can only pre-order them online. He's like, we had 30 people waiting outside on Thursday morning, and we had to just tell them all, like, there's no pre-orders. Yeah. So, like, that stuff only being available online definitely needed better communication. And, like, Walmart still needs, like, an actual repercussion for that, but, like, they sold them already, like you said, so there's nothing they can do. And it only being sold online, that's definitely not on Sony. That's on Best Buy.

Oh, yeah, but no, I was just saying, I think GameStop is the only place doing in-person pre-orders. Also, that's kind of on the pandemic. Yeah. I wasn't blaming that on Sony. I was just like...

Sony knows there's a pandemic and people are going to be trying to do this online. Like, giving people just communicating. That's all I'm saying. They just needed to communicate a little bit. Hold on real quick. So speaking of the Wario64 Twitter account, they tweeted 40 minutes ago, they're hearing that GameStop may be doing in-store only pre-orders for the disc version of the PlayStation 5 on Friday. That

Not confirmed by GameStop, but is what they have heard from employees, or an employee anyway. So GameStop may be doing some in-store pre-orders on Friday. Which is cool. Like, yeah. Good for them. I know I saw some people posting online for the Xbox stuff where they did, like GameStop did their classic piece of paper printed out website.

with, like, the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S on it, and they just were writing in how many they had of each for pre-orders. And, like, every store had, like, six Xs and, like, two or three Ss. So it's like, man, I hope if people wanted them, like, they got in line early. Yeah. Though, unrelated to that, I saw somebody on Discord, I forget what...

what server it was on, saying that they had been waiting outside of a micro center for 22 hours to get a 3090 tomorrow. Somebody from the store came out, let them know that they had 26 cards. He was the 24th person in line. So,

So, two places, like, if he was back three places, he would not be getting a video card tomorrow. Mm-hmm. Um, but he still has to wait till tomorrow morning when the store opens to actually get the card. Yeah. Which, that's insane. Um, so, Sony did actually come out, though, um, and they tweeted an apology. Um, I'm gonna bring that up real quick so I can actually just read it. Come on, Twitter. Uh, so they tweeted this on the 19th, which I think was Saturday? Does that sound right? Or was that Friday? Uh, that was Saturday, yes. Okay. Okay.

Let's be honest. PS5 pre-orders could have been a lot smoother. We truly apologize for that. Over the next few days, we will release more PS5 consoles for pre-order. Retailers will share more details. And more PS5s will be available through the end of the year. So that is at least better communication than we got before that. You know, they're telling us they're going to release more. Retailers will have details on when they are going to put them up for pre-order.

So at this point, it's 100% on the retailers. If the retailers don't communicate when they're doing the pre-orders, that is not Sony's fault at all. They went the step to tell us we're releasing more to retailers. Retailers will share details. At that point, if it's another clusterfuck when more consoles get released, I do not fault Sony on that at all. So Microsoft, on the other hand, it was a little bit better. Not

Not much. Not really. Like, if you kind of, like, put them next to each other on, like, a bar graph, like, they'd basically be at the same spot. But, uh, I think it was, it felt just slightly more organized because it, I mean, it was more organized because it wasn't that just, like, mad rush and chaos that the PS5s were because of Walmart. Um, so,

So Microsoft gave the exact date and time when pre-orders were going to happen, which is great for people because that means, you know, you could be online, you could have multiple devices ready to go, refreshing the pages for the different stores. But it also gives scalpers the chance to do the same thing. So, like, it's a double-edged sword. The stores actually getting their consoles up to purchase was just fucking wild. So.

So it was 9 a.m. For the U.S., it was 9 a.m. Pacific time. So that was 11 a.m. our time. I was keeping an eye on all this. And I did preorder a Series X at Amazon. I'm probably not keeping it. I'm not going to, like, sell it for some stupid amount of money. Like, I'm not going to be shitty about it. Are you sure it just wasn't a 1X? I'm positive. We'll get to that. Okay.

But I did pre-order a Series X. And I have reasons for that that I'll talk about later. But so, Walmart and Target went up first. They went up right around 11 a.m. when they should have. They both sold out pretty quickly. Not as quickly as the PS5 did, but definitely pretty fucking quick. Best Buy and Amazon were not up at 11.

Amazon went up at about 11.50, so almost an hour later. And Best Buy didn't go up until about 12.05. So what time did you say they were supposed to go up? 11 a.m. Eastern Time. No, what was the Pacific Time? 8 a.m. I said 9 a.m. That's my bad. Okay, because I thought earlier you said 9, and then you said 11, and I'm like, wait, that's... Yep, nope, that's my bad. 8 a.m. Pacific Time. Okay. So yeah, like...

Two of the biggest retailers didn't go up for almost an hour, which was just fucking weird. I just have... So I wasn't planning on pre-ordering. I literally just happened to refresh my Amazon page, and it was there, and it said pre-order, so I just clicked it. Like, that's as much thought as I put into it. And the other reason I did it there is they don't charge you until it ships, so...

That's the cool thing about the PS5 through Sony. They don't charge you until it ships. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Best Buy is the same way. I think Walmart actually charges you or at least puts a hold on your card immediately. Yeah. But yeah, this was one of those, it's like, eh, let's see what happens come the beginning of November. And honestly, if I'm talking to somebody and they're like, oh, I really wanted the Xbox or whatever, I'll sell it to them. I'll sell them the pre-order for like...

the cost of the pre-order. Like, I'm not, I don't want to make money off of it or anything like that. Like, it's $4.99. Give me $4.99 in tax and I will change the address to go to your house. Yeah. I, I, uh, uh, just a quick aside. I got an extra copy of Ring Fit Adventure by accident. I saw you say that. Uh, I didn't. It was the copy that got lost was found.

and mailed to me. The shipping finished last week. So I sent out a text to some of my friends who we have a Switch group chat. And one person was like, I kind of want that. I'm like, alright, I'll split the difference with you then. 40 bucks. This way, we paid for half and we got two copies. I'm not going to charge you full price for something I got for free. Yeah, exactly. That's the thing. I don't think I know anybody that necessarily wants the Xbox that's going to buy it at launch, but...

If I do, and... I mean, if they're a shitty person and I don't like them, I might charge them a little bit more. Yeah. Delivery fee. Yeah. But, like, it's one of those, it's like, oh, yeah, no, like, I have one pre-ordered, like, I don't really need it, like...

It's 540 bucks, I think, after tax. Just get me the money before it comes out of my account and we're good. I mean, even then, like, get it to me before I give it to you. Like, that's the only thing I ask. But, so yeah, so those went up closer to 12. So about close to an hour or an hour after, um...

Like, the scheduled time. Game stops were up pretty quickly. I didn't write down the time. They forced everybody into a queue, though. It was a really shitty one, too. Like, they must have done this, like, super last minute after the issues they had with the PS5. Because, like, their website basically shut itself down like it was being DDoSed. Yeah.

So if you went to GameStop.com while the Xbox was going up, you got a black page with a poor resolution flyer, basically, in the middle of it with a bunch of text. It was actually fuzzy. It was such poor quality. Yeah.

That was like, hey, you're in a queue. Like, don't reload this page. Like, when it's your turn, it'll refresh automatically, blah, blah, blah, blah. No countdown. Like, nothing to tell you, like, what place in line you are. Just a static image. And I had that open for probably a half hour, 45 minutes, and it finally loaded. But by that point, they were all sold out. I don't know if they were limiting quantity or anything like that. Or if it was just once you were in, you could do it. The slightly shitty part was, like, you couldn't actually get to their website otherwise. Yeah.

If you weren't interested in the Xbox and you were just going on to buy something else or do something else, you couldn't. For the hour and a half that that queue thing was up for, because it was up after they sold out too, you couldn't use their website. Or you could, but you had to wait in the queue first. I wonder if it kept you in the queue because you were waiting in the queue, but if you had refreshed after they had sold out, if the queue would have ended. No, because I tried that in a separate browser and it still refreshed right to the queue.

Okay. Microsoft, and just like Sony, Microsoft did their own internal pre-orders. It was not as good as Sony's. Like, there was no invitation thing for it or anything like that. You just went to Microsoft's website, and you could purchase the Xboxes. And you could do, like, you could purchase, like, your all-access for it, or, like, the payment plan options, which GameStop and Best Buy also do. Their site crashed at some point during that. Nice.

Nice. Because even, like, I saw, um, I actually saw Jeff Keighley tweet about it, that he was trying to buy a fucking Xbox, and the fucking Microsoft page was just loading up, like, unavailable. And his tweet was just like, come on, Microsoft, you're killing me. Yeah. But, like, let's be real, like, that motherfucker already has an Xbox Series X. He was showing off pictures of it today. Oh, yeah. Like, he might not get to keep it, but, like, he has one to, like, do coverage for. Yeah. Like...

Ain't no one worried about Jeff Keighley getting a fucking console. No. But yeah, so that... Microsoft was not much smoother, but at least having the timed stuff seemed to help. Because it at least gave everybody a, here's when you should be on your computer. Go to your computer, refresh these pages. They didn't all go up at the same time, but at least you knew, I need to be online by 1045 so I can start refreshing. Oh.

I mean, like, I got lucky enough to snag one.

And honestly, like I was looking around, I could have also grabbed one at Best Buy because they were available for a little bit longer after that. Yeah. I didn't, obviously, but I could have. Also, quick to just jump back to PlayStation, Target, at some point last night, their page changed and pre-orders became available again. Okay. Like the pre-order now button. I'm actually refreshing because I just realized I still had the tab open. Did they change it yet? No.

No, so they still do. Their website on the PlayStation 5 console page has the fucking pre-order now button there. But when you click it, it pops up, item not added to your cart, it is now out of stock. Huh. And apparently, so this happened early this morning, late last night sort of thing. And yeah, like, people thought there were Sony pre-orders and it just, no one could get them. Yeah. So...

Now, this is funny. I think I tweeted... I think I sent this to you guys, but I don't remember. Amazon saw a 747% increase in the sale of Xbox One X during the pre-order window. Mm-hmm. That means...

A whole bunch of fucking people bought the wrong Xbox. I wonder how many of those people have realized it. Because potentially their system, let's see, this was what? Yesterday? It went live? When did it go live? It went live yesterday. So with Amazon, probably by tomorrow or Friday, they should be getting their console. Yep. Like, I wonder how many people have already realized, like, oh,

Oh, fuck, I pre-ordered the wrong thing and it canceled. Yeah, and so part of this, like we've discussed before, bad naming. Like, I get they're trying to do a thing, but, like, come the fuck on, guys. Yeah. Part of this was also Amazon was being very cagey with the pre-order links, so they kept taking them down and then putting them back up under different URLs. So...

Like, they had, like, their Xbox landing page that you could go to. And a couple times they actually took that down and then put it back up. But that didn't give you a way to get to the actual listing for the X and the S. And if you just went to Amazon and searched Xbox One X, or, I'm sorry, Xbox Series X, you'd get, like, the list of things. The very top option would say, like, unavailable, and that was the actual Series X. But then right below that was the One X. So, like...

If you just clicked on the wrong thing, and especially if, like, you weren't 100% sure and, like, you were buying this as, like, a gift or something. Like, I get it. And it's a similar price. Yeah. So, it's a black box. It's a similar price. It's an easy fucking mistake to do when Amazon's, like, search for that stuff was pretty shitty yesterday. Yeah. Honestly, the only reason I was even on their page, like, when it went up, was because of Wario64. Like, he kept tweeting out

in a chain he had with the direct links to all of the different retailers' pages. And every time Amazon changed it and he found the new one, he would tweet out the link again. Yeah. So, like, I had just happened to open that link maybe, like, 10 minutes prior to them going live and then refreshed it when it, like... I hadn't...

He hadn't tweeted yet that it was live by the time I had refreshed the page. Like, I refreshed and clicked purchase right after, or right before I saw his tweet come out that it was live on Amazon. Okay. So, other fun little tidbit I've been hearing, and this is not fun at all. I've seen a bunch of people talking about their shit got canceled by their bank or credit cards. That...

That's nuts. Yeah, so, like, the bank saw a $500 purchase from, like, Amazon or Best Buy and cancelled it, and, like, they would get, like, the text message or the phone call asking if, like, if this was a legitimate call or a legitimate purchase, like, respond yes and then try again. But you can't fucking try again. Yeah, because...

That's, that's, like, that would have to have been from, like, Walmart and Target. I don't know how Target does their pre-orders, but Best Buy, Amazon, they don't take it out until after it ships or after you pick it up. Like, my, the money for, uh, 3D All-Stars didn't get taken out until I picked it up. So, it would have to have been something from Walmart and Target. Like, you just made this...

Or GameStop. Like, what are they buying? $500 at GameStop, Target, or Walmart. But, like, why would the bank cancel it and not call and just be like, hey, was this you? If not, let's cancel it type of thing. So that's how the bank's fraud departments work now. I don't know. You maybe have never dealt with this. But, yeah, if there is any sort of big purchase on a card and it seems even remotely suspicious...

they immediately decline it and then send you a message. Like, if you have, like, text message alerts set up with them, they will send you a text message that you can actually just respond to and be like, yes or no, and then they will, like, unflag it so that you can retry that purchase. That's right. It's been like that for a long time. I used to get it so that the text messages haven't been around for long. But, like, when I was at GameStop, and that was, fuck, like...

15 years ago, almost. Occasionally, people would come in and they would be purchasing, like, you know, a PS3 and...

Yeah. Yeah, that's just... Like, I knew banks did that. Like, I've been thinking about just paying off my student loans early. Um...

That's, like, close to $3,000, $4,000... Close to $4,000. So, like, I'm like, I know I have to call my bank when I make this payment. But, like, $400 or $500, I never thought that that was... That would be, like... I don't know, I guess if you don't always pay that money, but...

Yeah, I've never had anyone call and be like, hey, was this an actual legit purchase? But I guess my bank knows that I buy video games. Yeah, or you've just never purchased that high of a thing for them to flag it. I mean, I bought a Switch. But, I mean... That's $300. And, well, no, the PS5 I got at GameStop, right?

Or a PS4, I got a GameStop. And I think the Xbox One, I also got a GameStop. So, yeah, I don't know. Like, I don't know if it's... Yeah, that's the thing. Like, I honestly don't know what their flagging system is. And, like, every bank and credit card is different about that stuff, too. But, yeah, like, that sucks because, like, there are people that, like, got their pre-order and then immediately fucking lost their pre-order. Yeah, that's insane. But, yeah, so that was...

That was the fiasco of trying to pre-order stuff. Yeah. So, you know. So, I think I mentioned... I don't think I put this in our group chat. I think I might have just told you, Rich. Yeah. I tested out the Xbox game streaming, which is what xCloud is now called. Yeah. Because I have it while I have the Game Pass subscription for telling me why. It is super fucking cool. Like, it actually works really, really well. Yeah.

So I played Untitled Goose Game, Halo 2, and Battletoads so far. I actually... I was playing it enough that I actually purchased one of those $10 grip things that stick onto your Xbox controller so you can put your phone in it. Okay. Not the really... They have a newer one that's just coming out. It's from Razer that actually makes your phone just look like a fucking Switch. The controller's like...

Go onto the side of the phone like two Joy-Cons.

It's actually kind of neat, but they range from $80 to $100, which is just too fucking much. Oh, yeah. But yeah, one of those things where it's literally just like a clamp that goes on the back of the controller, and then it's adjustable, and you can put the phone in it and sort of tilt it to the viewing angle you want. But yeah, your Xbox controller pairs right to the phone, no issues at all. You just hit the little sync button on the top, and then look at your Bluetooth settings on your phone, and it's right there. Yeah.

There's not, there's a little bit of, little bit of input lag in like the menu. But when I got into the games, everything actually was pretty good. Like I didn't notice any, any input lag. Um, there was definitely artifacting like, and especially in Halo and Battletoads. Um, if I was moving a lot, things would blur a little bit and then it would almost have like, um, like a progressive scan would like very quickly shoot across the screen. Um,

And, like, clear everything up when I stopped. It was a little weird. But it was nothing that, like, ruined the experience. And, like, Halo played really fucking well. Yeah. Like, it picked up. And because it's Xbox and everything is just fucking synced to Azure, it immediately picked up my save. So, like, my game started right where I had last played it.

I ran around for probably 20 minutes in there. I was just kind of messing around. I wasn't doing anything crazy because I didn't want to progress in the game. I just wanted to test it out. But yeah, that alone is almost worth the cost of Game Pass if you're in a situation where maybe you travel a lot. Right now, no one's traveling a lot, but...

if you're the type of person where like you just happen to be on the road a lot and you can just drop an Xbox controller into your bag and either you don't have a data limit on your phone or you can regularly connect to stable wifi, like that's a good way to play games. Um,

And it works on tablets and stuff, too. Like, I have the app on my tablet. I haven't really done it yet. But I did hit play on a game, and it started to load the game. So, like, and I have a 10-inch tablet. So it's a... It's not huge, but it's a decent-sized screen. Yeah, the streaming stuff, the streaming gaming, I'm not... I haven't really done a lot of research on. But I don't think I've... I don't think there's a lot of complaints about it. It is absolutely cool that they're doing this and very interesting. And, like, which is why I...

also understand they're making the Series S weaker, because that's kind of what they're pushing with that, is the streaming. You can't stream on the console, though. Are you sure?

Right now, yes. Oh, yeah. So right now you can't, but it's also still in beta. No, it's out of beta now. It's released. Okay. I think it is, at least. I'm like 90% sure it's actually released now. As of last week, it was in beta. Okay, maybe what I read was wrong then. I could have sworn I read something that it was actually out of beta. But yeah, I don't think that they have not announced that you will be able to stream content from, like, to the consoles yet.

that I've seen. So like, yeah, the S is weaker. Maybe that's a thing they're going to do, but it's not going to be for a little while. So the Xbox.com, if you look up Games Pass Ultimate and you scroll down to explore cloud gaming, it's explored cloud gaming beta. Okay, so yeah, so I guess what I read was wrong. Maybe it's just it's beta, but now anyone with Game Pass can do it.

Yeah, maybe. I'm looking through the cloud gaming real quick to see if it says anything else, but it doesn't. It just shows that you can play it on PC and on your phone mostly. And actually, I didn't realize you could do the streaming on PC. That's actually kind of cool. That's similar to...

to Stadia. Stadia worked pretty well. My problem with Stadia was you had to buy the game at full price. If you wanted to play a game on Stadia, you have to buy the game on Stadia, which is fine. It's a platform. I get that.

that. But, like, their subscription thing isn't as robust as Games Pass, where I can look at Game Pass and I can see a ton of games that I'd be willing to play streaming. Yeah. Like, I don't want to drop 60 or 70 bucks on a game for Stadia and then have Google decide in two years that they don't fucking want to do this anymore. Yeah, they don't want to support it, so you're not going to ever be able to play it ever again. And it's like, well, fuck you then. Yeah, and, like, Stadia has their whole, um...

subscription service that is more like a PS Plus Xbox Live thing where, like, there's, like, one or two games free a month, I think is how they work it. But it's not Game Pass where it's like, oh yeah, there's like a thousand fucking games I can just hop onto and play on my phone whenever the fuck I want. Yeah. Um... But yeah, so, like, the game streaming stuff is super cool. Like, all for it. At least from how Microsoft's doing it. No complaints. Yeah. That's nice. Yeah. Um...

So, Nintendo Partner Direct was... Was that last Thursday that that happened? Thursday or Friday. Yeah. Can't remember. It was one of those days. Yeah. So, I'm going to let you deal with these first two because Drew and I don't care. There were two Monster Hunter things announced. Yeah. So, they announced, which was honestly a surprise to everyone, the

the the lesser of two uh monster hunter stories 2 which is just their sequel to their um um turn based rpg monster hunter game that is a story based game like it is nowhere near the monster hunter formula it's just the monster hunter monsters with characters in this world it's not even the same world i don't think at least i've never played the first one the original was on 3ds a

Apparently, it's like a really high-selling 3DS game, or at least right now, because no one's buying 3DS games. But that comes out next summer. But they also announced before that Monster Hunter Rise, which, from doing a little bit of research...

because I was hearing different things, it apparently is the next core title in the Monster Hunter games. So the team at Capcom that work on Monster Hunter, there's three teams. The Stories team, the Now, the Rise team, and the World team. So, like, this is their third team, which this is usually, like...

Uh, the- the director of these games is usually the one who creates the, like, the ultimate versions. So, like, the second releases that have, like, a little bit extra and was ported to whatever system. This one, it's just straight up, like, he directed this full game. It runs off the Resident Evil engine. It looks really cool. You get a fucking dog this time. Uh...

I'm pretty excited about it. And this is only on Switch, right? It's only releasing on Switch. So, this team, the last game they made or released was Monster Hunter... It was Double Cross in Japan Generations Ultimate in the United States. That released on the...

August 2018 worldwide. So they have not been... They've basically been working on this game since probably a little before then because it came out in Japan like a year prior. Um, and that one came out just on Switch. This team is generally the team that works on games that just release on the handheld consoles. Uh...

So, like, the Monster Hunter World team, they're still, I'm sure they're probably working on a new game now because they're still releasing content updates through next month, I believe. I think it ends in October or November. And then they'll probably start working on the new world stuff moving forward. So, like, I'm pretty excited to at least have something to tie me over and that's on the Switch. This

This will be the first time I buy a pro controller, though. Oh, you're going to get a pro controller to play? I'm thinking about it. I don't really know how comfortable it's going to be playing Monster Hunter with the Joy-Con grip, so I'm thinking about getting a pro controller. I mean, look, that pro controller is very nice. Yeah, like, I've used it before, and I've never had an issue with it, but, like, I also, like I said, I don't have really an issue with the Joy-Cons, but it's, like, with the Joy-Con drift issue on now, like, I

I think I have some sort of issue on every one of my Joy-Cons, except for the one I fixed, where, like, the A button doesn't work or this. Like, I'm like, I need a new controller in general. And for a game like Monster Hunter that is so, like, time-sensitive, like, I need to make sure what I'm hitting hits at that time and not, like, I press A but it skips it because my controller didn't register. I'd probably just get a new controller.

come that time. At least a pro controller, if not just a new set of Joy-Cons. I'm not sure yet. I haven't decided. But I'm really excited. I'm interested to see how the sales for this will compare to the sales for World and Ice Bowl. Yeah, I don't know. I know, like, I'm not gonna, like, I mean, we all know, like, I'm not playing either of these. Stories is probably the closest thing to interest I would ever have in a Monster Hunter, though.

Uh, probably. Uh, it's a turn-based RPG. Um, it probably, it doesn't have that Monster Hunter formula, as far as I know. It doesn't have the Monster Hunter formula of go out, kill the monster a million times to get the, the, the pieces you need, come back, and make the armor. It's just, you play through the game. And you, you, you have a pet Rathalos, or Rathian, I can't remember which one. Well, it, it, from what I've read, you also fight alongside the monsters, almost like a, like a Pokemon. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I don't think it's... It might be. I'm not sure. I know the main character has a Rathalos, which is one of the bigger monsters. I don't know if it's just you and him, or if he's commanding the Rathalos. I've never played him. Not that I'm not interested in him, but it's like...

I just didn't really care to play an RPG like that on the 3DS. Yeah, it's... Like, the little bit that I saw about it, and I didn't watch the direct, so I didn't actually see the trailer, but, like, the fact that it has an actual narrative, and...

the combat is turn-based and not the combat that I dislike about the game. I'm like, oh yeah, if I was going to play Monster Hunter, it would totally be a stories game because even if you have to grind a whole bunch, I don't mind turn-based combat. I don't want to grind Monster Hunter combat. But from these announcements, I found a new game that I can play while I'm perusing Facebook and stuff. It's called Find the Person, whose first game was Monster Hunter World. And

And I found that person right away. Uh, they, they announced a monster and it was like, here's the new, here's a new monster that's gonna be in Monster Hunter Rise. And a person, like, just goes in freaking out. Yeah, I'm just gonna wait for Monster Hunter World 2 because this is the same exact model and blah blah blah of this and that monster. And everyone, everyone on the, on the, on the thread, like, commented, actually, this is just, like, this monster from Monster Hunter Generations. Um...

That, like, obviously you're new to the Monster Hunter realm because that's generally what they do is take the skeleton of monsters and just make new monsters out of them. But, like, it just, it made me laugh. And I was like, well, that's a new game I can play for all these announcements until the game comes out. Yeah, yeah, that seems about right.

Yeah. So I kind of spaced for a second there. In case you didn't say it, Rise is scheduled for March 21st, 2021, and Stories 2 is summer 2021. Which, that also kind of sits aligned with their recent release schedules with, like, World and stuff, where World came out in January, and then Generations Ultimate broke the mold with

I mean... Yeah, I guess you could say it broke the mold with being released worldwide in August of that same year. But like...

It was January, and then Iceborne wasn't until November of the following year. So, and it kind of makes sense. It's like March this year, and then if they have an expansion or something, maybe November next, November the following year. So, we might get a Monster Hunter or World 2, whatever they're going to call that, 2022, 2023. Okay. We're suspecting. We don't know for sure, though. Iceborne was September, not November. Okay.

I wrote 11-19. Way to fuck up the release date. It's a typo. Uh,

But they're also consistent content updates like they did with Monster Hunter World. So every couple of months, free content updates, free creatures and whatnot. That's the first time they've been able to do that, right? Yes and no. They did it with the other games, but they didn't often send new monsters, just variant monsters. But they always gave us new armors based on event quests. So I guess what I...

I guess... I'm trying to think of the best way to say this. So, most of the previous, like, recent games were Nintendo handhelds, right? Uh, yes. Um, yeah, I think so. And, like... Uh, yeah. It was... Monster Hunter Tri was, uh, Wii. And then Tri Ultimate, I believe, was handheld. And then 4, 4 Ultimate Generations, Generations Ultimate... Generations were all, uh, uh...

3DS, and then Generations Ultimate was 3DS and Switch. Okay. Yeah, because I know up until the Switch, Nintendo consoles were not great at being... were either not able to or not great at getting DLC. Like, the Wii couldn't get DLC at all. That's why there's a game, I forget what game it is, maybe Metroid Other M, that had such a game-breaking bug in it, you had to send a memory card to Nintendo to get it fixed, because they couldn't patch it out

out of the game. Probably Skyward Sword. I don't, it might have been other end, but I know definitely Skyward Sword had a game-breaking glitch, and if you did things just right, when you get 40 hours into the game, you can't beat it. Nice. Um, but, wait, was Skyward Sword, oh yeah, Skyward Sword was just regular-ass Wii. Um,

But, like, for World, being on PS4 mid-generation when, like, everything had DLC and, like, the consoles were kind of built for that, I just feel like they definitely had... That was their first chance to be like, hey, we can just support this same game for multiple years. Yeah.

And not have it be a hassle on anybody. And that's basically what they did. So the previous versions, like, for instance, Generations and Generations Ultimate, they both started off on the 3DS, and then it eventually was ported to Switch as well. Um...

They would get event quests sent in, and it was generally the same monsters, but they would give new, different-looking armor for doing the event quests. Like, Monster Hunter World, yes, is the first time they, like, every three months, a new creature. Like, like, like,

Like, something that didn't have a pre-made skeleton or wasn't a variant was thrown in. That's, like, the first time they did that. But they always had sort of content updates throughout the games. But, like, World was the first time it was, like, as big as it was. Okay.

So just to round out that direct real quick, they announced Hades is out on Switch, which I forget if we were talking about that before we recorded or after, but it's a new game from Supergiant. The guys did Bastion and Transistor. I think they also talked about it at the last...

Partner Direct? Partner Direct as well. They may have. The big thing here is it came out on Switch. It has been in early access on PC for at least a year, I think, too. Drew, do you know for sure? How long it's been on PC? Yeah, in early access.

I'm not positive, but I want to say it's probably close. Yeah, so it's been in early access for a while now. But now it's available and Switch is the first non-PC platform that it's on. They also announced Disgaea 6 Defiance of Destiny for Summer 2021. I didn't realize Disgaea had six games. Yeah, neither did I.

I've played Disgaea 1 because that's been released, like, seven different times. I've played that a handful of times, but I've never played any of the others. Same. Like, I've actually never played any of them. I think I own the first one. I think a lot of us did, so you probably do, too. Yeah, I think I got it on PS2, like, when I worked at GameStop, and it was one of those, like, I got it, like, used, it was super cheap, and I meant to play it and just never got to it. Yeah.

yeah um and then they announced ori and the will of the wisp is out now also yep so you can you can get that on the way if you've played or in the blind forest i'm fuck i just said on the way on the switch yeah um sorry i i accidentally capitalized the i in will so it almost looks like we yeah um yeah it does so yeah that's the sequel to or in the blind forest um blind

Blind Forest was really good. I'm sure Will of the Wisp is also really good. The thing I find funny about this Direct was they start off with the Monster Hunter information, and then...

At the end of it, at the end of giving the Monster Hunter permission, she's like, by the way, we're having a Monster Hunter direct immediately after this one. Oh, Jesus. It's like, okay, why didn't you, like, end with Monster Hunter and be like, stay tuned for more? Yeah, I mean, that would have made more sense, but at the same time, like, honestly, as much as

I might not like it. Monster Hunter was definitely the two biggest things they had to announce. It definitely was. There's a lot of people excited for it. A good number of people, like, complaining that, like, they're, quote, backstepping, not realizing that this is a different team that's been working on this game since 2018 for this system. Like...

Yeah. We'll see what happens. Yeah. But yeah, so that's everything that was shown at the Direct, I believe. Today, though, I think somebody posted this on 4chan. I saw it going around Twitter and Facebook. There was a leaked quote-unquote memo...

for an October 8th Nintendo Direct. The whole thing looks fake. There are too many big things on here for any of this to be fucking real. But some of the things would be pretty cool. So it says WarioWare Switch It Up is going to be revealed for summer 2021. The Pokemon Sword and Shield Crown Tundra DLC will release on November 27th. Which actually, that doesn't seem impossible. It seems a little late

But... That's still fall and they said fall. So... Yeah. Um... That... Just that they would be showing something for the Super Mario 3D World plus Bowser's Fury that they already revealed. That they'd be revealing Kirby Power Rumble. And that it would be available after the Direct. Um... That Dragon Quest Anthology was gonna be...

was going to come out on december 4th that fall guys was going to come out on switch and it would be available after the direct yeah that game boy games were going to come to the switch online and would be available after the direct that gta 3 was going to come to the switch on november 4th that prefer persona 5 scramble would be releasing january 8th 2021 yeah that

That Super Smash Bros. Ultimate would have a Challenger Pack 7 reveal for Crash Bandicoot that would be available after the Direct for...

following a demo from Sakurai, like he has done many other times. Yeah. That Super Mario 3D All-Stars would be getting Super Mario Galaxy 2 DLC on December 18th, and that the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild trailer would be... Or our sequel is going to be Legend of Zelda Breath of Evil teaser trailer for 2021. I...

So, looking through this list, I like a lot of the ideas. The thing that makes me think this is probably most definitely fake is the Crash Bandicoot in Smash Bros. Yep. And, I mean, aside from the fact that Sakurai has said he doesn't want non-Japanese, non-game characters, so, like, Crash is a game character, but Naughty Dog's an American developer. Yeah. I don't think there are any other characters in Smash Bros. from an American company.

No, probably not. Um...

So... That right there, when I saw that, I was like, yeah, that's definitely fake. Why would Sony let them do that? Well, Sony doesn't own Crash. Yeah. I thought... Nope. Not for, like, 20 years. Yeah, Sony sold Crash after Crash Team Racing. Like, the original Crash Team Racing. Yeah, so it was basically Naughty Dog did Crash 1 through 3 and Racing, and then...

Sony sold the license to Activision along with Spyro. And that's when we got all of those really shitty Crash Bandicoot games. Like Mind Over Mutant and shit like that. And the Spyro games were good for a little while. The Year of the Dragon? I forget. There was like a trilogy of them that was actually pretty good. But then it went to Skylanders and everything fucking died.

I would be pretty happy if they did do the Mario Galaxy 2 DLC, but at the same time, I'd be so pissed. Like, why didn't you just fucking put it on the cart? Yeah. Because I just paid $60 for games that you barely did anything to, and now you're going to make me pay another however much? Probably $40 because it's fucking...

For another game that you're gonna probably do nothing to. Like, I would be happy to see that, but at the same time just be like, fuck you guys. You could've just put it on the cart. Yeah, like, I think a WarioWare game would be neat. Um...

The Fall Guys on Switch is also a cool idea. Same thing, like, the Game Boy games coming to Switch Online, like, it's whatever. There's, like, four good fucking Game Boy games that they would put on that thing. And even then, like, they might not put those four Game Boy games on that thing. No. I mean, one of them is Tetris, and there's already a way better Tetris product. Well, I was going to say, they have the single-player mode in Tetris 99 now that you could purchase. So, you're not going to get Tetris on there. You're going to get

probably Mario Land, Mario Land 2, Wario Land, and that's it. Like, you're not going to get Pokemon, you're not going to get, like, the Final Fantasy Legends or the Dragon Quest Warriors or anything like that. Yeah. Yeah, like, that's... I don't need Game Boy games. Give me fucking Nintendo 64 or something if you're going to put a new console on there. Persona 5 Scramble is a Musou game, so, like, people are...

somewhat interested in that, but also, like, I don't give a fuck. And I don't even need N64 games. Give me GBA games. Yeah, yeah, I would take some of the Game Boy Advance catalogs. So many good GBA games. Like, fucking, um, maybe on Battle Network games were actually pretty good. Yeah, exactly. But you also had fucking Metroid Fusion as a Nintendo property. Like, that was a wonderful fucking Metroid game. Yeah. Um...

But yeah, so that thing, super fake, but still a lot of cool stuff on there. We'll have to wait and see if anything comes out on October 18th, or October 8th. I might put a little reminder in my phone for October 8th. Be like, hey, is there a Nintendo Direct happening this day? So

So, Rich, you and I both picked up Super Mario 3D All-Stars. Yes. I'm happy with the purchase. I've only been playing Sunshine because that's the game that I've been... Like, I said multiple times on this podcast, I owned that game, like, three or four times. Like, I bought it, beat it, traded it in, and then bought something else, and then was like, I want to play that again, and bought it, beat it, traded it in. Like...

I absolutely love Sunshine, and I jumped into that first thing. I was like, fuck 64, I'll get back to you, Galaxy. I want Sunshine. Yeah, it's funny. I thought Sunshine would be the game that aged the worst out of the three. Galaxy definitely is. Is it? It has motion controls. Oh yeah, true. The problem with that isn't the fact that...

It has motion control, so it's... The motion for the Wii U, or for the Switch, is a lot different than the motion was for the GameCube, so it's not as smooth and clear. Yeah, but... And also, you mean the Wii. Well, yeah, the motion for... You said the GameCube. Yeah, that's what I meant. The motion for the Wii was better because they had the dedicated motion sensor and everything that, like...

for the Switch, like, where it's just the IR thing, it's just, it's not as good, so I'm sure it is kind of a pain in the butt, but at the same time, the motion was just to grab the star shards. So, it's to grab them and to shoot them? Yeah, you don't need to shoot them, though. So, I mean, you don't, you don't 100% need to. There are certain things that you do actually have to shoot them for, though. Um...

Like, in the first world, they're... And look, this is not a deal-breaker. This is not a huge deal. I'm just pointing this out. The Piranha Plant boss you fight...

Much easier to fight when you can point and shoot him with the star bits so that you can get behind him. Because otherwise he is very quick to be on your tail. And he's one of those bosses where you have to hit him from behind. Also there is, in that same world, one of the, I already forget their names, the little star dudes. That you have to feed.

and you feed him by pointing your thing at him and hitting the button until you've fed him a hundred. Yeah. Like, I'm sure that just, it takes some of, like, getting used to, but you'll eventually be fine with it. Well, so, there's two things. If you're playing in handheld, it's not motion controls, you actually just tap the screen, which is both good and bad. Yeah. Because you can't tap the screen and also, like, jump, which is kind of a problem. Yeah. Um, but

But it's great for, like, other stuff because you don't actually have to, like, move your switch around to do stuff. But even in the menus, all the menus are fucking motion controls if you're playing on the TV. Is it? Yeah. So that's the biggest problem. Like, Galaxy is still fun, but, like, those motion controls, like, they weren't good in 2008. They're still not good. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, and so, like, I don't play with the Joy-Cons. They're too fucking tiny. I play with the Pro Controller. The Pro Controller, you still have to fucking move around for motion controls. Yeah. Which feels very bad. Because it's not like you can, like, if a

Honestly, if I just had a Wiimote and a nunchuck, it would feel way less bad. Because, like, the Wiimote was big. Like, it fit in your hand well. The Wiimote was made to point at the system, whereas the Pro Controller isn't. Exactly. And, like, even with, like...

They're Joy-Cons. It's, like, they're easy... They're smaller, so they're easier to point at the system. But you're... Like, they're not... The button placement on them... Well, no. The button placement's gonna basically be the same. But, like, they're just not gonna... It's not gonna feel as comfortable, I guess. I'm sure. Exactly. And it's just... Yeah, it's... It's not great. Like, the game is still fun, but the... The biggest problem with these games is they did nothing to them. Like...

that there is nothing done to these games at all so like just having options for controls that's all i'm saying let people go in and just say i don't want motion controls on at all like let me just turn them the fuck off yes but then like how like how are you gonna do things like you like you so you don't you don't need every button on the switch controller let me hit the fucking right or left bumper to bring up like the little star thing and use the um

the right analog stick to aim those while I'm running around as Mario. I mean, sure, but then you're losing the ability to, like, move the camera around and stuff and look around. But, like, the camera movement's... So, Sunshine has the best camera movement, as weird as that is. Galaxy and 64 are both very bad with that. Beautiful.

Galaxy, because of the way the game kind of rotates around you, you're very limited in when and how you can move it. That's right. The Wii didn't really... It only had one stick, and then it had the D-pad. Yeah, so the right analog stick is borderline useless a lot of the time.

So being able to use that to control the star bits, I'd be fine with that. Especially if it was like a, if they took like a little bit of liberty from like a, like a third person shooter, like where like, you know, one trigger fucking pulls the gun up, the other trigger fires it.

It's not that fucking hard. But they put no effort into this. People already found out. They're ROMs. It's just emulation. They didn't fucking do anything. They took ROMs that somebody else probably made again, because that's what they did with all their other releases, and just fucking put them on a cartridge for us. But yeah, I've probably played the most Sunshine 2, actually.

actually. The one thing I wish I could do, especially with Sunshine, is play using my GameCube controllers. Actually, yeah, that... I would probably buy the GameCube controller adapter to play Sunshine with a GameCube controller so that it felt a little more natural. The one thing that I love about the GameCube controller is that it had that, like, the cornered area for the D-stick. And there are a lot of space...

Or the control stick, yeah. Not just the C-stick. Both sticks had the cornered area. Oh, right, they were kind of like in that weird little middle, like those little nubs came off of it. It would kind of snap up or snap to the side. You could go a little less diagonally, but it snapped to a diagonal. It was, I guess, septagonal? That's six? I'm pretty sure it's got...

Yeah, it was up, down, left, right, and then the four diagonals. It was on eight. Yeah, so eight. Yeah. Yeah. But, like, that made that game so much easier because, like, it would snap to that angle, whereas, like, I don't have steady hands or steady fingers at that. Somehow I haven't cut my fingers off when cooking magically, but, like...

There are parts in Sunshine where you have to be very delicate with your placement of Mario and running, because you're running on sand and it's falling underneath you, that, like, if you're a little off to the side and, like, these controls are super sensitive to where just barely tapping it, he goes, like, six feet ahead of him. Like, having that little snap would make it so much easier. Yeah, like, the game controls better than Galaxy, right?

but, like, it really doesn't control great on the Switch, which is why I was saying, like, they didn't do anything to these games to make them play better on, like, with this hardware. Like, they might run fine, but they don't play right. Yeah. Like, it sucks that they, like, it is, they're just ports. They're like, here you go, you guys want these, here, have them, somebody else did it. No.

No, that's the problem. They're not ports. They're fucking ROMs. It's worse. That's what I mean. They're, like, somebody else made this ROM. This seems to work. Sure, here you go. And it's like, come on, guys. I spent 60 bucks on this. If the rumors are true that you're gonna give me Galaxy 2 for fucking DLC, fuck you guys. I, I, I, like...

I'm upset that I opened my copy to play this because I could have just kept it sitting up on a shelf and maybe eventually be able to sell it for a little bit more money. No, because I sent you the... There's going to be millions of copies of that. The 25th anniversary of that is worth less than it was when it was released.

Like, just because it's going to stop being sold in six months doesn't mean they're not going to print fucking four million copies of that. Or, probably more likely, like, 40 million copies. That said, I think sentimentality, if you just wanted to have it on your shelf, that's a different story. At this point, that's, like, I love playing Sunshine, that's all I've been playing recently. Like, I barely played even Avengers since I got this, but, like...

Once I'm done Sunshine, if I'm uncomfortable playing Galaxy, it's just... It's gonna go into its case and it's gonna be up on the shelf. Like, I don't really have much nostalgia for 64 that, like, I don't really... I don't really...

Not that I don't care, but I don't care. It also came out two other times. So, Mario 64 actually plays pretty well. It doesn't look good, like, by any imagination. And, like, its biggest problem is the camera.

But, like, that camera was also bad in 1996 because it's Lakitu, and he is filming you the whole time, so you literally can't move the camera all the way. That's the problem with at least that and Sunshine is the camera, like, it's not shown in Sunshine, but the camera is basically a...

set thing to where if you're trying to move it around a building, it doesn't just phase through the building. It locks right next to the building. You can't move it. Yeah. No, but so this isn't so much that it won't phase through the building. This is, you can literally only move the camera so far in either direction. Like it won't loop around you. So if, if you're trying to like angle something and you move the camera to the right and the camera can't quite go far enough, you then have to move the camera all the way back to the left to get it into that position. Yeah.

But, like, the game... Like, that game plays well because, really, that game plays fine 85% of the time if you just keep the camera behind Mario. Yeah. Yeah.

There's only a few times where you kind of need to move it around to get a different angle on things. But I played... I have enough stars in that to go do the first Bowser. But I was kind of just... I was playing through those levels on the first floor, kind of remembering them. As much as Galaxy is a good game, it aged so bad. And Sunshine, other than...

And again, like I wish there were control things you could do. My biggest problem with Sunshine is I can't get my brain to function for the controls. Like the left analog stick is not meant to aim and I just I can't fucking do it.

I mean, I don't... I have not ran into too many issues with that. Like, I've gotten used to it quickly. I get... As you can probably tell based on all I get... Like, I get used to control systems... Control schemes pretty easily. That, like... Like, when I... And I also don't use the heavy flow...

often, if at all. Like, it's just, it's not something that you really necessarily need. I have to use it all the time to aim. Yeah, but I've, there's, there's not a lot of, like, full-on gameplay instances where, like, you absolutely need it, but also, I even told you, you hold L, and he does a strafe, and a strafe is left. Yeah, but that strafe doesn't let you aim up and down with the right analog stick. No, but... You still use the left analog stick. That's what throws me off. I, I, I,

I got used to it almost immediately. I have not. My brain does not want to use the left analog stick to aim. I'm making my way around the game. It's not making it so I can't complete stuff, but everything takes me a few extra tries because my brain just does not want to fucking aim with that side of my body at all.

Maybe you need to fix your brain. Ah, probably. Or get a good brain. Or maybe they could have just given fucking options. Any options at all. Like, games are so... Like, so many publishers are great about accessibility. This game has zero accessibility for anybody who can't just play it exactly as it was released. Yeah. And, like, that sucks. But yeah, I...

I use the R1 thing all the fucking time, especially on bosses and stuff like that. How do you hit them? Do you just use the strafe thing? I use the strafe because if you use the heavy flow, the R, and

and not ZR, he can't move. You just aim left and right and side to side. Or, like, if you use the strafe button, which I believe is L, or maybe ZL, I can't remember. I think it's ZL. You can aim up and then move side to side, so this way you can avoid and dodge enemies. Like, once you get that aim and you're holding on to the strafe button, you don't have to, like,

aim anymore. You just strafe side to side. Oh, see, I... Get used to that, and it'll make the game so much easier, and you won't be like... I've tried using that. I don't like that.

Like, that actually... Like, I end up getting more damage when I'm doing that because I'm moving too much. But also, like you said before, you have a ton of nostalgia for Mario Sunshine. You've played it multiple times. Yeah. I barely played any of it. I didn't like it in 2002. It was not fun. Like, I don't... I actually have zero nostalgia for Sunshine compared to Mario 64 or Galaxy. Oh.

So this is basically my first time playing Sunshine. So, like, for me, it's like, yeah, this doesn't make sense. Like, I'm not used to playing a game this way. Yeah. I mean, it's like...

I don't know. I agree that the controls didn't age well, but I just... Well, but like I said, like, the Sunshine controls are probably the best in the game. Yeah. Like, Mario 64 doesn't really have controls, but, like, between the two more modern ones that actually have, like, some new systems to it... Yeah. Like, Sunshine actually probably controls the best. Like, other than those secret, like, um, the secret courses where you don't have Flood, um...

Those things are fucking bullshit. Um... Well, that's... That's where I'm talking about having the GameCube controller where it has, like, the, like...

Yeah, no, that would make things so much better. Right? Like, there was one I did... A few tips that you need to know about those levels. Number one, there is always at least two or three 1-ups throughout the level. One of them is hidden. Yeah, no, I know that. So if you can always find the hidden 1-up, because it's usually near the beginning, no matter how many times you die, you're not losing lives. So...

I should point out to you, I watched a full playthrough of Mario Sunshine where they collected every single shine.

Why? Because it was fucking hilarious. Oh, boy. They made a gambling game out of it. Drew, you watched Deal My Sunshine, right? Oh, yeah, I watched all of that. Yeah, so they literally made a game out of it where they had a gumball machine filled with yellow gumballs, and every time somebody got a shine, they got a gumball. And it was like, there was like a blue and a red gumball, too, and if you got that, like, bad shit happened.

But it was basically like you played until you died like until you got a game over or until you got a shine. And if you got a shine you passed it to the next person. It kind of just went round robin. But the stipulation was they had to get all of the shines in the game and

And they did. So, like, I've actually seen... So that's the reason I'm making it through the levels a little quicker without, like, stumbling too much other than, like, with the controls is I've actually seen every level. So, like, I'm recognizing things. I just don't have the experience doing them. So it's one of those... It's like when I fought Petey Piranha the second time, I just had trouble because of the controls, like, kind of getting him...

set up correctly for it but like once I got a pattern for it it was a little bit easier yeah I just every time that just complete muscle memory I hit the r1 button and then I hit the fucking right analog stick because I fucking want to aim with that yeah every time yeah um anything else you want to say about those games though no I'm happy with my purchase I'm not upset with my purchase yeah I just wish they I wish they would have done better that's all

Do better, Nintendo. Be better. So, Michel Ancel, leaving video games. I'm gonna be honest, no idea who that is. He is the guy responsible for Beyond Good and Evil. Okay. And specifically Beyond Good and Evil 2. He's also, I believe, the creator of Rayman. Correct. And then he was also...

Was also one of the people working on that game, Wild, that was revealed in, let's say, 2014? And has not been seen since? He was the, like, creative director for that. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I don't think that was... That wasn't a Ubisoft game, right? That was his own studio? I believe so. Like, I'm pretty sure that game was, like, titled Michel Ancel's Wild or something. It may have been. But yeah, so he made a lot of games...

that people have very fond memories for. And the two games that he has been working on for years have basically been in development hell. Like, I think we've seen Beyond Good and Evil twice in, what, four years? Yeah. He came out on stage at E3 the year they revealed it.

I think that was it. He is leaving video games. He's going to go run a wildlife refuge, which is actually pretty fucking cool. That's cool. Apparently, he has not been involved in the wild or beyond Good and Evil 2 in months.

Yeah, I was gonna say when you said he was in development with Beyond Good and Evil 2 and Rayman, that explains why I have no idea who he is, because I was not a big Rayman fan, and Beyond Good and Evil 2 we obviously haven't gotten, because I liked the first one. So he made the first one. Okay, yeah, I played that on the GameCube forever ago, so...

I'm sorry if I did not make that clear, but yeah, he actually, he was the guy behind the original Beyond Good and Evil, and is in charge of this Beyond Good and Evil. Yeah. Or the sequel, I should say, but not anymore. Those teams are just working on those games without him. There'll be new creative directors in place and all that fun stuff. Yeah.

I wonder if that's good for these games or bad because they have just been... They're the definition of games announced way too soon. Do you think we see more of these and they actually come out this decade? Wild, I don't know. Wild was revealed year one of the PS4. That game is not going to look good if it comes out now.

Yeah. Let alone if it comes out on the next-gen consoles. It's going to look like a remaster of an early PS4 game. Yeah. And Beyond Good and Evil, who fucking knows? I honestly don't think that game will ever come out. No, it's in Purgatory, like Half-Life 3. Yeah. I mean, I'd say it has a better chance than Wild, but that's not saying a whole lot. And Half-Life 3 has a better chance than both of them. Yeah.

Yeah. You know what? Beyond Good and Evil 2 at least had a trailer. There was that monkey and the pig, I think. There was definitely a pig. I think there was a monkey, too. I'm pretty sure there was like an intelligent doctor space monkey.

I don't remember a monkey. It was like two years ago at this point. Who fucking knows? Yeah. Um, but yeah, so I mean, that's, that is wild. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Rich, you mentioned earlier there was an Avengers update. Yes. Uh, it is their largest update yet. Uh, uh,

addressed over a thousand issues. Oh, I did see a tweet about this. I forgot about that. It's version 1.3.0. One of their biggest fixes they did was they made a universal time for dailies and weeklies. So it's like all dailies, both faction-based and player-based, are now resetting at midnight, or at...

1 o'clock Eastern Time and no longer midnight or 1 o'clock. And obviously, I'm joking with saying that's the biggest fix. They've fixed a boatload, they've fixed matchmaking, they added, I believe they added a game mode, kind of?

Um, so, I, I, I made it to the end of the Scientist Supreme storyline, which is like the quest you do at the end of the game, uh, and the final objective you have to do, uh, is called, um, a Hero Something. I can't remember exactly what it is, but it's single player only, and it's basically a round robin, you go in with a, with

with a player. Once that player dies, the next player jumps in. And you only do it one hero at a time, and you have to make it through, like, however many floors with just that one hero. Or, once that player dies, the next hero comes in, and you have to continue going on. Um, so they added, like, an epic version, which is, like, a harder version of that game mode, uh, that I haven't gotten into yet, because...

I didn't know that the final mission I was going to have to do was a single-player only mission, so I only powered up Hulk. So now I have to go back and power up all the rest of my heroes. But yeah, I just wanted to throw it out there that they released their biggest patch update yet.

And the game's been out for... Less than a month. Uh... Yeah, that's crazy. A thousand issues were fixed. Yeah, that's... According to Square Enix site... Like, addressed over a thousand issues. That, like... They've been very active. Like, Square Enix has been very active on the Reddit. Like...

letting people know, like, this is in the works, that's in the works, we hear you, we see that there's this issue, we're working on it, uh, this might be fixed at this point, but this is, we're definitely gonna have it fixed on the main big patch that comes out on the, I believe it was, like, the 18th or whatever. And, like, I have the patch notes open, they even went as far as to, like, there's, uh, fixes for each system had their own specific bugs, PC, Stadia, Xbox, and PlayStation. Um...

They also gave a list of workarounds for bugs they haven't been able to fix yet. Oh, that's actually kind of cool of them. Yeah, so, like, for instance, um... Well, it says known issues and workarounds, so, like, they let you know, like, look, we know that this is an issue, we're working on it, we'll keep you updated. But I think they might have, like, workarounds on, like, here's how you get around this if you're seeing this issue, uh...

So, like, mission chains not completing, work around, try advancing any other mission chain by a single step. This will trigger an autocomplete of the incomplete mission chains, and rewards will be issued. So, like, they let you know, like, look, we're working on this, here's how you go about it first, but we know that there's these problems. So, like, they're staying very active in the community, which, like, gives...

Everyone hope that, like, they're gonna continue to keep pushing good stuff through this game. Because they're like, we know there's bugs. It's the first game of this type we've made. We're working on it. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. Have you still... I know you said you've been playing a lot of Mario. Have you still been playing a lot of the Avengers? Yeah.

Um, I, the last time I played it was probably Friday or Saturday night. Um, at the moment, because I played so much of it and it was all single player, I'm kind of really only interested in playing with like friends and other people because now I'm at the grind of having to level up all my characters so I can finish that final mission and completing the final quest chain gets me, um, uh, the Darkhold, the book from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Oh, okay. Yeah. So it gets me that as like an epic item.

So, like, I do, like, plan to play more of it, but I'm not, like, as strict about it right now because I'm more interested in playing Sunshine or just, in general, other things. But, like, that's on the back burner of, like, alright, I'll play it for a couple of hours today and probably, like, once or twice a week. There

They are planning on releasing a raid soon, so I'll probably get more into it when the raid comes out. So you won't hear too much about the game until then, or at least until Spider-Man and Hawkeye are released. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I watched, actually, a really long, like, play of it, where, like, they were doing a bunch of different stuff. Like, they were doing some single-player, some multiplayer, like, missions and stuff like that. And...

I'm actually probably going to hold off on this game longer than I intended. Yeah. Like, I might... Honestly, if Xbox somehow ends up putting it on Game Pass, I'd probably subscribe to Game Pass and give it a shot. But I might just wait until it's one of those crazy PSN sales, like the $10

$10 under sales. Because a lot of what I was saying, I'm just like, yeah, this... As much as I'm interested in the story, the rest of the game just doesn't look like it's for me. Yeah. That's a bummer. Because it was one of those games where it's like, I would like to play this, and like, you know, $30 was kind of like that price point where I'm like, yeah, I could get into this for $30. But...

I don't know that that's the case. I mean, I guess I said this already before, so I'm not going to push it too much more, but I played the entire game solo, and I have a good team set up to where with every character being a higher decent enough level to where I almost...

rarely die when I'm playing solo by myself because of the abilities that I have unlocked and how I have my character's spec. Like I said, this had nothing to do with multiplayer. Like, this stream, they were doing all sorts of stuff. There was some single player, some multiplayer, like, they were kind of all over the place giving, like, a pretty good, like, sense of the game. And, like, the gameplay is what I was just kind of like, eh, yeah, no, I'm good. Well, it's, yeah, the end game gameplay loop of go in, do this mission, get done, go in, do this mission, it's...

I know that's not your type of game, which is why I'm like, alright. Yeah. Like, everything else, like, like I said, I feel like if you gave it, like, the college try, you'd probably enjoy it, but I'm not gonna push it anymore, because I know the endgame stuff isn't your cup of tea, and that's what they're gonna be promoting more from here on out. Yeah, and I mean, this was, like, they were actually even doing some of, like, I saw a couple of the story missions, and, like, even those, it's like, yeah, like, it's still just...

I don't know. Something about it just... It doesn't click for me. There's just something about it that is like... Yeah, I want to know what the story is, but I don't want to actually play the game. It's one of those... I would probably read the Wikipedia on it in a month when the story is filled out on there and just kind of see what it's about. I'm sure there's a full Let's Play or Watch right now. Yeah, no, because that's the problem. The game... Nothing about it was like...

interesting me. I don't want to actually watch it. I just want to read what the story is. Somebody probably put a cut of just all the cut scenes. That's true. I was actually kind of surprised to hear that people were really enjoying the story in that game. That seems to be what's putting a lot of people through. A lot of people are just meh at most on the gameplay. They're like, the story's really good and I want to see what happens. The story is really good.

And people are super happy with Kamala. Yeah, that's good. Like, she is getting the most praise out of any part of that game. Yeah, Kamala's friggin' awesome. Anyway, a little bit more Microsoft fuckin' Marvel stuff. Insomniac revealed that the PS5 Spider-Man remaster that's coming, only digital. There's

There's not going to be any physical release of it. And there's not going to be any save transfers. So if you already have Spider-Man and you want that version of it, because it's going to look nicer, potentially play better, you're not going to be able to do New Game Plus or anything. You're just going to have to play the whole game

over again, which is kind of a bummer. Yeah, that is weird. Especially because a version of this comes with the more expensive Miles game. So it's like, if you buy that version hoping to do New Game Plus or something like that of the base game, just to have all your shit unlocked, have the suits, have the upgrades, and just

see how the game performs on the more powerful hardware like you can't like you just have to like the game's good so i mean like playing it through again it's not a bad thing but that's your only option you have to but i mean like was there save transfers for like uh last of us and last of us remastered like no but those came out like a year apart last remastered didn't launch on the ps4 spider-man came out like two years ago three years ago

Spider-Man didn't come out within the past year. It's been out for a while. I don't blame them for not having save transfers. The game's been out for a long time. We're not blaming them. It's just a bummer. It would be a nice thing for them to have. But it doesn't matter how long ago Spider-Man came out. I'm saying this game is launching with the PS5. It would be cool if the saves could transfer up because they're

selling a version of this game that is digital only and everything like it just with the way the sony especially has been talking about the ps5 and with the kind of stuff going on with especially early in this generation with like cross-generation games it just surprises that you're saved

doesn't pull over. I mean, sure. Like, to me, it would surprise me if it did crossover. Like, the game... How long it's been, this game is not a cross-generational game, which is why, like, I'm not, like... But it is. But...

The original Spider-Man that came out on PS4 came out, like I said, like two years ago. Yeah, but they're releasing it on PS5, which means it is cross-gen. It is on two different generations of hardware. It's like how Resident Evil 4 is... I don't know the number for that. All-gen? Infinite?

Resident Evil 4 is infinite gen. Yeah, but like, right now, when I hear cross-gen, I hear like Avengers or Madden or the games where if you buy them now, you still get to play them on your next system. So, I mean, that's true for all the PS4 games, though. Like,

your PS4 games are backwards compatible. Like, is there a version... So, and I honestly don't know this. This is a real question. Is there a PS5 version of Avengers coming? Or is it just backwards compatible? No, I'm pretty sure there's a PS5. There's a PS5 version, but if you own the PS4 version, you...

Like, you can play it, like, it transfers up or whatever. Like, everything, like, you're saving everything moves from PS4 to PS5. So you're thinking of cross-gen as, um... As... It's being released within the cross-generational time frame of a few months. Like, this game came out two months, three months before the new system came out. So they're making it so that it can be played on both systems. Right.

That's not what cross-gen means, though. There's another term for that. Cross-gen is any game that's literally released in two different generations. It goes across multiple generations. Then Skyrim is cross-gen. It is. You're right. And your Skyrim saves never transferred over.

Sure, but the generational split between the PS3 360 and PS4 Xbox One are different. And actually, I kind of want to say your 360 saves can transfer over. They can. To playing it on the Xbox One. You know what? I don't want to say I'm positive. I'm pretty sure they can. Microsoft has historically been much better with that stuff. Because even with backwards compatibility, you can...

you could import your saves over without anything extra. Like, I don't know if you guys remember, but if you... Because they got rid of memory cards, you actually had to buy a $20 adapter...

If you wanted to bring your saves from PS2 to PS3 when the PS3 played PS2 games? Yeah. Yeah. Eric has one of those. Oh, does he really? Yeah. I remember I bought one at... Actually, you know what? I worked at GameStop at the time, so I didn't even buy it. We got a used one in. So I took it home for the night, did the thing, and then brought it back the next day. Eric got it because Papa was working at GameStop, and they pennied it out, so he gave it to him. Nice. Yeah.

That's even better. Or he borrowed it and just never brought it back or something. I don't know. I mean, Papa was fucking over that place in Westmont very quick, so either one of those is possible. But I didn't get a PS3 until I was working at GameStop, so I know I picked that thing up while I was working there. But yeah, like I said, it's not like this ruined Spider-Man. It's just a bummer that they're trying to make...

trying to sort of blur the lines between PS4 and PS5 and Xbox and Xbox One and Xbox Series X also. Like, they're trying to make it this sort of weird seamless transition. So it's just a bummer that, like, a major first-party studio just doesn't have an option for it more than anything. It's not like, like I said, I'm not mad at Insomniac. I'm not going to boycott Spider-Man because of it. It's just, it's a bummer. People are bummed about it.

Yeah, I mean, me and you have different mindsets. I wouldn't pay $20 on a game that I already own and don't have to play. So, like, if I paid $20 to get the HD version, I don't want to be playing off of my original save that I already beat the game. I'd rather just, like, you know, play the game again. Yeah, but, so it's New Game Plus is more what people are bummed about. Like, they can't go into New Game Plus and...

Because I think hard mode only unlocks with New Game Plus, doesn't it? I don't remember. I played through it once, and I kind of played through it, like, binge played through it because it was so good. It was very good. Yeah. But yeah, like, honestly, like, if I was going to play that on PS5, like, I'd want to just start with New Game Plus and kind of just have fun with it. But, like, I also, I just simply wouldn't buy it again because it's playable on that console already. Yeah. Like, like,

Yeah. Like, I don't mind purchasing a game multiple times if it's, like, like the Mario games or whatever. Like, I've bought them way too many times. There's a few Final Fantasy games that I've bought multiple times because they're not easily playable otherwise. Yeah. But, like, I own Spider-Man digitally. Like, I should be able to just download it to a PS5 and play it, like, natively.

Yeah. It's not going to have all the puddles. Like, I'm sure the remaster is going to have all the fucking puddles. You need all the puddles. We got to keep an eye on the puddles in Miles. Yeah, the puddles. And people really like Miles' hairline. Sure. It's a very specific thing to be oddly enjoying. So...

He has... I don't know if you guys have seen the close-up, but in the one scene in the beginning of the trailer where he's not in costume, people have zoomed in on his head. His hair looks really fucking good. I honestly don't know a nicer way to... I don't know if there's a more political correct way to say this. He has black hair. It looks like that, whereas normally in games, any hair looks bad in most games, let alone black hair. Yeah. Um...

And, like, his looks really good. And, like, I know there's, like, a term for it, but, like, the way that it's cut, like, also looks very authentic. Like, he has a very good hairline. And people are both excited and jealous on the internet. But, uh...

Drew, I know you didn't see it, but Rich, did you watch the WandaVision trailer? No, I didn't realize that it was out. Like, what I saw was, like, I had seen somebody share it or something, and I was like, oh, that's just the Disney Plus trailer, so I didn't even pay attention to it. Yeah, so I only watched it without sound, so... But, um...

The big thing coming out of this, there's a very deliberate shot of a bottle of wine. It's a French bottle. And the label, however you pronounce these words in French, means House of. And I don't know whether it's the brand or what, but the big word on the label starts with the letter M. So it basically says House of M. Okay. Which is 100% not a coincidence. There's no way they would deliberately show this bottle that translates to that by accident.

Yeah.

So just quickly, because I'm sure you guys don't know, House of M, Scarlet Witch lost her fucking mind prior to that. Yeah. Like, her children died, or she found out that her children never existed. I forget exactly how that happened. But, like, it broke her. Between people treating her like shit and that, and Vision dying, and all this stuff, like, she fucking lost it. And she eventually created, like, an alternate universe that...

flipped the roles mutants were basically the ones in charge while humans were treated like garbage yeah and there's only a handful of non mutants that weren't treated like garbage but they were like it was like Carol Danvers and Spider-Man like people that have historically had like relationships with mutants yeah and it ends with Wanda basically like losing it even more Scarlet Witch and

And that's where the infamous No More Mutants comes from, where she instantaneously depowers, like, 99% of the mutants on Earth. Okay. Like, they go from having... There are millions of mutants on Earth, down to a couple hundred after she says that. That could be a way to actually bring the mutants into...

the MCU though. Yeah, it would be, it would be cool, but at the same time, like using her to just power all the mutants or whatever, making her technically the first mutant, you lose the storylines of like apocalypse where he was the first mutant and shit like that. Which granted, they're probably not going to go with apocalypse for quite a long time. Yeah. I mean that, it didn't go well last time, but so two things here, this would not make her a mutant at all.

It doesn't have to. She's not a mutant in the comic books anymore. They retconned that. Yeah. Her and Quicksilver are not Magneto's children and they're not mutants. So, um, but, so the MCU has never really dug into what her powers really are. Um, true. But if they're even remotely like what she can do in the comics, the reality warping. Well,

So in the MCU, like she's super powerful. They've shown that she like...

Frankly, like, if Thanos didn't have the Infinity Gauntlet when she went up against him, she would have lost. Or he would have lost. Absolutely. The only thing that saved him was literally having a weapon of unlimited power. Yeah, because that was when he grabbed the Power Stone off the gauntlet and just punched her or something like that. No, that was Captain Marvel. Okay. Um...

Captain Marvel also could potentially beat Thanos without the gauntlet. She was close to it. Had he not grabbed the Power Stone and punched her, she was winning. But depending on... Who knows what they're going to do when the show finally comes out, but they could use that as like...

her powers warp reality, um, and alter the course of human history to basically plant the mutant seed. Um, cause like when, so when she reverts everything to the regular world, um, there are things that change. Like, Hawkeye is dead prior to House of M. Yeah. Um, actually the Scarlet, if I remember correctly, Scarlet Witch is responsible for Hawkeye dying. Um,

I think she mind-controlled somebody that then killed him. But when she undoes it, Hawkeye is no longer dead. Yeah. That's actually... That's the whole storyline where Hawkeye became Ronan for a while. And nobody knew Hawkeye was Ronan. So, like, her powers could technically change reality and make it, like you said, like, plant this seed where, like, maybe mutants just aren't discovered until modern day. But you have...

creatures like Apocalypse dating back to, like, you know, ancient Egypt that had these powers that people just thought were part of their, you know, part of the mystique around that culture. Like, kind of like, um, 300 with, um,

the Persian dude whose name I can't... Xerxes? Yeah. Where, like, people thought he was a god, but really that was just a facade he put on, and as soon as he got cut, everyone was like, oh, this guy is just fucking human. Yeah. So, yeah, like...

I don't know. Like, it could just be like a neat little nod to the comics, but this could also be the way that they start expanding the MCU with the Fox properties. Yeah, that'll be pretty sweet. We'll have to wait and see. I'm assuming that's coming out soon because they... I think so. I know the other stuff's not coming till next year, but they didn't have a date for it. It just said coming soon. Yeah.

Speaking of things getting pushed, Black Widow and a bunch of other stuff has been deleted again. I'm not surprised. I saw... I don't have the article open yet because I'm a fucking idiot. Black Widow has been pushed to 2021. So...

Let's see, Black Widow had set to hit the big screen on November 6th. It will now open May 7th. Okay. With Shang-Chi, The Legend of the Ten Rings being pushed to... From May 7th? Oh, so... I'm sorry, Shang-Chi hasn't even gotten a new date yet. It's just been pushed. Because May 7th was its date. And also, Marvel's Eternals will get a new date. Yeah. West Side Story also got delayed. And the...

Pixar movie that was supposed to come out this year, apparently. It's still going to come out this year. Same thing with Death on the Nile, which is the follow-up to Murder on the Orient Express. Mm-hmm.

That is also still going to come out this year. Interesting. Yeah, so it's... Movies are going to be weird. They definitely will be. I am not surprised that Black Widow was pushed back. I know they don't want to just put it out on, like, pay-per-view because of a lot of the backlash they got from, uh...

I mean, Mulan was an issue because they put it on a service. So they did fix that by not requiring you to have a Disney Plus subscription, but they put it on a subscription service for an extra price. And it was also more expensive than all of those rentals have been. Yeah.

Yes, but you also, as long as you have your Disney Plus subscription, you have access to that movie from the, it's not just like a one or two day rental, it was a rental through and through. Like, you always had access to that as long as you had your Disney Plus subscription. Yeah, no, I know that, but... But at some point it was gonna just be on Disney Plus anyway. Yeah.

Yeah, but... They announced it was going to be released just digitally for rental for the regular $20 in December. Well, it's going to be free on Disney Plus in December. Okay, maybe it's going to be $5 elsewhere then. But, like, they got a lot of backlash from that, so I'm sure they're like, alright, not going to do Black Widow on that way, plus Black Widow is a higher budget film than Mulan. Yeah, apparently Mulan was awful too. Uh, it

it's not a musical. There's no new shoe. Um, they completely bypassed the part where she cuts off her hair, which is kind of an important part, I think. Um, and did you watch it? I,

I didn't watch it. This is things that I've read. And the actress absolutely fucking sucks. So, and she doesn't suck as an actress. She might, I don't know. She sucks as a human being. Yeah, no, I've seen that stuff too. But yeah, like, apparently, like, beyond, like, them taking all, like, the iconic stuff out, it's apparently just a bad movie. Yeah. Like, I've seen, I saw a lot of people the week that it released going, like, hey, don't spend $30 on this. It's very bad. Yeah.

People are just like, I have never actually regretted purchasing a movie before. I regret this. I thought about it, but then when I heard it's getting bad press or bad reviews and that the actress sucks, I'm like, I don't want any of my money to go to her, so I'll just wait until December or January to watch it.

Yeah. Also, I just realized we are running very long. Yeah. Um, so I'm just going to run through these last few news stories real quick. Um, Supergirl is going to end next season with season six. Yeah. It's, uh, it's a bummer, but it's going to be a longer season. No, it's only 20 episodes.

They said it... They called it a longer season. So, like, I read online that, like, it's gonna run... It's gonna be a longer season. But I also read it's only gonna be 20 episodes. So I don't know why they said that. Yeah, it's usually 22 episodes. So that's... That's... Wherever you read that is not correct. But

But it's going to air in March-ish, if I remember correctly. So I know it's not launching with everything else. It's launching, like, mid-season. It is. It's launching before everything else because it is already filming and I think might be close to finish? No, they said they're going to start filming soon. They're going to be the first of the hero shows to start filming, obviously.

And so, like, they're going to be airing sooner, and it's probably going to end sooner? I know. I mean, it looks like it is just going to air in January. Yeah. I think they're all airing in January now. But if you remember, last year, like, well, the end of last season stuff, they said that Supergirl was going to debut a little bit later. Like, it was supposed to debut in, like, March instead of January. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. So I guess they changed that because they decided that it was going to be the last season. Do you think this is a bad look for them now that they have a Superman series to be canceling Supergirl? No. I've seen a few people throw that out on Twitter at people. I...

I don't think so. Supergirl's ratings have been dropping, and... It never had great ratings, either. Yeah. And the last season, like, the season that happened during the pandemic, it was good, but I could tell that it was kind of falling apart. That, like, I'm not surprised that they were cancelling, or that they're ending it sooner. Luckily, they're actually getting a final season, and not just being cancelled. Yeah.

Yeah, that is true. Because I know that was, like, one of those shows that people weren't sure would be coming back. Yeah. And, like, also, it's a CW. She'll be in other episodes and shows and things like that. Unless they kill her. Unless they kill her like they did Arrow. I don't think they're going to do that. Also, I mean, at least... So, for the rest of that season, the only person from Arrow we saw was Jon on that one episode of The Flash. Yeah. So, who knows? Yeah.

Um, but yeah, so that's happening. Um, DC universe is done as of January. Um, it is being, it is being rebranded as DC universe infinite. It's strictly going to be a comic book platform. Yeah. Um, kind of like Marvel and limited, uh,

All of their original content, so Titans, Harley Quinn, Doom Patrol, Young Justice, they're all going to HBO Max. Harley Quinn and Doom Patrol are both already renewed for new seasons. I'm not sure about Titans and Young Justice, but I believe they are. Or at least they already have seasons in the works that haven't aired yet. So that's not surprising at all. But at least we now have confirmation that these shows should all be on HBO by January.

Which is nice. Like, I'm surprised it took them this long to just finally cancel it and rebrand it. They let people purchase your subscriptions. Yeah. So they kind of have to, you know, they have to work with that a little bit. They can't just end it and then refund people. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know if you guys will care about this at all. There's a Batman tabletop RPG coming out called Gotham City Chronicles. I mean, it depends, but I'm not super particularly interested. So it's being published by Monolith, which is a French company. It's their first foray, which I spelled that word totally wrong. I wrote rotary, into tabletop RPGs. And so...

They've done other board games. I think they actually did a board game version of Gotham City Chronicles. I think that Batman board game that I've seen at PAX Unplugged is theirs. And they're kind of using that template to make a tabletop RPG. The little blurb from CBR about this was Gotham City Chronicles is its first foray into boardless gaming. According to the product announcement on Facebook, plans include five books...

A core system rule book called Gotham's Heroes. The Gotham City Guide, a mighty reference to detail the world of the bat. A book of scenarios called Gotham's Chronicles and two campaign setting books that aren't named yet. And I guess all of these will be available through a Kickstarter campaign that they're going to be launching soon. Yeah.

Yeah, it's neat. I'm wondering if they're going with a D20 system or a different die system. They are. I was about to say that because I forgot to put it in here. The articles that they're using D20, I don't know what that means. I assume it just means that they're using a 20-sided die as part of their rules. Yeah, so there's a bunch of different die systems. D&D uses D20s.

What is... There was an RPG show I was watching that's, like, based on zombies. I can't remember the game that they were using on that, but that uses a D6 system, which is kind of a pain in the ass and kind of weird. So it's like, yeah, there's different kinds of die systems. Yeah, I'd say the other, like, kind of... I don't know what it's called, but the other kind of big main system that's out there right now is, like, you use two D6s

and you'll have a stat modifier that'll get plus one or minus one. Depending on what your roll on the 2d6s is, if it's between one and five, you get a bad result. If it's between six and nine, you get an average result. If you get between 10 and 12, you get...

a great result. Yeah, and sometimes they have, uh, like, exploding die, where, like, if you roll a six, you roll that d6 again, and you add that to it. Yeah. It

It's just... And then there's even systems where... And I think... I thought this was kind of cool. It's an evolving die where, like, you start based on whatever your character stat is. Say it's at the lowest, you use a d4. If you roll a 4, then you get to use a d6. If you roll a 6, then you get to go to an 8, and so on and so forth. Interesting. But also, in the, like... I want to say it's called the Fates system with the 2d6s. Like, even if you roll a 2, you might still...

complete the thing you wanted to do, but it then also has a negative side effect beyond completing the task you were trying to complete.

Like, it's not just a straight, oh, no, you fucked up and everything went bad. Those systems are, like, super narrative-based, where, like, the DM determines what happens based on your dice roll and not determines what happens based on a difficulty check and your dice roll. So, like, that's the system they used on all those Giant Bomb holiday podcasts on the BeastCast. Oh, okay. The, uh...

Austin uses them a lot on Friends at the Table, his actual play podcast. Right, yeah. Okay, well. So yeah, it could be something like that, which for a Batman game might actually be more interesting. Yeah, so... Like, the thing with Batman, like the heroes in Batman is they don't really have...

powers. So... I believe what I read about this elsewhere, you're not going to play as Batman, obviously. I guess that there is a scenario where you can play as villains, or a scenario where you can play as other vigilantes. So, there's potential for powers, but... Yeah, I don't know. I mean...

You guys would understand that stuff way better than I would. I just thought it was kind of interesting that this is apparently the first, like, official Batman tabletop RPG. I'm sure there are, like, homebrew, like, non-official ones all over the place. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, anyway, the last thing on here, cause I see Richie crossed out supernatural. Um, I watched the sequel to the babysitter, um, which is called the babysitter killer queen. Um, so last week I talked about the first one this week. I watched the second one. It just came out earlier this month. Um, it was fun. It was actually that they did a good job making a sequel to a movie that like, didn't really need a sequel. Like it ended fine. Like it could have ended there and been cool. Um,

I didn't expect a lot of it to go the way it went. I didn't expect the villains that were the villains or any of that stuff. And it kept up that same sort of over-the-top sort of comedy ridiculousness that it had in the first one. With also, like, you know, it's super gory and bloody, like the Evil Dead stuff, or especially like Ash vs. the Evil Dead, if you guys saw any of that, where, like,

Somebody gets, like, an arm cut off and it just fucking sprays blood everywhere. Yeah. And it kind of went a little more, like, supernatural in this one than it did in the first one, which was neat. Like, it pulled in some different genres for it. And, like, the cast is just super funny. Just, yeah. I don't want to spoil anything because it is a brand new, well, not a brand new movie, but it's only a couple weeks old. Yeah. That's fine. We've also gone for three hours. You don't need to talk too much about it. Yeah.

Yeah, no, no, I'm trying to sort of wrap up quickly, too. So, yeah, if you guys have, like, time and you want to watch movies, like, check these out. Like, there's nothing serious about them, so you can kind of, like, you know, fade in and out of them and still get what's going on. And they're just, they're super entertaining. Yeah, nice. And, like, they know what they are. They're not trying to be anything special, I guess is the best way to put it.

it. Yeah. And it definitely ends in such a way where there could be more. Like, there's no reason they couldn't make another sequel and still have it be good. But if they don't make another one, that's fine. Like, it wasn't left on, like, a weird cliffhanger or anything. Nice. Cool. But yeah, so I guess that is probably gonna do it.

That better do it. No, that doesn't. Even if I had something to talk about, I'm not fucking talking about it. Man, don't... Fuck you. Rex, do you have anything else you want to talk about real quick? No. You sure? Man, I told you to do that before we recorded. Let's end this. No, I'm going to keep going now. Fuck you guys. I mean, you can keep talking all you want. Sorry, I lost track of thought. I was actually getting ready to start the whole outro bit.

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