transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:10] Hello, and welcome back to another Nextlander Podcast. Here we are in the middle of April. April 15th, as some would say in the United States, it is officially Tax Day. Hope you got your stuff. By the time you're listening to this, and it's probably too late. Alex Navarro, how are you?

Speaker 2:
[00:30] Yeah, if you are listening to this and you have not filed your taxes, then the tax man shall cometh, like the fucking evil priest from Poltergeist 2 showing up at your door, just being like, And then Brad Shoemaker, wait, I can never remember if you've seen Poltergeist or not. That's a Poltergeist 2 joke.

Speaker 3:
[00:53] I watched one last October.

Speaker 1:
[00:55] Okay, right, yes.

Speaker 3:
[00:56] We talked about it a bit on the Ramblecast. I have not seen two.

Speaker 1:
[00:58] Okay, well, how about as that happens, there is no diving into your TV, there is no escape.

Speaker 3:
[01:04] Nope, still ain't paid them.

Speaker 1:
[01:07] What?

Speaker 3:
[01:08] As of 10:51 a.m. on the 15th.

Speaker 1:
[01:10] What?

Speaker 3:
[01:11] By um, I mean Q1 of 2026 estimated taxes, as we've discussed ad nauseam.

Speaker 1:
[01:17] Oh, okay.

Speaker 3:
[01:18] Not last year's return, as we've said many times, we have to pay for it. Any self-employed and freelance and so forth has to pay four times a year.

Speaker 1:
[01:25] So you have not put the check in the mailbox yet?

Speaker 3:
[01:27] I have not. Well, I pay online for the quarterly, but every damn quarter, I end up on the 15th of that quarter's month at about 11 p.m. Logging into the IRS website.

Speaker 1:
[01:40] Oh, it's not automated. Just doing the thing. No, no, no.

Speaker 3:
[01:42] You have to do it manually.

Speaker 1:
[01:43] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[01:43] Yeah. I mean, look, good. The amount changes. The amount changes quarter to quarter, and sometimes I wonder, is 11 p.m. on the West Coast still the 15th?

Speaker 1:
[01:56] I think that is.

Speaker 3:
[01:57] I've had it show up in the audit log and the payment record as the 16th a couple times. Nobody ever showed up in my door.

Speaker 2:
[02:06] I don't think they care that much as long as they get their damn money. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[02:09] Give them my money. I guess if they really wanted to care, they would care, but I think you'd be okay.

Speaker 3:
[02:15] I think it's more if you don't pay.

Speaker 1:
[02:19] For the company, we still have to mail one to California, which is the only one left we have to mail, so I have to always write a check.

Speaker 3:
[02:25] Interesting.

Speaker 1:
[02:26] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[02:27] You got acquainted with the old California Franchise Tax Board?

Speaker 1:
[02:30] I'm going to say that California Franchise Tax Board and the withholdings and whatever long MSFO, whatever I have to address that thing to every year.

Speaker 3:
[02:40] I've got a page open on good old ftb.ca.gov right now.

Speaker 1:
[02:43] They actually, their site is better than most. We have had to look at taxes in multiple municipalities and states. And I'm going to say California is fairly easy to navigate, and feels unified.

Speaker 3:
[02:57] We're all small businessmen now.

Speaker 2:
[03:00] The tiniest.

Speaker 1:
[03:01] The New Jersey's, you start out okay. And by the time you get to where you want to go, it looks like a 1997 Yahoo page where you're just like, this is just blue text on a white background with the default styled input box. I'm like, did your styling break? I'm just going to keep going forward here. And they also just, the way you have to log in is very weird. Anyway, I always mention this around this time because there's always somebody in our chat somewhere or by email, messages me and they're like, oh my God, thank God you mentioned something I had forgotten. So I'm just going to bring it up every year. That is, you know, it's tax season. What are you going to do? Pay him. Or don't pay him.

Speaker 2:
[03:47] Well, I cannot in good conscience go out there and recommend people not pay their taxes as much as I don't want to. And I understand most people especially not wanting to right now. I think it would be irresponsible of me to just say that.

Speaker 1:
[03:59] There was a report I was listening to on the radio where people, it was about people who send in letters with their tax returns that explain why they're putting in certain amounts or not putting in certain amounts. And I just, I wonder as an IRS agent what you do with that information. Like it was a very compelling letter.

Speaker 2:
[04:18] I never read anything like it.

Speaker 1:
[04:21] Sorry, Mr. Jones, you still need to pay your taxes.

Speaker 2:
[04:23] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[04:25] Look, I have, now that I have done my public service to our audience that may or may not know it is Tax Day and that they are too late to get that done. I have a request from or for our audience. I need to figure out a good way to make a sitting to standing desk or at least a desk that is adjustable in for my electronics or mini painting situation because I hunch over that desk. Right now, it is very low. So what I am asking for is anybody know a good solution for a custom desktop that can affix to a risable or I would, I think, want a mechanical one at this point, not like a manual one, something automatic, set of pistons or legs that go up and down. I haven't done a lot of research into this, but if anybody has recommendations, that's something that can bear a decent amount of weight and be pretty, like I'm talking probably like a 34 inch deep desktop that is probably six feet wide. Like that's what I'd be looking to like up and down raise for something like that. That's not nothing and probably a solid wood top and I want to dance on top of it. So I'm going to be using it as a platform. But I need to realize I want that to be about chest height and I can't make my seat low enough for when I'm working on stuff like that. Otherwise, I just am hunched over like a goblin over that stuff for too long and ain't got the back for it.

Speaker 3:
[05:59] Is it time to head to Ikea?

Speaker 1:
[06:00] No.

Speaker 3:
[06:01] Check out the old butcher block countertops.

Speaker 1:
[06:04] I bet that's super expensive at 32 by 6 feet.

Speaker 3:
[06:10] How about 6 feet and 2 inches for $169?

Speaker 1:
[06:13] How deep is that?

Speaker 3:
[06:17] That doesn't list here. It's one and one-eighths. Thick. You don't see the depth.

Speaker 1:
[06:21] I mean, that's not bad. I mean, I would do it.

Speaker 3:
[06:24] On this listing.

Speaker 1:
[06:25] Wait, what? That's impossible.

Speaker 3:
[06:26] Keep talking. It's got to be somewhere.

Speaker 1:
[06:29] Yeah, I've been debating what size depth I want to go. That's a good length. That's a good length. And the thickness, I don't mind that at all. That's a good thickness.

Speaker 3:
[06:41] Thick oak veneer.

Speaker 1:
[06:43] Okay. I don't need the veneer on top of it.

Speaker 3:
[06:45] There's some particle board in there.

Speaker 1:
[06:47] Wait, it's butcher block?

Speaker 3:
[06:49] Yeah. I was led to believe this might be more wood than that.

Speaker 1:
[06:55] Is it butcher block style? Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[06:58] Okay. They don't necessarily go out of their way to say that. That's perhaps less good.

Speaker 1:
[07:03] So yeah, if people know, I'm curious. I'm sure there's a lot of sitting and standing people in our audience. I'm curious what they get. We had those ones that could sit on top of the desk at work. Remember those? You can pull them up. I did not love that style. But anyway, I need to not be bending over, hunching over for that long. I am currently trying to recap or put new capacitors on that 528e compressor thing that I had that people remember before we got these DBXs. Mine would flake out once in a while, and it would be like... And that is my current project, and it is a great project because not only do I get to do some fun soldering and weird stuff like that, it's one of those things that there is one person on YouTube who does it, some older guy who probably... And the video is from 15 years ago, and God bless, I hope he is still around, but he is the only person showing you, okay, here are the capacitors you need, and hey man, this is a... I am going to recap this five...

Speaker 3:
[08:05] I love a crusty old electronics, analog, Grognard kind of guy.

Speaker 1:
[08:10] Who is like, this is the video for this.

Speaker 3:
[08:12] This is it.

Speaker 1:
[08:13] He is the one person who filmed himself doing this. He is like, I just repair these, and this is what you want to do, and a lot of people will say, do this.

Speaker 3:
[08:21] Do you know for a fact that recapping it will fix what's wrong with it, or is that a stab in the bark dark of just like, that's worth trying and see?

Speaker 1:
[08:27] I do not know for a fact, though I did go in and check some of the capacitors while they were in line, and their ESR, which is when a capacitor starts to have internal resistance, it started to be a little higher than I would have liked. Though, when I was also testing it out, the signal would drop out with some loose buttons in there. So there are some switches in there that do seem like they could be re-soldered in to be a little tighter. Some of the buttons in the pots also, the potentiometers could be clean, they get a little noisy, but you don't change those. I don't muck around with those too much. So it was not an inexpensive order from DigiKey. The switches that are in that thing are fairly expensive, almost seven bucks a piece for a switch in there, and they were out of stock, and somehow they also had a tariff on them. I guess they're coming in from... Oh yeah, oh yeah. So the whole thing, but I just enjoy doing it, and I just want to recap it anyway.

Speaker 2:
[09:31] Well, that's all that really matters. If it's something you want to do, then yeah, totally.

Speaker 3:
[09:36] I should recap something sometime. I should find something. My Xbox, my original Xbox needs new capacitors in it because I had to yank some of them out because they leak, as we well know.

Speaker 1:
[09:47] I think that's just one. That's the clock one, right?

Speaker 3:
[09:49] I have more than one leaking. So I've removed at least one load-bearing capacitor. Oh, right, right. Not just that the clock one is fungible, but some of the others are not.

Speaker 1:
[09:59] Oh, so it just will not boot up?

Speaker 3:
[10:01] Yeah, it straight up will turn on at the moment.

Speaker 1:
[10:04] Yeah, go for it. Put them in.

Speaker 3:
[10:06] Give it a shot sometime, maybe, maybe, I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[10:08] And then you make a video and then you could be the crusty old guy, be like, here's how you do it, here's how it's gonna go, and do it with your neck brace on. So it's just like, here's how it goes.

Speaker 2:
[10:16] You need to grow more of like a great big bushy beard, though I think that kind of needs to go with the look.

Speaker 1:
[10:23] Or like really like gnarled up hands that are just kind of like in there showing stuff with just like, oh man, look at this guy. This guy's been in some shit. That's just solder burns all over his hand.

Speaker 3:
[10:36] Speaking of faulty audio processors, the clock is ticking on this DBX. We still haven't done the return on? I think I'm down to about six months left to RMA it before the warranty runs out.

Speaker 2:
[10:46] What's holding you up at this point, apart from your neck?

Speaker 3:
[10:49] Well, currently I can't lift anything. Carrying it to the mile plus to UPS is a problem until the restrictions on what I can carry are lifted. But after that, nothing. It's not in the line anymore, right? No, no.

Speaker 1:
[11:04] It's out.

Speaker 3:
[11:05] It's in the corner.

Speaker 1:
[11:07] Nobody puts DBX in the corner.

Speaker 3:
[11:09] That's right.

Speaker 2:
[11:10] How did I end up with the one DBX that seems like it's not fucking up?

Speaker 1:
[11:13] Mine generally seems okay now. Do you keep yours turned on the whole time, Alex?

Speaker 2:
[11:19] Basically, I don't turn it off unless I'm just specifically rebooting stuff in my power chain.

Speaker 1:
[11:24] Yeah, mine I generally keep on all the time too. And I think it's okay though. I just like the 528 better. And so if I can get that one back in. I think it's generally, I did have to open it up that one time. Remember Brad, I opened it up and I spit on it and gave it a kick. And maybe like you had said, this is getting off on a tangent, but something was touching something grounding out inside. So I don't know, I just flicked all the buttons and didn't really do much in there.

Speaker 2:
[11:50] Ah, electronics.

Speaker 1:
[11:52] You gotta love them.

Speaker 2:
[11:53] No, I don't.

Speaker 1:
[11:53] If only I had a tiny little child who running around on my back to just go 101, 110, 110, 110, 110.

Speaker 3:
[12:03] You know what else is electronic?

Speaker 1:
[12:04] What?

Speaker 3:
[12:06] Video games.

Speaker 1:
[12:06] Oh yeah, yeah, I've heard of that.

Speaker 3:
[12:08] There's your segue. I'm just gonna come out and say this. I think Pragmata is like one of the best games I have played in a while.

Speaker 1:
[12:15] Wow.

Speaker 3:
[12:16] I don't know how you guys feel. You may not agree or I don't know how far you are, but I am.

Speaker 2:
[12:21] I'm not there yet.

Speaker 3:
[12:22] I'm more impressed by that game than I expected to be. And I had pretty high expectations.

Speaker 1:
[12:26] That's great.

Speaker 2:
[12:26] Interesting.

Speaker 1:
[12:27] Okay, I will say, I don't know how you feel, but I feel like Pragmata is maybe one of the most video games I have played in a while. It feels like a nice throwback to just a video game.

Speaker 3:
[12:38] It is a game ass game.

Speaker 2:
[12:39] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[12:40] That phrase came to me playing this because I called it a B game. This was before it came out, to be clear. I hadn't played it when we recorded the Planorama. I don't think I had started it at that point. You had played it at Summer Game Fest last year, so I had touched it before, but I hadn't played the final. And the point is I called that, and Saris was the other one where we were talking on the Planorama, and I was like, I'm excited for these B games to come out. And then I was like, wait, B game kind of sounds like a backhanded compliment. Some people might take that to mean these games are lesser.

Speaker 2:
[13:11] We were something we especially the East Coast did a lot of work to try and dispel that notion, because I don't think a B game means a quality distinction necessarily. It's more about budget and scale.

Speaker 3:
[13:25] Yeah, but some people are just always going to take the letter grade to mean, oh, this is a second rate. You know, this is not an A game or more than a passing grade. OK, but this is just this is a game as game like it's just like relatively linear. It's fairly limited in scope. It's not super linear, but it's pretty limited in scope. It's not huge and sprawling like it's telling a story. It knows what it's doing.

Speaker 1:
[13:45] It's got a mechanic that it leans into and I think it's got a regular combat rhythm.

Speaker 3:
[13:48] It's got yes, it's got all those things. It's got a satisfying upgrade loop. It's just it's the kind of game you would have gotten five of a month on the PS2.

Speaker 2:
[13:57] Right.

Speaker 3:
[13:57] And now you get one every three years. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1:
[14:01] It's also 60 bucks.

Speaker 2:
[14:02] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[14:02] 70. So Pragmata, I'm glad you're really liking. I'm warming up to it more and more. So without, there's not really any spoilers here. And I think we'll be fairly spoiler free because honestly, I don't think I could spoil it if I wanted to at this point in the game. The part I'm up to is I just did all the sign or the beacons I needed to do to get rid of the big wall in front of me. There's like six of those. Like you gotta go find these beacons and hack those.

Speaker 3:
[14:32] Did you fight the boss after you opened that big gate? Yes, it was a big... It's a huge boss. You would definitely remember.

Speaker 1:
[14:39] Maybe I just opened the gate, walked through it, and then I took a break.

Speaker 3:
[14:42] Okay. It is the biggest boss fight in the game up to that point.

Speaker 1:
[14:45] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[14:46] I'm not much past that. I'm only a little ways past that.

Speaker 1:
[14:49] So Pragmata, here's my two cents on the mechanic. I think the shooting is thunky and good. I think it is. I think it is. I think it feels good to shoot. I think sometimes there's a little too much shit on screen for me to discern when somebody's targeting me, but the little girl on your back is always like, somebody's targeting me.

Speaker 3:
[15:07] Yeah, it's weird how much. I did have to, the only change I have to make is to up the camera sensitivity so I can spin it faster because there are frequently things trying to kill you from eight different angles. And I'm surprised how much her voice call outs have actually started to become crucial because there's enemies that charge you. And sometimes you'll be fighting multiple of those and she'll let you know when another one is about to charge you from off screen so you can dodge without even seeing it coming, which is helpful.

Speaker 1:
[15:32] So it's the enemy, the one that I get tripped up on the most that I try to target first are the floating ones that shoot you. The sniper ones basically. Because in a crowd, sometimes they can hide a little bit. And so Pragmata is...

Speaker 3:
[15:46] We should say what the core mechanic is. It's the game where you have to play like pipe dreams or kind of you have to play a little tile puzzle game every time you want to kill a robot, kill an enemy.

Speaker 1:
[15:57] Yeah, I like less pipe dream.

Speaker 2:
[16:00] It's just a little grid based puzzle where it's trying to navigate obstacles and also hit certain things on the board so that you basically start boosting your damage with each one of those you hit.

Speaker 3:
[16:10] It's just a very, an ultra simple path game based little tile puzzle game type thing.

Speaker 1:
[16:15] But it's real time.

Speaker 3:
[16:16] It's real time and it pops up anytime. It's a third person shooter where that little puzzle pops up anytime you aim at an enemy because they barely take any damage until you hack them by doing that puzzle.

Speaker 1:
[16:25] Yeah. They open up.

Speaker 3:
[16:29] Yeah, they open, which sounds like it would be a big burden, but I actually think is like really satisfying.

Speaker 1:
[16:33] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[16:33] Like it adds an extra thing to do while you're managing a combat arena that like Vinny, you've also, because you're right about where I am, just saw they have started throwing you into situations where there's like eight enemies at once.

Speaker 1:
[16:44] Gets a little hairy. Well, they give you a lot more, a lot of other tools that we'll probably get to in a second here, but let's talk about that mechanic first, because this is why I think I'm warming up to the game. While you are doing that, when you aim, it pops up on the upper right of the screen, and you navigate it with the face buttons to take control of it, you have full mobility control while you're doing that. It kind of remembers where you were, so while you're doing that, you can be dodging and moving around while you're still trying to hack a guy, as long as you're within range of the person. And I think that has really made me appreciate the design of that game much more.

Speaker 3:
[17:20] Yes, 100%. And in fact, those giant, they're almost like giant babies, you know, the ones that are sort of like giant terminator looking humanoid ones that can stop you from hacking. Pretty hard and do a lot of damage and stuff. I realized at a certain point, not only does it save your progress, like if you have to pause for a second, if you disengage the puzzle and run away and then do it again 10 seconds later, all your progress is still there. So I've gotten, those guys, their weak points are on the back and they have like charge moves and stuff and like that belly flop they try to do on you where it exposes their back. And so you can prime the puzzle and get it one step away from activating, wait for them to do one of those moves where they expose their back and then pull it back up and finish it and then just wail on them. I think it's super satisfying to do stuff like that.

Speaker 1:
[18:06] The thing I haven't tried is setting that up on multiple enemies. I don't know if it tracks each enemy independently, their progress or if progress overwrites another hacking, because each enemy also has a different grid. Some are smaller, some are bigger, some have different things on it. So the setup is basically you're going to check on the moon, it's the future, moon's not communicating. The setup is really that shit's gone bad on the moon with an AI or something, that is the setup.

Speaker 2:
[18:36] Well, you're missing a key component here though, which is the funniest part of the setup for this, which is that we are living in a universe where mass like printing is the way that all stuff is built.

Speaker 1:
[18:49] Only for lunar filament, only on the moon.

Speaker 3:
[18:51] They've discovered a new ore on the moon, and that can be 3D print basically anything.

Speaker 1:
[18:55] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[18:56] And so like quite literally, the villain of this game is an evil 3D printer.

Speaker 2:
[19:01] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[19:01] Like it is a 3D printer.

Speaker 2:
[19:02] And the corporation that is cheaping out on certain things by 3D printing everything.

Speaker 3:
[19:08] Which apparently is like not as far fetched as you think. Like apparently NASA has those.

Speaker 1:
[19:13] Is that where we're going to the moon?

Speaker 3:
[19:14] In the wake of Artemis mission, like apparently there's like some speculative thought about being able to use effectively moon dust, like the regolith, the layer of... Like they think they might be able to 3D print things on the moon out of parts out of moon stuff.

Speaker 1:
[19:30] Lunafilament. So yeah, you're called in to be like, I guess nobody's heard or there's been a communication blackout with the moon team. You're with a special group of moon check-in people. I'm just going to break through this.

Speaker 2:
[19:45] You're not soldier types.

Speaker 1:
[19:46] Yeah. And like your guy's name is Hugh, which I suppose is supposed to be you, you know, because every time they're like, you, what are you doing? Anyway, you're Hugh, you lose contact with your team, but you do meet a precocious little girl who is out of the gate. You know, she's a little Android robot.

Speaker 3:
[20:05] Yeah. There's zero mystery. In fact, it's like core to the characterization. That's why like, I wonder.

Speaker 1:
[20:11] And Hugh doesn't seem that put off by it really.

Speaker 3:
[20:13] Not really.

Speaker 2:
[20:14] Confused maybe, but.

Speaker 3:
[20:15] Reviews seem very positive in this game. I haven't read any start to finish, but looking at headlines and scores, like it seems pretty well received. But I did wonder early on if there would be a category of people who find the little girl annoying.

Speaker 1:
[20:27] I do, but I'm warming up. I'm warming up.

Speaker 2:
[20:30] I did initially. It didn't take long for me to get over it.

Speaker 1:
[20:33] She's both cute and annoying.

Speaker 3:
[20:34] I think that lasted about 30 seconds for me because she has the affect of a child, but the brain of a computer. I think they do a pretty good job of blending those two things together.

Speaker 2:
[20:50] It's an idea of a child.

Speaker 3:
[20:52] She also has some just straight up manic gremlin energy to her.

Speaker 1:
[20:56] Definitely.

Speaker 3:
[20:57] But her thought process is very computer-like as she tries to understand the world. It sounds like it's coming out of a, I don't know, what is this, a six-year-old roughly?

Speaker 2:
[21:07] Seven at most, I think.

Speaker 3:
[21:09] Or five, I don't know. But it sounds like it's coming out of a child's mouth. But all of the conceptions of how things work are very robotic or very machine-like in a way that I think is really fun.

Speaker 1:
[21:21] I would say sometimes, and sometimes they just sound like kid who's been locked in a room her whole life. Sometimes it's like, oh my gosh, what is this? A skateboard? What do I do with it? Why would you go on wheels? Do I take it with me?

Speaker 2:
[21:34] So you're saying she's home-schooled?

Speaker 1:
[21:35] A little bit, a little bit. I'm coming around because she is kind of adorable in some places, and in some places I'm like, all right, I think maybe I'm less annoyed with, Diana is what they call her. I forget what her designation is.

Speaker 2:
[21:49] It's DI and then a bunch of numbers, basically.

Speaker 1:
[21:51] I think it's the interaction with Hugh and Diana that feels like they are a thousand miles apart when they're recording it. It just, Hugh's got a weird vibe to a man. Hugh is just like, I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[22:06] He's a little gruff, I guess.

Speaker 1:
[22:07] Not even gruff. Yeah, it's a weird vibe.

Speaker 2:
[22:11] I feel like, okay, just bear with me here. I feel like the direction for him was, we don't want this to just be another gruff dad character. But they didn't give a lot of instruction about what that meant. So basically, it's the actor trying to goof it up a little, but still play that kind of character. And I'm not sure it completely works.

Speaker 3:
[22:32] Yeah, I mean, there's some of the optional dialogue. You talk to her in the home base, you find out he's not married, he doesn't have kids, he kind of doesn't like kids, and that's all pretty standard.

Speaker 2:
[22:42] Like me.

Speaker 3:
[22:43] Stuff, but there is some background there.

Speaker 1:
[22:50] But it's not even the characterization. I think it's more the delivery of stuff sometimes, where he just is like, hey, yeah, no, don't do that. And be like, what do you mean, Hugh? Don't do what? Rawr! Like you said, he's got this weird like, I'm gonna go do this thing, I'm gonna chase this cat. Hey, don't do that, you're gonna get yourself hurt. I don't know, there's something a little corny. I think this is one in the preview stuff that I was like, there's something a little corny about it that I have.

Speaker 2:
[23:16] But I think it's intentional.

Speaker 3:
[23:18] Yeah, I think that it's very intentional. I think it all works very well for me.

Speaker 1:
[23:23] It was grinding, I found it to be a friction point, but I think the action and the game, and actually even some of the world stuff pushes me past it to the point where I'm okay with it now. It's pretty much fine. I like Bingo, or whatever his name is, the little robot guy with him.

Speaker 3:
[23:40] Oh, Cabin.

Speaker 1:
[23:41] Cabin, Cabin.

Speaker 3:
[23:42] His name is Cabin. There's another robot in your home base whose face is like a giant touch screen, but changes expressions and he wears a hat. He also wears a hat for some reason, but his delivery is like a game show host sometimes. The writing is just goofy in this game. There's definite personality to this.

Speaker 1:
[24:01] Yes, it has the vibe that I like, that I appreciate. Again, when I say annoying, I'm not saying I hate it, I just find it kind of grating sometimes. But it's got that binary domain or who's the Rocket Knees guy.

Speaker 3:
[24:16] This game feels very vanquished to me.

Speaker 1:
[24:18] Vanquished, yes.

Speaker 3:
[24:20] Not specifically in the same type of mechanics, but also in the same way that vanquished. Didn't vanquish kind of evoke a character action game even though it was a third-person shooter?

Speaker 1:
[24:29] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[24:30] Because that's how this feels. When you start getting into those combat arenas with a bunch of enemies, that's very much how this feels is it is a third-person shooter, but also you were dodging, you were jumping in the air to dash over sweeping ground attacks, and evading, and crowd, there's all kinds of-

Speaker 1:
[24:46] Tons of crowd control.

Speaker 3:
[24:48] Even more after you finish the level you're on, because they have a licensing system. Every time you finish a major part of the game, you get a license that unlocks more back in your home base. And a whole new raft of way more crowd control. I just got an auto-hack. You can burn little bits of super meters who just auto-hack robots now.

Speaker 1:
[25:10] So there is a decent amount to the depth of this, right? So you have your standard weapon, which almost reminded me of the- it doesn't operate anything like it, but it just kind of reminded me of the default Dead Space Gun. It doesn't change, it doesn't turn, it's not a line gun, it doesn't- it just kind of looks like it.

Speaker 3:
[25:25] It's just a pistol though.

Speaker 1:
[25:26] It's just a pistol, it's got six shots, they auto refill kind of slowly as you want to reload and you put unlimited ammo for that. Then on the left side, do you know what they call it? It's like not tactical, it's something else.

Speaker 3:
[25:37] I forget, it's like-

Speaker 1:
[25:39] It's your hit-and-guys hard gun, right? It's your damage set of weapons.

Speaker 3:
[25:42] The left is basically a shotgun and a charged sniper rifle so far. I mean, you get more weapons. The right is a grenade launcher or a like net that pulls-

Speaker 1:
[25:50] Grenade launcher is more of a AOE crowd control thing.

Speaker 3:
[25:54] It's not necessarily for damage. One is for damage, one is for crowd control, one is for like defensive, like a decoy.

Speaker 1:
[26:00] Yes, on the bottom.

Speaker 3:
[26:02] Those can't be reloaded.

Speaker 1:
[26:04] No.

Speaker 3:
[26:04] You just have to find more of them, but they are absolutely everywhere.

Speaker 1:
[26:07] I know, just use them. If you're playing this game, just use them.

Speaker 3:
[26:09] Coming off of Resident Evil, I was still in like resource scarcity mode, so I kept trying to not use my stuff.

Speaker 1:
[26:14] They throw so many-

Speaker 3:
[26:14] This is not that game. And they also throw power-ups at you to use in the little hacking puzzle.

Speaker 1:
[26:19] Yeah, so then there's the- Are those called nodes in their parliaments?

Speaker 3:
[26:23] Yes, I think that's the term, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[26:25] Yeah, so then the nodes are basically Diana's power-ups, which I think so far I got damage, stasis, and multi-hit. I think those are the ones that I know.

Speaker 3:
[26:36] There's a hack that will hack multiple robots in an area.

Speaker 1:
[26:39] And that's a super cool mechanic, is you have to pass through them on your way to the completion of your little snake-like puzzle thing.

Speaker 3:
[26:45] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[26:46] And if you do, it'll trigger, but they are limited in use. But you get tons of them.

Speaker 3:
[26:50] They just unlocked more of those for me. And I also just unlocked new hacking modes, basically, where it changes the purpose of the default tiles that are on the board, not the power-up ones.

Speaker 1:
[27:00] Oh, so it's not just extra damage?

Speaker 3:
[27:01] So not only can I auto-hack now, I can also equip a different type of hacking mode than the one that you start with to make the hack behave differently when you pull off a hack. There's just a shocking amount of customization and options in this game, I feel like.

Speaker 1:
[27:14] Yeah, it's really thought out.

Speaker 3:
[27:17] But also it lends itself to that because the hacking just adds a whole extra layer of mechanics to the shooting. Even my kids were like, Oh, I've never seen that before. I'm like, Yeah, I've never seen that before. There are a lot of very cool ideas for building on that core mechanic. The only thing that I found annoying in the game so far, but I think it's intentional, is that pistol. Because you don't reload it on the spot, it recharges shots.

Speaker 1:
[27:40] Yeah, slowly over time.

Speaker 3:
[27:41] Quite slowly, and you only have six shots. If you shoot the six, which is very easy to empty the gun quickly, you just have to dodge around for a while as the bullets very slowly recharge.

Speaker 1:
[27:53] Or hopefully, another thing drops, which they do quite often.

Speaker 3:
[27:57] Yeah, you can use the other guns, but again, those only come with three or four shots a piece and they're gone. I've been dumping all of my upgrade resources into the pistol. But you really feel it though. The basic robot, just kind of bipedal robot enemies that you start fighting, when those things went from five headshots to four and then to three as I upgraded that pistol in killing them, you really feel it. It's like, oh man, these guys go down way faster as I am. I think I'm up to eight bullets on the pistol now.

Speaker 1:
[28:27] I think there's also, along with the upgrade path there, there's damage on the gun. You get, or at least where I'm at in the game, and maybe you've opened up more, there are three places. There's a lot of upgrade trees, but the main one for character traits are your health, your main gun damage and reload and speed and bullets, and then Diana's damage from a hack or her hack open time.

Speaker 3:
[28:51] How long they stay kind of open after you hack them?

Speaker 1:
[28:53] But I think there's also, like you said, nodes that make it more damaging when you finish a hack. What's your multiplier for the damage? Most enemies have weak points. Some are hidden and super annoying. Some are, like headshots matter. This is like headshots matter of the game, right? This is like finding their weak point.

Speaker 3:
[29:10] Weak points matter, actually. Yeah, weak points matter. Because some of them have like canisters on their back or stuff like that.

Speaker 1:
[29:15] Yeah, a turret that pops up. The other thing, though, is you are doing kind of a whole other tier of upgrades over time with a different currency. There's like five or six currencies. There's a different currency that you're doing.

Speaker 3:
[29:29] Not in a bad way.

Speaker 1:
[29:30] Not necessarily.

Speaker 3:
[29:31] You get used to it pretty quickly. Not in a free-to-play way, just in a kind of standard video game upgrade way.

Speaker 1:
[29:35] Oh, yeah, yeah. But it's like, oh, you need, what is it, pure Lunafilament to do a certain upgrade?

Speaker 3:
[29:40] Something like that, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[29:42] And that'll get you things like, hey, you can dodge one more time with your thrusters, or you get an extra health canister. You're pretty fragile. You can't sit there and tank hits.

Speaker 3:
[29:52] I don't think I've died yet, but I've come very close.

Speaker 1:
[29:55] I definitely died. It's kind of cute when you die.

Speaker 3:
[29:59] I've definitely gotten down to like 5% health and just barely made it out before. The point is, it's not an easy game. Like you said, you take a lot of damage. You can die in two to four hits in a battle. I would highly recommend maxing the dash ability as soon as you can.

Speaker 2:
[30:17] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[30:18] Because the more times you can dash, the more times you can get out of the way of damage.

Speaker 2:
[30:21] This does bring me to my main criticisms about the game. I think I'm a little less enamored with the combat in general than you guys are. I think the puzzle thing is kind of neat and novel, but I can't say that I'm finding it that fun to play around with. The shooting does feel fairly good, but in the early goings, it's very lumbering and it doesn't really feel like you can do a whole lot. That changes eventually and it does start to feel more dynamic as you start getting upgrades and things. But initially it's a little kludgy, but I got over that. This game does a thing that I find a little annoying, which is that they tell you when you select your difficulty at the beginning of the game, when you die, you can change it. What they don't tell you is that they default the button, which is X, to change it instead of another button that you wouldn't normally pick. So basically the first time I died, they were like, do you want to change difficulty? And I just hit X reflexively and realized, wait a minute, I just changed the difficulty without realizing it.

Speaker 1:
[31:22] And it doesn't confirm or anything?

Speaker 2:
[31:24] No, it just does it. And I think you do have to hold it down or something. I didn't really realize what I was doing in the moment. So you can go back and change it again, I think. But it's one of those things that's like, okay, maybe that's a little pushy on the hay. I don't need this yet.

Speaker 3:
[31:39] Whoever designed the confirmation prompts in this game should get a stern talking to, because every yes, no prompt in this game defaults to no. So you have to select yes. And my brain expects it to be yes, so I'm constantly hitting X on no as soon as the prompt pops up. And then having to do the whole thing over like, it's just a little messy.

Speaker 2:
[31:58] Less than ideal. But those are like, those are my main criticisms though, is it? Because I have no real dislike of the game. I think it's actually, like you said, some of the characterization stuff is fun. I think the further I get into it, the more interesting kind of the world on this moon is. I'm just not loving it. And I think it's more that it just feels a little, again, I think if I was more interested in the combat and I was having more fun with it, I would probably be way more into it. Right now, it's like that stuff is fine. It's just not super doing it for me.

Speaker 3:
[32:31] Yeah, it ramps quickly. I don't know how far in you are, but it absolutely, especially toward the end of that big New York level, like really...

Speaker 2:
[32:39] Okay, I have not made it to New York.

Speaker 1:
[32:41] I can tell you that.

Speaker 3:
[32:41] Okay, that's like, that's the actual beginning of the game as far as I'm concerned, like by the time...

Speaker 1:
[32:45] Yeah, it kind of opened up a lot.

Speaker 2:
[32:46] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[32:47] And that level is shockingly long, I thought. I don't know about you, Vinny, like it kind of, there's a lot to it.

Speaker 1:
[32:52] I mean, it's long, but it's kind of a pace that I enjoy because there's plenty to search around and look through.

Speaker 3:
[32:59] Yeah. But I'll just say before I... I think it's worth touching on how the levels are broken up, but by the time you get to the end of that big, long New York sequence, like they have added so much to the game that, like there's a ton of extra stuff to do, a ton of extra combat options.

Speaker 1:
[33:14] It does feel like New York is, by the time you're done with it, you have basically done the tutorializing, right? Like, because they've opened up all the weapon slots, or at least it feels like the slots are opened up.

Speaker 3:
[33:23] All the weapon slots, like the little girl has started getting her cyber upgrades. They've opened up their optional challenge rooms off to the side that unlock new upgrades and stuff to do that you have to get an expendable key to even open and get in and do.

Speaker 1:
[33:37] Yeah. So you'll get what? Overdrive. You'll have mods for Hugh. You'll have the nodes open for her. You'll have all the weapons.

Speaker 3:
[33:45] They introduce a ton more mechanics in that. And also it's not a I hope it's not a spoiler to say the New York stuff, because that's like the first imagery they ever showed from this game six years ago.

Speaker 1:
[33:54] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[33:54] Was was the kind of astronaut and the little girl walking through weird New York.

Speaker 1:
[33:58] It's the first big open area.

Speaker 3:
[33:59] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[34:00] Otherwise, it's very linear. And that part is not.

Speaker 3:
[34:02] Yeah. Yeah, for sure. But so on the point of that level being super long, you have the home base and you they give you fast travel points back to the base like constantly like every like. Yeah, which I really appreciate, because you can only upgrade back at the base, but you're constantly getting upgraded materials. So like six times throughout that big New York level, they open a fast travel point where you can hop on the monorail and just go back to base and upgrade and then come right back to where you were. I am, which is nice.

Speaker 1:
[34:29] I don't know if you probably knew this maybe because you had to spend some more time with it. I initially pretty early on, maybe within the first half hour to an hour, I was like, is this going to be a run based game? It feels like there's some mechanics in here because they're like, hey, you can go back to base. All the enemies will re-spawn when you come back. You can go back and do a thing. Is this a bonfire mechanic? Are we doing that? But it's not quite. I think it's, they don't penalize you really except for re-spawning the enemies.

Speaker 3:
[34:58] It's not not though, because you also get all your health back. You don't have, there's not a lot of healing in this game is the other thing to the difficulty. Not only do you take a lot of damage by default, you only get one, basically Estus Flask, you only get one heal, but you get all your health back and replenish that heal when you go back to base. So it's like, it's always, it's generally always worth it to pop back to base, especially with short load times these days to upgrade and heal every time you come across one of those new fast travel points.

Speaker 2:
[35:24] I mean, I did that with the first boss, like when I, that was the only time I died, was to that first boss the first time around, went back to the base and then I just fucking shredded that thing after that.

Speaker 3:
[35:33] I think the personality and the game mechanics and like all of it and the variety and everything could really develop through that next big level like very substantially.

Speaker 1:
[35:41] It's where I started coming around more on the game.

Speaker 3:
[35:43] Same, same. I was also, after the end of that first level, I was like, this is cool. This is good. I like this, but I wasn't like over the moon about it until I've started to see how much. Yes, exactly. Until I've started to see how much is in there. Also, when the little robot, when the little computer girl starts getting her cyber upgrades, they come in the form of these little tablets that she sucks on as if they are Capri Suns.

Speaker 1:
[36:08] I would say she more just bites it.

Speaker 3:
[36:10] But there's definitely a very drinking or eating kind of motif going on, and she's like chomping down on these things.

Speaker 1:
[36:17] She's so dopey.

Speaker 3:
[36:18] That's yes. I find that character to be endlessly entertaining.

Speaker 1:
[36:22] She does, again, occasionally, not all the time when she hacks a thing, she just starts, she verbalizes binary in such a silly way. 101, 110, 111. It's ridiculous. It's so dumb.

Speaker 3:
[36:34] It's all so goofy.

Speaker 1:
[36:36] The other part that made me wonder at first, I was like, is this not a Roguelike, but is this a run-based thing? Is you also, before you go back out into the world, it's very much like, what's your loadout? What do you want to equip here? Do you want to equip this gun? Do you want to equip? What mods you want to equip?

Speaker 2:
[36:51] What's... And this is another UI thing. Sometimes those menus do not do a great job of emphasizing whether you have selected a thing or you are not selecting a thing. Once you get the feel for it, you stop having that problem. But initially, I kept feeling like, did I equip this? Did I not equip this? It doesn't seem like it's working the way I would think.

Speaker 3:
[37:15] I think some parts of the environment are also not quite as readable as it could be. There are so many lights and shiny cyber surfaces everywhere that I've missed quite a few treasure chests, and collectibles.

Speaker 1:
[37:26] They don't pop.

Speaker 2:
[37:27] They try to make those as yellow as they possibly can, but it doesn't always work.

Speaker 3:
[37:32] There's that blue treasure chest that just blends into the background, unless you really know what you're looking for.

Speaker 1:
[37:37] That's like the L1 chest.

Speaker 3:
[37:39] But it's very much a keyword around collection because every fast travel point, when you're back at base, shows exactly what there is to find and how many around each fast travel point, so you can very much go back and find stuff.

Speaker 1:
[37:53] Did you clear them out?

Speaker 3:
[37:54] Not a ton. No, absolutely not. Some of them seem pretty well hidden.

Speaker 1:
[37:59] I tried to get, once I realized what some of the upgrades were for, I did go back and try and get some of the big ones that unlock. So there's a lot to talk about in this game, even though mechanically probably the thing is the hacking, but some of the upgrade trees, you have to unlock a thing to get access to it, and then you can upgrade it with a different resource. And some of them are kind of awesome, like hey, if you upgrade this thing, you can heal more, or this, Hugh has his own mods he can put on, and you can upgrade extra mod slots, and then one of them, I think the one I'm rolling with is like, you heal more, you can hack from further away, which is like a godsend, I don't know how you'd play that game without that thing.

Speaker 3:
[38:49] Oh god, I don't think I got that one.

Speaker 1:
[38:50] Oh my gosh, that was so great. Yeah, because like having some distance from those enemies, especially those snipers and being able to hack them, or those guys that shoot missiles and you can just hack the missile from further away is very, very helpful. I forget the other one I have on, but there's some other mods there. And so I went back and I was like, man, I need to get some more of that good luna filament to get these other things open. I like their base, I really like their base.

Speaker 3:
[39:16] Yeah, the base is awesome.

Speaker 1:
[39:18] And the way they, when you're like, okay, now you've unlocked the ability to bring this gun in with you, it shows up on like a gun wall, which like flips around. I think that's very cool. I like a good like, hey, you're actually gonna see this in the environment that you can bring this thing with you. And they do a good job of that.

Speaker 3:
[39:34] It's also just weird, like you're collecting like blueprints for earth objects basically, so you're like-

Speaker 1:
[39:39] That part's weird. Is it re-mo? What are those things called?

Speaker 3:
[39:42] Oh God.

Speaker 1:
[39:43] It's not repo.

Speaker 3:
[39:45] Read Earth Memories, I believe, of REMs.

Speaker 1:
[39:47] Oh, REMs, that's what it is.

Speaker 3:
[39:49] It's like one of them is like a basketball hoop. One of them is an old CRT television. One of them is a slide.

Speaker 1:
[39:55] And you complete the set, and it makes like a little room.

Speaker 3:
[39:57] Oh, I haven't completed any of them yet.

Speaker 1:
[39:59] Yeah, if you do a set, it actually locks it all off, and it's a completed set.

Speaker 3:
[40:04] You're basically printing a bunch of earth objects for her to discover and play with, which is like juicy to watch.

Speaker 1:
[40:09] She's cute when she interacts.

Speaker 3:
[40:10] Like animation is good. Like it's just fun watching her. Which again, like, I don't know, I think it's pretty well done. But it's like it's like mostly a child's understanding of learning about the world. But again, there's like something machine like about it that just makes it a little bit off.

Speaker 1:
[40:23] It's yeah, it's I think again, I think it's the hue Diana. It just doesn't feel they're in the same room when they're talking to each other.

Speaker 3:
[40:31] Now they are laying it on very thick. Like some of this might be where you're about to walk into to fight that boss like cut scene wise, but like the the the burgeoning father child father daughter relationship is like as heavy. Okay. That heavy handed but it's very transparent like it becomes very front center.

Speaker 1:
[40:51] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[40:51] Where they're going with it. And I also think I guessed exactly what the backstory of this whole thing is like way before they started revealing any of it.

Speaker 1:
[40:59] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[40:59] Or I think I know exactly where it's going. I could be wrong, but like it's just not like that. The broader story is like pretty predictable or by the numbers, I think. But it's but it's more the way they handle the writing and the goofiness of the personality that makes it likable.

Speaker 2:
[41:14] And again, I think the thing that I makes me want to support this game, even though I'm not like overly in love with it, is that I just love the idea of a major publisher putting out a game that isn't meant to be the biggest fucking billion dollar AAA explosive thing like Capcom. They have that. They have Resident Evil this year. So here's Pragmata, a game that's a little bit cheaper, a little bit shorter, and a little bit more like old video games. By old, I mean like, you know, a generation or two. And like pretty good in most respects. Like it just feels like, hey, we greenlit a thing that isn't going to be our biggest breadwinner this year, and that's okay.

Speaker 3:
[41:49] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[41:49] Do more of that.

Speaker 3:
[41:50] Totally, totally. Like it's just it's just again, it's just a game ass game. Like with the two exceptions that again, I think the puzzle over top of the third person shooting is, like Vinny said, like that is actually genuinely new and feels fresh and like something I haven't seen before. And again, like at least at least for me, like I think the general tone of the writing and the personality of the characters is more interesting than I expected it to be also.

Speaker 1:
[42:17] Yeah. TBD on that for me, I think I want a little more tooth and the whole thing feels a little saccharine right now.

Speaker 3:
[42:23] Yeah, it for sure is, but yeah.

Speaker 1:
[42:25] So I think this, but this is not a, this is not, or does not feel like an edgy game, right?

Speaker 2:
[42:32] No, it's a very sweet robot shooting game.

Speaker 1:
[42:35] We'll see where it goes.

Speaker 3:
[42:36] It's corny, but not embarrassing.

Speaker 2:
[42:38] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[42:39] Yes, it is not embarrassing.

Speaker 2:
[42:40] By no means unbearable.

Speaker 3:
[42:42] It's not predictable the way they're doing or relation to her surroundings necessarily, or I don't think it is.

Speaker 1:
[42:50] Yeah, I'm making a little bit of a phase. Again, a little TBD.

Speaker 3:
[42:53] There is some more stuff after where we're at.

Speaker 1:
[42:56] Again, I think she's very cute. I just think she could be a little annoying at times. Did you change her outfit? Did you put her in the VR thing? Did you unlock the outfit? Did you bingo card it?

Speaker 3:
[43:08] No, I have not gotten enough to. I also haven't beaten the red zone that opens up that first board yet.

Speaker 1:
[43:13] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[43:14] But I also have a whole second board now.

Speaker 1:
[43:17] Did you get that after the boss?

Speaker 3:
[43:19] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[43:19] Okay. Yeah, you could put her in dumb outfit. She's in a weird VR helmet now. She just sits on your back. She just holds on to your back and you run around with her.

Speaker 2:
[43:29] Good thing you got those footholds on there already.

Speaker 1:
[43:31] Yeah. Good thing. She doesn't wear shoes either. I'm waiting for the outfit to put some damn shoes on.

Speaker 3:
[43:35] No, she's a robot.

Speaker 1:
[43:36] Yeah. Is she though? She's my robot kid. My robot kid needs to wear some damn shoes when you run around here.

Speaker 3:
[43:44] I mean, a good example is that I don't know how much of the optional dialogue you've done. I don't think this is part of this.

Speaker 1:
[43:51] I can't think I've done all of it.

Speaker 3:
[43:53] Maybe this is part of the actual story cut scenes. She flat out says, I was designed to feel sensations and have feelings like people do, but then he asks her about pain and she's like, no, I don't feel pain, but my system assigns a numeric value to it. That's the type of stuff I mean is she's a little more detached than a child. She never cries. You know what I mean? She never feels upset when he yells at her. She just is, that's kind of, I think, where I mean the mechanical quality comes in is that there's a bit of a detached quality to the way she relates to her surroundings, so that I think is really fun.

Speaker 1:
[44:28] She's always chipper about it. Yeah. There's that other part too.

Speaker 3:
[44:30] She's completely unflappable actually, is I guess what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 1:
[44:34] And there's that other part too where she's about to fall like 800 stories, and he grabs her and he's like, what are you doing? He's like, I don't know, you'll repair me if I fall.

Speaker 3:
[44:40] That early, actually, this is the best example I can think of. Very early on, when they discover the tram system and they're trying to figure out what to do in this base that's collapsing and they're like, he's like, maybe we need to go to the power station and start it up, but I don't know if it's safe. And he's like, how will we know if it's safe? And she was like, well, we can go. And then if you survive, then we'll know that it's safe.

Speaker 1:
[44:59] Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[45:00] Like it's stuff like that.

Speaker 1:
[45:01] Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, I don't think she's, it's not a thing where I'm like, oh my gosh, well, this is the worst tag along character. It's not that. It's not that. I think it actually might be more Hugh. I think.

Speaker 2:
[45:15] That's fair.

Speaker 1:
[45:16] Hugh needs to figure it out.

Speaker 2:
[45:18] Hugh's just not that interesting. Like again, it's not that he's a, it's a bad performance or anything. I just, I think it's intentional. Like they know the girl and the friendly robot with the hat is probably going to do a lot of the personality lifting. So you're just a guy.

Speaker 1:
[45:31] You're you.

Speaker 2:
[45:32] You're just a guy. Who is pleasant enough. Just not that.

Speaker 1:
[45:35] Pleasant enough.

Speaker 2:
[45:35] Not that exciting of a character.

Speaker 1:
[45:37] Maybe if he were a little more like in the beginning here, maybe if you were a little more like, what the fuck are you kind of a bro? But he's kind of a bro.

Speaker 3:
[45:47] He's like he's in his late thirties and he's unmarried and he says he's happy that way. But he's not like he's like, I like my life. She kind of like at some point, he sort of gets a little defensive. He's like, I like my life. Like, what do you?

Speaker 1:
[45:58] Yeah, don't judge me. But he's not like he's like, this is kind of weird that they'd make a little girl robot who's like, he's just kind of like, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[46:06] So that's the stuff where instantly, as soon as I saw what the tone of the writing and stuff was in this game. And I've gotten like one email that you uncover that now reinforces my theory of exactly where that's going.

Speaker 1:
[46:16] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[46:17] And why she exists.

Speaker 1:
[46:18] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[46:19] Again, it feels like the most, again, I could be wrong, but it feels like the most obvious explanation for why you would even write a character like that.

Speaker 1:
[46:28] I got to give a tip of the hat to Capcom. They are kind of like you said, Alex, good for them for publishing this game, but also they just seem to be on a consistent hit record. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[46:39] I mean, they have been for...

Speaker 1:
[46:41] Yeah. That's what I mean. Like they're...

Speaker 3:
[46:42] Eight, 10 years at this point. Like they were kind of down for a while, but they have been extremely back for quite a long time.

Speaker 1:
[46:49] I don't know if that last month, Sir Hunter did what they wanted it to do, but like, I think they are just putting out consistency.

Speaker 3:
[46:55] Not a little of them. Yeah. Wilds didn't super do it for me. And like, I liked Requiem quite a bit, but I had my issues with that as well, but there's still generally a good, pretty good baseline of quality from them.

Speaker 1:
[47:07] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[47:07] And hey, Street Fighter's still a very good going concern for them.

Speaker 1:
[47:11] Yeah, and also they just, I mean, say what you will about Monster Hunter. I'm not a big Monster Hunter person. I would say Monster Hunter probably set a trend more than followed it, which was gonna be my point, is I don't think it feels like they're following a lot of trends. I haven't seen the Capcom Extraction Shooter. I haven't seen the Capcom giant, massive, open-world collect-a-thon game. They kind of have their things they like to make and they continue to make them. And maybe the world is coming back around.

Speaker 2:
[47:37] Little girl robot shooters.

Speaker 1:
[47:39] Yeah, or fantasy games that may or may not come out.

Speaker 2:
[47:43] Not deep down, though.

Speaker 3:
[47:44] They should put out deep down. I was just about to say that. That's right.

Speaker 1:
[47:47] Pragmata came out.

Speaker 2:
[47:47] It's kind of like saying, I'm gonna drive somewhere, right?

Speaker 3:
[47:50] The PS5s deep down came out in this game, so now they need to go back. I'm like, whatever.

Speaker 1:
[47:54] What do you think of the game now? I think I like it more than I thought I would, and that's mostly based on the combat and the action and that mechanic.

Speaker 3:
[48:03] Yeah, it's really satisfying to play.

Speaker 1:
[48:05] It feels good, especially when things start heating up and you're doing like seven things at once to try and take care of this guy, take care of this guy. These guys are opened up, these guys are not, and the combat puzzles seem to work for me. I do really not like fighting those giant baby things, so those are annoying.

Speaker 2:
[48:22] They're not great.

Speaker 1:
[48:23] Yeah, especially when they block your hacking. It's annoying. Two of them at a time, even more annoying.

Speaker 3:
[48:28] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[48:30] That's Pragmata. 60 bucks available on the PlayStation and the Xbox. There's a Switch 2 version of it and the PC. I don't know what, I mean, this game also looks and plays pretty well, so I don't know how things are on the Switch 2.

Speaker 3:
[48:44] Probably fine. I would guess this game probably runs well enough on a Switch 2. Yeah, probably doesn't load as quickly, otherwise.

Speaker 1:
[48:51] I played it on the PS5.

Speaker 3:
[48:53] Yeah, I'm on the PS5 Pro. I'm using, well, I don't know if your TV can do it. I'm using the high frame rate mode.

Speaker 1:
[49:00] Is it just variable refresh at that point?

Speaker 3:
[49:02] Yeah, it disables the frame rate cap and puts it in VRR mode. So on my TV, I can look, I mean, not that it really matters, but I was kind of getting like 90 FPS in the first area when I had it on, just to see what it was doing. Like it runs really well, looks good.

Speaker 1:
[49:18] Hey, let me ask you a side question about that. Does that go up and down? And would you notice?

Speaker 3:
[49:24] Yeah, well, do you mean like playing it? Do you notice? Or can you watch the number? Because yes, most monitors, you can sit there and literally watch it.

Speaker 1:
[49:30] No, no, playing it. Like, is it annoying to go from 90 to 70 or?

Speaker 3:
[49:34] For me, I can't really tell past about like 75, 80 and up. It's really hard for me to tell. Like 90 to 60 really rapidly back and forth, I could tell, or 120 to 60, I could tell. But once it's consistently, and VRR helps with that too, but once it's consistently like 80, 90 plus, like I don't notice the swings at all.

Speaker 1:
[49:55] So you didn't notice it here?

Speaker 3:
[49:56] No, no.

Speaker 1:
[49:57] And I should say, on mine, the frame rate has been very smooth. On my normal one. That's Pragmata. That is available on the 17th. So we got a couple of days after the time this podcast comes out. Are they doing their early, get in there early for anything, like an early version of this? I doubt it.

Speaker 2:
[50:16] I didn't see anything to that effect.

Speaker 3:
[50:17] I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

Speaker 1:
[50:20] Seems pretty cool. I don't know if anybody wants to go watch a video before you do it to really get a sense of, I did not have a great sense of how combat puzzle it would be before I got in. I'm sure there are videos out there that kind of show the depth of it. I think things do open up and get pretty cool on that front. Pragmata, we're gonna take a quick break. We're gonna come back. We're gonna talk about some other games. So stick around. All right, we are back. And we got some other games to talk about here, including the Type for Your Life game, Final Sentence, how much do you value your words per minute? Are you willing to bet your life on them? We played this demo when it first came out. It is now out for realsie. It is 10 bucks. The premise and setup for this game is you enter into a lobby with a bunch of other people. They all get a little typewriter. You get some text. There is a person pointing a gun at you basically. It is then every time you make a mistake, it gets logged by default. I think it's three mistakes and they put a bullet in the chamber, spin it and then pull the trigger. You have a one out of six chance as are the odds in the Russian roulette to die. If you survive, you continue.

Speaker 2:
[51:47] Three more mistakes, they add another bullet.

Speaker 1:
[51:49] Yeah. Pull, flip the chamber.

Speaker 3:
[51:51] It's very just visually, aesthetically it is very like NKVD, torture basement coded.

Speaker 1:
[51:57] Sure. Yes. It is dystopian to an extreme here. This is, it's also got, to me feels like something, the bureaucratic nonsense of it is like a little Brazil or something like, why are we all typing this nonsense? Nobody knows, but you must. Doesn't matter. Yes. You must continue to type. What would you say? The guys are like, like in trench coats. I barely look up at them, like holding guns.

Speaker 2:
[52:22] I think maybe Hill Gas looking.

Speaker 1:
[52:23] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[52:24] I mean, it all just, it all just looks kind of 30s. Totalitarian to me.

Speaker 2:
[52:29] A lot of guys with fucking John Hurt in 1984 haircuts.

Speaker 1:
[52:33] So the winner, the one who makes it all the way to the end, fast this, flips off their torturer, and then everybody else gets shot in the face.

Speaker 3:
[52:41] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[52:42] And then you can go again.

Speaker 2:
[52:43] It's a race, you know.

Speaker 1:
[52:45] It's a race. It's a race to be fairly accurate, and also to type very quickly. It's a simple concept, I think, with some interesting trappings.

Speaker 3:
[52:56] It's a typing battle royale, really.

Speaker 1:
[52:57] It really is.

Speaker 3:
[52:58] Which is all that was in the demo, and it's still kind of the main mode here. Not quite as much new stuff in this as I was hoping for.

Speaker 2:
[53:06] It's pretty straightforward in terms of features.

Speaker 3:
[53:09] But also it's like, what is it, nine bucks?

Speaker 1:
[53:11] Nine bucks.

Speaker 3:
[53:12] Yeah, it's like, it's kind of hard to complain.

Speaker 1:
[53:13] Ten bucks. Nine bucks on sale. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[53:15] It feels like there's plenty in here. They added two more modes. There's a round based mode now, which is eight players, and every round the last place finisher gets shot.

Speaker 1:
[53:23] Kind of like that one, actually.

Speaker 3:
[53:24] Until there's one left. One's okay, and then there's a dual mode that is after every round, whoever came in second plays Russian roulette, so you're not out immediately, but eventually one of you will die.

Speaker 1:
[53:36] Wait, is that, that was different than the one-on-one duel?

Speaker 3:
[53:40] No, that is the one-on-one duel.

Speaker 1:
[53:41] That is the one-on-one duel.

Speaker 3:
[53:43] But at the end of every round, it's Russian roulette, it's not a guaranteed death, so it's like you have a chance of dying if you come in second.

Speaker 1:
[53:49] Oh, oh, right.

Speaker 3:
[53:50] Every time you come in second, your chance increases of dying.

Speaker 1:
[53:53] I like that one because you're sitting across from them and it's just like...

Speaker 3:
[53:55] That one's okay. I was really just hoping for more progression, frankly.

Speaker 2:
[54:01] It has almost none.

Speaker 3:
[54:02] But it's kind of a meter. Because you have a level, like I'm level 103 or something, like you level pretty quickly, but the level gives you absolutely nothing as far as I can tell. There are exactly three quests in this game that you finish in about five minutes, and there's no more quests. It's like, why did you even put quests in? There's nothing to unlock. There's kind of nothing. There's not even a global leaderboard or any kind of leaderboard.

Speaker 1:
[54:28] Normally, I would say maybe the level is being used in some matchmaking, but this game feels small enough that I don't know if that's a concern.

Speaker 2:
[54:38] I think the real thing is that it feels very much like a joke that got a lot of love put into it. It was a gag idea that they realized had some legs behind it, and they made that idea polished enough to work well in this environment, but they did not add a lot of trimmings around the edges to it.

Speaker 3:
[54:57] Yeah, I would have loved some unlockable stuff to equip or whatever as you level in that game. But the core, the look and feel of sitting in that room and the music and everything is unbelievable, the atmosphere.

Speaker 2:
[55:09] It literally makes my hands shake, which is weird because I don't really care if I win or lose that game. I'm not pressed about it, but just something about the vibe of it and the sound that happens every time you make a mistake actually makes me a little shaky.

Speaker 1:
[55:22] Yeah, it's mostly silent except for the clacking away, but there is proximity chats and once in a while you do get somebody mouthing off or talking. I think the thing that they added, which I do appreciate, is there's a decent amount of customization in some of the modes or the private game. So you can choose the text you want. You can choose how many mistakes to start the root lab.

Speaker 2:
[55:44] Whether capitalization matters or not.

Speaker 1:
[55:45] You can choose whether caps matter. You can even go so far as to say, when a mistake happens, do you skip the letter? Do you go back to the start of a sentence? Or do you just time out for a second? And those are interesting. I think the setup is great for what it is. I think for 10 bucks this is great. I do think a little more on the progression would have me try a little more to achieve. I think that's what you want, Brad. You want to be rewarded for winning more than just being able to flip off your captor.

Speaker 3:
[56:18] The other thing is I wish there was more text in the final version. I was seeing repeats in the Battle Royale mode in the first half hour, which is a real shame.

Speaker 1:
[56:27] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[56:28] Some of the ones they put in there are pretty clever. Some of them are awful. Some of them are-

Speaker 2:
[56:32] The one that's all fucked up words.

Speaker 3:
[56:34] That's the very first one I ever got. The one that preys on that feature of your brain, where words that essentially begin and end as they should, are legible even if they're all jumbled in the middle.

Speaker 2:
[56:48] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[56:48] Like that's what that entire, every single word in there is just like a little bit jumbled up in the middle. And so you have to fight your brain's desire to type it normally. Like it's a nightmare.

Speaker 1:
[56:59] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[57:00] Like there's some clever stuff. Like there's a whole category of game review stuff.

Speaker 1:
[57:03] Yeah, that's pretty funny.

Speaker 3:
[57:05] Which it's not snippets from game reviews. It's little blurbs about them.

Speaker 1:
[57:10] Like summaries, Jeff's Kane and Lynch Review is in there.

Speaker 3:
[57:12] Yeah, like Kane and Lynch Review is in there and some others.

Speaker 1:
[57:14] There's like a SimCity one from Polygon.

Speaker 3:
[57:17] The Polygon SimCity 2013 review is referenced like this. Whoever made this game has a weird knowledge of the history of game reviews.

Speaker 1:
[57:25] Yeah, it's a neat, cool, self-contained thing. Brad, you were killing it. You, I would have, I think as somebody who was not killing it, to be able to have you have a little flair on would have been, I think, you know, like maybe the return bell on your typewriter could be a little different, something.

Speaker 3:
[57:45] Yeah, it's cool. I mean, it's fine for nine bucks, but I'd wish it had more.

Speaker 2:
[57:49] I think at this point, it is a well-made, reasonably polished novelty. It does not feel like a super deep game, but it is a kind of thing. Like every once in a while, you might just get the bug to want to play a few rounds. Yes.

Speaker 1:
[58:00] Executes on its premise. Executes. Alex, tell me about Dosa Divas.

Speaker 2:
[58:09] The new game from Outer Loop, the makers of Thirsty Suitors, and what was it? Falconeer before that?

Speaker 1:
[58:16] Falcon Age.

Speaker 3:
[58:17] Falcon Age.

Speaker 2:
[58:17] Falcon Age, okay.

Speaker 3:
[58:18] Yes, Falcon and Falconeer is a different game from kind of around the same time.

Speaker 2:
[58:22] Okay. Well, this is probably, I would say, more in the vein of what they were doing around Thirsty Suitors, which is to say it is an extremely culturally South Asian game with characters who are definitely representative of that. And it's also food based in the way that a lot of Thirsty Suitors was, because you are playing these two sisters who are part of a family of, I guess, culinary giants in this world, or at least people that are well respected in that regard. But this is not just like a regular, you know, wacky, normal suburbia environment. Like you are coming home after a long time away, you have a mech suit, and you are immediately greeted by the lawyers from this evil corporation that has taken over the food supply of your mountain village that you are returning to, and that corporation is run by your evil little sister named Lena. So you immediately start getting in turn based battles with their lawyers. And the way the combat works, it's an RPG, it is turn based battling, it's a little rhythm based in the sense that blocking and critical hits are timed to specific button presses. That has been my biggest challenge so far with this game, is that I feel like I am just not quite dialed in 100% on the timing of that stuff. Not so much that it's like negatively impacting me because I'm still getting the blocks and I'm still getting the hits, but I feel like I'm not getting the perfect timing yet. I'm not sure if that's just me or something about the game I'm just not locking in on. But also all the different status effects and attack types are based around flavor profiles. So you have sour or you have sweet or you have things like that. Eventually, what you are trying to do is I think, figure out what's going on with your evil sister and all that. But the vibes are just like, hey, you're in town now and you have this mech suit and you are helping people, you are fighting battles and I'm not as immediately in love with it as I was with Thirsty Suitors, but I like it a lot out of the gate. It does not take a long time to get going. It pretty much drops you in to what's going on very quickly. The mechanics, while I'm not 100 percent dialed in on them, seem at least clever and it has a ton of personality in the way that Thirsty Suitors did.

Speaker 3:
[60:44] Have you been to the cooking dimension? I assume you have.

Speaker 2:
[60:46] Yeah, so the cooking dimension is a thing you...

Speaker 3:
[60:48] What is it called?

Speaker 2:
[60:49] Oh, what is that called?

Speaker 3:
[60:51] There's a name. I remember when I played this at Summer Game Fest and they told me the name of the alternate dimension you warp to every time you cook was very funny and I can't remember what it is.

Speaker 2:
[60:59] Yeah, I don't remember either. It's a thing you can go into at any time just by holding down the left trigger on the controller. And then when you go in there, there is a series of mini games you go through depending on what ingredients you are putting into your food. So you are collecting ingredients throughout the world. Some of them are meant to be primary ingredients, some of them are more like for flavor profile and spice. But you can recombine those ingredients in various ways to create different kinds of buff items, like health power-ups, like stuff that gives you more special points for your attacks, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1:
[61:36] And the entire world, is the entire island or environment kind of food themed?

Speaker 2:
[61:43] Not really, I mean, food is a big part of it, but the world itself seems very much just sort of like this kind of rocky island environment. And there might be more stuff that opens up over time. I don't think this is like a super long game, but at least in the opening area, they're like the food is more just like everyone talks about it, everyone cares about it, but it isn't like there's just the food world in Mario Odyssey or something like that.

Speaker 1:
[62:06] Okay. Okay. And are the corpos also food based?

Speaker 2:
[62:10] No, there's dudes and ladies, like the lawyers are just people that have their own weird attacks and stuff. You like your mech suit has a personality, like it will fight separate from you when you are in the battles. And it seems like that is one of the main things you will be tricking out throughout the game. Like there's a bunch of different like cosmetic items you can put on it to change its look. And the two sisters are like the main characters. And I think they might be some of the same voice actresses from Thirsty Suiters if at least one of them seems very recognizable to me.

Speaker 1:
[62:44] So you're digging it. Maybe the guy got synced up with the combat a little more.

Speaker 2:
[62:48] Yeah. I just haven't quite gotten into a rhythm with it the way I did with Thirsty Suiters. But also, you know, there are different games doing slightly different things. But it has that same flavor profile, I would say, of something like Thirsty Suiters. And if you liked that game, I think this is a pretty easy recommendation.

Speaker 1:
[63:05] Very cool. That's out now, just came out. And again, that's Outer Loop Falcon Age and Thirsty Suiters, developers. Yeah, I kind of want to check that out. I like the vibe of Thirsty Suiters. I never made it through the entire thing. So I want to see what they do here.

Speaker 2:
[63:26] I think that game is a triumph. I'm not quite ready to declare this game that also, but I do think right out of the gate, it seems very good.

Speaker 1:
[63:34] Very cool. I did pick up and play that game Replaced. If you guys remember this one, it's the...

Speaker 3:
[63:42] Finally came out.

Speaker 1:
[63:43] It finally came out.

Speaker 2:
[63:44] Cool pixels.

Speaker 1:
[63:46] It's very cool pixels. I think Replaced is so dang, and pardon my French, good looking. It is so much my jam in the way this game looks. It is very reminiscent of a Blackthorn or a Flashback. It just... But it adds in the modern stuff of 3D backgrounds and foregrounds, and it does great jobs with rolling things across the foreground to transition and move you from one scene to another or to hide a scene change. It just does a great, great thing, and things going from the background to the foreground work very, very well. The set up here is it's an alternate, I think, 1980s. There has been some bad, bad business with radiation, I believe. The story is still unfolding. You wind up being... You're transplanted as this consciousness, this robotic consciousness into the body of a human, and now you're running around. In the demo, they explicitly say this, but they also are very noticeable now. They give you a gun that fires in the demo. You have a super weapon in the demo. This you do not.

Speaker 2:
[65:03] Is the human personality still there, or is it just the computer?

Speaker 1:
[65:07] Hard to say. The computer personality talks to the human personality like it's there. I have not heard a word back from the... It'll be like, Warren, we need to get you moving now. You're gonna die. You never hear back. There's also some nasty stuff going on where it sounds like there's organ... Legitimized is maybe not the right word, but they are harvesting organs from people to keep other people alive as this radiation sickness takes over. But maybe it is... It's monetized and legitimized in a way that seems to be a foundation of the society now. Like it is, hey, you just sign up for this. You're called a disposable, and maybe you've given your organs over to other people. And you're making your way through this mostly from left to right, as you move from left to right. I love the production of this game. The music is great. Animations are godly in this game. I think the gameplay leaves a little to be desired.

Speaker 2:
[66:17] That was going to be my follow up question. You've really hammered the aesthetics, which I'm not surprised those are good. I was wondering how it played.

Speaker 1:
[66:25] So there's basically three loops in this game. One is you are really just holding right on the stick as you run from left to right through gorgeous environments. Maybe occasionally jumping or doing a jumping puzzle or jumping multiple times. It's fairly slow. There is the combat loop, which is Arkham Asylum-esque in its combat. It is not very demanding. It is fun to execute that stuff, can get a little repetitive. You basically have a roll to dodge or you have a hit a button to attack or you can counter. And they're telegraphed, the enemy attacks. Hey, it's a big red flash. It's going to be a roll to dodge or it's a yellow flash. It's going to be a counter. It's not complicated. It is satisfying to watch the animations pop off and to get rid of six people in a room. But it is not necessarily going to be novel every time you do it by the sixth or seventh time. And then there's really an exploration loop where you're kind of walking around a town.

Speaker 3:
[67:26] Yeah, that was the thing I kept harping on because it felt like they never showed that publicly, like in the demo or any of the footage. But that was probably the bulk of what I played of it last year.

Speaker 1:
[67:36] Okay, now I'm not super far. I'm in the big station area doing quests for people, like kind of running around and being like, this person needs this thing, this person needs this thing.

Speaker 3:
[67:47] It's like a lot of talking to people, a lot of reading terminals and doing stuff like that.

Speaker 1:
[67:52] And it's, you know, it is a slow mover. It is not, the character doesn't run super fast. There's no fast travel within these fairly large environments, relatively large environments. And you're mostly going to or from a place to go find the thing you need to find. It's not a, it's not an actiony game in a lot of respects in those parts. But I love the atmosphere. I've actually played through the beginning first hour twice now because I missed, and this is the thing I hate, and please don't let this happen to you. I missed the collectible and the collectible, the collectibles are things that flesh out the world. They're kind of cool to read. Like what happened in this world? And the only way, the only way I knew I had missed one was they show you them in a kind of series of what you got and there was a question mark on mine, and I had just started getting the rest of them. I was like, oh my God, like I want to read about this world, especially the early stuff that's like, hey, here's what happened, and I missed it. So I actually went back and I just replayed the beginning again, and used that save, and now a little bit in my head, I'm terrified I'm going to miss something else. I don't care about the music, you can unlock music to also play, and you're a very cool looking player that comes up in your hand is the thing. I wouldn't quite call it skeuomorphic. What do you call it when it's in world? The guy is holding up a thing in world to read.

Speaker 3:
[69:23] Diagetic, I guess.

Speaker 1:
[69:24] Yeah, maybe diagetic is a better term or that term. So you can unlock music in there, but really the world building is what I want from this game. It's kind of the reason for the season for me in this game.

Speaker 2:
[69:37] Why would you make that stuff missable, really?

Speaker 1:
[69:40] I mean, I get why they want you to go collect it. I just wish. It's one of those things. Look, it is a right to left running game. So there's only so many times you just have to go a little more to the left or a little more to the right to find them. It's not like they're that hidden, but if you're running from left to right, and then it's like push up to proceed and you didn't go a little bit more to the right, you could miss a thing. And there are some upgrades for your health. I've only found one so far. I think this game is super cool. We'll see how long the novelty or the shine on just the production value lasts as I go through. I don't know how long this game is. I'm probably two or three, maybe two hours in, just kind of running around that town now. I don't think this game could sustain like over eight hours. I don't think it could, so far from what I've played. Unless something else wildly changes and the enemy types wildly change, it just feels like it'll be an awesome shorter experience. Gotcha.

Speaker 3:
[70:48] I just looked it up.

Speaker 1:
[70:50] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[70:51] Eight hours.

Speaker 1:
[70:52] There you go.

Speaker 2:
[70:53] They know what they have.

Speaker 3:
[70:55] How long to be currently says eight hours.

Speaker 1:
[70:57] Okay. That could be a great eight hours. Let's hope. It's replaced. You should go check it out if you haven't seen it, because I do think its most striking thing is its visuals.

Speaker 3:
[71:10] Yeah. It looks quite nice.

Speaker 1:
[71:13] It is also 20 bucks. I'm really into what it's doing, and I think the writing, the production, the looks, the music, everything like that is so good. I just can't come to a conclusion on the gameplay yet, because I have to kind of see how things shake out over the course of what sounds like eight hours. I'm playing on the PC and it runs just fine, but it's also on the Xbox as well. I don't know if it's on Game Pass. Might be. It looks like it's not on PlayStation. This is the only reason I say maybe it is on Game Pass. I have no idea. We'll get to Game Pass in a little bit. Is that it?

Speaker 2:
[71:56] I'm still playing that fucking video store game.

Speaker 3:
[71:59] Sure. I'm sorry. Replaced is on Game Pass.

Speaker 1:
[72:02] It is. OK. OK. With the retro rewind.

Speaker 2:
[72:06] I can't stop myself. It's sick.

Speaker 1:
[72:09] Are you? How big is your store?

Speaker 2:
[72:11] It isn't as big as maybe you would think. I've got a couple of the extensions, but I haven't really been that worried about expanding. I've more been about expanding my library.

Speaker 1:
[72:21] Any new mods or same mods?

Speaker 2:
[72:22] Same mods. I haven't had anything new. I have been slowly building out some videos to put on the TV screens, though. There's one mod that just gives you like some trailer reels, but all you have to do is just go into the folder and change the MP4 that's in there to a different MP4.

Speaker 3:
[72:38] That's the thing I was talking about last week.

Speaker 2:
[72:40] Yeah. So it's pretty easy to do. And I just I've been building out some very weird video loops of things. Like one of them is that Canon Films trailer reel that we showed on one of my video streams a long time ago, things like that.

Speaker 3:
[72:53] Does that just play randomly as you're walking around?

Speaker 2:
[72:56] It just loops. It basically becomes a channel on the TV and it just loops forever.

Speaker 3:
[73:03] If it doesn't have the option in game, I might just put some dummy silent videos in there to break it up a little bit. I feel like hearing them too much would kind of make them get old, but having them pop on randomly as you're walking around would be fun.

Speaker 2:
[73:14] Yeah, you can just turn the TV screens off if you want. Or just turn the volume down.

Speaker 3:
[73:18] Oh, okay.

Speaker 2:
[73:18] Yeah, you don't have to have that stuff on.

Speaker 1:
[73:20] Is it only one video that you can put in there or can you put in multiple?

Speaker 2:
[73:23] So they have folders for like eight or nine channels, I think. Only three of them currently work. Like they said the TV thing was such an afterthought part of the design. I was reading some of their devlogs about this. They were like, the TV thing wasn't really a thing we put a lot of thought into. We are going to build some stuff out for that over time.

Speaker 1:
[73:40] That's fun.

Speaker 2:
[73:41] Yeah. But it's just a really simple game. There isn't much going on. It just hits this scratch loop I have in my head of the way some people have with Power Wash Simulator or even I have with an American Truck Simulator or something. It's just this thing that I can do repeatedly and it's just basically pleasurable. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[74:01] I'm sorry. I think I might go back to this game after they add more to it. Somebody on our Discord dug up their roadmap last week after we talked about it, which I hadn't found or hadn't thought to go looking for. It's very funny the way it is presented. Like small text at the top, controller integration, slightly bigger text below that, VHS repair station, huge styled text with stars around it at the bottom, video games. So they are bringing, I don't know if we even, maybe we mentioned that last week?

Speaker 2:
[74:28] I think we talked about the idea of it, but not that whether they were going to do it or not.

Speaker 3:
[74:31] Yeah, but it's not even something you're going to have to mod in. They are formally going to add video game support to this, which is awesome. By the time that's in, I'm sure the mods will be better. I might have to come back to this.

Speaker 2:
[74:43] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[74:46] The part of my brain that I needed in this game or the mod that I would want is for the video shelf, I want the thing that says Turner and Hooch is out. I want to know where the video has to go back on the show. I don't want them randomly. The thing where you have the last copy and be like, oh, sorry, we're out of Turner and Hooch or whatever, and I just want to be able to put Turner and Hooch back where it belongs. It needs to go back in the right spot.

Speaker 2:
[75:13] I mean, you can just do that.

Speaker 1:
[75:15] I can't remember it though. I need a little sticker or something there.

Speaker 2:
[75:18] If you spend enough time looking at your shelves, you'll start to be able to do it on your own.

Speaker 1:
[75:22] Or I just need a Turner and Hooch shelf.

Speaker 2:
[75:24] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[75:24] That's all Turner and Hooch. Your movies currently are being randomized from some source. They're not your Plex movies.

Speaker 2:
[75:32] They're not the ones you put together. It's whatever the Modder did, whatever database of movies they built. I'm going to tell you right now, I'm pretty sure that person scraped for a bunch of poster images for that, because every once in a while, one is wrong in a way that only a AI scraper could possibly fuck up.

Speaker 3:
[75:48] Well, it may not be AI. Only scrapers have been around for 30 years.

Speaker 2:
[75:53] Let me put it this way. When you get the age of innocence, you don't get the cover of the movie. You get the cover of the book. There's also a couple that might just be an intentional joke. If you get Commando, the Schwarzenegger movie, it's just a picture of military guys. It's not the poster or anything.

Speaker 1:
[76:13] Interesting. But it's not the in-game art.

Speaker 2:
[76:15] No. It is a literal, I think taken from Google Image Search, image of commandos.

Speaker 1:
[76:22] Okay. Okay. Interesting.

Speaker 2:
[76:26] So that's not ideal, but other than that, mostly they're correct.

Speaker 1:
[76:31] Also, I think like we said before, maybe some integration with your home library would be fun.

Speaker 2:
[76:37] Or just let you build out your own movie list. Let people edit the images and the text titles for everything and decide what they want to have in there.

Speaker 1:
[76:45] Still seems like, and now maybe even more reinforced by what you've said, Alex, in terms of digging in a bit, that this is a thing that's got some heat and some attention.

Speaker 2:
[76:58] It's a small team.

Speaker 1:
[76:59] Yeah. Now put maybe the resources they have into fleshing it out.

Speaker 2:
[77:04] You never know what this is going to hit. I know.

Speaker 1:
[77:06] There's so many.

Speaker 2:
[77:07] They dip their toe in with this, wondering if people were going to be into it, and then they suddenly were and they're like, okay, we should start adding stuff to this.

Speaker 1:
[77:15] Yeah, right. Retro Rewind 2 is going to be amazing.

Speaker 2:
[77:19] Or just if they continue to flesh this one out, sure, great.

Speaker 1:
[77:22] Yeah. Well, that is the Video Store Simulator Retro Rewind. Boy, it doesn't come out of my mouth easily. Retro Rewind.

Speaker 2:
[77:31] You can tell they really wanted to call it Be Kind Rewind, but that would get thorny with copyright.

Speaker 1:
[77:37] All sorts of things. Okay, I think that's going to do it. There's a couple of other things here, Pokemon Pocopia and Slay the Spire in the background, we are in the season for games right now. We got a lot coming out. Actually, towards the end of this week, we even have some more stuff. There's that Tomodachi Life coming out. There's that Mouse PI for Hire game coming out. There's of course, Jay and Silent Bob, the Chronic Crunch Punch, of course, next week. So what are we putting? Seros, that's two weeks or next week?

Speaker 3:
[78:11] Two weeks, I think. I'm looking forward to that.

Speaker 1:
[78:14] Yeah, Kiln is this month. And of course, Ultimate Drummer was a game I... You've got to go check out the Planorama for.

Speaker 2:
[78:21] I'm very ready for.

Speaker 1:
[78:22] That Titanium Court game, Snap and Grab, No Goblins next game, that Vampire Crawlers game is this month. Masters of Albion is this month.

Speaker 3:
[78:33] Sure is, supposedly. So they say.

Speaker 1:
[78:36] Still is the time of this recording. That's like next week. We're going to talk about the news for our next segment though. So stick around. We'll be right back. All right. We are back and we've got some news. And I just cracked myself up in my own head as I was thinking about how to intro this news because this headline here that I wrote in my notes, it just says, Game Pass is really expensive. And I'll be like, yeah, that's not really news to anyone who's...

Speaker 2:
[79:15] I'm not sure anyone can use this news at this point.

Speaker 1:
[79:18] Or like, I think everybody knows this, but Brad, it is now confirmed officially that maybe Game Pass is too expensive. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[79:27] Well, or at least according to the Verge. I mean, not official in the sense that Microsoft hasn't commented on this publicly, but...

Speaker 1:
[79:34] Well, wait, isn't that the leaked memo that it has become too expensive?

Speaker 2:
[79:39] But it's not a public comment.

Speaker 3:
[79:41] Not official because they haven't come out and said it.

Speaker 1:
[79:43] Okay, we're not supposed to know.

Speaker 3:
[79:45] But the Verge did get their hands on an internal memo, so it's official to the extent that you trust the Verge to identify a legitimate Microsoft memo. Asha Sharma, the new head of Xbox, apparently has basically said internally, hey, Game Pass is too expensive.

Speaker 1:
[80:00] It's expensive.

Speaker 3:
[80:01] Like literally, that is the quote from this memo. Game Pass is central to gaming value on Xbox. It's also clear that the current model isn't the final one. Short-term, Game Pass has become too expensive for players, so we need a better value equation. Long-term, we will evolve Game Pass into a more flexible system, which will take time to test and learn around. I mean, the change is coming there, it seems like.

Speaker 1:
[80:28] She's not wrong.

Speaker 3:
[80:29] Which I think she's not wrong, but also, I mean, I took the price increase to be reflective of the fact that they kind of have stopped adding subscribers, so I don't know what's changed.

Speaker 2:
[80:39] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[80:41] Sorry, let me extend that all the way out. I took it to mean that, like, the... Okay, now I'm walking this back before I've even completed the thought. Like, the mandate is to get profitability up, obviously, from the head of the company or the top of the company. I guess within the division, there's actually quite a bit of wiggle room around how they do that. So I guess you can see why. Maybe it was the opinion of the previous regime that, hey, we need to jack up the prices because we're not adding more people on this. But now, you know, that can mean that the mandate has not changed, hey, this division still needs to make more money, but she has different ideas around maybe higher Game Pass prices are not the way to do that. Also, it could just be reflective of the fact that, or not the fact, but the possibility that a bunch of people have canceled Game Pass.

Speaker 2:
[81:26] Yeah. I mean, it's not the only reason people have canceled Game Pass, because again, as we all know, the BDS boycott is still ongoing with Microsoft and there are multiple reasons, including the cost of that thing, that people might have decided to cancel their Game Pass. But the bigger thing, I think, just specific to this story, though, is that, again, this is not a public comment, so I'm not necessarily expecting them to just have this answer in this memo, but like, have the economics changed? Because I thought the whole thing with Game Pass was that it was having a hard time actually making money. Like, they were throwing a lot of money at it because they were getting, especially in the early days of it, getting a lot of game developers on board and giving them this upfront money to basically be a part of this thing, and that was part of the appeal. But I never got the impression they ever actually cracked the nut of how to keep it profitable after that sort of dried up.

Speaker 3:
[82:16] Well, I think how lucrative it is for developers, I think, is part of what has changed. I mean, I don't know for a fact, but that's definitely just anecdotally, the sound of things. Seeing developers talk about the deals they're getting is that, like, the fat deals at the beginning of Game Pass, for being on Game Pass, like, stopped being a thing a while ago.

Speaker 2:
[82:35] Because you can't spend like that forever. I mean, Epic ran into the same thing when they started locking up exclusives for the Epic Store. Like, at a certain point, that just kind of ran out of runway.

Speaker 1:
[82:44] So Tom Warren, the author on this Verge story, also mentions, you know, the inclusion of the Activision stuff, like Call of Duty coming to Game Pass, right? As a big value add for why Microsoft might think that this is, well, he kind of goes more into, hey, if we put Call of Duty in there, we're going to lose physical, we're going to lose retail Call of Duty sales, right? So we need to make that money back. I don't know how much of that is, Tom Warren, sourcing people in there or basically?

Speaker 3:
[83:20] So, I mean, that is the other shoe here that is yet to drop before the first shoe has actually officially dropped. But which is the Chess Cordon of Windows Central said on a podcast very recently that they are considering pulling Call of Duty from Game Pass. So that might be part of how they get to a cheaper Game Pass. Or if you just take the language she used in that menu, or menu, that memo at face value, a more flexible system could mean, I don't know, maybe there is still a top tier that has Call of Duty in it or maybe not, but it could be a, maybe it's more, I don't know, I don't know what flexible system means or maybe a little bit more of a mix and match kind of like more options for what you get in your Game Pass for how much it costs. I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[84:01] It was, it was a little bit more of a flexible system.

Speaker 3:
[84:06] They've already got three tiers, so I don't know how much more flexible they're going to make it.

Speaker 1:
[84:10] But I do think, yeah, I think going back to what you mentioned about them removing Call of Duty, you could see a world where maybe you just don't get, you don't get annualized games or you don't, maybe there's a thing where you don't get first party a day one releases anymore, you know, that the game passed or maybe there is only a tier where you got first party.

Speaker 3:
[84:28] Yeah. Or it could be a thing like there, you can only play so many games a month at a given tier, you know, it's like, Oh, I'm on the cheapest tier and I can only, I can only play three new games a month or something. Like there's all kinds of knobs that you could twiddle for this.

Speaker 2:
[84:40] Everything you are describing makes it a less appealing or interesting service than it already has become in its current state.

Speaker 3:
[84:47] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[84:47] I, I, I, like, yes, these are things that I could absolutely foresee Microsoft trying and doing, but that all of those things to me fail to solve the actual equation of how do we make this a profitable service? Because I don't think the things you're talking about will attract a new audience.

Speaker 3:
[85:06] Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the the basic reality is that it's never going back to what it was at the beginning.

Speaker 2:
[85:12] Definitely not.

Speaker 3:
[85:13] When it was the vanguard of video game subscription services and they were using it as a loss leader to just try to corner the market before they started their typical process of slowly ratcheting the prices up.

Speaker 1:
[85:23] Saying, I won't be able to stack my $1 Game Pass.

Speaker 3:
[85:26] Right. Stuff like that's gone. Again, the lucrative deals to developers to be on there is gone. Like the pandemic, the zero interest, we're adding five million subscribers a quarter. We got to keep this thing moving. All that's gone. It's never going to be as good as it was at the beginning, which might in and of itself be a deal breaker for a lot of people that have dropped it.

Speaker 2:
[85:49] Again, I think when something burns that bright that fast and has the roster of things it had at the beginning and it's just been one long trail off since, I don't think you can fully ever repair that. I don't think you can ever get it back to the thing you initially launched, which was ridiculous. The popularity of Game Pass at the beginning was pretty wild because of the things they were getting for it.

Speaker 1:
[86:15] It felt like a great value.

Speaker 2:
[86:16] It felt like a great value, but they've lost that and I don't think even modulation of what they are currently doing will do anything to bring people who have already decided it's not worth it to them back, unless you are seriously going to cut that price in a way that is ridiculous.

Speaker 1:
[86:32] For me personally, the $15 Game Pass Ultimate seemed like a great value for PC and Console Game Pass. At $30 a month, and I'm going to use the cliché, in this economy, $30 a month, you're starting to really second guess where that money is going.

Speaker 2:
[86:50] With fewer interesting things being added to it on top of that.

Speaker 3:
[86:53] Not only that, but it puts you in a different decision-making mentality. I think the, I'm going to be honest, I think the $8 is $5 stuff is a little played out. There's absolute merit to it, although people just invoke it a little too often.

Speaker 1:
[87:05] I don't know if I've heard that. Is that just basically what it used to be?

Speaker 2:
[87:09] It's steam pricing math.

Speaker 3:
[87:11] Well, it's extremely salient advice, to be clear. It was the peak developers after peak blew up out of nowhere, were the ones that coined that phrase that basically, I forget exactly how they phrased it.

Speaker 2:
[87:22] It's perception of money versus actual numbers.

Speaker 3:
[87:25] I forget what their math was because I forget where that game landed exactly, but it was like $4 is $5, blah, blah, blah. It's basically how people look at prices and what they think about. The point here is that $30 is an appreciable fraction of $70.

Speaker 2:
[87:40] Right.

Speaker 1:
[87:41] I see.

Speaker 3:
[87:41] Depending on how many games you're playing on this thing and how long they are, you start getting into territory where it's like, well, if I'm playing Assassin's Creed Shadows on Game Pass and it's taking me two months to finish it, and that's all I'm playing, why don't I just buy that game? You're barely getting into the territory of like, I'm getting close to being able to buy a game every couple of months compared to what I'm not getting on this, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1:
[88:06] Yeah, well, yeah, I 100% get what you mean. I just think, I also just think $30 is empirically just a lot of money to look at.

Speaker 3:
[88:15] Yeah, those are also bad.

Speaker 1:
[88:18] For some people, I mean, I don't even know how much is a Netflix subscription? Is it under 30? Is it 25 bucks a month?

Speaker 3:
[88:25] Depends on if you've got four, I mean, I assume they still offer them on 4K option, don't they? I haven't looked in a while.

Speaker 1:
[88:30] I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[88:31] It's been a long time since I gave Netflix money, so it varies depending on if you get the one with ads, whether you get the 4K ad on.

Speaker 1:
[88:38] They're different tier, okay.

Speaker 3:
[88:39] So yeah, it looks like $9 is the cheapest ad supported plan.

Speaker 1:
[88:43] Okay. And so I think some of these things just start to question, I mean, this is for ultimate, is the $30 one. So there are, like we said, different tiers of this. It's just the value starts to be a question.

Speaker 3:
[88:59] Yeah, actually, I'll just close the loop. $27 is actually the most expensive Netflix plan now.

Speaker 1:
[89:04] And so Game Pass Ultimate, now that value is going to be great for some people, but for other people, it's going to start sounding like, hey, I don't play that, I'm only playing one game a month, right? Like $30 is not that good for me, or I am playing, like you said, Brad, over the course of two months, I could have just bought the game. Games, I still feel like games are less a buffet than, I know I say that, I'm just thinking in my head, in this job sometimes I do feel like a buffet where we rotate out every week, but we are not everyone. Games have a little bit more staying power than like a movie where you watch it, spend three hours, two hours watching it, and you're on to the next thing, or a serial on a Netflix or something where it's like, hey, I'm tuning in once a week. I do think games are a little bit more like, hey, I'm gonna jump into this thing, and maybe that math is not working out in people's perception of it.

Speaker 2:
[89:57] Yeah, I mean, video games are not visual musack the way that Netflix treats their content, you know?

Speaker 1:
[90:02] A little bit like just put it on the background kind of thing.

Speaker 2:
[90:05] Yeah, it's not, there's a more active involvement in it. And the thing I'll say again is that it's not that I don't think you could ever salvage Game Pass or make it back to something that's more viable. But, and especially if I'm Aasha Sharma coming into this, yeah, take some time to fiddle the knobs a little bit and see what you can do. I'm just not confident that this regime or any other would actually have the key necessary to fix what this is, because I think a lot of what made Game Pass successful is just not replicable in our current economy and environment. I don't think you can get it back there. I think what you could do is make a compromised version of it work for cheaper. But by that point, I'm not sure who you're really doing that for.

Speaker 1:
[90:55] Again, to be fair to the current administration there, this was not supposed to be public. They are talking about this internally.

Speaker 2:
[91:04] That's why I'm saying, again, it's not like I'm expecting firm answers out of this memo that has gone around. It's just that my confidence level in their ability to crack this particular nut is not that high.

Speaker 1:
[91:17] Or maybe this was supposed to go public, maybe it's a goodwill campaign that is trying to leak out there and be like, oh, look, see, they're inside talking about how to make it less expensive. These people get it.

Speaker 2:
[91:32] I do feel like it's a little early in the regime to be leaking memos for the sake of potential interesting press, but I feel like at this point, all bets are really off. I don't really know what their vibe is at this stage.

Speaker 3:
[91:46] It's weird times over there at Microsoft in general, like Xbox and otherwise. I don't know if you've seen, you probably have not. I mean, I only know about this from the Xbox Twitter account. They've been rolling out some just like dashboard updates, like just some system software level stuff on the Xbox, and people are losing their minds over it. Wait, in what sense? Like a week ago, they're like, your achievements are getting an update, new animations and icons, hide games from your achievement list, highlight your 100 percent completed games. It's a bunch of people replying going like, oh my God, I can't believe it. I've been asking for this stuff for years. I can't believe you're doing it. And it's just like, some of that might be her pushing that stuff. I'm not saying that they developed this stuff.

Speaker 2:
[92:25] Is this a Mom Donnie fixing the potholes thing? Like, is this very much like, let me show you. Let's get some easy wins under our belt right out of the gate.

Speaker 3:
[92:31] Totally, totally. Like, I'm not going to say they developed all this stuff, start to finish since she took over necessarily. Some of this might have been in progress, but also like she could have been pushing it through. But also, I don't know if you've said, did you guys see the blog that the Windows team, or it's like the kind of, I forget who the kind of head guy on Windows, or one of the head people on Windows, that blog they put up probably less than a month ago? Like, any idea what I'm talking about? It is a way, way more hand in hand version of what I'm talking about here. It is a full on like, hey, we like, we hear your feedback about, we've heard some very passionate feedback about where Windows 11 is at these days. It's like practically a manifesto slash roadmap for salvaging the Windows brand. Like that's, it's like kind of, that's really what I'm getting from all of this across the board as Microsoft realizes they have like a pretty bad brand perception problem right now. The Windows one is way more aggressive. It is way more like, like we're gonna like re-architect file explorer to launch faster. And like they've already removed co-pilot buttons from things like Notepad and stuff. And like we're re-writing the UI and like native UI code so that it's faster like to like tons of the pain points that people hate about Windows 11. They say they are going to address over the course of this year.

Speaker 2:
[93:49] All it took was 10 people moving over to Linux and they were like, fuck, we gotta do something.

Speaker 1:
[93:53] Oh, I did see Microsoft. I did see something that did address like, I don't think it was that blog, Brad, but something where Microsoft was aware of the shift to people.

Speaker 3:
[94:03] Like this Xbox stuff is way less aggressive than that stuff, but it did still kind of read to me as like, oh, they're just like plucking some low-hanging fruit of some things that would make their base happy, that kind of shines the product a little bit. It's not a bad thing at all.

Speaker 1:
[94:16] It's like, well, it's just like, I'm a cynic, so, right, like, you know.

Speaker 3:
[94:20] They embrace the radically innovative concept of making the products better.

Speaker 1:
[94:24] Well, right, or.

Speaker 2:
[94:26] Or they're reacting to potential future market forces that might conspire against them.

Speaker 1:
[94:32] I guess maybe that is where the cynical side of me is like, hey, Microsoft has two, but really three big giant parts. Their corporate B2B side, right? Their, and their consumer facing side. And somebody was like, we need to separate these and you need to deal with the consumer facing side in a bedside manner way and stop shoving all of the B2B stuff down the pipe and being like, how do we exploit and monetize everybody? So maybe their bedside manner is getting a little better. But that, I would like to go read that blog. I should go look that up. It was a public facing blog?

Speaker 3:
[95:07] Oh yeah, it was extremely forward and I wish I could remember the name of it. Sorry, it's called, the title of the blog is Our Commitment to Windows Quality. Like it should be easy to find if you just Google, like it's that. It is that to the point.

Speaker 1:
[95:25] That is a really like...

Speaker 3:
[95:27] They're letting you put your taskbar on the left and top again. I'll put it that way.

Speaker 1:
[95:30] Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3:
[95:31] Like they're just doing it.

Speaker 1:
[95:34] I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just weird.

Speaker 3:
[95:36] That's, you know, it's getting better. You know, they're making the product better. Like that's whatever the motivation.

Speaker 1:
[95:41] Or is that, I mean, that's just what people want, right? They want flexibility.

Speaker 3:
[95:44] No, no, this is the roadmap. This is the month by month. These are the features we are going to...

Speaker 1:
[95:48] No, I mean, I mean, is having the start button on the left better than having it in the middle?

Speaker 3:
[95:53] I can do it. A ton of people were pissed when they took that away in 11. I don't like it.

Speaker 1:
[95:58] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[95:58] I'm not talking about on the bottom. I'm talking about putting the taskbar on the side of the screen. The whole taskbar, not the start menu.

Speaker 1:
[96:04] Oh, like the pop up?

Speaker 3:
[96:06] No, no, the entire taskbar, like the whole thing at the bottom of the screen. Make it vertical on the left side of the screen.

Speaker 1:
[96:11] Oh, like you've been able to do in like OS X since like the dawn of time.

Speaker 3:
[96:14] No, the thing that was in Windows until Windows 11 came out has been in there for 30 years until they took it away.

Speaker 1:
[96:20] Oh, sorry. I really thought my brain was so locked into it never happening that it would, I thought you meant just sliding it over the start button.

Speaker 3:
[96:27] The point is, like, it's that level of minutiae that they are pulling out of the things people are mad about and they're just flailing around for every little thing they can do to improve it, because they're like, please stop installing Linux.

Speaker 1:
[96:43] Well, they got a long way to go. But it does seem like they're asking some questions internally about how can we make some people happy.

Speaker 2:
[96:55] Best of luck with that.

Speaker 1:
[96:56] Best of luck to that. They also, Brad quickly here, want to know how they can make their financials happy with the appropriate release window for Fable.

Speaker 3:
[97:07] According to Jeff Grubb.

Speaker 1:
[97:09] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[97:09] One Jeff Grubb of one giant bomb says that Fable is potentially being delayed because of Grand Theft Auto.

Speaker 1:
[97:18] Potentially.

Speaker 3:
[97:20] Or well, his language is, I'll say that I've heard that Fable has been pushed internally.

Speaker 1:
[97:24] But they came out and said they're still targeting, was it Autumn? Is that what they said?

Speaker 2:
[97:30] That was the original, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[97:31] That's the language that they, I guess they did feel the need to, well, no, that's like the actual language of the tweet is certainly not like targeted at Grubb's statement or anything. But as of two days ago, they did reiterate, we're excited to welcome you to Albion in Autumn 2026. So they have used the Autumn language pretty recently. But he says, this is a bit speculative, but like I said, has been pushed internally. That doesn't mean it's coming out next year. Apparently, they're still trying to get it out this year, but they're worried about the launch of GTA 6. And so if it's getting delayed beyond the release of GTA, which is in November, that could push it into December, which might make it a prime candidate to get delayed into 2027.

Speaker 1:
[98:17] I get it. That's speculation, but you know.

Speaker 3:
[98:18] Some of that is speculation, yeah, on his part, but... I hate this. That's tough.

Speaker 1:
[98:23] The GTA guerrilla.

Speaker 3:
[98:25] I can't believe they moved it to November.

Speaker 1:
[98:28] Create the Dotto?

Speaker 3:
[98:29] Shittiest possible time for anybody else trying to launch in the holiday window.

Speaker 1:
[98:34] I know.

Speaker 2:
[98:34] I just... It's not even that... I'm not holding it against GTA or anything. It's just...

Speaker 3:
[98:39] It's not their fault.

Speaker 2:
[98:40] It's just so dumb that we have this thing that basically has to have a fucking 100-yard void around it at all times. Otherwise, anything that gets sucked into it is inevitably obliterated. I don't even know if it's actually true, but enough people believe it to be true that basically everyone just enforces that demilitarized zone regardless. And it's just... It sucks.

Speaker 3:
[99:02] It's really weird watching this whole thing. Basically, the idea that GTA 6 is going to be the biggest video game of all time has just become a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point. Everybody believes it to be true, and so it's going to be true.

Speaker 1:
[99:16] I mean, I don't think they'll delay, but man, they could really just keep messing around with other companies by pushing it into 2027 and being like, well, OK, now get out of the way of that. You know, like there are... This happened last year, right? This was...

Speaker 3:
[99:30] Yes, but I think I'm guessing they are probably out of runway with Take-Two investors at this point.

Speaker 1:
[99:36] I mean, probably, but this... What could possibly happen where GTA isn't... GTA 6 does not make buku bucks, right? Yeah, absolutely. Even if that thing launched in an empty box that was just a loader, I feel like that thing would still be the number one seller.

Speaker 3:
[99:51] The question is just how big it is at this point. But I guess the kind of thing I mean is that, like, I bet... I bet it's going to pick up more sales from mainstream or casual people who might not have otherwise bought it on day one just because of the level of hype at this point.

Speaker 1:
[100:06] I mean, especially news stories being like, everybody's getting the hell out of the way of this thing.

Speaker 3:
[100:11] Like, it's going to be in mainstream media everywhere and stuff. Like, it's just it's going to be wild.

Speaker 1:
[100:19] I am hyped up mostly, not even as much to play to see what that thing is.

Speaker 3:
[100:25] Yeah, for me, it is seeing the first Hauser-less GTA. Yeah, and how it goes. Well, yeah, but I always got the sense Sam was more on the business side and not contributing to creative that much. I could be wrong.

Speaker 2:
[100:38] Business and production. I don't think he was doing much writing.

Speaker 3:
[100:41] Yeah, like Dan was always the head, like the one credited for all the creative stuff.

Speaker 1:
[100:47] So, best of luck to Fable. Yeah, nothing confirmed there. And we'll probably know this. I would assume we will know this by the time their showcase happens this summer.

Speaker 3:
[100:56] Yeah, I would think surely they will have a date for that game at the showcase.

Speaker 1:
[101:01] Like locked in date.

Speaker 2:
[101:01] What if they don't?

Speaker 3:
[101:02] Oh, man.

Speaker 2:
[101:03] What do we do at that point?

Speaker 1:
[101:05] Like if they're still coming this year?

Speaker 3:
[101:08] Yeah, I guess they could wait till Gamescom. That's like cutting it pretty close, though.

Speaker 2:
[101:12] I mean, they are notorious for doing like these Blitzkrieg PR things like within about a three month window of it actually coming out and then just never giving you anything until that Blitzkrieg begins.

Speaker 1:
[101:25] Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. And again, if they're like, no, we're we're delaying whatever. And then if GTA is like, oh, yeah, we're delaying. Oh, just kidding. We're not delaying. Are we delaying?

Speaker 2:
[101:36] I don't think they care about Fable. I'm going to be honest with you. I don't think Rockstar gives a fuck about Fable.

Speaker 1:
[101:41] Oh, Rockstar, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[101:42] I don't think they have to think about anybody else, but what they're doing.

Speaker 1:
[101:45] Yeah, they're totally. All right. So that is possibly Fable being delayed until December, maybe possibly again, just speculation being delayed even more than that. We talked in the past about Epic Games. We've had their layoffs. They've laid off like a thousand people. We talked about not that long ago as part of them saying that while Fortnite is a money maker, maybe it's not printing as much money. It's not as big a hit still with the kids. They are not. Not everything they put out has been the golden goose or the golden egg from the goose. We also talked a little bit about a rumor about Disney possibly wanting to, people inside Disney wanted to make that relationship a little more formal, possibly an acquisition of Epic. That was more of a rumor than really anything substantiated. But it's interesting going into this story, which is coming out of Bloomberg, which is basically saying that they have strategically partnered Disney to put out three games. But the first one, the one that's most realized in this reporting is the Extraction Shooter with Disney Characters. There are two other games here which are less well defined. But according to Bloomberg, there's the Extraction Shooter with Disney Characters, a la Arch Raiders, according to the reporting, and then, quote, the Disney deal will reap at least two more games. Early versions of the second title received middling internal reviews according to two people, and resources for the third game were reallocated to the first two because they were disappointed by Epic's release timeline. So those other two games really not fleshed out in any way in this reporting.

Speaker 3:
[103:36] Yeah, it seems like we know what those are going to be, but...

Speaker 1:
[103:40] Do you want an Extraction Shooter?

Speaker 3:
[103:42] What is that?

Speaker 1:
[103:44] I mean, it's them... I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[103:47] I'm confused on multiple levels. Like, I'm sure Disney does not want their characters engaging in wanton gratuitous violence. So...

Speaker 1:
[103:56] I mean, is Fortnite gratuitous?

Speaker 3:
[103:59] Not really, I guess.

Speaker 2:
[104:00] It's guns, but they're dumb guns, you know? It's not like a bloody game.

Speaker 3:
[104:04] A bunch of Disney adjacent stuff like Star Wars has been just fine in Fortnite and they haven't seen Care, so maybe, maybe... I mean, are they going to put like an AK in the hands of Mickey Mouse?

Speaker 1:
[104:13] Mickey Mouse? I think they would do something a little more cartoony.

Speaker 3:
[104:18] Yeah, of course, they also kind of don't use their classic stable of characters much for anything anymore. My presumption is because they are too close to entering public domain. They don't want to bank on characters they can't continue to monetize forever.

Speaker 1:
[104:32] Well, sometimes it feels like Disney goes back and they go pull those old versions of characters, maybe to in some ploy to make sure that people know they're still using those old like 30s and 40s versions of characters. But yeah, I mean, it sounds like from this reporting, it's a fairly long story that also goes into a lot more of Epic. I think it's actually really interesting read on the Bloomberg story about what's happening inside Epic, what things they've shut down over the past couple of months or year, what initiatives they've tried, what some of the internal turn and burn culture. I didn't realize that Epic had this, according to this reporting, has maybe a culture of just launch it, just get it out there and we'll figure it out later.

Speaker 3:
[105:13] Yeah, I mean, that's how the Fortnite Battle Royale came to be. That was only, what, three months after it launched or something? It was very quick after release.

Speaker 1:
[105:22] I think they said 10 weeks in this story. Is that what it was?

Speaker 3:
[105:26] And they're constantly pumping content into Fortnite proper, so they definitely have a pretty breakneck pace.

Speaker 1:
[105:32] And that's what the story goes more into here about the pace of just kind of rapid iteration, trying stuff out, version 0.5, I think they say sometimes in the story of, like that Darth Vader thing. And again, some of the reporting is saying that maybe that thing wasn't good to go.

Speaker 3:
[105:50] It was good to go. It was perhaps a little too good.

Speaker 1:
[105:54] But the next one will be great.

Speaker 3:
[105:57] Considering how many racial slurs it was spewing on day one, it was extremely primed.

Speaker 1:
[106:04] So yeah, the biggest thing that came out of here, I think, that might be relevant to the audience is like, hey, Disney wants to make this extraction shooter. And that they are doubling down with Epic, right? Like this relationship with Epic, they are clearly very happy with. It's funny, the reporting always mentions Marvel and Star Wars, but I mean, The Simpsons is Disney as well, right? That is a...

Speaker 3:
[106:25] Unfortunately, yes.

Speaker 1:
[106:27] Successful pairing of properties with Epic as well, which it sounds like only from you guys, because I know, Brad, you played the Star Wars one, but you guys seem pretty happy with The Simpsons one in its kind of recreation of Springfield. Was a successful integration.

Speaker 3:
[106:40] Yeah, I liked it. I liked it.

Speaker 1:
[106:43] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[106:45] I can't remember if you mentioned, this is all downstream of Disney dumping a billion and a half into Epic a couple of years ago.

Speaker 1:
[106:51] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[106:52] There's pretty big expectations for this. The bigger thing for me here is, when did the extraction shooter just become the thing to make?

Speaker 1:
[107:00] I feel like it's over though, right? Are we crested?

Speaker 3:
[107:03] No. It's definitely not over, but it's like Arc Raiders is the breakout at this point.

Speaker 2:
[107:12] I know it isn't doing quite the same business, but Marathon seems like it has at least captured attention in a way that most of these other ones have not. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[107:20] I don't know if the numbers are there to back that up. Like the people that like it really like it, but it's like a pretty tiny fraction of what Arc Raiders has done sales-wise. But other than Arc Raiders and Tarkov, which again is like its own weird thing that barely even counts outside of the lunatics who like Tarkov. The idea that an extraction shooter is the first idea you go to when Disney is like, hey, make us a game. It just doesn't feel like the way the battle-

Speaker 1:
[107:49] I guess if you go into epic, right?

Speaker 3:
[107:51] Well, yeah, but I mean the way the Battle Royale blew up. Extraction shooters have not done that in the same way. It still feels like Arc Raiders is more of an outlier rather than a trend that that genre is going to be huge.

Speaker 1:
[108:04] And the reporting does say that they are aiming for Arc Raiders, right? This is kind of the quote, it will be a shooting game along the lines of Arc Raiders, but with Disney characters battling enemies until they can reach an extraction port. This is according to their sources. Again, this is from the reporting, so far internal reviewers have expressed concerns that the game mechanics are not very original, but some of the employees are optimistic that Epic will get it right by launch date.

Speaker 3:
[108:35] You know, I mean, like in the same way that Fortnite was the wow to PUBG, you know, like if they could do the wow of extraction shooters, then sure, maybe if they can figure that out, I don't know what that would be. But that is not a friendly genre. Just like MMOs were not a friendly genre and Battle Royale was not a friendly genre, like until somebody came along and made the friendly one. You know, maybe they'll figure that out, but I'm skeptical.

Speaker 1:
[109:03] Yeah, again, my comment that I have extraction shooters crested, sometimes it just feels like Ark Raider's spun out of orbit, you know, like it obviously hits and...

Speaker 3:
[109:13] About it being an outlier, like it's not necessarily replicable.

Speaker 1:
[109:17] Yeah. From the reporting on this, and I should just credit the reported from this Bloomberg article, I think it is...

Speaker 3:
[109:24] The View of Cecilia Anastagio?

Speaker 1:
[109:27] Yes. It's a very good, well-written story that kind of goes into who maybe the trials that Epic is going through right now, trying to find their next thing, because it goes into also the Epic Game Store, their margins on that, things that people have been asking for in there. The reporting also says that Epic wants to put more money into the Epic Game Store and try and make that a better, more competitive product with the Steam. I think Epic is at a real crossroads here as Fortnite numbers seem to at least plateau, if not decline, or at least nothing's grabbing hold, their initiatives to add all of these things and bring Rocket League and to bring, was it the music festival, the, the, the-

Speaker 2:
[110:12] Yeah, the festival mode.

Speaker 3:
[110:13] Yeah, the Fortnite festival.

Speaker 1:
[110:14] Yeah, these things are not grabbing hold in the way that they maybe had anticipated. Epic Times.

Speaker 2:
[110:23] Or not.

Speaker 1:
[110:24] Does Disney, okay, ready? Up down vote. Five years time. Brad, does Disney own Epic?

Speaker 3:
[110:32] I don't think so.

Speaker 1:
[110:33] Okay. Alex, five year horizon here. Does Disney own Epic?

Speaker 2:
[110:39] Are they finally fulfilled the Epic Mickey promise?

Speaker 1:
[110:42] Yeah, right.

Speaker 2:
[110:43] I think it's possible, if not overly likely. I think it is a somewhat low tens percentage of possibility for me.

Speaker 3:
[110:54] I think the shine is off now that the Fortnite plateauing narrative has taken hold.

Speaker 1:
[111:00] I think that just lowers the price of Epic. I think Disney picks him up. And maybe a bunch will hinge on the success of this product.

Speaker 3:
[111:10] I don't know that Tim Sweeney seems like the kind of guy who's interested in selling.

Speaker 1:
[111:13] That is the only thing I would say. Will he take a payday and walk out? I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[111:19] He does not need a payday. He's worth like $9 billion or something like that. But he seems like such an ideologue with all the suing Apple and all that stuff.

Speaker 2:
[111:26] He wants to be doing this shit. That's why I find him sort of unbearable, because I can't imagine a person that actually wants to engage in this shit.

Speaker 3:
[111:36] He doesn't need more money. It seems like he has a mission that he's on, that is not served by just selling to a big corporation.

Speaker 2:
[111:45] But that mission is not always very coherent and often feels capricious in places. I'm still mad about them buying Bandcamp for basically no fucking reason and then offloading it again. Like they do things sometimes that just don't feel very well thought out.

Speaker 1:
[112:02] I do feel like for you personally, Alex, with Harmonix and Bandcamp.

Speaker 2:
[112:07] He is fucking up my life.

Speaker 3:
[112:10] Real rage. You know, look at Giant Bomb.

Speaker 2:
[112:14] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[112:15] Small properties get bought and sold constantly. That's giant companies just do dumb things all the time.

Speaker 1:
[112:23] Well, we got one more block here. A lot of it is Kojima based. Before we get into this movie block, I had to go and look up some stuff here. So this block starts with a video game, some casting for Physint, the PS PlayStation deal that Kojima has for their not Metal Gear game.

Speaker 3:
[112:50] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[112:50] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[112:52] Here's what I have written down.

Speaker 2:
[112:54] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[112:55] Kojima Productions involved in one way or another with Death Stranding Isolations, the animated series for Death Stranding, that would be a series, I think, on Disney Plus. Death Stranding Mosquito, the animated film for Death Stranding, the Death Stranding movie with A24.

Speaker 2:
[113:14] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[113:15] OD, which is the Jordan Peele horror game that they would supposed to be working on with Microsoft, right?

Speaker 2:
[113:22] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[113:23] And then, Physint, which is the... Stealth Action, which I guess, Alex, they have started casting for?

Speaker 2:
[113:31] That is what this story is about, yes. Game that, again, I just admit everything else going on, I had completely forgotten had it ever gotten announced, but is definitely in the works. And specifically, there is a casting notice that went out for what is essentially, I guess, the game's villain character, who is described as Mads Mikkelsen in Hannibal, but with flair, which I'm gonna say is a bad description, because that's literally what like the Hannibal in that show is. It's Hannibal with flair. I don't like more flair, a different flair.

Speaker 3:
[114:01] What kind of flair are we talking?

Speaker 2:
[114:02] I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[114:04] All right, you guys have been around this as much as I have. Doesn't it seem ridiculous that Kojima doesn't know who's gonna be his villain, that there would be a casting for this?

Speaker 3:
[114:14] I'm sure he's got a wish list, but you know.

Speaker 2:
[114:16] Maybe the actor he wants isn't available.

Speaker 3:
[114:17] You gotta see who you can get, I guess, I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[114:22] He had that person in mind from day one and will not compromise.

Speaker 3:
[114:26] Maybe they haven't been able to get anybody that he wanted, and that's why there's a casting call.

Speaker 2:
[114:30] I mean, I have to imagine this started out with him actually asking Mads, do you want to play this character, right? Because otherwise, why would you describe it this way?

Speaker 3:
[114:38] It's weird. When I saw this, I was a little bummed out because I was like, man, you just had him as the villain in Two Death Strandings ago again. But then nobody bats an eye when film directors have long time actor collaborators. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[114:53] There's no reason he couldn't go back.

Speaker 3:
[114:55] Certain directors cast the same actors over and over and over, and it's totally normal and accepted. But for some reason in a video game, it seems weird.

Speaker 2:
[115:03] I have to imagine, again, he didn't come back for two. I mean, there wasn't much for his character to do in two, so I get that. But I do wonder if maybe doing the big mocap dance for Kojima once was enough for him. I'm not saying that Mads doesn't like him. I'm saying that he maybe just doesn't want to go through that rigmarole again.

Speaker 1:
[115:23] So there's not much else that is in here, right? Just that basically...

Speaker 2:
[115:27] The casting has begun, and this does put a little bit of a potential timetable for this game, which is to say if they are in the motion capture casting stage, probably going to be a while.

Speaker 3:
[115:37] Yeah, it was definitely a while, but it seems like it's actually...

Speaker 2:
[115:42] Moving along, at least.

Speaker 3:
[115:43] They're probably not about to start shooting tomorrow, but it might be closer to like start shooting, quote, unquote, you know what I mean? Like doing performance stuff is maybe not as far off as you thought. I mean, the bigger thing is that like OD still doesn't have a release date.

Speaker 1:
[115:56] I know.

Speaker 3:
[115:57] Like is that company to full team? I mean, they're definitely not full teams because there would be no team in full production on Physint yet. But like, I assume what it is, is that like OD is like mostly are all done filming. Still so weird that we talk about him filming, but you know what I mean?

Speaker 1:
[116:16] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[116:17] Like they're probably in full production where the rest of the game is getting built out. Animations, levels, mechanics are all being finalized, and he's on to probably finishing writing and casting on Physint.

Speaker 1:
[116:29] Do you think he is involved heavily in many of these death stranding projects?

Speaker 3:
[116:35] I bet those are extremely supervisory.

Speaker 2:
[116:37] They will send him scripts, they will have notes, and then that will probably be it.

Speaker 3:
[116:41] Yeah, that's 100% how something like that works is that he and whoever else at the studio is in charge of that stuff, keeps an eye on it and reproves things and offers ideas and et cetera.

Speaker 1:
[116:52] Well, what if we had one more little movie property in here?

Speaker 2:
[116:56] Sure, why not?

Speaker 3:
[116:57] So real quick before we move on there, I don't know if we've said this before, it's kind of impressive to me. Like I think that might be the only developer that's ever had a game going for Microsoft and Sony at the same time.

Speaker 1:
[117:09] Like almost exclusive big deal.

Speaker 3:
[117:12] Exclusive and published by one of the two head-to-head console makers.

Speaker 1:
[117:16] It's kind of amazing.

Speaker 3:
[117:16] On both sides.

Speaker 1:
[117:18] It's a real King Kong, Godzilla kind of thing.

Speaker 3:
[117:20] It's kind of impressive.

Speaker 2:
[117:22] Yeah, but if King Kong and Godzilla were made by the same guy.

Speaker 1:
[117:25] Yeah, yeah, or like basically getting paid to have them fight, you know.

Speaker 3:
[117:29] Also, I was thinking about PT a lot over the weekend because I'm on a crusade to clean up the insane amount of old crap on my server, on my NAS, that's just... There's way too much old stuff hanging around. One of those things is a full PS4 backup that has PT in it.

Speaker 1:
[117:48] Ridiculous. That is pretty cool, though.

Speaker 3:
[117:50] Because you can't download that. It's been forever since you could download that thing. It's still on my PS4. So I just took a system backup of my PS4 at the time that it was on there so I could restore it to a PS4 and play PT whenever. And that's like a hundred gig just sitting there. That was worth it. And I was hovering over deleting it and then I was like, I wonder if PS4 emulation is not super, I mean, it's getting there, but it's not super far along. Maybe I should keep this just in case.

Speaker 1:
[118:15] Keep it.

Speaker 3:
[118:15] I'm sure there's other ways to preserve PT. But anyway, you know, it reminded me of what PT was and that he almost made a Silent Hill game and didn't. And so, like, And there's OD. Pretty exciting to finally kind of see some semblance of what that was.

Speaker 1:
[118:31] Maybe.

Speaker 3:
[118:32] Or what some of those ideas were, at least.

Speaker 1:
[118:37] Alex, a Metal Gear Solid movie.

Speaker 2:
[118:40] It'll never happen.

Speaker 1:
[118:41] Great. Moving on. Moving on.

Speaker 2:
[118:44] Wait, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm getting word.

Speaker 1:
[118:47] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[118:48] It might happen.

Speaker 1:
[118:49] It'll never happen.

Speaker 2:
[118:51] I still think it'll never happen, but they're the closest we've been probably ever to it actually happening. So this very long in development idea of doing a Metal Gear Solid movie, I want to say it's been at least 20 years they've been talking about this. Finally has a pair of directors that seem motivated to go forward with it. Specifically, it is Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, the directors of the most recent Final Destination reboot. Their production company has signed up to do this. It is still Ari and Avi Arad producing, and I believe they have been attached to produce this movie for as long as my professional career has existed.

Speaker 1:
[119:32] I would almost say people have been wondering about a Metal Gear Solid movie since that game came out. They're like, why isn't this a movie? This is like a movie. It's basically a movie.

Speaker 3:
[119:41] I mean, we've probably talked about some version of the story five times on different podcasts over the years, but I mean, how sure a thing is this now that there's like a deal with a director?

Speaker 1:
[119:50] I'd say like, you're gonna get some steps done now that you have these guys on board, and it seems like they are making this a focus project and not just a thing humming in the background. But like they've talked about that so many times, there have been other directors, I think, at least loosely attached. At one point, Oscar Isaac was attached to play Solid Snake. No idea if that is true. I think that's still the going plan, or if they have someone else in mind now. But like, you know, attachment does not mean full commitment. Attachment means we are going into the early production process, we are getting a screenplay together, we are figuring out exactly what it is, getting casting together, and anywhere along those steps, it can still fall apart.

Speaker 2:
[120:32] The last one fell apart, right? Because that's when Kojima left Konami, right? They separated, that was...

Speaker 1:
[120:40] I want to say the Oscar Isaac News may have bubbled up even after he had left Konami.

Speaker 2:
[120:43] Oh, that was after. Yeah, that was after. I don't know who this is, Jordan Voight Roberts, directing the movie with Jay Basso, confirmed in 2015, writing the story.

Speaker 1:
[120:56] Yeah. So whatever version of that is, unless they use some stuff from that screenplay treatment, more than likely it will be a totally different thing.

Speaker 2:
[121:05] What a weird thing.

Speaker 1:
[121:07] I think this is how these things go, especially with properties that just aren't an immediate, like we are throwing a billion dollars at this, let's fucking go. But now, that's changing.

Speaker 3:
[121:17] Yeah, it's a different world than it was 10 years ago.

Speaker 2:
[121:19] Definitely.

Speaker 1:
[121:20] Or even five years ago.

Speaker 3:
[121:21] Because of the Mario movie. I mean, not just the Mario movie, but that's the example that proves the rule, right? Is that game movies make shit loads of money now?

Speaker 1:
[121:29] Well, Mario movie, Last of Us TV series, Fallout TV series, there are things happening now where people are seizing on the stuff and it's actually like lasting in cultural memory. It's not just a bad movie people don't care about. Like these things actually have a tail now. So now there are like these things that have been percolating forever. People are like, well, we should actually do this, right? We should make that Metal Gear movie.

Speaker 3:
[121:50] That's why I feel like we've gone from, I mean, this is me justifying a podcast news section. Like we went from joking about the Asteroids movie 15 years ago to like we actually have to take this seriously now because like things like this actually do get made now.

Speaker 2:
[122:04] Yeah, they did make that Tetris movie. It wasn't the one that I wanted, but they made a Tetris movie. It wasn't Tetris pieces battling in an arena, but yeah, I still think that one might have been a hard sell.

Speaker 1:
[122:19] The actual Tetris movie was probably more interesting.

Speaker 2:
[122:22] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[122:22] Okay. It was a better movie. I don't know if it would have been more interesting, like amusement wise than what they were trying to do with the other one.

Speaker 3:
[122:30] They came up with an angle for it. I can at least say they came up with an unexpected angle for that. Yes, it was. I think more game properties being adapted to stuff like this could stand to not just do the obvious thing.

Speaker 2:
[122:44] The other thing I could absolutely see too is, oh, this guy is hot. He sold all these, they're selling Death Stranding, animes and cartoons and series and movies. What else has he got? Oh, we got this Metal Gear Solid thing that's been kicking around for a while. Yeah, sign me up.

Speaker 1:
[123:01] You know, Koji was not a part of that anymore. Wait, what?

Speaker 2:
[123:03] What? No, no, no. Just wait. You signed it, right? You're good? You're good?

Speaker 1:
[123:08] I mean, we can still do it, right? I mean, that sucks, but it's all right. We can still do it. It's still a movie. We can still make a movie.

Speaker 2:
[123:15] Okay. Do you think they go to him at all?

Speaker 1:
[123:18] They can't.

Speaker 3:
[123:19] No.

Speaker 1:
[123:20] They will, like, I bet legally they can't.

Speaker 2:
[123:22] Do you think he has a cameo in it?

Speaker 3:
[123:24] No, absolutely not.

Speaker 2:
[123:26] No.

Speaker 3:
[123:27] I bet Konami wants him nowhere near that thing.

Speaker 1:
[123:30] That's what I mean, is that I bet you to get this thing off the ground, they would probably, there would be some language that says this person is not involved in this. I mean, that sucks.

Speaker 3:
[123:42] Who knows? Who knows if there's maybe been a change of leadership at Konami or something that, like, eventually they could pass things up.

Speaker 2:
[123:47] Yeah, maybe new Konami is okay.

Speaker 3:
[123:48] But there's no indication at all that that has happened at this point?

Speaker 1:
[123:53] At the absolute most, if that movie gets made, there is a credit error that says, based on the video game created by Konami and Hideo Kojima.

Speaker 3:
[124:00] Yeah, that might happen, but that's it.

Speaker 2:
[124:05] Well, I mean, look, that Castlevania stuff did well, right?

Speaker 1:
[124:07] Yeah, the anime series?

Speaker 3:
[124:10] Yeah, totally. Haven't they done two of those now? Didn't they do a second one?

Speaker 1:
[124:12] Four, I think, seasons.

Speaker 3:
[124:13] Oh, jeez. Oh, it's just seasons of the same one? Okay.

Speaker 1:
[124:16] I think they did an offshoot one that might be slightly different, I do. They've done at least four seasons of a Castlevania thing.

Speaker 2:
[124:24] What are you gonna say? Everybody's kind of got a thing now, huh? Publisher-wise.

Speaker 1:
[124:28] Well, not everybody. EA's kind of still eating shit on this.

Speaker 2:
[124:32] I don't know if EA knows what to do.

Speaker 1:
[124:34] No.

Speaker 2:
[124:34] I guess Ubisoft had Rabbids for a long time, that cartoon.

Speaker 3:
[124:38] Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, they made an Assassin's Creed movie. And a Prince of Persia movie.

Speaker 1:
[124:42] They sure did.

Speaker 2:
[124:43] Oh, they sure did.

Speaker 1:
[124:44] They really did.

Speaker 2:
[124:47] And they made a Far Cry movie.

Speaker 1:
[124:49] Oh, yeah. You may both sure did do that.

Speaker 2:
[124:51] Sure did. Everybody. There's a Viva Piñata cartoon.

Speaker 3:
[124:58] Oh, that was part of the pitch. Well, it was out of the gate. Yeah, it was a transmedia property. Yeah. So we're going to put this on everything.

Speaker 2:
[125:06] They made the they made the there was an actual Halo series, right?

Speaker 1:
[125:11] Yes, there was two seasons of it. No one cared.

Speaker 3:
[125:13] Yeah, that did not seem to go over super well.

Speaker 2:
[125:17] Oh, well, Alex, Sony doesn't want to be left out.

Speaker 1:
[125:24] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[125:26] They want to make stuff.

Speaker 1:
[125:28] They want to make a Bloodborne, it turns out.

Speaker 2:
[125:30] Sony Pictures apparently is making... Okay, I did not realize that Sony Productions, or whatever you want to call it, is working on the Zelda movie, which is just a weird thing to me.

Speaker 3:
[125:39] I didn't realize that either.

Speaker 2:
[125:40] In my gamer brain is a weird one.

Speaker 3:
[125:42] Well, you know, they're just a movie studio that wants to make money.

Speaker 2:
[125:45] Yeah, I guess so.

Speaker 3:
[125:46] I mean, what were they before Sony bought them? They were Columbia, right?

Speaker 1:
[125:50] Columbia, all the Columbia stuff is under the Sony banner.

Speaker 3:
[125:53] That's what became, that's what Sony bought to get into movies effectively.

Speaker 2:
[125:59] So apparently there was a cinema con where they talked about the Zelda movie. They also talked about Jason Momoa being in Helldivers 2, which I didn't realize. But Alex, they talked about one other property getting an R-rated animated movie, which is?

Speaker 1:
[126:16] Bloodborne. They're going to make a Bloodborne somehow. If fucking, if From Software will not let them redo Bloodborne, then they're going to get Bloodborne out there into the world another way.

Speaker 3:
[126:27] You're not getting a Bloodborne 2, you're not even getting a Bloodborne remaster.

Speaker 2:
[126:31] Yes, unfortunately, this Bloodborne movie will only be at 30 frames per second at 1080p forever. Yeah, I don't know, sure. I guess this could be rated R and it's animated.

Speaker 1:
[126:42] Well, I mean, rated R in this, if it is an animated feature, yeah, I guess. It just means they'll have blood and violence in it, which I would expect that from a Bloodborne thing, so sure. The interesting detail in this, apart from them doing it, is that one of the producers is Sean Jacksepticeye McLaughlin.

Speaker 3:
[127:03] Yeah, that was, frankly, the biggest revelation in this whole thing to me, is that Jacksepticeye has 31 million YouTube subscribers.

Speaker 1:
[127:10] He's very popular.

Speaker 3:
[127:11] Maybe, like, I knew he was big, but good God.

Speaker 1:
[127:14] So I had thought this was his second thing, but actually, no, there was a different movie that was produced by a streamer, Markiplier, earlier this year. That is not a video game project. That was just a horror movie that he produced.

Speaker 3:
[127:26] God, what was that?

Speaker 1:
[127:28] Iron Lung.

Speaker 3:
[127:29] Okay, yes.

Speaker 1:
[127:30] And I think Septiceye and Markiplier are friends, so maybe they just both decided, we need to get into this producing business. That sounds fun. This YouTube thing doesn't have legs.

Speaker 3:
[127:40] That sounds, you know, what if you made, if you made fuck off money from YouTube and don't want to keep up with the streaming grind anymore, that sounds like a fun thing to do instead.

Speaker 1:
[127:48] Totally.

Speaker 3:
[127:51] Markiplier directed that movie.

Speaker 1:
[127:52] Yes, he was very directly hands on with that one.

Speaker 3:
[127:55] Jeez, all right.

Speaker 2:
[127:57] So you think this is not, they reached out to get some, some influencer adjacent, high influencer, you think this is a backed financially producer role?

Speaker 1:
[128:07] I think he is actually getting into the production of this stuff.

Speaker 2:
[128:10] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[128:10] This is actually like an interesting pipeline to me because it reminds me of the, I assume you pronounce their name, the Philippu or Philippo brothers, the guys who made Talk to Me and are in Death Stranding 2, like they were YouTubers.

Speaker 1:
[128:24] Right.

Speaker 3:
[128:25] They were goofball Australian YouTubers before they became like acclaimed horror film writers and directors. Like this YouTube influencer to film director pipeline is becoming a thing in a weird way almost.

Speaker 1:
[128:40] I mean, it makes a certain amount of sense because-

Speaker 3:
[128:42] Well, yeah. I guess you're editing things, you're in video production already.

Speaker 1:
[128:46] Well, you're media savvy too, right? If you're putting yourself out there in that way and you're actually cultivating a following, you're demonstrating an ability to basically get people to pay attention to the things that you are involved in and that's a big part of it. The other thing also is just that it makes sense because this is where you discover people now. If not explicitly YouTube, then platforms like it. Like the backrooms director, again, the person who is making that backrooms movie is a person who spent their teenage years making their own backrooms, like short films on YouTube. And then A24 was like, do you want to make the movie for us?

Speaker 3:
[129:25] Yeah, but I would say that's at least a little more traditional because at least he made an actual short film that resembles what a commercial production would be.

Speaker 1:
[129:33] Right, because they're using these platforms to get them noticed.

Speaker 3:
[129:36] Yeah, but as opposed to like streaming Minecraft and then directing a movie is a little bit weirder.

Speaker 2:
[129:42] I mean, that also just might be a big realization that this is where your audience is. Your audience knows these people from this platform.

Speaker 1:
[129:52] This is where the recognition is.

Speaker 2:
[129:54] And they will go see anything that, or give a credit because it is a jacksepticeye doing it. Be like, that's a legit movie. 31 million people, you're already building in a following to come see your movie. I don't know what that translates to in ticket sales or in rentals or whatever.

Speaker 1:
[130:12] Or if this is even a thing that is going to theaters. Like, it could very easily be a thing that is like going to a streaming service.

Speaker 2:
[130:19] Which, again, you already have a good percentage, probably, of that. I mean, he's gonna promote this to an audience that is already over 30 million people.

Speaker 1:
[130:29] Yes, and Bloodborne already has that recognition with that audience. So it's a pretty easy thing to say, like, hey, I'm making a Bloodborne animated movie and having all those people go, fuck it, hey, cool.

Speaker 2:
[130:38] Yeah, or even, like, again, I don't know the specifics. Even attached to it, right? You know, you're going to make some money off of this. So good on him. Now, if he could just pull some strings to get Blue Point back to remake that canceled.

Speaker 1:
[130:54] That is several layers of extra work that I don't think is in that purview.

Speaker 2:
[131:01] Jason Momoa in Helldivers 2?

Speaker 3:
[131:05] Sure.

Speaker 2:
[131:06] Yeah?

Speaker 1:
[131:06] I mean, do you know what a Helldiver looks like under that helmet? I don't.

Speaker 3:
[131:10] Or whatever the Helldivers adaptation is called, I guess.

Speaker 2:
[131:13] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[131:14] You can be any guy. Why not Jason Momoa?

Speaker 2:
[131:19] I was reading up about this before we got here because I didn't know that. Then there was some quote from somewhere that was just like from a director or somebody attached to the project that was, oh, here it is. Helldivers balances satire with humanity, and the only person who I can think can pull this off is Jason Momoa.

Speaker 1:
[131:44] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[131:45] Sure. Sure. Yeah. I forget who is directing this. It's the Fast and Furious guy, right?

Speaker 1:
[131:51] Which one?

Speaker 2:
[131:53] Lin.

Speaker 1:
[131:54] Justin Lin is doing it?

Speaker 2:
[131:55] Yes. Justin Lin is doing it.

Speaker 1:
[131:57] All right. Well.

Speaker 2:
[131:59] Is that a good thing?

Speaker 1:
[132:00] I don't know, but it's at least interesting.

Speaker 2:
[132:03] Okay. Which Fast and Furious is...

Speaker 1:
[132:06] Mostly the good ones, but also some of the less good ones.

Speaker 2:
[132:10] Okay. Interesting. Well, that's where that quote comes from.

Speaker 1:
[132:13] Gotcha.

Speaker 2:
[132:15] And then, geez, I think there's one... Resident Evil Sony Pictures? I think Sony Pictures is doing all of that stuff. That Zack Craigger one.

Speaker 1:
[132:24] I think you're right about that.

Speaker 2:
[132:26] I would believe that. I have to go look that one up. That's a lot of video game movies, people.

Speaker 1:
[132:31] I think they just put out a trailer, or at least showed a trailer somewhere for that. Really?

Speaker 3:
[132:36] I mean, it's out in September. Damn, I didn't know they had shown something.

Speaker 1:
[132:39] It may have been a thing that was shown at a CinemaCon or something like that. I don't know if it's actually out there in public yet, or it will be soon if it isn't.

Speaker 3:
[132:46] I don't want to see that. I mean, I don't want to see if the footage... I think it's just a teaser. I'm very excited to see that movie.

Speaker 2:
[132:53] It did come out of that CinemaCon thing. It was behind closed doors.

Speaker 1:
[132:56] Okay, so they haven't shown it yet.

Speaker 3:
[132:57] A bunch of people were getting really mad about that movie recently. I mean, this has been known for ages, but it kind of bubbled back up in the present evil community. I think it was after Requiem came out that it's not gonna be just like a straight adaptation of one of the games that he's writing his own story.

Speaker 2:
[133:12] And people got mad at that?

Speaker 3:
[133:13] A bunch of fans seem to feel like they're being denied their Leon S. Kennedy origin story movie or whatever.

Speaker 2:
[133:22] I mean, I would imagine...

Speaker 3:
[133:22] Why do you need that?

Speaker 2:
[133:25] He has said that he is a fan of the franchise, right?

Speaker 3:
[133:27] Yeah, he's said repeatedly how much he loves those games. And he is quite good at making horror films. Let's see what he does with that.

Speaker 2:
[133:35] Totally. And I don't think... And it remains to be seen, but I would guess if you are a fan of the franchise, you're going to make your own thing, you'll do the references. You'll have some umbrella reference in there or something.

Speaker 3:
[133:45] Or maybe you'll do something totally original and it'll be amazing. It's like, just give it a chance. But also, the type of thing they are saying they want is exactly why, like for example, I just avoided the last of a series entirely because I know that story already. The game's already told that story. Like do something new in that world.

Speaker 1:
[134:04] Also, let's be real, the Resident Evil movies, most of them are only lightly abate. They are around the edges of the games and the lore of the games, but most of the, like Alice is an original character and she's in all of them. Then the one time they went back to reboot it, Welcome to Raccoon City on Netflix, it was dog shit. That was them just trying to do a video game reference.

Speaker 3:
[134:30] In fairness, a lot of those people seem to be pretty displeased with the Paul WS. Anderson run of those movies, and like that's why they seem, I guess it's sort of like how you heard us before. It's like, look what happened last time you let somebody kind of have carte blanche with this franchise.

Speaker 1:
[134:47] But the ones that, like the second one of those, the one that is the most like the games is the worst one.

Speaker 2:
[134:57] Is it? That's the Raccoon City one?

Speaker 1:
[134:59] No, no, no, I'm saying, what I'm saying is the second of the Mila Jovovich lineage, the one that is like straight up, here's a bunch of, here's some of the characters from the game. Here's the actual rubbery ass looking nemesis, all of that. That one was awful.

Speaker 2:
[135:13] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is going to be a weird couple of years with video game movies. I wonder if they were going to burn out as they try to kind of mine craft everything.

Speaker 1:
[135:24] They got to do something.

Speaker 2:
[135:25] They got to do something. Movies need to do something.

Speaker 1:
[135:28] Yes, everything needs to do something.

Speaker 2:
[135:32] Well, that's going to do it for the news. I think for me, just before we wrap up the news, I think the one that is on the bubble the most for me, and I mean that every sense of the metaphor, because I think it is on the bubble in terms of will it do well or not, or will it make the bubble burst, is that live-action Zelda movie. Like that movie...

Speaker 3:
[136:00] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[136:01] That might be the thing that kills culture. I'm not sure.

Speaker 2:
[136:03] It might be the thing where people have like, we've dug too deep.

Speaker 3:
[136:06] I'm not at all convinced about the fate of that, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[136:10] And it might be like, well, if Nintendo takes a bath on this and we are all pulling out, all money stops.

Speaker 1:
[136:16] It might actually kill movies and video games at the same time. Some real matter and anti-matter touching type shit.

Speaker 2:
[136:22] Collapse everything. All right. That's going to do it for the dews. We also have an email address, podcast.nextlander.com, podcast.nextlander.com, podcast.nextlander.com. Brad, I don't know which emails you have picked yet, but I would like to just give a special shout out to two that I saw while you were going through. I don't think these will be ones that you've read. One was a description of going under anesthesia, and I wanted to thank the person for sharing that whole story with us. I thought it was a really interesting tale about the surgery, and I don't know if we'll read that one. The other one was an ask for update on some Mass Effect stuff, which I don't know if that is for public consumption, but thank you for sharing that.

Speaker 1:
[137:08] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[137:08] Now I'm wondering if I should, I wasn't gonna read that one, but now I don't know if I should.

Speaker 2:
[137:13] I mean, you could. Why don't you read the last line?

Speaker 3:
[137:15] Yeah, we could, we could. I guess I could, there's nothing like super, I also, the wording from that one was also not clear to me.

Speaker 2:
[137:22] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[137:23] But I guess we could read it anonymously.

Speaker 2:
[137:25] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[137:25] Okay, I mean, the email is basically just about the kind of team composition at Edmonton Bioware at this point and how many people are there and so forth. Almost none of the past Bioware staff remain at EA to transfer back, so the next Mass Effect will be done by an effectively new and first time team.

Speaker 2:
[137:44] Also a little bit previous to that about like, staffing isn't quite up for the level of full on production.

Speaker 3:
[137:50] Like the gist of it is the team size apparently is nowhere near big enough to make a full game at the moment, so they're going to have to staff up substantially still. They're not at that point yet.

Speaker 1:
[137:59] And I'm going to tell you right now, that will not happen until that Saudi deal has gone through.

Speaker 3:
[138:03] Yeah, I have to imagine that is, puts everything in some degree of limbo.

Speaker 2:
[138:09] These are not grub level revelations here, but I do appreciate the, I'm still Mass Effect, one of my favorite franchises.

Speaker 3:
[138:18] Yeah, I mean, that email has a lot of other detail that does sound like quite unformed, so I have to assume there's legitimacy there, but.

Speaker 2:
[138:24] Yeah, and buddy, look, if you told me that game is still in early stages of productions, I would absolutely believe it. Absolutely.

Speaker 3:
[138:33] Indeed. Why don't we read, gosh, a lot of different directions this could go right now. Okay, this one's, we were just talking about this, so I should just read this one from Zack in Savage, Minnesota, about the Mario Galaxy movie. I have a five-year-old who loves Mario, so I found myself at the Mario Galaxy movie last week. It's abysmal and just remarkably worse than the first one, but we all knew that already. What I wanted to write in and say was about the point of Nintendo exercising too much creative control over that movie. Miyamoto is the first credited name when it starts before the director or anyone from Illumination. Also, the idea that they won't reference or acknowledge anything from the live-action Mario movie. I'm here to say that The Devo Gun plays a small but important role in the back half of that movie.

Speaker 2:
[139:21] Oh, that's fun. That's an old Mario Brothers live-action.

Speaker 3:
[139:24] I don't remember the Devo Gun.

Speaker 1:
[139:26] It's the thing that turns the people into the dinosaurs with the tiny heads. Wow.

Speaker 2:
[139:30] The de-evolution gun.

Speaker 3:
[139:31] Oh, right. Okay. I was trying to figure out how Devo factored into that whole thing.

Speaker 1:
[139:36] Mark Mothersbaugh is innocent. Don't worry.

Speaker 2:
[139:39] It's what I think... who gets shot with it? Bowser gets shot and turns into an ape at the end, right? Or a monkey?

Speaker 1:
[139:46] No. Because remember, it's the shitty human guy that gets shot with it and then Dennis Hopper points at it and goes, monkey, monkey.

Speaker 2:
[139:55] Yeah. Who could forget?

Speaker 1:
[139:57] One of the all timeline deliveries.

Speaker 3:
[139:59] At the end of this email, PS, I'm pretty sure Star Fox has more lines than Mario Luigi and Rosalina combined.

Speaker 1:
[140:04] Apparently, the Star Fox bit of that movie is so out of nowhere and so prominent that it can't be anything other than a direct promotion for an upcoming video game.

Speaker 3:
[140:15] Nintendo got to get paid.

Speaker 1:
[140:17] Remember me? I'm Star Fox.

Speaker 2:
[140:21] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[140:23] I want to do this email, but I don't know how well this is going to work.

Speaker 1:
[140:25] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[140:26] Because I'm contemplating playing a YouTube video into my microphone.

Speaker 2:
[140:30] Oh boy. Maybe you could just send me the audio?

Speaker 3:
[140:33] From Joe in New York. You need to hear it live though.

Speaker 2:
[140:37] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[140:37] I can do that. I don't know if you can pipe it into your microphone. This is very low tech. It's about Magikarp.

Speaker 2:
[140:44] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[140:44] This is about the week that Lexi was on and we talked about Pokemon, Pokopia. Magikarp is notoriously useless and constantly dunked on. Here is the official Magikarp song which covers all of this.

Speaker 2:
[140:59] Oh, I'm afraid I've heard this, Brad.

Speaker 3:
[141:00] Okay. You know the song? I guess I can.

Speaker 2:
[141:02] When this e-mail came in, I clicked it here.

Speaker 3:
[141:05] Okay. Well, I'll give it a shot here.

Speaker 2:
[141:06] Yes. Here we go.

Speaker 1:
[141:53] Yep, I got it.

Speaker 3:
[141:54] All right, you get the point. It goes on for another three and a half minutes.

Speaker 2:
[141:58] Yep, it's a very similar refrain, The Weak Pokemon.

Speaker 3:
[142:02] And everybody hates Magikarp. Therefore, I love Magikarp.

Speaker 1:
[142:07] Yeah, you need a weak one in there to balance everything out.

Speaker 3:
[142:11] Maybe that's the whole point, I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[142:14] It's a good song.

Speaker 3:
[142:15] Join us as we catch up on more 35 year old Pokemon lore.

Speaker 2:
[142:19] Yeah, right, right, right.

Speaker 1:
[142:20] Look, we all were just a little too old to be into Pokemon at the correct age range.

Speaker 3:
[142:25] It's true, it's true, it's true. All right, let's do one more quick email. It's also from Zach in Savage, Minnesota.

Speaker 2:
[142:31] Okay, Zach.

Speaker 3:
[142:32] Just wanted to get Alex and Brad's thoughts on the news last week that WWE's Triple H believes Sane Anger to be the best Metallica album. Yeah, that about sums up my thought as well.

Speaker 1:
[142:47] That's the whole thing. Triple H is not great for a lot of reasons.

Speaker 3:
[142:52] I was going to say, doesn't he kind of suck? Like, of course, he would think this.

Speaker 1:
[142:56] I mean, yes. The big thing is that he also has fairly terrible music taste in the way that most pro wrestlers tend to. Him being a Metallica guy is the least surprising thing in the world. I mean, again, he had literally Motorhead do his theme for a number of years.

Speaker 3:
[143:10] Like, that's fine.

Speaker 1:
[143:11] That's fine. I have nothing against Motorhead. My point is that, like, that's the level of, like, metal brow he is generally operating at. But St. Anger, as your favorite Metallica album, is a specific strain that I don't think I ever would have necessarily applied to anyone, let alone him. But it does make a certain kind of sense because he has terrible taste in everything.

Speaker 3:
[143:33] I mean, do you have any other good wrestler music taste pairings since you referenced them?

Speaker 1:
[143:38] It's just, I mean, the thing you need to understand is that, especially with old wrestlers, these are guys who were just, like, carny dudes who liked fucking butt rock, you know? That's most of what it was. I've heard the legendary story many times about Vince McMahon signaling his entry to the staff gym by having ACDC play at full volume, so that people knew he was coming. Like, again, it's not necessarily that they only like the worst music, but music that is associated with wrestling is mostly terrible. And that is because the bands that want to associate with wrestling most directly tend to be not great bands. There's a reason why New Metal took so intense a foothold in wrestling for so many years.

Speaker 2:
[144:23] All right. Is there a whole academic field about music and wrestling that is waiting to be... Can I take a course?

Speaker 1:
[144:32] I mean, I could give you a light one if you want. The basic gist is for the early days of WWF's biggest years, all their music was composed more or less by one guy. Sometimes they would pull in some royalty-free stuff.

Speaker 2:
[144:46] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[144:47] One composer named Jim Johnson who did a ton of their most iconic themes.

Speaker 2:
[144:52] Oh, really? I had no idea.

Speaker 1:
[144:53] He was an in-house guy. And then they started getting bigger around the Attitude era. He was still doing stuff, but then they could get real bands to record themes for some of these wrestlers and whatnot. So they've got everyone from the most New Metal runoff bands, like Alter Bridge and fucking Killswitch Engage or whatever, to like Our Lady Peace and like these other like alt rock bands and stuff doing their themes. And then that got expensive and then they stopped doing that. And then I think most recently they've been contracting these current guys. I don't know, I remember, Def Rebel, I think is the name of the group, but it's like a producer and like some other dude. All their shit sounds the same now. Like all their music basically just sounds like, they might as well be AI generated. Like there is no, barely any differentiation between themes and what is there is mostly awful.

Speaker 2:
[145:46] Who came up with that ear worm, the, what is it? I am a real American.

Speaker 1:
[145:52] So Rick Derringer wrote that.

Speaker 3:
[145:54] Isn't that the Hulk Hogan thing though?

Speaker 1:
[145:56] Yes, that's the Hulk Hogan theme. That was his real American theme. So Rick Derringer did that song. That was a rare early instance of them having another artist do theme music.

Speaker 2:
[146:06] Was that on Piledriver?

Speaker 1:
[146:08] Probably. Okay. It was on one of those WWF albums. I know that.

Speaker 2:
[146:15] How many did they make?

Speaker 1:
[146:16] A few.

Speaker 3:
[146:19] Who has more albums, WWE or The Simpsons?

Speaker 1:
[146:23] Oh, definitely WWE. They put out so many compilation albums of all their music and whatever. That is a whole cottage industry for them.

Speaker 2:
[146:32] Alright. Well, that's going to do it for the emails. Yeah. Thanks for everybody for writing in and sharing your stories and sharing your feedback. We do appreciate it. That email address is podcast at nextlander.com. Bunch of interesting emails. Thanks everybody for writing it. That's going to do it for our show. Happy to say we've got the return of the watch cast. Alex, what's going on?

Speaker 1:
[147:00] So we have officially kicked off our... I mean, it's going to go into May, but our month of Cohen's Comedies, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? is up on the Patreon right now. We will be recording the Hudsucker Proxy later this week.

Speaker 2:
[147:13] Very cool. And then we've got Raising Arizona and what's the last one?

Speaker 1:
[147:19] Burn After Reading.

Speaker 2:
[147:20] Burn After Reading, yes. And our Cohen Brothers Comedy Month-ish, month-ish. So you can go check that out. That's on the Patreon currently. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? On our Patreon, patreon.com/nextlander. We've also got Abby Russell playing through Resident Evil. She is a Leoning it up as he runs around doing Leon things. It seems like Abby is actually really enjoying playing as Leon and taking it to those zombies. That's a lot of fun. I realized, I will say, sometimes I can tell just by looking for a thumbnail, like, oh, okay, what were the interesting parts of the thing? There are no cut scenes in the two hours that she played as Leon. None. None, because I was looking like, oh, usually I'll try and grab a cut scene because the camera's turned around, you can see somebody's face. There were-

Speaker 3:
[148:13] You mean that whole, like, get the parts of the detonator sequence?

Speaker 2:
[148:17] Yeah, and she's finished with it.

Speaker 3:
[148:18] Does it never?

Speaker 2:
[148:20] There are a couple of swing around the camera parts, one where he's falling off a lift and he jumps off, but no really big dramatic moments I could find, at least that I remembered. I was like, that is a very kind of, I could see why people say that section drags because there were last time, the last episode, because it's not that whole section from the beginning. There is that big one when he first enters the environment, and when he finds the soldiers that are on the ground. That's definitely a cut scene.

Speaker 3:
[148:53] That's a lot of back and forth.

Speaker 2:
[148:56] And it's kind of uninterrupted. You're just kind of running around. Anyway, I noticed that when I was looking for a thumbnail. So we can catch that up now. And also we'll have a grab bag on Friday, this Friday. I think there's enough stuff out where we can drop in there, show off some of what we've been playing. We got a big release week this week, and a pretty big release week next week as well. And maybe till the end of the month. I think Sauros is two weeks, right? So a lot of stuff on the calendar.

Speaker 1:
[149:24] Ultimate drummer. I mean, it's right here. I'm just... Finally.

Speaker 2:
[149:28] It's so close. It's so close. So check all that stuff out. You can go to patreon.com/nextlander to support us. Hey, if you like supporting your favorite podcasters, game players, video personalities, do that. But then come and support us as well.

Speaker 1:
[149:48] Ha ha ha.

Speaker 2:
[149:54] But then support us as well. Look, we have been going over some stuff internally and being like, hey, you know, things are getting expensive, the services are getting expensive, everything's getting more expensive. We still want to do this as much as patron supported as possible. So we rely on your support to do that. We're not looking to go out and do some stuff that we were old school. We just don't feel comfortable doing certain things out there. We want to make sure that we can survive and do this. The reason we started doing this is to have the direct support of the patrons. So your support keeps us going and it truly does. So patreon.com/nextlander is the best way to do that. You can take some time. And you're not a supporter. Go think about it. Hey, you can get in there for $5 a month.

Speaker 3:
[150:45] You might even say we wouldn't be doing this without you.

Speaker 2:
[150:47] But $5 is the new $3. This is what I hear.

Speaker 1:
[150:51] $7 is the new $10, I think. I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[150:54] Yes, Brad, we would not, we could not do this without you. So thank you very much. There are a bunch of tiers there on the Patreon. There's some goodies attached to some tiers there. But there is only one tier that gets their names read on this year's show. And it is the Mysterious Bannerfactors tier. And I'm going to read those names for you right now. Starting with, The Good Vibes Will Continue Until Morale Improves, Alpha Rhythm, Open AI Delenda Est, David L, Kelly F, Brian Lussier, Skywarp, Jason Grimm, John Hubbard, Thor Drean, Evan Cook, Jerry Lee, Deidre Forgets to Change Her Name Sometimes, Pogtato, But Hashtag Bunny Jerk, Jadrida Statics, Sending Good Vibes Back to Minnesota and Beyond, Brian Murphy, Randy Duax, Randy Alderson, Andrew Teabkin, Alex Wu, It's Me JP, Edward Chick, Andrew Slosky, Steve Lin, Matthew Herrick, David Campos and Tyler Treese. A lot of names there you'll recognize because those people know that we couldn't do it without them. That we are out here trying to be the outlet of the people. We don't answer to Big Pharma. We don't answer to Big Video Game. We answer billions of small donations. We answer to you out there. Or we answer to ourselves and then to you. You gotta go with what's in your heart.

Speaker 1:
[152:36] You gotta. You gotta make something for yourself before you can start making things for other people.

Speaker 2:
[152:40] That's right. It's true. It's really so very true. Brad Shoemaker, thanks for joining us.

Speaker 3:
[152:46] Thank you.

Speaker 2:
[152:48] Alex Navarro, thanks as always for joining us.

Speaker 1:
[152:50] Thank you.

Speaker 2:
[152:51] Brad, how are you feeling?

Speaker 3:
[152:53] I'm all right.

Speaker 2:
[152:54] Yeah. I feel like we had a week. I saw some people asking in the various sites around the internet. They're like, oh my gosh, first time I saw Brad. You know, not everybody's catching the Ramblecast.

Speaker 3:
[153:02] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[153:03] Not everybody's catching stuff. You are still recovering from surgery. People are seeing you in a neck brace.

Speaker 3:
[153:08] Still another four weeks of this thing.

Speaker 2:
[153:10] Four weeks, but you are feeling generally okay.

Speaker 3:
[153:12] Yeah, I'm pretty fine.

Speaker 2:
[153:13] Okay. Good to hear. Good to hear. Well, thank you guys for joining us. Thanks everybody for emailing in, for supporting us. And again, patreon.com/nextlander, where you can go support us directly. We'll be back with another Nextlander Podcast next week. See ya.