State of Gaming - What's happened lately?

00:00:00Let's say hello and welcome to State of Gaming. It has been a while, but we are back. So we could, should, mayhaps will, have... What do they say in politics when they go out and just apologize by not apologizing? A non-apology? We've been busy. And it's been a while. A long while, some would say. But we'll just say it's been a while. But we're back now. Stronger than ever? Question mark. But... You know, we had a streak. One could say, we might say, we had a streak and we broke it so that we could build a new streak. Yeah, we wanted to start all over again with a new streak. For you out there. And if you bought into all that, I'm happy. Yeah. But yes, for those of you who haven't been here for a while, this is our, well, not in this instance, but our monthly recap.

00:00:57what's been happening in the gaming space. But now, seeing as it's been more than a month, we will call this a state of gaming. What's happening lately? Or what's going on? Or how's it hanging? All those. And we have a list, as always, and it has a mixed bag, one could say. But before we get started with all that, we have to try, once again, to stick with the program. No. No. I love that you said it. Before we even said it. But yes. You both looked so disappointed. I had eyes on the target, but no. So, okay. It's a cool looking can. Yeah. It's a little devil face. And it's a black can with green text. It says Zoomology? Or is it Zoomology? Or Zoomology, maybe. You're right. It says Zoomology. And what is that? I guess it's because hops is called Zumo. I'm not sure I'm feeling this one. What would you call it? Hopsology. Hopsology. Mosaic. Because it's also mosaic in this one. True. But this is from one of my favorite breweries. Yeah, it looks delicious. It's from that brewery. So how many?

00:02:25Zooms out of five. I mean, this is really good. So are we thinking 4.3? 4.1 maybe. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. No, true. It's not delicious. Let's just say that. We're all about the balance. Balance and force. Yes, you could say that. Anyway, I myself, non-alcoholic generation today. Oh, wow. No, actually, I'm having sort of a slight cold and stuff. So I thought it would be reasonable. Then you should have had whiskey in your jar. Don't you worry. I'm going to get my alcoholic streak back on sooner rather than later. Oh, another streak broken. Yes. Once again, we did it for you. So that leaves Oscar. Are you having a delicious brew today? I have something that I would say. Choco or Coco, depending on how you see it, plus menu. Coco plus. Coco plus. Coco puffs. Coco puffs, yeah, that's a thing. But Coco plus could be a character in a Japanese game. So basically, it's a chocolate brew with some sting. And we love that sting, don't we? Yes, we do. So there we have it. We are kind of back in every capacity except for me. But I'll be back.

00:03:53don't you worry so we have a partitioning in the list we have some games well we have quite a few games actually and then we have some rumors and it's all delicious but i think we should start with the games because you know this is a gaming podcast and all that so what has been going on lately and when i say lately i mean the last couple of months we could probably go further back than that but we choose not to because no what's in the past is in the past and all that but i'm just Go through them real quick and then we'll skip back and talk a little bit more about them as we please. So we have Silent Hill 2, Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred, which is the first big DLC for that game. Metaphor Re-Fantasio with a Z. And that's the Atlas non-persona Persona game. We'll get back to that. We also have Call of Duty Black Ops 6. First time on Game Pass-ish. And Sonic's...

00:04:50Sonics. The Sonics. Back it up, y'all. Back it up. So we have Sonic X Shadow Generations. Very confusing title, but maybe we can pick it apart and get to the bottom of it. And we have also Dragon Age, Veilguard, and just because we are out there, we'll get a little bit of TV in there. So we have Arcane Season 2 as well. So, first question, I... I think I'll point my finger towards you, Oskar. Have you seen Arkane Season 1? That's a good question. I think I started it, I would say. Then you fell asleep and never picked it up again. No, not that, but it was like something... I can't remember what it was, but something got in the... Was something released at the same time or something like that? Yeah, it was something like that, yes. So you basically had a focus shift, is what I'm hearing. Yeah.

00:05:47It never shook back. No, shame on us, I guess. But I actually watched, I did a classic thing. So I binge watched. Binge watched? That's, you know, words, very difficult. So I binged the first season. I think over the period of a couple of days, it was gorgeous looking. It's a really, really cool looking show. And I haven't really played the source material game. So for me, it was just a show. Yeah. And it was still good. But it ended on a really dramatic cliffhanger. Oh. So there will be a season three, maybe? No, no, I'm talking about season one. So season two is now here. Hopefully giving some explanation to that cliffhanger. Because it's been a couple of years. Yeah. I think. Yeah. So that was one of the reasons I both loved it and hated it. Because it was like, they left it on a miscommunication thing. Where some of the heroes thought that...

00:06:44another one of their gang had betrayed them and left them behind. And you as the viewer knew that that wasn't the case. It was just a misunderstanding. Oh, no. And then I think the character that was left behind is one of the primary villains in the game. So she fell off like forever from that point onwards. But did you know that it was going to get renewed? Because that could drive me crazy knowing that if it ends on a really tough... cliffhanger and you really just want to know. It was gangbusters when talking about numbers almost immediately. So it was a sure thing. I mean, otherwise, I 100% agree with you. If they don't renew a series that you are heavily invested in, I hate that. But in this case, it was instantly successful. So, yeah. I'm kind of... I haven't seen it all, but with everything I've heard, it's...

00:07:40I'm kind of almost shocked that it got that good as it supposedly is because like it's basically from the beginning I thought it was just a fan service and of course League of Legends has a large fan base but there are so many other people that has never ever played or even watched League that was excited about it. So they really did something right. Yeah, we should probably mention that if it had only been the gaming fanbase, it would probably have been successful, but not nearly as successful as it has been. And it's because of the, quite frankly, stellar writing. They have fleshed out these characters that makes them real characters. And the thing I think is also that if you compare it with Castlevania, Castlevania was so heavily tied to a game. This has nothing really tied to League per se, so it could be for anyone that... The characters have the same names, they have the same face, and it's in a world that's mentioned. But other than that, it's kind of an unwritten page, which, you know...

00:08:54Made it possible to make something good out of it. And fans still liked it because they... Fans loved it. Yes, because each character that was created, at least in modern time, they all get a small introduction of video for when they were released. So there was a little bit of lore. And some of the more popular characters, they got more lore, of course. Yeah. So they managed to find a good balance, you could say. Yeah, okay, because that's always I think hard if if especially I guess when series or movies are based on games that you don't know how much you want to make it for the fans or how much you want to make it for like the broader like audience. I mean if it had only been for the gaming fans I would probably not have enjoyed the game because my experience of League is very very limited. Yeah. Yeah, mine too.

00:09:52We should mention, though, that Arkane Season 2 has only been out for a little while and it's already on the top charts in over 60 countries. That is very cool. Is it released once a week or is it a batch of? I think it's one of those you can binge straight away. That's good. I love that. Yes. Yes, indeed. But anyway, I think I'll return to it. I'm not sure when, but I probably... I have to refresh. myself slightly on what happened in the first season because it's been a few years. And as I said, I've binge watched the first season, so I haven't looked at it in a good long while now. But I mean, it's cool. This is probably an example of gaming moved to the series space done well. That's good. I like that. Some people really don't have that in them. But in this case, it worked. We'll get back to people who didn't do it right in a little while.

00:10:48So don't you worry. Let's move to some more traditional gaming. And we might as well pick the raisin out of the cake straight away and say that Silent Hill 2, the remake, is now out there in the horror woods. And people, well, I should probably not say people, gamers have been enjoying it overall. You and I. You and I, especially. But gamers overall. have really been enjoying what they got in this remake. And common descriptions are faithful recreations, and they honored the theme of the original game, the settings, fleshed out but done in the right way. A lot of those positive descriptions of the game have been in reviews and videos and in the word of mouth. So Konami is having a good month, that's for sure. Yeah, I'm very impressed.

00:11:41It's a beautiful looking game as well. It definitely is. I mean, since it was released 20 years ago, I guess it wasn't that hard to make it more beautiful. Which hadn't been better. Slightly worrying. That would have been very disappointing. But no, it looks great and it's good. The only thing I think might be a problem for people is that it's a quite taxing game if you're playing it on PC and you want to have it as beautiful as possible. That might demand a quite powerful rig in order to do that. But I think even if you played it on more modest settings, it would still be a cool experience. So it's not that it would look ugly in any way, but it's really, really cool when you can crank it up. It's very misty in there. It is super misty, which is so cool. Oh, yeah. So also, slight spoiler, not really a spoiler.

00:12:37But we are doing a Let's Play of it. So if you are interested in visual, I don't know, if you want to check and see that we're not lying to you right now. So a visual check-in, then there will be a Let's Play on the old channel eventually. Yes, indeed. Yes, there will be. Yeah. Overall, people, and we included, are very pleased with what they've done with Silent Hill 2. And they haven't said anything about eventual... remakes of the other games in the series as of yet but let's face it their company money was being made usually that means that another remake will be made eventually that's kind of how it goes i guess let's hope so and let's hope they stay true to yeah yeah i think that's one of the givers they have to get it right and this time they did uh yeah i think we have also

00:13:31I mean, I'm not sure if it's a... It's kind of a horror game. But Diablo 4, Vessel of Hatred, first big DLC, is out. And a lot of people liked it. And a lot of people didn't like it. Which is kind of weird. It's usually not a lot in both camps. But this time, I think a lot of people were upset with how kind of short it was. Which is understandable, I guess. On the other hand, it's... on game pass so i guess a lot of people didn't really have to pay for it well then we get i mean if it's on game pass then yeah fine it's all right that it's how short was it oh i think around six hours or something like that i mean under under 10 hours for like the story part of the dlc well which i mean i think it's still kind of i mean six hours 10 hours it's still

00:14:29I think it's reasonable still, but I don't know for this particular game, but for the games that I played, it's definitely fine with six hours. And I think that if you do have Game Pass, then definitely you shouldn't be. But also, I think it's a good kind of response if your fans think that the DLCs are too short. The problem with this game, I'm saying that as a person who hasn't actually played Diablo before, but I've played all of the other Diablo games for thousands of hours. Looking at this game and this DLC from the hardcore Diablo fan, these people don't care about the story. Don't misunderstand me out there in gaming land. You do care, but only once. The story is a thing you do one time and then you grind the end game for 200 million hours. So that experience is more important to those people. And from my understanding, that wasn't spot on as well.

00:15:26So if you don't have a story that is amazing or an endgame that is amazing, people will be a little bit disappointed, which is kind of what happened here. And I think also the story was lacking for some. It was very gory cutscenes, so a lot of people loved that. That's what you're looking for. Yeah, they had a trailer where a woman basically got ripped into shreds. Oh, that is like the worst thing. If you hadn't said that, then it would be like, okay, so what else is new? No, she was just hanging there having a really, really bad day. To the pun of the day, do you think that Al Gore's friends call him gory? Of course they do. Yeah. I mean, why wouldn't they? And if they don't, goddammit. Shame on you. Take a moment and think about that. What a missed opportunity that would be. Yeah. But yeah, there we have it. Diablo 4 is out there.

00:16:22Some people love it. Some people are a bit miffed. Overall, the game is doing quite well, though. So I think Blizzard slash Microsoft, they're pleased. Microtransactions. Baby! Yeah. Well, I mean, that's kind of how it goes with those games these days. It's not pay to win. It's pay to bling. Yeah. Because you look absolutely fabulous. Which is also, I mean, that's worth something. Oh, yeah, for sure. If you're out there killing everything, you want to look fabulous doing it. Of course. You know what I'm saying? Don't want to be drab. No, no. Not even on a Tuesday. So, yeah. One day. One day soon. No. One day. Just one day. One day I will play Diablo 4. Because I actually honestly believe it's a good to mayhaps great game.

00:17:18I'm not sure why I haven't gotten around to it, but maybe it's just the fact that I've played the series so, so many hours previously. Yeah. And this one, it looks amazing. I don't know about the DLC, but... Yeah, it looks good. Especially the cutscenes. They are absolutely gorgeous. Oh, yeah. But I don't know how well I want to see a woman get cut apart and then not die. Oh, she's not cut apart. She's just torn into shreds. It's hard to describe it when you don't have the pictures. I don't know if I want to have the pictures. But it's so beautiful. Yes, I probably will appreciate the handicraft. We'll leave it up to viewer discretion if you want to go into that. You have been duly warned. One other game that's out, and it's a first in a new series, which is not often we get the time to say that when it's a AAA game. Because a lot of people play the trusty save card these days. But Atlus has done a new series. And it's the studio that has given us the Persona series previously. And now they have met for ReFantasio with a Z.

00:18:31And it says it's good. A lot of people are truly loving this game. Some not. And we'll get into why. But I've seen quite a lot of this game because I'm interested in trying out the series. Because I know I would enjoy the Persona series. But those games are super long and they have five of them. So if I'm going to catch up, I need to invest like 3,000 hours. That's a lot of hours. There's only one out there. So now only 200 hours are required. Oh, wow. I actually talked today with a colleague of mine that is a diehard Persona fan and has done it all. And now she is hooked on this and says that it's amazing. It's a gorgeous looking game. It has a lot of cool ideas. I think I heard some people say that in the end we're talking like...

00:19:30way in there. It gets a little heavy-handed with the messaging. It's like, it's a metaphor, damn it! And at that point, we all know. But it's kind of a Japanese way to do that, overemphasizing things. You should probably say that even if you have no relations to Persona at all, that you're probably going to be better off if you are somewhat interested in anime or manga or any kind of that. I did mention they're from Japan. That's kind of what they do. This is like super anime. Oh, yeah. It's not the kawaii anime, but it's very anime in many other ways. Slash of life more. Very much so, very much so. And, yeah, I should probably mention, there's bound to be at least one big penis in there. Yeah, it's one of the things that they do.

00:20:23All the Persona games have had like massive penis enemy in there. And yeah, usually a boss fight. And every time people have asked like, why this penis enemy? And they always point to, yeah, we took inspirations from this artist. The name escapes me, but there is actually a famous artist that they have basically taken all their enemy characteristics from. And I guess he has a big penis on some painting somewhere. Okay, so at least there is a person attached to the penis. It's just not... No, no, no, no. In the game, it's just a penis. A big penis. Okay. Yeah. That is... It's very penis-y. Yeah. Okay. And it's become sort of a thing in the Persona series. So I would imagine that somewhere in ReFantasio, it's going to be some of that. Is it the same as with Saints Row?

00:21:18that you had is purple. Yeah, well, they were more tongue-in-cheek, because I think in the Persona series, they never actually said that it is a penis. It just looks like one, and it's called, like, Ted. Yeah. Okay. Have you seen Ted lately? He's such a dick, man. Yeah. Anyway, apart from that weirdly Japanese-esque thing, the design of this world and the enemies are pretty cool. They look like nothing else, really. So if you're into artsy experiences in games, I think ReFantasio could be straight up your alley, so to speak. And I will also add that to the list, but I'm not sure when I will get down to it, because one shall not lie. It might be a while. Yeah. Yes. Maybe when I get around to it, there's like two or three more games in that series out already. Oh no, you have to prioritize this. Yeah, I should probably get on it at least sooner than a few years down the road. Yeah. But yeah, this game has sold really well. People are loving it. So kudos to Atlus for trying something new, I think. Something new, but something old at the same time is Call of Duty Black Ops 6.

00:22:31Which is, I mean, it's number six, so obviously it's been done before. But people are positive about this one. The last one sucked. There's no other ways to describe it from the perspective of the fans. They still played it for a billion hours. But it sucked. It's multiplayer, so they played that. But the story was on rails, really short, and badly written. This story is... better in every way possible i looked at like an hour of gameplay and it it kind of comes off as a more hitman-esque experience which is kind of cool you still do the you know i'm in the desert i'm flying a shopper i'm shooting some guys i'm climbing this pin all of that it's black ops so it's not straight up gung-ho army action but it's more uh more still covert covert operations yeah and i would imagine that the the multiplayer is fine even though

00:23:27Some people were upset about the zombie mode. I'm not sure why. Why? I think the zombies were like too good. It's kind of interesting. Have you met like a diehard Call of Duty? No, but I'm not 15 anymore. I mean, exactly. Like I haven't in like 20 years. I think when we were, and I'm talking we as a generation. We're heavily into that. That was like 25 years ago. So I guess maybe that's still the age bracket that they are targeting. The 15 to 25 year olds that are like, yeah, Call of Duty is the shit, mate. Yeah, but it would be interesting to find someone that is like... I mean, to be serious for a moment, those games were excellent when it came to gameplay. I fell off hard because I thought the story started to become rather bad after Modern Warfare 3.

00:24:24I think, when I spotted the decline. And then nothing really made me come back. I played one game some years ago, and it was like, yeah, this is a large set of pieces, bombastic action scenes, but nothing new, really. So I think the people that really love these games are very much into the multiplayer. I would be surprised if they were like, I'm doing this only for the story. That would be even more interesting to find one of those guys. You remember Black Ops 4? That was amazing. Yeah, that would be very surprising indeed. Maybe that's what the 30-year-olds did and realized they didn't like it, so they stopped playing it. Could be. But you know what? It would be interesting to talk to, I'm not even sure, what do they call themselves? A duty head.

00:25:16But this is also kind of where in the world you live, because Call of Duty is a huge monger of things in the US, but not as much in Europe. Not anymore. It used to be a lot bigger, but it's still very much a big franchise in the US. That's 100% correct. All right. And we have only, well, we have two, but I'm not sure if any one of us have looked into one of them that much. But we have Sonic X Shadow. Why do they have the generations afterward? Isn't this the first one? Yeah, maybe that's what it is. Generation X. The shadow generation. I haven't started playing this, but I... Oh, you have? Kind of, because my son is really into Sonic Frontier, for example, and so on. So this is the next upcoming game.

00:26:15Isn't Shadow kind of the bad boy of the gang? Well, that's the definition. He's misunderstood. He has a dark past and he tries to get into... He was into drugs heavily at one point. But more of an experiment that got wrong and he just got angry with the whole world. Okay, he's angsty. But anyway... I've seen a lot of people already speedrunning this game, or at least trying to do it. Yeah, it's promising, and I'm kind of actually looking forward to get into this, because for being a Sonic game, it's actually have some... It looked pretty nice. It's in 3D, we should say. It's a 3D game, which is... These days, not a given because it feels like they do like one 3D game and then one 2D platform game and then one 3D game. So they try to please both camps, which is nice for the fans, if nothing else. But okay, glad to hear that it's decent or above even, which is nice. Because the next game, oh boy. We're talking Dragon Age Veilguard, which was known as something entirely different when it started out.

00:27:34It was supposed to be entirely different when it started. It was supposed to be one of those online things. But then people got a hold of that, and they said, if you do that, we'll kill you. So they backed up and rebranded, and then they had a couple of trailers, and people said, we'll kill you anyway, because this looks absolutely trash. And then it came out, and some people love it. Just a spoiler, this is going to be a thing for a lot of people. Some people really hate this game. Some people really love this game. Most people are kind of, it's okay about this game, to be fair. It's one of those games that got political. And that always makes things a little sticky. So, short recap. The Dragon Age world and the Dragon Age series is a long-running series of Bioware. One would say one of the golden series of Bioware. When they used to be good. Which I kind of...

00:28:31i mean it's sort of true and it's sort of not true the first game was excellent second game wasn't excellent but people have the the hindsight with the golden lining so they only remember the good parts about the second game which was a rushed mess when it was released a lot of people had a lot of issues with that game but now many years later people only remember the good part and it's suddenly become an instant classic and after that was dragon age inquisition which also at the time was topic, because a lot of people thought that it had lost its soul. It wasn't as RPG heavy as it should have been. But once again, 10 years later, people only remember it as a stellar game that did everything right. So I would say it's a solid series, and it has always been solid, but it hasn't been a flawless 100 out of 100, which a lot of people have sort of talked themselves into believing. So with that, Veilguard had an uphill battle.

00:29:25Because a lot of people said that if it isn't 90 or above, this game sucks. And yeah, sure, go ahead. One question. I know what the Vanguard is, but what is Veilguard? Veilguard is, it's a little spoilery. It has to do with the in-game terminology. So the Veil, I guess it's not really a spoiler. The series has been out for like 25 years. But the Veil is a barrier. that separates the demon-infested magic universe in this world from the actual world, so that demons can't just jump out and murderize everyone. That's basically what the veil is. So it is a veil. It is a veil, yes. And in this game, you run into the person that actually created this veil that has now, for reasons unknown to the player when you start the game, he has reneged. So he wants to tear the veil down.

00:30:23And that would basically end the world overnight. So a little issue, one might say. So are you playing as the veil guard who wants to keep the veil intact? May have. Maybe. It's very much around those topics. But story-wise, I think this game looks to be fine-ish. I'm not a big fan of the fact that, once again, short recap, why we're used to have a cool feature in a lot of their series where... you had save files that you could move between games. So if you did something in the first game of the series, you could then export the save file to the next game, and it would pick up on a lot of decisions you did in the first one, and the world would change accordingly. And that was a really cool feature, and they've done away with that entirely. So in this game, they have just taken a lot of decisions as a hard fact, and a lot of those decisions might not at all jive with what you've done.

00:31:22in the three previous games so a lot of people were miffed about them that dude's dead i killed him myself and here he is smiling at me um so that was a thing and also they have and i think they've done this in almost all the games that they have them the main character of the last game is a guest character in this game for a portion of it and people kind of hope that you could import your own character but you couldn't so there's just one some dude or dudette showing up and like, hey, I'm this person. It's like, not my person. So, yeah. So there's been a lot of that. And also, we should mention, I don't think we should get into it because it's a 10-hour thing, but it has a lot of woke battle surrounding this because character creation had, you had the option to have scars, upper body scars if you had sex change. And a lot of people,

00:32:21that our progressive liberals thought this was amazing because you finally play as a transsexual person a lot of other people said like yeah i hate this because this is like a medieval high fantasy world where would they even get an operation and we hate everything you stand for and there are some dudes that are non-binary here and they talk about as non-binary in this setting why don't they even have like in universe words for this So that was a big, big topic. And a lot of people hate the game just because of that. Yeah, because they had all the possibilities to actually make something real off it. Because they had these fantasy settings, they could have created any kind of like... I think a lot of the people that are like anti-woke are a lot of other unpleasant things as well. But a discussion can be had about what you just mentioned. Because the previous games have been really good of mentioning...

00:33:17these things but in in-game terms so basically if they had a person that was gay they wouldn't say like i'm a gay man they would just say like i prefer the company of uh this or that or this or that race because there's there are non-human races in this game so they had a really good way of talking about these topics and they've always done that so that's nothing new people who are saying otherwise are high on something. It's always been a part of the series, but it was handled in a much better way previously. And I think they missed out on that, because if nothing else, it just makes it feel more integrated into the world. So that was, I think, a little... So, to sum it up, go woke or broke? Once more, or no? Yeah, to some extent. It's still wildly successful in terms of numbers of copies that they've sold. The thing that makes me not want to play this is that...

00:34:11And to me, a much larger issue is that apparently the dialogue is just garbage. Okay. And for an RPG, that's not something good. A lot of people say it's dumbed down, it's simplified, and it's like on the nose. A lot of overt explanation, which I hate. It's like you come into a room, it's like, hey, have you seen that X on the wall that is shiny? Maybe we can do something with that. It's like, yeah. I'll get around to it. Way ahead of you. Yeah. It's the old Lassie thing. What's that, Lassie? Little Timmy stuck down the well? For all the small Timmy's out there that take these things for granted, I would like to shift them like Discworld, the quantum click game, and say, solve this. Yeah. Unfortunately, this is a bad trend. A lot of AAA games in the last couple of years have been overt helpful, and that sucks.

00:35:08One other game that did that way too much was God of War. It was like, do this, do this, do you know this? Shouldn't we go there? I think that person is waiting for us to the left about two minutes walk from here. It's like, no, please don't. I really, really hope that Indiana Jones is having a fair balance on these kind of things. Otherwise, I will be super disappointed. At least give us the option to turn it on or off. Yeah, there should be like a toggle, like a setting where I can say proudly that I am a little bit stupid because I am sometimes. And I need this, but I don't want it all the time. I don't want it to be too much. Yeah, I think we should not, we're not very into this now, but I think they said something that they would have an initiative helping system that could

00:36:00be optional or something like that yeah they oh yeah they said that like we will have help for you if you want which is the big thing i want and i don't want it i'd rather fail 10 times before i get it right but i hate when you have like a person have you pushed that button sir it's like no but now i must you idiot yeah now you kind of ruined it because now i don't even have to think And these people, they have heard of walkthroughs, right? I mean, you can go online and find the solution if you're struggling. I would say that you could create an amazing sitcom based on taking this to real life. So maybe going into the office and having someone that you should press that button. Maybe it will happen something if you open that mail. Have you noticed the door in the other side of the office? We should go there. We should check it out.

00:36:55Have you tried the elevator? That might take us downstairs. It is like a stair. Have you heard of this staircase? Yeah. Doing that in other situations that makes you come off as a complete retard. So yeah, please don't do this in AAA games or any other game. Please, just stop. So that's my personal opinion about why I'm not playing Dragon Age Veilguard right now. I think they dropped the ball on what I think. I value the most about RPGs, which is the storytelling and the world building. And when those are not the best part of the game, I'm not as interested. And obsessive grinding. Yeah, of course. It goes without saying. But that's it on the gaming front. So there's been a few hot potatoes out there. We have some other stuff. Although we have already been doing this for a while, so we'll be a little more brief than we perhaps thought we would be. But we have been talking about Ubisoft quite a lot lately.

00:37:51It has happened. And not in good terms, because they be struggling. But now we're going to talk about them like we love them, right? No. It depends on how you want that description. Let's just say that they have a lot of big problems right now. But this is a weird little problem. And I'm kind of proud of the instigators here, because they've gotten sued by two gamers. just two gamers and they are suing them over the fact that they pulled the crew uh the the driving game the first one the crew 2 is out and i think it has been out for a couple years but this is the first game that was pulled from not only from the store i mean that happens all the time but it was pulled from people's profiles they can't play the game at all and uh basically they're suing ubisoft because they said we bought this product

00:38:48And you weren't clear on the fact that we only bought a license and that it would one day cease to exist. Which is kind of what happened with the first crew. And I think this is in the UK where they have some type of law that you have to be very, very clear about the fact that you're just buying a license of a product. Because otherwise you might have hoodwinked them. So these two fellas are almost certainly going to lose the case. It's creating bad publicity for Ubisoft, and they really don't want that at this time. They don't need it. They really don't. If you're interested in why they don't, just go to the old faithful Google and type Ubisoft bad times, and you'll probably get like 5,000 articles about why they're struggling right now, which they are. So I thought this was a fun little tidbit that two very passionate gamers thought that enough's enough.

00:39:46We're suing them. That is sort of cute. Yeah, it's kind of cute. And I wish them all the luck in the world because they're going to need it, let's face it. So also, another thing that I thought was pretty cool is that Embracer, we talked about those, our Swedish shameful conglomeration of failed gamers. They bought a lot of franchises. And one of those franchises they bought was the Deus Ex series. And we were all thinking like, yeah, cool. They might do a good game. They canceled that because they mismanaged their company so badly that they almost went under. And one of those cast cuts... Yeah, I'm not even sure if they said that it was that. But they basically just... They had a studio, I think it was based in Montreal. And it was two years into development of the next Deus Ex game. And they basically just called them up and said, yeah, it's not happening. It's over. So a lot of people got...

00:40:44Slightly upset about that. But now Warren Spector, who is the creator of the series himself, came out and said that. I'm not sure if Deus Ex would have worked these days. Because the cool sci-fi future that he imagined in the first game, he doesn't know what the equivalent would be today. Cyberpunk. Yeah, he basically said that we already have Cyberpunk and maybe that was the niche. a new Deus Ex game would have had to have, but it's already been done. And if they only did a new Deus Ex, people will look at that like a documentary from the 30s, basically, because technology has changed that much. They're already living in the science. This is his view, obviously, but it is the dude who made the series, so obviously. But having said that, I think he's wrong. You're wrong. Because I think... Sir?

00:41:42I beg to differ. This is a non-excuse. Yeah. To me, it wouldn't matter if it was like spot on with the technology because I like the setting and I like the world. Yeah. For God's sakes, it's sci-fi. How can you be spot on with tech? It's like, well. Yeah. Have they ever been sued by games like that? Didn't happen. We are now in the year 2100 and it didn't happen. Where's my flying cars? Damn it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, see, the project Red will get a lot of lawsuits 2077. I thought it was a fun little article that he himself didn't know what a Deus Ex game would be today. So not to be outdone, Sony briefly mentioned, we should say, we won't go into it deeper, but Concord, also a massive flop lately in the gaming space.

00:42:38Yeah, it was so bad that Sony killed it themselves. It was out for less than two weeks before it was gone. And Sony invested hundreds of millions in this. Some said it was 400 million. They said it was only 200 million, which is still not great. But they have now said, after killing off the studio entirely, that... This is a quote, so I'm not even making this up. So for us, for our reflection, we probably need... to have a lot of gates, including user testing or internal evaluation and the timing of such gates. And then we need to bring them forward. And we should have done those gates much earlier than we did. Oh, shit, Sherlock. And that was said by Sony president Hiroki Totoki. So what the hell happened there? Didn't they test this at all? Nope, it went straight up. No user testing? Okay, well, that's... I guess.

00:43:36That's why it failed. At least that's... It was not the testers that cost them 200 million. It was not that guy at the CDR project. Yeah, that guy was not the guy this time around. But man, that sounded really weird. You know what? A little testing might have been good. I think either it was a shitshow, probably. Otherwise, I think the developers took those... Chuck Norris memes to the world and saying, we are doing it in production. Very much so. And they did. They did. For all of nine days. And then it was gone. Yeah. And I think we're kind of out of time, unfortunately. We had some more tidbits, but we'll leave that for next show. I'll just leave you with a sentiment that don't do a Sony show. Because that was bad. Yeah, it was bad.

00:44:30They named it Concord, and we all know what happened to that. Flew too close to the sun. Yeah. And I don't know, I'm pushing over a shady looking project. Thank you, Oskar. We'll kill it once more, but saying that we will be back, and this time it's for real. Oh yeah, see you when we see you. Over and out. Bye-bye.