Episode 308: "Baman Piderman"

Ben and Sara talk a lot about superheroes! Saturn has to endure it!

Every big announcement from PlayStation’s June State of Play

Everything announced in Summer Game Fest 2026

XBOX Games Showcase 2026 Recap: The Return of Exclusives, World Premieres, and Anniversary Hardware

Everything Announced at Nintendo Direct June 2026

Xbox is closing down Hellblade creator Ninja Theory

Transcript

SPEAKER_08 0:20

This is The Gorge. It's a podcast where my friends and I gorge ourselves and what's happening in the world of video games and entertainment.

SPEAKER_04 0:26

The Gorge is brought to you by Patreon. That's patreon.com slash thegorge, where for just $3 a month, you gain access to all of our bonus content, everything we've ever done in the last 10 years. And yeah, we just had our 10-year anniversary. Um, all of that bonus stuff is there on Patreon for the paltry amount of $3 a month. I think it's a pretty good deal. It also gets you early access to the reboot, uh, our TTRPG podcast. It's currently on a slight hiatus because of uh scheduling things and projects that members of the podcast are working on.

SPEAKER_05 0:59

I'm writing a I'm writing a story about horses.

SPEAKER_04 1:02

That's right. A normal story about horses.

SPEAKER_05 1:06

Normal for horses, which is why Char Rasnable is in it. Horse normal or horsenal. Ormal.

SPEAKER_04 1:14

Hormal.

SPEAKER_05 1:15

You know, the chili.

SPEAKER_04 1:16

Oh, a thing famously made out of horses.

SPEAKER_05 1:19

Yeah, because it's normal for it to be so.

SPEAKER_04 1:21

Yeah, exactly. Uh patreon.com slash the gorge. Please check it out. Yeah, that's all I got. Um, this is gonna be a long one. I already know, so I promise to not spend five and a half hours talking about all the Batman stuff I've been up to lately, but it's been a lot of Well, this uh this I can uh I am proud to introduce our new segment on the podcast.

SPEAKER_08 1:45

Oh, what's that? That I like to call Batman Piderman. I see. Where Sarah and I talk about the comics we've been reading.

SPEAKER_04 1:58

I promise to be fast. I'm not going to spend 40 because Summer Games Fest happens, and there's gonna be stuff to talk about there.

SPEAKER_05 2:04

And stuff after Summer Games Fest to talk about.

SPEAKER_04 2:07

Yeah, there's so much. So, and I don't want to be here for four hours.

SPEAKER_05 2:11

Um look forward to Sarah being justified for not having been there for the Microsoft show.

SPEAKER_04 2:17

Sarah remains eternally vindicated. Um so, real quick, the biggest thing to get out of my system is uh um I started and have almost finished all of Grant Morrison's run on Batman. The only thing I have left is Batman Incorporated, which I started today. I didn't get far in because I'm busy at work. Um that entire run absolutely kicks ass. I highly recommend it if you want to have your entire brain rewritten, um, which is what happened. I read I read the first part of this, which it goes Batman and Son, Batman R.I.P. Uh, and then running concurrently was Batman and Robin with with Dick Grayson as Batman and Damien as Robin. And it was running alongside the return of Bruce Wayne, like those were coming out at the same time, basically. Um and it finishes with uh Batman Incorporated, so you can have the whole thing. Um, it's really good. It's really, really good. I highly recommend it. It's the it's a bunch of comic books horseshit in the best way possible. Batman RIP is so cool that I was just like I spent like a solid three days just telling everybody I could like, no, you don't understand. This shit rocks. Um, yeah, no, it's it's awesome. It's it's Grant Morrison playing with all the stuff that I think is interesting, which is that um everything that's ever happened is happening at the same time forever, right? Uh and then also this idea of like the whole in everything that uh will culminate in uh Batman, uh uh Batman Incorporated. So I need to finish it. Um but it's it's phenomenal. It's so good. It's it's so comic books in the best way. Um, you know, like what did I say? I have like I have it written down in my phone. Um it's literally like a secret society of rich assholes brainwashed Bruce Wayne with enough heroin to kill an elephant so they can torture him to death after he suffers a complete break from reality. Uh, and then he gets his shit together by turning into a different version of himself where he beats people up with a baseball bat and then eventually digs himself out of his own grave and uh and then dies in a helicopter crash, but also no, he doesn't. Um he actually dies, but also no, he doesn't in Grant Morrison's Final Crisis, a thing I don't intend to read yet. Um maybe, maybe later. Um so it's fine. Uh because he dies finger quotes in uh Final Crisis, in that Darkseid sends him back into pa into the past to like quantum leap through history over the course of a couple thousand years, um, as part of an elaborate way to destroy all of reality. So, you know, comments order. A little bit. The mechanics of time travel to destroy the world are a little differently, but the you know what, spiritually is right there.

SPEAKER_08 5:30

Bruce would just have an altar for every class, wouldn't he?

SPEAKER_04 5:35

Bruce Wayne is absolutely Batman? Batman is absolutely like a fucking Artoria, right? Like you could have a yeah, you could have a full support list of nothing but Batman, I think.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Right.

SPEAKER_04 5:47

Yeah. You would have to cheat a little, probably, by having certain Batman be like Damien or Dick. Well yeah, Damien is Saber. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 6:00

Because he's got he's got the sword. Red Red Hood is assassin.

SPEAKER_04 6:03

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's it's perfect.

SPEAKER_08 6:05

But I mean, you've got you've got the Batmobile, so riders covered.

SPEAKER_04 6:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 6:10

Like Batman has trained with the Bruce has trained with enough Tibetan monks to be a caster.

SPEAKER_04 6:15

Yes, actually. So it would work out perfectly. Um spiritually, there's not there's fate grand order is comic books. Right? Like spiritually. Like when you start discussing all of the convoluted horseshit that happens in in both comic books and that game, you go like, oh, I understand. Instantly.

SPEAKER_08 6:38

Yeah. Like in the in the same capacity of fate being a culmination of every culture's mythology. Yeah. Uh, you know, being combined into one big project. So much is the same of Western Big Two comics. Yeah. Like, just like, from a standpoint, it's every it's every great mythological figure and famous literary character just being reinterpreted and re-represented in a new form.

SPEAKER_04 7:15

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so truly, I mean, it it's all the same. I it's fine. I love it. It's really good.

SPEAKER_08 7:24

Um look, I'm looking, I'm looking at Amazon right now, and they got all three Grant Morrison omnibuses for like less than for 50 bucks each.

SPEAKER_04 7:32

Oh, that's actually not bad. That's actually not bad at all. I wonder if that contains everything, because I have not read Go ahead.

SPEAKER_08 7:41

So it's got the volume one says it's got Batman and Sun, Batman the Black Glove, and Batman R.I.P.

SPEAKER_03 7:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 7:48

Contains 655 to 658, 663 to 683.

SPEAKER_03 7:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 7:53

And some DC Universe stuff. And volume two looks like it's got Batman and Robin one through 16.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_08 8:00

Uh the Turn of Bruce Wayne one through six. And then volume three has Batman Inc. one through eight, uh Zero through thir- God, I hate re-issues.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

I'm learning that. I am learning the the annoyance of the city.

SPEAKER_08 8:20

Now you have to now you get it.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Now I get it.

SPEAKER_08 8:23

Where it's like, where do you start? Issue one.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

No.

SPEAKER_08 8:27

Yeah, now you understand Snake Town.

SPEAKER_04 8:30

I understand Snake Town perfectly now.

SPEAKER_08 8:33

It's my favorite location in Bloodborne. Sarah, Sarah, imagine reading these contemporary.

SPEAKER_03 8:40

I couldn't.

SPEAKER_08 8:42

Like try like these are you get to read books that are all nicely organized in chronological order.

SPEAKER_03 8:49

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_08 8:50

Imagine being like, what the fuck do you mean I have to buy the resurrection of Rachel Ghoul? I didn't even know that was coming out.

SPEAKER_04 8:59

Yeah, no, I uh I really want to read the Matt Fraction and Jorge Jimenez's um current run of Batman really bad. Um, but one, I don't know, I need to look and see what I should read before that to like be sure. And two, there's stuff that happens in that that I'm like, well, because like at one point I know that Barbara gets arrested, right? Right. Well, that's its own comic book line, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:25

Like Barbara Gordon in prison, you know? So there's that. I'm like, okay, well, I did this to myself. I willfully stepped into this bear trap. It was not. I could have been content to just watch cartoons, but no. No.

SPEAKER_05 9:41

Does the teeth sinking into your leg feel good?

SPEAKER_04 9:43

No, it feels terrible. Well, sometimes it feels really good when you are reading things like Batman R.I.P., so I think it's okay. It's fine.

SPEAKER_05 9:51

I see, I see.

SPEAKER_04 9:53

So uh it's it's it's great. It's fine. Grant Morrison comics are good. I understand why everybody's crazy about them. Um it's also funny to learn that apparently Alan Moore and Grant Morrison don't like each other.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Grant Morris has talked about how they want to hit Alan Moore with their car. I'm like, yeah, that sounds about right.

SPEAKER_05 10:18

I feel like that is a normal relationship to have with Alan Moore.

SPEAKER_03 10:22

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 10:23

Like, I don't know Grant Morrison that well. Alan Moore seems like a Hayao Miyazaki style of just kind of a complete asshole all the time.

SPEAKER_04 10:32

He's a complete asshole, but he's also unfortunately right all the time. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 10:37

Much as well like Hayao Miyazaki. Unfortunately, he's right to be a humongous asshole, but God is he a humongous asshole.

SPEAKER_04 10:43

Yeah, tremendous asshole. Um, but he is right all of the time, so I understand Graham Morrison wanting to hit him with their car. Um so that was funny to learn. Um see, look, I banged that out in less than 10 minutes. So I knew I could do it because I don't want to I don't want to go into too much yapping about it beyond the fact that I just think it's really good. Um I really like the end of the return of Bruce Wayne a lot. Again, I don't want to say anything because Ben intends to read it.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 11:14

So I'll be a good girl. But it's awesome. That's all you need to know.

SPEAKER_08 11:19

Look forward when Sarah and I just set time aside to just talk about comic books specifically.

SPEAKER_04 11:28

This is the quarantine zone. It's only Ben and Sarah, and those if she wants to attend, uh, and Saturn if they feel like just kind of sitting there going, da-da-da! I don't know what anybody's saying.

SPEAKER_05 11:38

I'm doing my best to here's the thing: I have I have developed a skill set over many hundreds of episodes of listening to We Hate movies, which I don't really make time for anymore, but did for a few years, where I can just listen to people talk about a thing that they watched or read or whatever that I have absolutely zero context for and find ways to be like, yeah, that's that I'm I'm I'm not internalizing this necessarily, but I'm enjoying the part I'm enjoying the being here and try and like visualizing it in my mind.

SPEAKER_04 12:08

You you've developed the skill of not being that interested in reading and or watching it, but you can still engage the conversation.

SPEAKER_05 12:16

Yeah, I it's like I get to retro it not retroactively, it's like I get to vicariously experience being someone who reads Batman. Yeah. Which is not something I I'm I'm likely to ever be myself, but like it's it's nice to imagine what it would be like to be someone who reads Batman.

SPEAKER_08 12:34

It has to be like just like being told like a tale around the campfire.

unknown 12:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 12:42

Yeah, it's happened to my buddy Batman.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

It's happened to my buddy Bruce Wayne, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 12:45

Yeah. This guy I know Bruce. He had a Bruce Wayne, by the way, would be the pretender.

SPEAKER_04 12:49

Yeah. Oh, true! Yeah, just Bruce Wayne. Billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. That's so good. Um. What else, real fast? Uh, since we have last done our last roundup, I have gone through two and a half of the Arkham games. So.

SPEAKER_07 13:08

Oh yeah!

SPEAKER_04 13:09

I played all of Arkham Asylum. That game is good until it isn't, and when it's bad, it is It's it's it m it's unironically might be some of the worst boss fights in a video game. No, straight up. Like, it's embarrassingly bad. Like so bad that when people tell me that like Arkham Asylum is a masterpiece, I'm like, are you sure? Are you sure?

SPEAKER_05 13:35

That that's just how starved we were in 7th gen that everyone's like, yeah, Arkham Asylum, that's like a solid nine and a half.

SPEAKER_08 13:41

Hey, what if what if we had one one type of boss fight? And we what if we had Batman's ultimate climactic battle with the Joker and it was the same boss.

SPEAKER_03 13:53

Oh my god, and it's so bad.

SPEAKER_05 13:56

Yeah, just imagine just like just him shooting all the Bane talks on her or whatever, and then you just go, no, no, not again!

SPEAKER_04 14:03

It's I mean it's it's it's really amazing. And it's crazy because, like, yeah, in terms of what Arkham Asylum is, which is a Metroidvania, that game is awesome. It is so like its tone is so good, its atmosphere rocks, it's so like like that heightened reality that I've been talking about, like on Blue Sky and stuff, about like what these maps are doing, where like they're so it's like the the the pinnacle of seventh generation like hyper reality where it's trying to look it's not trying to look like a real place, but it's trying to evoke a real place with like these crazy broad brush strokes. Um and in Arkham Asylum, the moon is 20 times too big, everything is like this sickly green, that and I mean just the atmosphere is just stunning, it's fantastic. And and you're kind of having you're you're Batman maxing because you you have to sneak around everywhere and you know yank guys up like into the darkness because uh a single bullet will blow your brain clean out the back of your skull, right? I learned that the hard way that Batman is in fact a regular guy and is very susceptible to 50 caliber rounds, you know.

SPEAKER_08 15:26

It is it is the best, I think not maybe not the best mechanical stealth I've ever done, but the best feeling stealth.

SPEAKER_04 15:37

It is extremely start smart stealth because it gives you a ton of tools and even lets you know where all of your enemies are at all times, and you still have to think so smartly about it because you are just like a regular dude and you can't get shot that often, right? Right. It's really fun, it's really smart. That game would be a genuine all-timer if it had any good boss fights at all, but it does not have a single it has boss fights so bad that I'm like I mean it actually does bring it down like a point or two. Like they are so bad that I was dreading them. You don't if if somebody's dreading any part of your video game, something has gone horribly wrong.

SPEAKER_08 16:26

It's got the best like user interface hallucination.

SPEAKER_04 16:32

They're really out of seventh gen. Um there's actually, I was reading that that the I think the last scarecrow hallucination, the one where you where like you replay the beginning of the game, but you're playing as a Joker instead. Um that last scarecrow hallucination has such an accurate like the specific way your computer screen glitches when your graphics card dies that it scared people in playtesting. Like the specific kind of graphic artifacting where you're like where your graphics card is the thing that's going out was that it actually like it made people playing the game in playtesting go like, oh shit. Uh so it worked out really, really well.

SPEAKER_08 17:20

Um and I I know that so they they even did the thing where like it will detect what your controller style is because the fake tooltip that they give you needs to change depending on what your controller scheme is.

SPEAKER_04 17:33

Right, it's so smart. I love it. There's a fake, I mean that it's it's really well done. There's a fake death screen that takes you to a loading screen, and you literally think, like, did I do something wrong? What did I do?

SPEAKER_08 17:46

Yeah, did I fail a quick time?

SPEAKER_04 17:48

How did I fail a cutscene? But no, it's just the game fucking with you. Um, it's great. I I love all that stuff. They never do it again, and it's probably for the best because you can't, you know, lightning never strikes twice. It'd be kind of cliche.

SPEAKER_08 18:05

The problem with interface stuff like that, you know, like you think of uh Eternal Darkness and stuff like that, yeah, is that one, it's got a time limit as technology improves.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Correct.

SPEAKER_08 18:20

Right? Like your TV doesn't have a video one, video two input anymore.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 18:27

Right? Like, so that wouldn't work. And also, if you use it too frequently, it's it like very quickly stops being effective.

SPEAKER_04 18:37

Right. You can't you can't overuse it. Yeah, otherwise it starts so like uh Scarecrow isn't even in Arkham City, as far as I can recall. No.

SPEAKER_08 18:47

No, it's not, it's it's only in this one and a little bit in in night.

SPEAKER_04 18:50

In night. And they're doing something totally different in night that I think is interesting, but it's completely different.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:56

Um so Arkham Asylum is good but flawed. And I'm gonna skip City for a second. Arkham Night is the prettiest video game I've ever played in my entire life. Um you actually like video games actually never needed to look better than this. There are so many times where I'm playing this game where I just kind of have to stop and look at it. Because like the world design is so good. It's so, it's so good. The map is is incredible. It's I I can't even because it's doing it's like doing Joel Schumacher Gotham, but good instead of bad. I remember cheap and lame.

SPEAKER_08 19:44

There was something that stuck with me forever since I played night for the first time. Which was you know, gliding around, you know, batmobiling around and whatnot, and going underneath a city or underneath a bridge and finding a little homeless encampment.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 20:03

Of just like sleeping bags and boxes and stuff, and like, you know, a couple like backpacks. I'm like Holy shit! This is the most lived in city I've ever seen in a video game.

SPEAKER_04 20:14

Until we hit fucking Cyberpunk, which is literally years later. It is, I mean, it and it's just so it is so beautifully designed. Like the city itself is so distinct because it is in comparison to modern open world maps, uh still pretty small, it's still pretty like digestible. It's only three little islands, um, but they're all extremely dense. So every island is very designed to be very um distinct. So eventually you can start navigating it just by knowing the city, which is great. That's exactly what you're aiming for when you have a small dense map like that. Um the actual art direction of the game itself is tremendous, it is so gorgeous. Um, I wish the plot was a little less stupid. In that, I mean, they literally, I am 50% of the way through the game, and nobody has gone. It's Jason Todd.

SPEAKER_08 21:16

So listen. Listen.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 21:23

Arkham Knight is the probably the worst plot of any of these three games. I'm gonna tell you right now, Sarah, it doesn't get better.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

I'm not surprised.

SPEAKER_08 21:33

It stays about that stupid all the way through.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_08 21:41

It's so stupid. It's got the it's got the kind of I don't want to spoil the ending for you.

SPEAKER_04 21:47

Please don't.

SPEAKER_08 21:48

But I but I will say one thing out of the ending is that I walked away from that game going. Well, that's just not gonna work. Like the way the game ends.

SPEAKER_07 22:00

And what it tries to leave you on, you just go, wait, that doesn't. That's not going to work.

SPEAKER_03 22:07

That's so funny. Okay, sure. Alright, alright.

SPEAKER_08 22:11

And you'll say You'll know what I mean when you get there.

SPEAKER_03 22:15

So funny.

SPEAKER_05 22:16

Oh god, we're so close to that Steam sale coming back and the very real risk that we'll all have to play that fuck-ass uh friends long dolphin game.

SPEAKER_04 22:25

And I'm and I'm not gonna make if if it's like more than $15, I'm not gonna be like There's no way.

SPEAKER_05 22:33

They've sold Suicide Squad for like two bucks already. That game's fucked.

SPEAKER_04 22:37

If that game is if that game comes on Steam sale and it's two bucks, you're all fucked. I'm sorry. I'm fucked. You're fucked. You're gonna play a Batman game with me. Bad news.

SPEAKER_05 22:44

Look, okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 22:47

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_05 22:48

But if I do this, you have to play Warframe with me.

SPEAKER_04 22:50

I will play Warframe with you. Once that uh that referral programs.

SPEAKER_05 22:53

Hey, guess what? Guess what's up?

SPEAKER_04 22:54

Oh, is that started now?

SPEAKER_05 22:56

Uh yeah, that is officially started as of this update. One of you has to let me refer you. Don't let us take both of you.

SPEAKER_04 23:01

Oh, it's not taking both of them. It's both of us. It's fine. One of you gets me, one of you gets Ben. That's fine. That's that's how this friendship works.

SPEAKER_05 23:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:11

I will play Warframe with you. It's a long way to Evercold.

SPEAKER_05 23:14

So that's right.

SPEAKER_04 23:15

You know. And Warframe is free, so it's fine.

SPEAKER_08 23:18

That's right. Um I will also say though, in its defense, Arkham Knight is one of the only games that I 100% because I didn't want to stop playing it.

SPEAKER_04 23:24

It's a great video game to play. To physically play Arkham Knight is fantastic. Every minute of it just whips ass. Um, Batmobile is cool, flying around is cool, it's a really good-looking batsuit.

SPEAKER_08 23:36

Um, you know, it's it hits it hits all of the highs of the previous Arkham games.

SPEAKER_04 23:42

Yes. However, that being said, speaking of previous Arkham games, Arkham City is the best one and it's not even close.

SPEAKER_08 23:48

Arkham City is so fucking good, man.

SPEAKER_04 23:50

Arkham City is the best one. It's crazy how good Arkham City is. Because like, Arkham Asylum probably has the best, like, atmosphere and tone. Um, and I love Arkham Knight's open world, but Arkham City has an extremely designed and beautiful open world. It has the tone thing going on. It probably has the most interesting of the three plots. I mean, none of these games are written that well, but what's going on in the city is probably my most favorite of the three of them, so that works out. Um it all of my little gameplay quibbles from Arkham Asylum are fixed in City. The uh the open world is extremely navigable and very just like uh easy to memorize. After a little while, you don't even need the map, right? You know exactly where you're going because it's a very, very small open world in a way that I really enjoy. Um, but one of my big problems with Ark of Knight right now is that because it's so focused on the open world, you don't have a lot of bespoke interior spaces that function as your stealth puzzle rooms, right?

SPEAKER_08 24:59

Right.

SPEAKER_04 25:00

Um and that is my favorite part of these games, is actually the is the stealth rooms. Like the battle, like the combat challenges are fun enough, but that's not my favorite part of the game. My favorite part of the game is trying to like clear a room with 12 guys with guns, and you've got to find a way to do this as smoothly and as quietly as possible. To me, that's the most interesting thing of these games. And Arkham City has that open world, but it also has a ton of interestingly designed, bespoke interiors that lend themselves well. They give you a shit ton of toys. You start the game with all of the tools you had at the end of Arkham Asylum, which rocks.

SPEAKER_08 25:39

God, I love when games do that. You know, the only other game I've seen that does it to that capacity is Banjo Tooie.

SPEAKER_04 25:46

That's so funny. And it rocks and it rocks every time. Like it's so good. And this game is just it throws you in, it says, here is everything you need. Get going. It's like cool, fantastic.

SPEAKER_08 25:56

Fucking um love how the opening of Arkham City is you breaking your handcuffs on the penguin's face.

SPEAKER_04 26:06

Yeah, it owns. It rocks, it's so good. Um that game is just good. It it's actually interesting plot-wise. It has a lot of incredible world design stuff. All of the like, you know, we've taught have talked on Blue Sky about how fucking cursed it is to live in Gotham City. And sure enough, yeah. Sure enough.

SPEAKER_08 26:30

You think about for a second how they were like, hey, we um we uh quarantined an eighth of our city to make a little like crime town.

SPEAKER_04 26:43

And the funniest part to me is that like not only do we have crime town USA, literally, um, but it's built on top of like the fucked up ruins of old Gotham. So it's like I think constantly of the bit in Brooklyn 99 where Jake is like, I've mapped every single crime in New York City in the last 24 hours, and all I have to say is, why does anyone live here? There is so much crime. That's what I think of. Is just like, why does anyone have a lot of people?

SPEAKER_05 27:11

That one post is being like, yeah, so it's like, you know, it's on top of a out of all of uh the ruins of old Gotham and also a Native American burial ground, and also a portal to hell, and also a portal to the afterlife.

SPEAKER_04 27:23

And a second portal and a partially open portal to hell, which is different. And there's this whole thread of this person listing all the shit wrong with Gotham, and then I reply with, This doesn't even mention the Masonic cult of owl people.

SPEAKER_05 27:38

Like this well, I mean the thing is you can only have a Masonic cult of owl people in a city where the water is polluted by no less than nine different kinds of uh industrial chemical runoff that turned you into some sort of like mutant hungster.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Yeah, you know, it's fine. Don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_08 27:54

Getting your vaccines in Gotham has to be like a fucking three-day endeavor.

unknown 27:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:00

Nobody should live there. You go nobody should live in Gotham's.

SPEAKER_05 28:04

You know, you know how people are like how they're always like, oh, you know, New York pizza dough because of the water. Can you imagine Gotham pizza dough? It's green.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

It's green, not and it's not for like Joker reasons, it's just greens.

SPEAKER_08 28:15

You gotta go to like the Wayne Tech funded like uh healthcare centers.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 28:20

To get and you have to check into a room to get your vaccines, because you're gonna be here a while, okay?

SPEAKER_04 28:27

You're gonna get a lot of shots. Um and when you come back from Gotham, like if you're going, if for some godforsaken reason you have to visit Gotham and then go home to Metropolis, they put you in quarantine for like five days.

SPEAKER_08 28:40

Sarah, I'm going to I'm going to recommend a comic for you to read in conversation with this.

SPEAKER_03 28:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 28:50

Which is Superman's pal Jimmy Olsen.

unknown 28:54

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_08 28:55

Because uh the premise of that comic is that Jimmy needs to go into witness protection. So he moves to Gotham.

SPEAKER_05 29:08

I need to get I need to get out of the money. I'm thinking of moving to Syria.

SPEAKER_04 29:14

Yeah. Uh that owns.

SPEAKER_08 29:17

It's Bimad for Action, so you know it's good.

SPEAKER_04 29:19

Oh, of course it's good. Um, that's actually kind of the plot. I know they're making like a live-action Jimmy Olsen's show, and the in the hook is it's Jimmy like interacting with a bunch of different supervillains and stuff as like uh as like a in like a reporter capacity.

SPEAKER_05 29:37

Is it gonna be Jimmy from the from the reboot movie or are they gonna get away?

SPEAKER_04 29:41

Jimmy from the new movie, which is great.

SPEAKER_05 29:43

Thank God, I love that dude. I love that. Yeah, that guy over that his that that Jimmy Olsen is spectacular.

SPEAKER_04 29:48

He's uh he's in Righteous Gemstones, and he's fantastic in Righteous Gemstones too.

SPEAKER_05 29:54

Um so another I think I think frequently about shrimp toes.

unknown 29:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:00

He's so good. Um, but all of this is to say, and then also on top of everything, going back to Arkham City, real quick. On top of everything, it does all of the stuff I really like in Arkham Knight, and all of the stuff I really like in Arkham Asylum. Um, and it has good boss fights. Imagine that.

SPEAKER_08 30:18

Um you know what they did to make up for the shitty boss fights in Arkham Asylum is they fucking made the Mr. Freeze fight.

SPEAKER_04 30:25

The Mr. Freeze fight is so good. It is such a simple idea, but it's so much fun. It's the most Batman shit imaginable.

SPEAKER_08 30:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:33

Like, have you played Arkham have you played Arkham City? I know you played Asylum, right?

SPEAKER_05 30:38

I did not actually play any of them.

SPEAKER_04 30:40

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 30:40

So I watched multiple friends play through the entirety of Asylum on multiple occasions. So I know that game pretty well.

SPEAKER_04 30:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 30:48

Uh and I watched City and Knight, I think, once each, but that was a very long time ago, so I don't remember them very well.

SPEAKER_04 30:53

So the hook of the Mr. Freeze fight is that you are in um like a police evident, like a police uh kind of CSI area. Um, and the hook is because Freeze is really smart and his suit is really smart, he adapts to everything you do. So you can get one sneak attack in him to do damage. And then after that, the rest of the hook of the fight is that you have to lure Freeze into different environmental traps because otherwise, like he'll tell like he tells you basically that won't work on me a second time, and it never does. Um and it's just really fun, it's a really cool, fun idea of kind of feeling like the most Batman possible. Um, where you've got to like, there's a lot of just thinking on your feet and looking at your surroundings and be like, okay, what can I use? What can I do? How does this work? Um and it's awesome. It's so good. It's so much fun. And every fight is actually really good. The Grundy fight is good, the the Raish fight is really good. Um like they're all like decent to good, and like the freeze fight is great. So I was just really the improvement is uh phenomenal. And then they went back, and there are like no boss fights in Arkham Knight, because whatever, whatever.

SPEAKER_08 32:14

Yeah, your boss fight is the Batmobile.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Your boss fight is trying to drive that fucking battery.

SPEAKER_08 32:18

Yeah, you get in some you get in some arena battles with the Batmobile, and that's your boss fight.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Oops.

SPEAKER_05 32:26

Um I I I think the Batmobile is kind of a curse, just in general. Because ultimately, like, it's a cool, like, it's it's cool, you know, being like a Cape Crusader type of like power of hero and having your cool supercar. My fantasy of Batman doing things does not ever involve the car.

SPEAKER_04 32:45

No, the car, the car is a cool idea, and like the car is fun to play, and it has a tank mode and all of this fun stuff, and you can swap back and forth between those two modes really well. Um, and so like there's interesting stuff in like with the tank. And the thing is that the car, there is no fast travel system in Arkham Knight, right? So you do have to drive or fly everywhere. But the problem is that flying everywhere is both easier and feels better.

SPEAKER_08 33:15

It's so it's the uh it's the same thing with like the insomnia games where like, why would you use the fast travel? You're Spider-Man.

SPEAKER_04 33:21

Yeah, you don't you don't need to.

SPEAKER_05 33:24

Um also making me think a bit of Saints Row 4 because that was the one where they introduced the superpowers and it got to a point where it's like, why the fuck are you driving the car? You can fly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:34

Yeah, and like the glide function, especially when you upgrade certain things, like the glide function on the suit is a way easier and more enjoyable way to play that game. Um so like I like the Batmobile in Arkham Knight because it's fun, but I think it's it gets a little too much um focus and it takes away from the game.

SPEAKER_08 33:57

I never I never felt like it was an active hindrance to the game, but like it was not the elevation that the rest of the game has.

SPEAKER_04 34:09

It's kind of a a lot of stuff in Arkham Knight feels like a side grade at best, not including like the graphics. That game is like interesting and good, but not I think City is like such a complete package, it's so like perfectly constructed in a lot of ways. Um like there's really nothing in City that I can complain about, right? Like there's stuff I can complain about in Asylum and Night, but City is just like, no, I like every part of it, honestly. Like, I think it's it's great. I think it's fun to use Hugo Strange as your bad guy for that game. That's great. Um and all the stuff going on, like all of the it's very bold of Rocksteady to just make the homoerotic subtext between Batman and the Joker just text.

SPEAKER_05 34:55

Um it's what you want.

SPEAKER_04 34:57

That's what you want. It's great. Um yeah, good game. I really, I really like Arkham City. I'm gonna finish night probably in the next couple days, and I'll report back. But um, yeah, I think that's everything in terms of like so I don't I don't yak everybody's ears off.

SPEAKER_08 35:14

Also, Arkham City gave us one of the uh best Panic at the Disco songs ever.

SPEAKER_03 35:18

Which one?

SPEAKER_08 35:19

Mercenary.

SPEAKER_03 35:20

Oh.

SPEAKER_08 35:21

That was made exclusively for That's really funny. Because back in the day, kids, video games used to sometimes get soundtracks that were not in the game. They were just songs that were inspired by the game.

SPEAKER_04 35:33

Yeah, you know, it's fine.

SPEAKER_08 35:35

Um and it had a whole bunch of like uh a bunch of uh punk off alt rock songs on it.

SPEAKER_04 35:42

That's not surprising. Um but yeah, no, I think that's it. That's the majority of it. Um I mean there was other like little things. Oh, we watched Cape Crusader. That show's not good. Sorry. Sorry, Bruce Tim. Um I don't think that sh like at first I'm like this show's fine, and then I had to sit with it for a few days, and I actually don't think it's good.

SPEAKER_05 36:02

Um I saw the the stuff you were saying about the the foibles of having a bunch of celebrity stunt casts for characters, and that really soured my interest in it.

SPEAKER_04 36:11

Yeah. Um, because the idea that the penguin is like a is like a MILF who runs a cabaret like on a on like a gambling boat in Gotham Harbor is cool. Um except you cast mini drivers so you can only afford her for one episode. There's only one Catwoman episode because you cast fucking Christina Ricci as Selena Kyle.

SPEAKER_08 36:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:35

It's it's silly. And I mean, tonally the show is just kind of boring. Umothing I was saying on Blue Sky, which is that like we want to make a Batman show where the setting is a Gotham that's kind of nebulously 40s to 50s, you know, art deco with a focus on organized crime and a more grounded human Batman. That show already exists. You you made it.

SPEAKER_07 37:02

You made it- You made it!

SPEAKER_04 37:05

You made that show. It's called Batman the Animated Series.

SPEAKER_07 37:08

Like Did you forget? You put the character you invented in it. You put Harley Quinn in this show too.

SPEAKER_04 37:15

And it's she's nowhere near as interesting. She's a lesbian, which is nice, but so is the other Harley Quinn.

SPEAKER_07 37:20

Um Did you forget?

SPEAKER_04 37:22

Did you forget? Did you forget that you already made this show? But like, with none of the aura, with none of the atmosphere, Gotham just looks like it looks like Metropolis. Like it's so they're like, they're like, one, the animation is terrible. It looks like a direct DVD Disney sequel. Um, and two, you've got these characters like looking out the window, like, I don't think Gotham can be saved. And you look out the window and it looks like it looks like Main Street, it looks like Main Street USA in fucking Disney World. Like, what are you talking about?

SPEAKER_05 37:55

Just cutting to a shot of LA Noir.

SPEAKER_04 37:57

Yeah, literally though, actually. Yeah. It's the most, like, that's the thing, is it's the most blatantly like, we really like LA Noir. We really like the Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity and all that shit. And that's fine, but again, you already made that show because the before they switch over to the new art style, all of OG Batman has those moody 1940s inspired title cards. Like, and this show doesn't even have that. Like, it doesn't even have the decency to have that. It just has like it doesn't I don't even think it shows the title of the episode, actually.

SPEAKER_08 38:34

That's fucked up. So, like what a waste.

SPEAKER_04 38:37

What a waste, huge waste. Um, I don't like the voice actor for Batman. I think his name is Link Loudder. It's something Link Loudder. He's not good. Um I I truly struggle. This this show about Batman has very little Batman about it because they they they have a Barbara Gordon, and again, it's fucking Bruce Tim, so they're trying to sneak in Barbara Gordon and Bruce Wait. I see you, Bruce Tim. Um so like Barbara Gordon is a defense attorney in like a kind of 1940s era Gotham, and she is kind of like your dude or agonist, but secretly she's she's the city's most feared serial killer. Yeah, I god, I wish that would at least give the show some kind of sauce. God. Um and it's just it's just boring, it's just really boring, is the thing. It is not interestingly animated, it is not moody or atmospheric at all. I'm gonna watch the second season just in the hopes that maybe it will do better. But unfortunately, when this show came out for some inexplicable reason, it reviewed really well. I don't know why.

SPEAKER_08 39:50

Because it's Bruce Tim doing Batman again.

SPEAKER_04 39:52

It's Bruce Tim doing Batman again, but it turns out what you actually need is the combo of him and Pauldini. You need the Pauldini element, or it's not the same.

SPEAKER_05 40:02

Yeah. I I think I I know we've brought this up on the podcast before, but it's really you need it's the the thing that makes it important is you have to understand Paul Denise's the one who wanted to bring Harley Quinn back in the first place.

SPEAKER_02 40:12

Right.

SPEAKER_05 40:13

Yeah. That was his crusade. Uh fucking uh uh Bruce Tim did not originally want to bring her back.

SPEAKER_00 40:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 40:21

And like you need that second voice there that also has good ideas to counterbalance you in your sometimes not good ideas.

SPEAKER_04 40:28

Yeah, and the problem is that it's like everybody, it's it's the it's the George Lucas problem. Everybody is like, well, this guy made Batman the Animated Series, so we'll just defer to him. Well, Bruce Tim also has bad ideas. He likes Bruce Wayne and Barbara Gordon, of course he has bad ideas. Like, I'm sorry. You shouldn't trust him exclusively. You need other people telling you how to make this show, and it's weird because the show has like 11 fucking executive producers, right? Like, that's where all the budget is going, is that it's got all these fucking executive producers getting paid, and the show looks so boring and bad. Like, there are times when like the worst of Invincible looks better than the K.

SPEAKER_08 41:12

Ooh, that's PNG Vincible.

SPEAKER_04 41:15

Yeah. It's because at least Invincible has an art style that I kind of fuck with, even though like the animation itself can look really cheap and bad. At least it has kind of a unique art style. This just looks boring and uninteresting and uninspired and not like it doesn't look like dark or moody at all. It's so weird.

SPEAKER_08 41:41

So I've I haven't watched it at all, obviously, but like I there's two nitpicks I have about it that like just piss me off to think about.

SPEAKER_04 41:51

Sure.

SPEAKER_08 41:52

One, Batman doesn't have purple gloves.

SPEAKER_04 41:56

If you're gonna do that outfit, then get bold and do the purple gloves. They literally do the they do the costume that has the purple gloves, but they're like, well, we gotta make the gloves black. No, you're doing that throwback fit, put those purple gloves back on, motherfucker.

SPEAKER_08 42:10

You're already going with the really pointy angled ears. Yep. Go all out and give them the purple gloves, okay?

SPEAKER_05 42:17

It was the 40s, people were wearing purple gloves.

SPEAKER_08 42:19

It's true. It was, it's, it is, I think it is a good look if you're going to go for a retro, like 40s style thing. It works, okay?

SPEAKER_04 42:31

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_08 42:32

The other nitpick I have, this is the worst two-faced design ever, and he's he's it's the wrong side.

SPEAKER_04 42:39

That that's the joke. Okay, I will say that is the point. It's the and I wouldn't even say it's that interesting, but it is a stylistic choice that the that the fucked up side of his face is nice Harvey. It's like the Harvey we know and love, right? They're they're doing a thing there. Um, where it's like the pretty Harvey is the one who's still angry and just wants to kill them all, right? Um But I'm gonna spoil the. Ah, the Pippa. Yeah, it's kinda yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, but I'm gonna spoil the end of fucking uh season one of Cape Crusader for you. They kill him off!

SPEAKER_08 43:18

Oh bullshit. Like But like I don't like so bad.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

It's it's not I don't like it. I don't like it. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_08 43:29

I think it's so important for Two Faces design to be good. That and also he needs to have a different color skin.

unknown 43:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 43:39

On the fucked up side, okay? It's actually like really important.

SPEAKER_04 43:42

It's much more interesting that way. Yeah. Like it's just and it's a shame because Diedrich Bader, who plays Batman and Batman the Brave and the Bold, right? Yeah. Um Diedrich Bader who's really good, by the way. Yeah. Diedrich Bader plays Harvey. Than in this show. And so like he's doing like he's because again we were complaining about I don't like the voice actor for Batman in this show. And Dietrich Vader normally does like a much like if you've ever seen a clip of Batman Batman, he's doing like a kind of corny, heightened, like 1940s delivery for Batman in those shows. But he's still really good because Dietrich Vader is professional. He's in this show, he's playing Harvey Dead, and he's literally doing like nice guy, pretty boy, with an angry side. And it's like, so you could have but he's playing it very straight and he's playing it very like seriously without any of like the kind of hamminess that comes from like Brave and the Bolt and stuff like that. And I'm just like, so you could have had Diedrick Vader playing Batman, and you chose not to.

SPEAKER_05 44:51

It it feels a little like an insult to Diedrick Vader that you had a guy on your cast who has experience playing Batman.

SPEAKER_02 45:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 45:02

And you go, we don't want you for Batman.

SPEAKER_08 45:05

Specifically has experience playing a campy pulp version of Batman.

SPEAKER_04 45:11

Yes, and like the version of Batman that's in this show is meant to be very serious and very early in the career. So he's not, he's not, he has like zero emotional intelligence. So like there's I mean, there's like ideas in here that are kind of interesting, but they are not acted on in a way that is interesting. So he has like no emotional intelligence, he's very rude to Alfred. He calls him Pennyworth for most of the season, um, right? And it's meant to be like a character growth thing. That's fine. I don't mind if Batman sucks. That's part of the appeal of that character, right? Is that he's kind of a dirtbag who gets better. Um like he has a heart of gold, but he doesn't have the intelligence sometimes to act on that heart of gold. That's the interesting book of that character. Um so like that's fine, but it's it's it's just so boring of a performance. I miss Kevin Conroy every day. Every day, I just miss Kevin Conroy. The thing is, nobody can do it like him. It's brutal.

SPEAKER_05 46:08

I'm like, I'm gonna be real with all the other casting they were doing. Like, I know that Fool has been in animated shit before. You could have just got Robert Pattinson.

SPEAKER_03 46:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 46:18

That would have been clear. He'll do anything for money, and clearly you had enough of it lying around if you were doing all these fucking stunt casts.

SPEAKER_04 46:27

You got fucking mini driver. You couldn't not get mini driver and just get Robert Pattinson out of the moment.

SPEAKER_05 46:33

You could have just gotten Robert Pattinson to do Batman and he would he would have paid out the year. Um, and then you could, since you couldn't have afforded all the other ones, you could have gotten real voice actors for everyone else. Wow, what an idea.

SPEAKER_04 46:44

What an idea. I hate stunt casting. I hate stunt casting. It's the worst. I hate it.

SPEAKER_08 46:48

There's there's like nothing that pisses me off more than seeing budget wasted towards people who can't voice act.

SPEAKER_04 46:55

Who cannot voice act.

SPEAKER_08 46:57

But they have a name that looks good on a poster.

SPEAKER_04 46:59

Right. It's fucked up. I can't think of it.

SPEAKER_05 47:01

Like the the only stunt, like it's weird because also, like, to bring to bring Saturn experiences into it. Uh stunt casting basically did a lot of like contributed a lot of bad things very directly to Destiny because that first game was made with Activision money and they want to spend a bunch of money stunt casting every fucking character they could.

SPEAKER_00 47:20

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 47:21

Uh, and then you know, when Bungie went independent, they couldn't afford those, but also like a lot of those casters and their in their things had like right of first refusal to the character or whatever. So you'd have things where like, oh, this character hasn't showed up for two years because uh they can't afford the actor who plays this character, but it's not like they've said no.

SPEAKER_02 47:40

Right.

SPEAKER_08 47:41

You know, it's just that they can't get the money for him.

SPEAKER_05 47:44

Yeah, and so now they have to write around this. Mean me, like the only time it worked out for that game, and like while I can't decry it completely, is that stunt casting is also what put Lance Reddick in that game, and uh, I feel like uh Destiny owes so much to Lance Reddick, uh not only being in Destiny, but also enjoying Destiny enough that even when they're like, nah man, we don't have that Hollywood actor money anymore, it's like I don't care, I want to be in Destiny.

SPEAKER_04 48:05

Well, in that case, it's I don't think at that point when he's doing it for like normal pay instead of stunt casting pay, that's not stunt casting anymore. I think for like you know, that's how we get around. When you're doing it for the love of the game, that's no longer stunt casting. You're just doing voice acting because you're like doing voice acting, right? So it's it's I just I can't stand it. I'm sorry. I I wish I liked the Cape Crusader more, but literally just go watch BTAS.

SPEAKER_05 48:33

It just breaks my heart to know that it's bad because that was like the thing where it's like, wow, an a Noir Batman that's actually set in the 40s. Like, I don't know, that's pretty cool, and it has all these like weird interpretations of these characters, and just being like, no, it's cheap stunt casted Amazon uh killer, basically.

SPEAKER_04 48:48

It's like uh gonna watch the second season because like I wanna believe it can get better. Sometimes shows just have rough first seasons. We're all Star Trek fans here, yeah. Um so like maybe it'll get better, but I feel like the problem is that that show did review well, so there's not a lot of lessons learned, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we'll come back and the second season will look better. Like the character designs are still nothing. Have you seen their fucking boring ass Riddler design?

SPEAKER_05 49:17

No, it's so lame. I think I've literally only really seen uh MILF Penguin.

SPEAKER_04 49:24

MILF Penguin is really good.

SPEAKER_05 49:26

And I think I've seen Harley Quinn as well. It's just fine. It's interesting. And I like I like the take. I don't know that I'm like crazy about it compared to all the other Harley Quinns there are, but I like the take. But like that's really all I've seen.

SPEAKER_04 49:39

It's a it's perfectly fine here. I'm posting this in group chat so you can all see it.

SPEAKER_08 49:43

It's the the read the designs for Cape Crusader really do remind me of uh New Adventures of Batman and Robin. Or the new Batman Adventures redesigns. Where it's like, yeah, they're okay, but then you look at BTAS and you're like, holy fuck! Yeah, what a downgrade.

SPEAKER_04 50:04

It's a huge I mean the at least the the new the new adventures is like interestingly animated and still has good stuff happening in the course of the episodes. So even though the designs are almost universally downgrades, except for Scarecrow, who is of course my goat. Sweet, sweet fantasy baby, my favorite. Um my my beloved horrifying fourth season of Batman the animated series, Scarecrow. Um other than that, but I mean like even if the designs suck, at least the show looked good and it was still doing interesting things. Cape Group Theater is doing none of those. Uh that's it. I'm done. Alright. Okay. Sorry, I ended up, I was like, I got done talking about Batman quickly. And now it's been 50 minutes. Fuck. Oh.

SPEAKER_08 50:52

Saturn, do you want to go next?

SPEAKER_05 50:54

Uh yeah, sure. Speaking of uh comic stuff, uh uh one of the only real things I can mention is that we finished our uh Doro Hetorous. Yes, yeah. And I I I've been I haven't looked, but I've been struck by the need to be like, man, I need to own Doro Hetero in print really badly. Because that that's like it's like 20 volumes, it's not crazy long.

SPEAKER_04 51:15

It's totally doable, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 51:17

Yeah. Um, and like and like for one of the anime we've seen, which is now through the end of season two, uh, that is basically half the runtime of the comic. We are halfway through Dorohetero uh functionally, and like presumably now that they're not fucking making uh Demon Slayer anymore, we might get a season three in less than six years.

SPEAKER_04 51:38

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 51:39

We can only hope.

SPEAKER_04 51:41

God, we can only hope. Uh I would really like to read Dora Hetero. I like the manga, I like the anime a lot. Um, Noy, my beloved.

SPEAKER_05 51:49

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04 51:50

Um Shin and Noy, my fucking babies.

SPEAKER_05 51:53

Um the presence of Shin and Noi is the thing that makes me go, yeah, no, I understand why Q is so like vocally in the text. Like, no, uh Kaiman and Nikaido are friends. Please don't read anything more into it. Here, have these other giant beefcake heterosexuals. Yeah. These are you like these, right? Okay, good. Don't ask me for anything else.

SPEAKER_04 52:14

You I know you want beefcake beefcake heterosexuality, so here you go.

SPEAKER_05 52:18

Um take the take these two.

SPEAKER_04 52:21

They're baked. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 52:22

Just don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_04 52:24

Uh but yeah, no, that show is good. I would like to and you make time to read the manga at some point soon. I know it's a pretty brisk read, like you said.

SPEAKER_05 52:31

Yeah, uh like it's it's like long, but also it is a lot of action scenes.

SPEAKER_02 52:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 52:37

Like it moves at a clip, and then the writing is never like super complicated. Right. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 52:44

Yeah, absolutely. Um so like I would like to read it because I really like Kyu Hayashida's art. I mean, like, I think the show looks great, but there are so many, like, like there's a lot of stuff in the show that's doing like one-to-one recreations of panels and stuff from the all that you could.

SPEAKER_05 53:01

And that's the that's the problem. That's the problem.

SPEAKER_00 53:04

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 53:04

Where it's like, you know, a good uh a mid-manga can be elevated by an anime adaptation, you know, like case in point with a mappa, like uh like Demon Slayer. Demon Slayer is like basically a six, uh, but they gave it all the money in the world, and so that anime is like pretty decent for Shonen's slot, right?

SPEAKER_02 53:24

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 53:25

But then you run into the problem with like you'll get like a Chainsaw Man, where it's uh aside from like controversial directorial choice, it's also like Chainsaw Man is like a perfect manga. It's like like Fujimoto has like a perfect understanding of the medium and how to use the medium, and you simply like in remaking it for anime, unless you are doing new and inventive things, you're just going to make a workforce version of that comic.

SPEAKER_03 53:48

Right.

SPEAKER_05 53:48

Dungeon Meshi, like, the anime looks great, but there's also lots of great, like important details from the original panels that they just don't end up recreating in the anime for time or whatever other reason, and it's unfortunate because then it ends up with a thing where, like, no, the manga is still the better told version of the story. Right. For Doro Hetero, the anime is a really good version of that story and is probably a little better paced than the manga, just in terms of like condensing it to an actual action show. It is simply not possible in any way to replicate Kihayashida's artwork and animation. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_08 54:20

No, it's not. You you have to reinterpret that.

SPEAKER_04 54:22

Yeah, like yeah, and I mean they do the best they can. Like the using um like CG models is actually pretty smart, so you don't have to like maintain that level of detail. And like the CG in Dora Hetero, the anime, looks great, like it genuinely looks awesome. There are certain times where it doesn't look like CG. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_05 54:42

Well, it's one of the things I noticed, like watching these all back to back again, like, or like watching the first season and the second C back to back, is I noticed like a thing they started doing in the second season that they didn't do at all in the first, is that you'll actually have scenes where they draw over the CG like traditional style so they can do like more evocative and unique facial animations and things like that. And it's like they weren't doing that in the first season at all.

SPEAKER_04 55:03

No, not at all. And it looks so it looks so good in the second season. Um, it's like a huge upgrade, and it's still just like no, I would like to read the manga though. I would like to read the manga and like really appreciate Yu Hayashida's extremely beautiful art, right?

SPEAKER_05 55:20

Um besides that, uh a Warframe update came out today.

SPEAKER_04 55:26

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 55:27

That's been fun. Uh we it people have been very getting into it on the Discord, which is not something I ever anticipated would happen. I was kind of just expecting it would be a game that me, Otsy, and Sev played very quietly on occasion. And then all of a sudden, like three new people started playing in the course of the last like month and change.

SPEAKER_04 55:47

And now it's like it's like the busiest, it's like the busiest like room on that server. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 55:53

Yeah, because we're all well, none of us want to play FF14 because Evercold's still not out yet.

SPEAKER_04 55:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 55:59

So we're we're doing other stuff instead.

SPEAKER_04 56:01

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_05 56:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 56:02

Uh well that referral program is up, so uh, I guess I'm starting sooner than later.

SPEAKER_05 56:08

Yay! Yay. Oh, that's really been it for me. I don't know. Uh anything else I need to talk about would be in the context of news.

SPEAKER_08 56:18

So um so, Sarah, you were disappointed by Cape Crusader, which is a noir take on your favorite superhero.

SPEAKER_01 56:30

That's correct.

SPEAKER_08 56:30

You know what's a really good noir take on my favorite superhero?

SPEAKER_01 56:34

Is it Spider-Noir?

SPEAKER_08 56:35

It's fucking Spider Noir is so fucking good. Holy shit, man. God, I've been so excited to talk about how good Spider-Noir is.

SPEAKER_04 56:45

At least Ben is at least Ben, long-suffering Spider-Man fan that he is, is finally winning in some capacity.

SPEAKER_08 56:52

Do you want to watch Nick Cage be a weird little guy for eight episodes?

SPEAKER_04 57:00

You know I do.

SPEAKER_08 57:02

You absolutely want to watch Nick Cage be a weird little guy for eight episodes.

SPEAKER_02 57:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 57:09

You know, speaking of actors who would do anything for money and probably would have done uh Batman Noir for like cheap. You should have got Nick Cage to do it. I don't know. That's cool. I I think I know he was literally just in Spider-Noir Ben's talking about. I feel like Nick Cage could do Batman. Yeah. He already did Superman, he might as well do Batman.

SPEAKER_02 57:28

Yeah, he's done Superman. I didn't know that actually. Well, it wasn't a movie that never got made.

SPEAKER_08 57:32

He was it was finally made real in the fucking Flash movie.

SPEAKER_03 57:37

That bad Flash movie. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 57:38

Yeah. But like the whole joke is that there are three people in the world who have played both Peter Parker and Clark Kent. And it's Jack Quaid, Nick Cage, and Yuri Lowenthal. One of these is not like the other. Um but no, Spider Noir is fantastic. Watch it in black and white, watch it in color, doesn't matter. Both are absolutely gorgeous. Uh I alternated. I watched Oh, that's fun. I watched uh odd episodes in black and white and even episodes in color.

SPEAKER_00 58:13

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_08 58:14

Um, and God, just immaculate visuals.

SPEAKER_04 58:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 58:20

Holy shit.

SPEAKER_04 58:21

Well, it's because they filmed the thing to also look good in black and white. Yeah. And you know what you have to do when you want your show to look good in black and white, actually has to have lighting. Imagine that.

SPEAKER_08 58:31

It's got amazing lighting, there's fog effects, there's smoke, you know, everyone is smoking. So you've got trails of cigarette smoke. Uh God, it's just incredible, man. Everyone does a fantastic job. You've got Nick Cage acting like a spider whenever he's like out of his mind. Uh-huh. Like he gets injured and like he's like, he's hallucinating, so he's laying in bed and like he curls his limbs up. Like he tucks his limbs in on his back. Like when you kill a spider and their limbs just curl up.

SPEAKER_03 59:06

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_08 59:07

God, it's incredible, man.

SPEAKER_03 59:09

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_08 59:10

Oh, I love it. Like, it it introduces like a bunch of characters that no one has ever cared about in Spider-Man lore. And you're like, I gotta fucking read these comics. What do you mean? These guys are this cool? Like, no one gives a shit about Silvermane.

SPEAKER_02 59:28

Right.

SPEAKER_08 59:29

But you've got Brendan Gleason playing him as this crotchety old Irish bastard, and you're just hooked.

SPEAKER_03 59:38

Sure.

SPEAKER_08 59:39

God, it's so good. Uh they so like they had to, so you might be aware that, like, in in the un in story, he's just called the spider and he's Ben Riley.

SPEAKER_03 59:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 59:56

They did that because one of the mandates of, you know, whenever someone gets a hold of this character, here's what you can and can't do with them. You Peter Parker cannot drink, smoke, or kill people. Which would be really hard to do in a gritty 1930s noir story.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:20

Sure, yeah, no.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:22

So they're like, well, fortunately, Peter Parker has a built-in alias that we can just call him.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:29

Right, absolutely.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:30

They kind of hint that, like, after World War One, Ben changed his name to Ben Riley to kind of like get away from his old life.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:40

Sure. Okay.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:41

That's but like no one ever refers to him as Peter throughout the entire thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:45

Okay. I mean, that's you know, you gotta get around it somehow. I like I think those mandates are very silly, but whatever. Um, you know, hey, if you gotta find a way to get around it, that's not a bad way to get around it. Ben Riley is a that's a known entity. Right. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_08 1:01:01

It's not making up a name or trying to act like he it's someone, it's not Peter Palmer or something like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:08

You're not dancing around it or anything like that, or listening to bullshit studio mandates, right?

SPEAKER_08 1:01:13

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:13

Like, it's fine. That's that's fine. It works.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:17

It's it's great. He Nick Cage is in his 60s and he plays Ben like he's in his 60s. Sure. Guy, the guy swings like a sack of flour.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:30

Like any good Nord attack.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:32

Like, you know, but he's he's he's got that big bulky trench coat, you know, so he's not gonna be doing the acrobatic flips and the you know, spins and you know, ducks that like Peter Parker normally would do. He's just like a fucking wrecking ball in the air.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:47

Sure.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:47

Swinging across.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:49

Great.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:49

Uh he lands and he clutches his back, he's always hurting his back.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:54

Yeah. Cause he's he's old, he's 60.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:57

Yeah, he's always he's always drinking and smoking and he goes through half the series of the hangover.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:02

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_08 1:02:03

Fucking rules. Highly recommend you watch it.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 1:02:08

Um, just absolutely phenomenal noir story. Um and then I got to I went to a comics shop uh and picked up a bunch of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:22

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_08 1:02:23

Uh I started I finally have the first three volumes of the Tom DeFalco Spider Girl run.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 1:02:30

The late 90s to early 2000s MC2 run, where they had a small universe where they flash-forwarded the Marvel universe like 15, 20 years or so, and uh where everyone is at now. Like there's other lines with like there's like an Avengers line in this universe and like an X-Men line too, which didn't really get as popular, but Spider Girl is the big one. Right. Um started off as a as a what if, what if um the uh MJ's miscarriage had not been a miscarriage, uh and then it just evolved into its own very long running series. Like Spider Girl ran for a very long time.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 1:03:11

Um it's it does a really cool thing where the narration is done in the second person.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:24

Oh.

SPEAKER_08 1:03:25

So like with you's yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:29

Huh.

SPEAKER_08 1:03:30

It's like that's like her her thing, is that like all of the narration, like all of like the inner monologue, all the thoughts are done with you. Instead of like, you know, just like I or and then Mayday Parker went here.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:43

AO3 fanfic girly. I understand.

SPEAKER_08 1:03:46

I mean, yeah, she's she's a teenage, she's a high schooler.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:50

No, for sure.

SPEAKER_08 1:03:50

Uh who plays basketball and has all her all her dorky friends, so absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:03:56

Uh the so the the it's the Spider Girl complete collection, so it's just got all of the you know annuals and everything in order as well. Like it's the omnibus before they started calling them omnibuses.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:04:08

So it's got the initial what what if as an issue zero. Um, and it has the funny I I forgot, and I got punched in the face. So the what if is just a one-shot story about um Mayday dealing with uh the grandson of Norman Osborne seeking revenge against Peter in his older age. I forgot what Normy looked like in that issue. Yeah, his grandson Normie Osborne. Harry's son Normy.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:04:44

Oh, that poor child.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:46

Brutal.

SPEAKER_08 1:04:47

Um this is what he looked like.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:55

What the fuck?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:58

Oh, but he still has the wave! He's got the waves with the dreadlocks now! He's Osborne baby. Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:06

White boy dreadlocks.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:07

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:09

Holy shit. And like in base 61s.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:14

And like in the two he still got killed to get into the Spider.

SPEAKER_08 1:05:18

Like, like base 616 Normie, like, he's just like this fucking shit kid toddler, you know, whatever. Like his his dad is Harry Osborne and his grandpa's Norman Osborne. Like, he's always gonna be messed up.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:29

Right.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:30

But like, you you just turn the page and you see this. Like getting punched in the mouth.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:36

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_08 1:05:38

Holy shit. Oh my god, it's so good. Oh man. It's like the whole M the whole MC2 thing with with Spider Girl, it beyond that, is just an incredible read. Like it's a hundred fucking issues long, and there it you know, it goes into like this whole thing of like Inheriting this legacy, how you know people have evolved over time. Um, like in the like Peter goes to check like get help from the Avengers and he walks into Avengers Manor and it's just full of kids.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:15

Right.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:16

And he's like, Oh my god, I'm so old. I can't ask a bunch of teenagers to help me with this. Oh god.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:28

Oh man, that rules. Okay.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:30

Yeah. Oh, I l I love it. Like it's it's you know, it's cool when characters like get to exist for this long. Like it really and it's kind of funny because like Spider Girl came out in 1998 and it ran until 2006. Yeah. It was pretty concurrent with Ultimate Spider-Man.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:48

That's really funny, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:49

Like they were they there was a good chunk of time where both of them were running side by side as just these like teenagers in a more advan advanced world, like trying to find their place.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:07:00

Um. And then I also picked up uh the Todd McFarlane Spider-Man run.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 1:07:08

Which is a book that I really highly recommend that you look at.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:13

But not read.

SPEAKER_08 1:07:17

Boy, Todd McFarlane's really good at drawing Spider-Man.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:23

Yeah, I understand immediately.

SPEAKER_08 1:07:27

I appreciate the earnesty in which Todd McFarlane writes his thrilling narrative.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:07:39

That's a he took he took it.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:43

Um it's the equivalent of um when you go see a band and the and famously the thing that Tim Rogers said, and you tell them you look like you were having fun up there.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:58

So it's like that. It's like the comics version of that.

SPEAKER_08 1:08:01

The run is a lot of Craven's last. He reheated the nachos of Kraven's last hunt.

unknown 1:08:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:08:08

But he at least put some like red pepper flakes and paprika on them before he reheated them. Yeah. So there's a bit of flavor in there. But not as but it's it's still the texture's all wrong. It's still kind of more or less the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:08:26

Like, I love the way Todd McFarlane draws Spider-Man. Like, honestly, like it's one of my top favorite. Like it's it feels like such a giant. It's like the huge eyes and the gigantic eyes and the tons of lines.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:40

Yeah. No, it's super good. Yeah. I I love how Todd McFarlane draw Spider-Man.

SPEAKER_08 1:08:45

Like, it's really it feels really like pretentious to have a favorite design of Spider-Man, who is a guy that's had the same suit for 60 years. But like, you know when when you when you read as much as I have, like, you can't.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:02

No, absolutely. There's a difference in artists. Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:09:05

You can pick up like what our artists emphasize, what like how they design certain aspects of it, we know where they you know how far they put the the gloves up his forearms, that kind of thing, you know?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:09:16

And I love the big eyes, I love all the the uh the hundreds of lines on it. It looks good. He he does a really good job. I I love uh uh Bagley Spider-Man, the ultimate Spider-Man original artist, because the same thing. Gigantic eyes.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:33

Yeah, it's fun.

SPEAKER_08 1:09:34

Um like really like live build, you know, lanky arms, all that kind of thing. It looks really good. So great to look at, but um, as far as the quality of storytelling.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:46

You know, listen It can't all be Grant Morrison, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_08 1:09:50

No, yeah, no.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:53

Um Would that they could.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:56

Would that they could.

SPEAKER_08 1:09:58

Um but there's there's so much else on my list that I just need to track down as well. Sure. Uh I also picked up the first, I picked up some more Lower Dex comics. Lowerdex comics are great. Um Ryan North did the first volume and kills it just like he kills everything he writes.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:14

Sure.

SPEAKER_08 1:10:15

Um, but I also picked up the uh Colin Kelly and Jackson Lanzig Star Trek. It's just Star Trek.

unknown 1:10:23

Cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:24

That's the IDW stuff, right? Yeah, IDW stuff.

SPEAKER_08 1:10:27

It's the same with lower decks as IDW.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:29

Okay, makes sense.

SPEAKER_08 1:10:30

Um and it is a story of the this is a story of Benjamin Sisko putting together a team to investigate a big cosmic mystery.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:42

Sure, fun.

SPEAKER_08 1:10:43

The team is Data, Crusher, Tom Paris, Whorf, and Scotty.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:50

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_08 1:10:52

And then I got to volume two and Lieutenant Shaq's shows up.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:58

Yes! Our boy!

SPEAKER_08 1:11:01

I grandpa's here!

SPEAKER_04 1:11:03

Grandpa's here to try and wrestle all your problems.

SPEAKER_08 1:11:07

And it really it it made me like think for a while, because like you get to this thing where it's like what really sells the how good lower decks is, is that this is a very like grounded, like not grounded, but like it's very serious and stern.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:23

Sure.

SPEAKER_08 1:11:23

It's it's a DS9 story.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:25

Like it's very going to be very like written like Deep Space Nine, it's not written like lower decks, right?

SPEAKER_08 1:11:29

Right, like it's gonna be it's it's gonna have multitudes and shades of black and like conflict between characters and like gripping with with morality, because it's it's it's in the wake of DS9, and a lot of horrible things happen in DS9.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:42

Right.

SPEAKER_08 1:11:43

Um so like you have to come to terms with that, and like it really is a testament to how well Lower Dex treats its characters despite being a wacky sitcom comedy series, that Shax can act the exact same in both series, and it works.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:01

And he just fits in, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_08 1:12:02

Because like he is a veteran of the Cardassian invasion. Right. You know, yeah, like the occup, like he's he's got a lot of PTSD from the occupation.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:12:13

And a lot of pent-up rage against Cardassians, and that it's able to manifest in this storyline in a way that like like fits and works because famous, like the one thing I like about Lower Decks is that yeah, it treats Shaq's as this big hulking kind of dumbass bruiser kind of guy, but it never belittles his role in the occupation.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:34

Right. It plays his relationship with Kira, like as friends and people who were in the like, you know, the the insurgency together. Yeah. Like completely seriously at all times. It's really good. Like they have their dumb little jokes, like their dumb little in-jokes, but like it's treated like no, that's part of Shax's backstory. Shaq's is a guy who fought, you know, against the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, and he's got all the the baggage that comes with that, and so you can absolutely translate that kind of goofier type of character to a more grounded, like Deep Space Nine sort of story, and it just works fine, honestly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:13:14

Yeah, like like what I like one of the things that stuck about Lower Dex watching it all in order is that like Lower Dex made fun of Shaq's trauma for being involved in Star Trek bullshit.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:23

Right.

SPEAKER_08 1:13:24

And then later on has an episode where he actually really comes to terms with a lot of the horrible things he did during the occupation. Right. And like how to properly channel that rage and that like trauma that he faced.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:38

Sure. It takes like there's a reason Lored X is like a legitimate Star Trek and it's really good, is because like it's goofy and funny, but it's never making fun. It doesn't make fun of you for taking this shit seriously.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:54

It's the it's the Venture Brothers thing, right? Like you're not an idiot for liking this stuff and taking it seriously, right? Yeah. Like, yeah, this is all goofy, funny, you know, comic book horse shit for sure. But like you're not wrong for loving it. Yeah. It's fine.

SPEAKER_08 1:14:12

You are you are rewarded for getting invested in this story.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:17

Yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_08 1:14:18

Um, but still, highly recommend just IDW Star Trek, the Colin Kelly and Jackson Lanzig uh stories. Very good. I'm excited to read more about it.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:30

Cool.

SPEAKER_08 1:14:31

Um also been watching Batman Beyond.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:14:36

Fucking love Batman Beyond. I forgot how good it is.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:40

The thing is, local Spider-Man fan needs a good Spider-Man cartoon.

SPEAKER_08 1:14:45

Loves Batman Beyond. Shocking.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:48

It's like, I want to watch a good Spider-Man cartoon.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:50

I know this is gonna sound weird, but Batman Beyond and you considered watching Batman Beyond. It's how you that's how you convert people into prospective DC fans. That's correct.

SPEAKER_08 1:15:00

Yeah, absolutely. I like, you know, I I I joked about it for a while. Like, yeah, he's got a lot of similarities to Spider-Man.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:06

You had no idea.

SPEAKER_08 1:15:07

I forgot, like, he has a fucking I forgot he has a craven.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:12

He has a he literally has a craven. He has a craven, he has a sandman in the form of ink, right? So what if Sandman was like a MILF batty assassin instead, which is a man, maybe I didn't even watch Batman Beyond, shit. Uh so it's just a straight upgrade. Yeah. Um he literally has a Norman Osborne. Uh he has an Uncle Ben. Um, he I mean it's it's it's almost one-to-one. It borders on plagiarism, um, but they change enough that it's fine. Yeah. But like it no, it's just Spider-Man.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:49

His his list of I'm just thinking about that real quick, just thinking about that meme image, but it's like, hey doc, this isn't gonna make me shoot Spider-Man's come out of my dick.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:59

That is actually the literal plot of that episode of that is the hook of that episode of Justice League Unlimited. Yeah, actually. That's that's 100% what happened.

SPEAKER_07 1:16:09

I forgot he has a Flash Thompson. Yeah, he's like And his name is Nelson Nash. They didn't even try. They didn't even try a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:24

No, no.

SPEAKER_08 1:16:25

He's got like like Bobby and Chelsea, like his like Blade and Chelsea, like Dana's friends, are just fucking Liz Allen and Gwen Stacy.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:35

I down to the fact that one of them is like a platinum blonde.

SPEAKER_08 1:16:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:42

Yeah, no, it's not subtle. It's really funny because like and I love it. The thing is I love it.

SPEAKER_08 1:16:49

No, it's great.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:50

I love Batman Beyond, it's so good. Um, I I keep getting served these fucking videos on on YouTube shorts that are from a making of Batman Beyond like video that I need to find because I love it. Um and one of the things is that like so famously Batman the Animated Series and then the the new Batman Adventures or whatever the hell that fucking thing is called got canned by WB because they go to Bruce Tim and Paul Vini and they say, We want a Batman show that's about a teenage Batman. And they go, What the fuck do you mean a teenage Batman? The whole point is that he's like a grown-ass man. That's like his thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:31

Um and they're like, Well, we're canceling Batman, so you gotta do something. And they said, Okay, fine, we're gonna make like this weird, dark, like cyberpunk uh Spider-Man story, and it works crazy good, basically constantly.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:50

Uh, it's awesome.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:52

Now I will say, I think it is a failure of the imagination to go like, well, Batman has to be like, you know, a grown-up. Uh, because the thing is, I think what is more believable than a 30-year-old man with lots of money deciding to become a superhero is a 16-year-old with lots of money deciding to become a superhero.

SPEAKER_08 1:18:14

So I've thought uh because I think everyone has seen those either they're fake or whatever, but those mock-ups of like a Gotham High like designs. And I think you could get away with doing a kind of like That's kind of that show Gotham. But like what you would do, you would have to do like a like a recess or hey Arnold or like Fillmore type thing.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:42

I have I mean, okay, sorry, continue.

SPEAKER_08 1:18:45

It's it's kid Bruce Wayne going around his high school, solving high school crimes with all of the seriousness and aggression that Batman, regular Batman, would go treating actual crimes against Gotham.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:01

Sure. See, I was going to suggest something very different than that, which is that Batman being a teenager is literally the only change.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:10

I see.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:12

And that he is still squaring up against old man Penguin and Old Man Mr.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:17

Grown ass men, for sure, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:19

No, but I mean like- I guess you can make Selena Kyle like younger enough that it's not weird, but like that's it.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:25

That's it, yeah, for sure. Uh but no, I mean, like, you know, they had already kind of established their shit. They knew what they wanted to make, and they're like, no, we need you to cancel that. Uh, and they're like, okay, well, we'll make Batman Beyond instead. And it's like crazy.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:42

And it rules.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:43

And it rules. It's really good.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:45

DC cartoons of the era pouring one out for Teen Titans.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:48

Yeah. Teen Titans is good too.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:50

Yeah, it is good.

SPEAKER_08 1:19:51

It's just it's good in a different way, but let's still good.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:53

It's good in a different way. And then it all but then Batman Beyond also gets canceled. I'll tell you, that show ends really abruptly. That should be.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:00

Batman Beyond just kind of ends, and you're like, oh, okay.

SPEAKER_08 1:20:03

I saw the number total number of episodes of Batman Beyond, and I was like, That can't be right. There were more than that, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:20:09

No.

SPEAKER_08 1:20:10

No.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:11

It's really, it's it's really sad. You only ever get it with uh Batman the Animated series, you know, which has like a shit zillion fucking episodes.

SPEAKER_08 1:20:20

And everything else that barely lasted, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:24

Three, four. I mean, like, it's still more than what modern cartoons get.

SPEAKER_08 1:20:28

The fact that Batman got three series.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:20:34

And Superman gets three seasons.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:38

Yeah. That's uh, you know, it's fine. It's fine.

SPEAKER_08 1:20:43

Which actually looking at the looking at the total episode Well, no, actually, no, never mind. I'm I'm totally wrong. BTAS has 65 episodes. Excuse me, 65 episodes.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:20:55

So never mind, I was wrong. I was like, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:58

No, they're not comparable at all. Yeah, no. Yeah, no, no, not at all.

SPEAKER_08 1:21:01

Batman has like 128 episodes total.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:06

The combined length of Justice League comes in at like 75 episodes. So, like a decent run, but still not enough. Um, and like Batman, like Batman Beyond is like what, like 54 episodes?

SPEAKER_07 1:21:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:30

It's not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough. Especially when you look up how many fucking episodes Gargoyles got. And that show got really bad at the end, but you know. Uh hold on. Number of Batman Beyond episodes. I want to know.

SPEAKER_08 1:21:44

It's like 50, like lower 50s, I want to say.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:48

52, prove.

SPEAKER_08 1:21:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:50

Um not enough.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:51

See, I'm see, I'm just hearing 52 episodes of a cartoon show.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:55

I know, and in 2026, right? That's a that's still luxurious, isn't it? Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:02

I mean, granted, these are also not shows that are being produced at the animation standard of like most things. Yeah. But still, you know?

SPEAKER_04 1:22:12

Yeah, I mean that you know, Batman Beyond is still, until they do the switch just to digital, uh, is a gorgeous show, and then it becomes gorgeous again, but boy.

SPEAKER_08 1:22:23

So like, like, I I hit the point where they they switched to digital, and the first couple episodes are rough, but I think that like once they actually kind of get a hold of the technology, like I do really like the color palette. Like, you get a lot of like these really bright like purples and blues that like really sell this being like a neo-gotham.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:49

Well, I will say one of the smart things they do very quickly, I think, because they realized that digitally animated backgrounds, they were just not there yet. They switch to painted backgrounds under digital animation.

SPEAKER_08 1:23:03

I did notice that, like, there's you can see brushstrokes again.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:06

They very quickly switch back to painted backgrounds because they were like, nope, nope, nope, this looks like shit. Absolutely not. Um and they don't go back, they don't do digital backgrounds until the last season of no, until Justice League Unlimited, because all of Justice League has painted backgrounds. Yeah. So um that show also and like the and by the time Justice League Unlimited rolls around, they've under they've got a better grasp of the animation techniques. So that show also looks really good, right? So it's there's only a little brief window where Batman Beyond looks really bad, and then they switch back to painted backgrounds, and that saves that show a lot. Um, but it's still not the same.

SPEAKER_08 1:23:52

Yeah, it's it's definitely loses a bit. And it's it's just different. And it's that's just different. It has like a fumbling early on, but then it kind of and it doesn't, yeah, you don't get that that like grit anymore. But like I think, I think if Batman Beyond, you know, had been shifted to like after static shock, maybe, yeah, and it was all digital, then you could be like, oh yeah, well, this is the Batman of the Future. Of course it's all digital, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:21

But like you have that grow you have that first season where like you get like these like very beautifully painted episodes with just like very like unique and varied color palettes and stuff, and it looks awesome. And the switch is just very hard to uh um what's the word? To come to terms with.

SPEAKER_08 1:24:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:40

Yeah. So you know, it's fine. It's uh that show is still good.

SPEAKER_08 1:24:44

It also doesn't help that like the episode they transfer they shift from the other. Which episode is that?

SPEAKER_04 1:24:50

That is uh is it the one where they think that Terry killed Mad Stan?

SPEAKER_08 1:25:01

Uh yeah, Eyewitness is the is the first one.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:04

Okay. That's a good episode.

SPEAKER_08 1:25:06

It's a good episode.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:07

Yeah, that sucks because like the the premise of that episode is really good and fun, but uh you're just kind of constantly being distracted by the way it looks.

SPEAKER_08 1:25:16

Very, very funny um that you know, end of an era, end of you know, complete hand-drawn uh DCAU is Terry's friend dates a robot. Which is one of the best Spider-Man episodes of Batman Beyond.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:38

This is some shit that is some shit that happened to my friend Peter Parker. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_08 1:25:44

This is some real shit that Peter Parker would have had to deal with.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:48

Can you steal this plot line for the TV show with uh uh Jimmy Olson? Oh, 100%. And Jimmy Olsen accidentally dated Robots. I think he has. He's probably intentionally dated several robots.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:03

Yeah. Jimmy Olson has willfully dated multiple robots almost certainly. Uh it's funny that the plot of Terry's friend dates a robot is functionally kind of the plot of recent horror movie Obsession, which is I want a robot girlfriend who will love me no matter what. Um and then that love is a little too intense. Granted, obsession is is about a different thing. Don't worry about it. I know, I know what obsession is about. It's a great movie. Um, but it's just funny that that's like the same basic premise, right? Um so, you know, it's good. That's a great episode, too.

SPEAKER_08 1:26:43

I love, I I just before I move on to my final thing I talked about, because we gotta get to the news at some point.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:48

I know we're never gonna be here forever. I'm so sorry. I thought we could be, I thought we could be fast.

SPEAKER_08 1:26:52

I love I love that no one in this episode actually makes fun of Howard for dating a robot because it's the future.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:02

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_08 1:27:03

Like they actually think it kind of makes him cool.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:07

The problem the thing is, like, okay, Howard's dating a robot, that's fine. It's just that Howard's robot girlfriend is really intense and scary.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:14

Um, keep talking. I'm not sure. Not again.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:18

Saturn's like, mm-hmm, that's right. That's a matter for sure.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:21

She's a Bruce Tim baddie, so you know. Like, what? Do you want a robot girlfriend whose doesn't scare you?

SPEAKER_04 1:27:26

Who's normal? That's the most important thing.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:28

Are you some kind of pussy?

SPEAKER_04 1:27:30

Well, like Howard is in fact some kind of pussy because he's he's like, he's like, oh, she loves me no matter what. That's kind of intense and scary. I don't like it. And then he hits his murderous robot girlfriend with we can still be friends. And then you get the best, the best fucking baseball comparing where he's like, oh.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:50

Yeah, see, that's the problem is that when you get a robot, when you get a robot girlfriend, that is a lifetime commitment. You have to like make you have to actually they make you put something in, they make you Like sign paperwork that she has somewhere to go if you die.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's like an African gray.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:05

And to be clear, if you die, it is because you she will have killed you on accident doing whatever it is you do with your robot girlfriend.

SPEAKER_08 1:28:12

Absolutely. I want to say that brute that Batman Beyond, uh, especially has these great moments where every so often, they don't use it, they use it sparingly, they use it wisely, but every so often a character will do an expression that I can only describe as freakazoid-esque.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:31

That's correct.

SPEAKER_08 1:28:32

Where like just the eyes just get really big.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:35

Yeah, it's really good. That's what I'm saying though. But I'm always joking that like Terry is like, this Batman shit's easy for real. Yeah. It's because Terry's just having a good time being Batman, right?

SPEAKER_08 1:28:44

Terry's having fun.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:46

He's having fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:46

Like he's sorry, Bruce was so miserable the whole time and kept ruining his own life by fucking his best friend's girlfriend. But you know what?

SPEAKER_05 1:28:54

You know, I will say, if you want the version of that for a different property where it's like, actually, this shit's super easy because I'm having fun and also have friends uh at all. Um that is what double Zeta is.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:09

Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:11

After two Gundam series of having a kind of loner, mentally ill, like 15-year-old boy get groomed by war powers into becoming an inhuman killing machine. For sure. Um, double Zeta is basically like, okay, but what if that 15-year-old boy uh had friends and the answer is that he is immune to brainwashing?

SPEAKER_08 1:29:28

Like that rocks. It's so funny how like just adding to this idea of like Terry being like this Batman shit's easy. Is that like his biggest struggle was like for the longest time is like, oh man, Dana's mad at me because I had to skip out on a date again. If only there's some way I could, like, you know, keep her calm and while I'm doing my Batman stuff. And then Max is like, don't worry, buddy, I'm here to make excuses for you.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:53

Yeah, because Terry is one of the girlies. All of his friends are girls. It's and like so funny. And like Howard, who is a loser, but like all of Terry McGuinness's friends are hot women. It's just like Well yeah, because Terry McGuinness is a hot woman. Yeah, because Terry McGinnis is spiritually a hot woman, exactly.

SPEAKER_08 1:30:12

It's just so funny how it's like Dana and all her friends, and then Terry's also there.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:17

And Terry's also there, and he's just having a great time.

SPEAKER_08 1:30:20

Yeah, he's just chatting with them.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:22

And like, it's and like nobody, like, there's no cliche, like Dana is jealous that her friends are friends with her boyfriend. She's just like, of course my friends are friends with my boyfriend. This is fine. Uh it owns. Like, she never there isn't even like a real like there is like there's like three episodes where he kind of him and Dana are like slightly on the rocks and he goes and like, you know, screws around with Melanie. And Melanie is great, by the way. Ten rolls.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:49

Um but it's so short-lived, it does not count even remotely as a love triangle. Right. Um, it's so good. Terry McGinnis got this shit figured out. It rules.

SPEAKER_08 1:30:59

Like Dana, Dana isn't there's maybe there's one later, but like Dana doesn't even have an episode where she's like jealous because like Terry and Max are like have like this private conversations between themselves all the time.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:12

No, it's rules. It's so good.

SPEAKER_08 1:31:14

Like she's like, well, yeah, Terry, Terry's one of the girls. Like, what he would never like like why would I be worried about him hanging out with a girl? He does that all the time.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:22

Yeah, Terry has nothing but girlfriends, like platonically. It's owns. Like I said, this fabulous shit's easy for real when you're just like a cool 16-year-old.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:30

And I guess grew up for most of your life with both of your parents. Yeah, maybe that's part of it. I don't know. Fuck.

SPEAKER_08 1:31:38

Um God, okay. So last thing I did is I started and finished Me of the Hollower. Oh, I didn't define that. That game fucking owns. Okay, good.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:49

I know you didn't like it when it first came out.

SPEAKER_08 1:31:51

So, like, and and you know what? That was on me.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 1:31:55

That was totally on me. Like, the whole thing, the biggest problem I had with that was that like I felt like the dodging sucked because you have to, like, the whole thing is that she's a hollower, which like like the whole gimmick is you burrow underground to like, you know, go underneath obstacles or to dodge enemies or to get out of the way, like you move faster while burrowing, so it's like your way of getting out of danger.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:16

Right.

SPEAKER_08 1:32:16

Type thing. But like you have to jump and then go underground. So there's like a second where you're in the air where you're still vulnerable. And I was like, well, this would be better, like, if you had some kind of like invincibility in the air or whatnot. But that's not the problem. The problem is I was getting too aggressive, and this is a Dark Souls.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:38

Uh, it's not a blood board.

SPEAKER_08 1:32:40

Ah, you were greedy. Yeah, so like I was just getting hit by stuff where it's like, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, back up, back up, get in when you can, and then b and then physically get out of the way. Like, physically pull yourself back until you can strike again.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 1:32:58

And once I started figuring that out, I was like, oh, okay, okay, I get what you want me to do now, game.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:05

Right, yeah. You're learning to meet the game on its terms.

SPEAKER_08 1:33:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:08

Yeah, absolutely. Okay.

SPEAKER_08 1:33:09

And I also figured out that like the whole thing is that like there's like a hundred difficulty toggles, right? Like things you can turn on and off about the game, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:19

Right.

SPEAKER_08 1:33:19

Like you can like normally that you can only burrow for like two seconds and then Mina pops back up automatically. Right. You can turn it on so that you're all what you can burrow as long as you want, you know. So there's like there's like certain things, like some of them, like the only thing they do is that most of them will deactivate the in-game achievements, but the in-game achievements do nothing. They don't unlock anything, they don't, you know, it's just keeping track of your progress accomplishing some goals. They don't unlock new abilities or custom color palettes or anything like that. It's just they're just there to track your progress if you care about Brian rights. But they have so many of them that it's not so much like making the game easier, it's about tailoring to what you feel like you should be punished for.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:34:04

Like, I was really bad at the platforming, and I fell off a lot of into a lot of holes a lot of the time, and they would always take a little chunk of health off. And I was like, I don't like this. I am still when I fall off, I'm still getting knocked back to the beginning of like the obstacle course I'm trying to navigate.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:26

Absolutely. So, like, why am I also being punished by taking damage?

SPEAKER_08 1:34:30

Yeah, so I turned that one off. I'm like, don't take damage when you're when you fall on a pit. And it was still challenging. I still had to like physically accomplish the goal, but now I'm like, okay, now I'm not going to snap my P my Switch 2 controller in half because I keep dying and having to go back from last save point to try again.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:48

Right.

SPEAKER_08 1:34:49

So like little things like that, you can just like toggle on and off and like make it easier. And there's only two bosses where I'm like, fuck this, I'm turning invincibility on. I gotta go to bed.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:57

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:34:58

I'm like, I don't want to deal with this guy anymore.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:01

Famous, famous Noah Caldwell Gervais uh line. Cool man, I'm 35.

SPEAKER_08 1:35:07

Yeah, exactly. I'm like, I'm tired and I don't I will not want to do this in the morning. I'm just going to turn on invincibility and kick your ass and then turn it off.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:16

Right.

SPEAKER_08 1:35:17

Um, but no, beyond that fucking Yacht Club games can do whatever the fuck they want.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:24

And it's all well, so they will continue to do whatever they want.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:27

Yeah, I was just saying, luckily the game uh exceeded their modest expectations. Uh so they are not uh in imminent risk of uh complete financial collapse.

SPEAKER_08 1:35:36

Yeah, if you like Link's Awakening, if you like Dark Souls, if you like just Game Boy games, fucking Mean of the Hollower is amazing. Like from like it's frustrating and you're gonna get mad at it, but it's gonna feel so good when you finally finish it.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:57

Understandable.

SPEAKER_08 1:35:58

It's also dark.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:01

Sure.

SPEAKER_08 1:36:02

It's got some dark humor in there that I did not expect.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:05

They're doing your writing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:36:08

There's there's a bit where like, okay, like one of the areas is um like your standard like Halloween autumn, you know, over-the-garden wall thieved area where it's like farmlands that are in the middle of harvest season, so people are out, you know, pulling you know, cor stalks of corn and pumpkins and whatnot.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:26

Right.

SPEAKER_08 1:36:26

And there's leaf piles all over. And you hop off a ledge and you land in a leaf pile, and the leaf pile disintegrates, right? I get a secret, uh like I I find like a secret chest, and I open that. I leap off of a platform and fall on a pile of leaves, and I walk away, and two of the leaves start talking, and because Mina landed on one of them and crushed them, and you get to watch as one of these leaves slowly dies from their injuries that Mina unintentionally caused, and the other one is like cursing you out.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:08

That's so funny though.

SPEAKER_08 1:37:10

And I'm waiting for like the Undertale twist where they're like fine.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:15

Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:16

I'm waiting for the Undertale twist where your grave sin was that there was actually a way to leave that scenario without jumping on the leaves, and you're the monster for not having done it.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:24

No, but no, they they just die.

SPEAKER_08 1:37:27

He just dies, and you can find his funeral later, and you can crash the funeral, and everyone gets mad at you.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:32

That's so funny. Okay.

SPEAKER_08 1:37:35

Like, it's it's like a Dark Souls in which you can do a side quest, and the person who gives you the side quest just fucking dies later. And you're like, could I have prevented that? No.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:48

Oh.

SPEAKER_08 1:37:48

That's just how the story goes. That person dies.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:51

Funny. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:52

It's very funny that uh the it's my one of my favorite like weird game mechanic features of Dark Souls that I like when people steal. Sometimes the correct solution to a side quest in Dark Souls is not to engage with it.

unknown 1:38:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:04

If you want someone to get their happiest ending, you have to go out of your way to avoid being involved with them at all. Yep. Which is very funny. I like when games do that.

SPEAKER_08 1:38:14

Um, but no, I highly recommend Mean of the Hollower. Uh well worth the wait of for this game to actually come out. Uh, please, Yacht Club Games, keep making throwbacks because you are the only company that knows how to fucking do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:30

Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:31

Um You need to join forces with uh Studio MDHR and just be like wake we're making weird retro games to spec. That's all we do now. Yeah, MDHR in their fucking what is the uh previewing the news a little bit, I apologize, but it is very funny.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:46

No, but it's so funny. What is it?

SPEAKER_08 1:38:48

It's um like super cuphead something.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:52

Yeah, but what is this? It can it can actually play on a on a master system. That's hilarious.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:58

It is made to spec to run on an actual Sega Master System, and they're making it the way you made Sega Master Systems games. It's being coded entirely in a sense.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:06

So you could play it on a Sega. They're putting out a new Sega Master System game next year.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:12

Yeah. In 2026.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:14

That's so funny.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:14

Or 2027. Yeah. Do that owns.

SPEAKER_08 1:39:17

Do more of that.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:20

Speaking of Okay, let's finish news time. We're not gonna be here for four hours, I swear. We're gonna we're gonna be good.

SPEAKER_08 1:39:29

Unless. Oh no. Don't worry. It's mostly Summer Game Fest, and then like the two things that happened directly after Summer Game Fest that were very funny.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 1:39:41

Funny asterisk. We'll start off with Sony. Got a good look at Wolverine. He sure kills those guys real good, like Wolverine would.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:52

He sure. He sure does. It's not for me.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:57

Welcome back, 7th gen video games.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:59

The people who are excited for Wolverine, I'm glad you're excited. I, however, have been playing an absolutely disgusting amount of Arkham video games lately and been like, wow, I really love this heightened comic book aesthetic that this world has. It just it's realistic, but it doesn't look like any place that exists in the real world. And then uh the next day after I started Arkham Knight was that fucking Sony show, and I'm just sitting there like, oh. Okay. It's just the real world.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:31

I think people who really like Wolverine will be happy. That's it seems like a very aesthetically Wolverine game.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:38

Absolutely, and I'm happy for you. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_08 1:40:40

I've I think the funniest thing I've seen people complain about is they're like, oh, it's another game where he's crouching down and he's gonna stealth kill guys and he's gonna use his uh gonna use detective visions. Like, yeah. What else would he do?

SPEAKER_04 1:40:55

He's Wolverine.

SPEAKER_08 1:40:56

He's Wolverine. He's going to sneak around and like 90% of Wolverine is him sniffing the air and going, we ain't alone in here, Bub. Like that's that's all he does.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:09

That's that character.

SPEAKER_08 1:41:10

Like, you know, of course he crouches down. He's always crouching, he's like four foot eight. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:15

He doesn't have a choice.

SPEAKER_08 1:41:17

And he he weighs he weighs 400 pounds and he's under five feet tall. He can only crouch.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:24

His canonical build type is the Gunserker from Borderlands 2.

unknown 1:41:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:41:30

I am I am like genuinely like surprised at how utterly violent this game is.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:41:38

Like he's really fucking tearing those dudes to pieces.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:42

You know, we're we're we're going full rip and tear. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:45

I did, I did that, uh, it is like the first time I've seen a trailer for a gory game, and I had like the the pearl clutching grandmother moment of seeing him like just like shove a shove claws directly through some lady's face and blood explodes out or whatever. I was like, that's just far too much.

SPEAKER_07 1:42:02

Like good heavens.

SPEAKER_08 1:42:04

Like in the trailer, it's very funny because like in the trailer, like in the trailer at least, like, you know, there is something kind of gross where like these enemies are kind of afraid of you.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:15

Well, yeah, like there's you're an immo you're an immortal little manlet who's just kind of a fucking tornado of blood and violence.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:24

I would be afraid too. Are you kidding me?

SPEAKER_05 1:42:27

You know, like if the if if the Tasmanian devil was real, I would be afraid of him. Because he'd run through my entire house and then turn me into pulled porn.

unknown 1:42:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:42:37

They are they're doing the really cool thing too that I think that like they're doing their ri their take on it, where like the old um X-Men Origins game, I think, had Logan's body was in layers, like modeled in layers, so that like as he takes damage, like it exposes more and more of his like muscle and like bone and like you know, organs and that kind of thing. Insomniac's doing like their own take on that. Like you can kind of like tell when he like does that massive regeneration thing. Like you can see like the method of him like stitching himself back together looks very cool. They've confirmed that you uh you can die in this game, but only if you're not angry enough. Like the more carnage you do, you build your rage meter, and if you get a fatal wound, you can use that rage meter to become man who goes too angry to die.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:35

I was literally about to say, so so it is a literal case of local man too angry to die.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:41

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:42

Local Canadian too angry to die.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:45

My my only my only cinema ding with the gore system is that I did notice that they showed it off with him getting like his back like exploded out and not in the fun way. Right. Uh from like a shotgun blast or something, right? And there was a big chunk of gore missing from his back. And then the scene does a thing where he's like, oh fuck, I have to do a motorcycle chase, and he hops on the motorcycle and gives chase. And then as soon as it cuts to the next level, presumably, where he's doing the motorcycle chase, that damage has completely recovered, including his clothes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:15

I wonder if that is just because it's two different gameplay sequences that have been cut together. Oh, 100%.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:22

I'm sure it will be consistent in the main game. Sure. But I was like, uh-uh-uh. I did notice that you didn't care enough about the trailer to stitch it right.

SPEAKER_08 1:44:30

There's definitely like there's definitely like a case, and I know what you're gonna say, Saturn, but it's like there's definitely a thing in Insomniac where it's like we gotta regenerate the clothes, or else like it's in five seconds, it's gonna be Logan with his dick and balls out.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:44

I mean, I wasn't gonna say that, but I do think they should do it, however, but I you know, it's fine.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:50

You know, you're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:51

If some if someone if someone's ready to do it, here's my thinking.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:55

And like, yeah, it's already rated that. If somebody shotgun blasts Wolverine in the dick and he gets clothing damage, and then his dick and balls regenerate and there's hanging and flopping out, like perfect.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:04

Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:04

No notes.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:06

Do the Cyberpunk 2077 thing where it's pixelated. Have you ever considered that?

SPEAKER_05 1:45:11

You know, or like just have it be flopping around and have it be fully physics model. I think that would be fine.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:16

That game is rated M, so it's fine, you know? I show show Wolverine's dick. It's chill, don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_08 1:45:23

I feel like I feel like what they're gonna do is that like, you know, obviously you wanna show the cool costume in the game, so you don't want him to just be like completely naked in every every fight. But like during cutscenes, there's just gonna be like the quote unquote canonical damage he got, like, during that conflict. Like a suit's gonna be. Like in the trailer, you can see like when the when the like the final cutscene, his suit's still all torn up.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:49

Right.

SPEAKER_08 1:45:49

But like, so like in game, it's not it's the clothes are gonna regenerate, but in the cutscene, it's gonna show like what he actually accumulated.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:57

Or it's just a case of like there's just a threshold to how much damage the clothes can take.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:03

Yeah. My my babe roof shot call, and I'm willing to make a gamble on this, not with actual money, just with like my pride on the line. Sure. Is that there's going to be a level where like someone with a flamethrower burn and Wolverine and he comes back and you have to do the entire level as naked Wolverine.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:18

God, I hope so.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:18

If they if they put the Weapon X outfit, which they're probably gonna do, then you still get that.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:24

I hope so.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:25

I would love that because even there's very famously like the the look he had when he first got the Adamantium put in, where he's got like the helmet and like a bunch of like uh gadg strapped to him, and he's just wearing a loincloth.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:40

No, no, no, no, loincloth. You don't need that. You can't make a Wolverine game and not put this this look in.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:46

Right. Yeah. God, true. Yeah, you need to put that in.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:51

Fucking badass look.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:52

Yeah, it's sick as fuck. Yep.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:54

Uh we also, speaking of Marvel, we got to see the Knights of Doom.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:00

Looks good.

SPEAKER_08 1:47:01

Uh for Marvel Tokon.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:02

Uh Tokon looks great.

SPEAKER_08 1:47:04

Tokon fucking looks so good.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:06

Those designs look really good, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:47:08

Uh, it's Doom, Magneto, Green Goblin, and Carnage, which is very funny because Doom decides decided he really fucking hates Spider-Man this time. I'm sick of that little twerk keeping me out of New York City.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:47:25

Doom being voiced by Sung Wan Cho is fucking awesome.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:29

Good for him. Good for him. Good for Sung Wan Cho.

SPEAKER_08 1:47:32

Uh God Goblin's design looks so good with like the tattered cloak.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:37

All the designs in that game are I mean, all the designs in Tokon are really good. They are so fucking solid, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:47:42

They're just amazing. I love that this is an Arxis game and Carnage has that one super from uh Blaze Blue where the tentacles just cover the screen and whip around.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:53

It's cool.

SPEAKER_08 1:47:53

It's great. Oh god. And it and it's Steve Bloom playing Green Goblin and Josh Keaton playing Spider-Man, so it's just uh spectacular Spider-Man again.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:02

Yeah, it's perfect.

SPEAKER_08 1:48:03

Fucking rules. I love it. Uh what else did they show in this one? Um. We are uh Oni Musha is coming out September 25th. A lot of shit's coming out September, we learned.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:48:22

Yeah, so many things are coming out in September that a lot of things were no longer coming out in September.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:27

Everything's getting out of the way of September. Everybody thought, like, oh hey, Grand Theft Auto 6 got pushed back. We can release in that window now. Uh and then everybody thought that at the same time. Oops.

SPEAKER_08 1:48:40

Oops. Um We saw a brief look at Silent Hill uh Town Coming.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:49

Townfall. Downtour down Downcoming?

SPEAKER_08 1:48:53

Downtown.

SPEAKER_05 1:48:55

They unfortunately now have a critical mass of games with this kind of title that where it is no longer possible to distinguish them from.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:01

Yeah, they're all the same. Uh that I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:03

I don't know. It's it it looks like Silent Hill parody a little bit. But here's the thing, I don't get how you set a Silent Hill anywhere in Great Britain. Because it just looks like that.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:16

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_08 1:49:18

The the this looks like someone wanted to make their own Silent Hill. Not like this, this looks like a trailer that you would watch and go, oh hey, this kind of looks like Silent Hill, and then it shows like it shows like Misty Town.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:36

Someone wanted to make a spiritual successor to Silent Hill, but somehow it it became a real Silent Hill game.

SPEAKER_05 1:49:43

And I can't and I can't even really be impressed by the thing of like, oh well, the radio is really central in this and it's used as a as like a mechanic in like actuality and like for whatever, like it's really important. Because you know what game already did that? Signalis, which was made by two people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:58

Yeah. And Signalis. I just like is way more aesthetically interesting than um Town Poor. You know? You know, it's hard to follow up the fact that we had a Silent Hill game written by the guy who wrote Umineko.

SPEAKER_08 1:50:12

Yeah, and the thing the thing is, Silent Hill F looks more like a Silent Hill than this game.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:18

And also the guy who wrote Umineko is like, well, Silent Hill is cool, but what if instead of about being like killing your wife or whatever, it was about living as a woman in the 60s in Southeast Asia?

SPEAKER_04 1:50:27

Gender politics in 1960s Japan. It's like, oh, okay, cool. You know? It's about like interesting things. So I gotta finish that game. I own that game. I know.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:37

I gotta I gotta get that. I also own that game, and I've never I I bought that game near launch and have not booted it once.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:42

I played it like for three hours and I really liked it, and then I got distracted by fucking it wasn't, you know, by fucking something else. Who knows?

SPEAKER_05 1:50:48

Everything.

SPEAKER_04 1:50:49

Everything.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:49

I will say now that I have the newer graphics card, I might actually play it just because like I'm I'm less afraid of UE5 games now.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:56

I don't I don't mean to I'm going to poke you about that 3080 one more time, but yes, I do still need to get that uh because I would also like to play Silent Hill F on something slightly newer than a than a 1080. As much as I love my 1080, you know?

SPEAKER_05 1:51:11

I I will I will need to actually still get that out of its casing. The computer is still just sitting here. I haven't done anything with it. That's fair. But uh I need to actually get it.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:19

And I don't want to constantly pester and be like, hey Saturn, where's my free graphics card?

SPEAKER_05 1:51:23

No, yeah, I think the thing I remembered is I need to actually get tools uh because I don't actually have the appropriate uh screwdriver to get it out of the case currently. So I need to actually go out and get the tool for it. Sure.

unknown 1:51:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:51:33

You're allowed to remind me that I need to do that. I just genuinely like I have that disease where despite the fact that the computer is sitting so close to my eyeline that I can basically see it in my periphery even when I'm not like actively looking at it. Sure. Uh that I just sort of don't remember it's there.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:49

That's fair. Okay, then I will remind you then.

SPEAKER_08 1:51:53

Absolutely. You know what horror game looks a lot better. Is uh baby kicking extraordinaire ill.

SPEAKER_04 1:52:03

Yeah. It was very funny to be watching this trailer and just be like, this is that baby kicking game.

SPEAKER_06 1:52:08

Yeah, this is the baby punching game, right? And then you watch, and then you watch him punch a baby this time instead. Like this that looks that looks that's got some sauce.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:17

Ill looks ill ill has the sauce.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:19

So this is this is not developed by the Atomic Heart people, but it is published by them. Okay. And and learning that made me go, ah, that's why this is the baby punching game. Yeah. Uh because it's like irrespective of irrespective of whatever their weird politics are, the fact of the matter is that Atomic Heart is very much a game that thinks punting a baby is funny.

SPEAKER_08 1:52:38

And you're right. This game, this game has that uh sprinkle of slapstick that can only come from Europe.

SPEAKER_04 1:52:50

Listen, what weapons taught me excellent movie Weapons by the guy who's making that really good looking Resident Evil movie. Um Weapons taught me that there is a fine line between horror and comedy, and it's okay to jump back and forth across that line sometimes. Yeah. So uh I I think this looks good.

SPEAKER_08 1:53:14

I I'm excited about it.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:15

I don't know if I'm gonna play it on lunch because like there's a shit ton of other things coming out, but that game looks good and fun and cool.

SPEAKER_05 1:53:21

The thing the thing is, like, you can't hand anything to Poland. However, it is only Polish game developers who will present you with a baby and tell you that the correct option is to kick it. Correct.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:34

Yeah, yeah. Uh I can I can say mean and nice things about Poland because I'm from Alabama, the the Poland of the United States.

SPEAKER_08 1:53:42

So it's well I I'm from Detroit, which is the real Poland of the United States, because that's where we all went. Well, no, you have the Polish people, but you're not the first.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:51

You don't have you don't have the Polish spirit, which is Detroit is not culturally Polish. No, not at all. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_05 1:53:57

Well, you haven't been dramatic.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:59

No, Alabama is culturally Polish. That's basically the same place. You know, it's fine.

SPEAKER_08 1:54:05

Um they also showed off uh what I originally thought was just some oh, it's it's Forza again or whatever. But then it turned into Stuntman, Stuntman. Stuntman!

SPEAKER_04 1:54:19

Those games are fun from back in the day, the very, very back in the day. So uh that's curious. I'm curious to see. That is not a game I would buy full price, but if that game was on sale anytime in the next three years for a decent price, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:54:33

You know, speaking of Welcome Back 7th Gen Games, we haven't had a stunt driver since like the 360s.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:38

Right.

SPEAKER_08 1:54:40

Um And then uh they ended with I didn't think it needed 20 minutes, but uh they're they're bringing back the character action to God of War.

SPEAKER_04 1:54:54

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:54:55

I I didn't watch much of that, but here's the thing, like like Ben said, didn't need 20 minutes. It's a it's a God of War gameplay trailer, which means 15 minutes of that was cutscenes, and then the other five was highly scripted gameplay.

SPEAKER_08 1:55:11

Right. Um I I I gotta give a shout out to uh she took the double jump and the divorce.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:55:20

I I do think it's funny to have Kratos be the sad old man. It's like, well, what was what was his wife like? And the answer is that she was a woman who could do all the shit that he did in the PS2 days when he was cool.

SPEAKER_08 1:55:30

Like, no, like oh, it totally makes sense. Yeah, of course Kratos would fall for a woman who could just absolutely kick his ass.

SPEAKER_04 1:55:36

Yeah, no, that's romance.

SPEAKER_06 1:55:38

Yeah. I'm sorry, but the only way I will marry you is if you can do a 15-foot vertical leap.

SPEAKER_04 1:55:43

And she doesn't he's like, oh damn.

SPEAKER_06 1:55:45

And then she does it again in the air.

SPEAKER_04 1:55:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:55:47

Oh shit. Um, I but Do you want to have many children? Or just one? I'm flexible.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:54

Or just the one snob nose brat.

SPEAKER_08 1:55:56

I gotta say, um I I was kind of sold by Jack Quaid playing a cube. I fucking love Jack Quaid in anything.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:07

Sure.

SPEAKER_08 1:56:07

So, like, my the odds of me getting this game went from zero to like 30%.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:13

Sure.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:13

This is the most I have ever been interested in any God of War. I am unfortunately not getting a PS5 for it. Yeah. Um, and they're not going to put it on PC later in all likelihood, unless they change course again.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:24

Yeah, they uh I don't know if that's part of the news, but they said they're done with PC ports for PlayStation games.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:30

So uh or their quote unquote story focused this or the other multiplayer game, multiplayer focused, which presumably means if we get like Helldivers 3 or whatever the next or whatever the next bungee thing is, if Marathon doesn't pan out and also they don't close bungee.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:45

Right. Yeah, you know, and it's like okay, well, I don't intend to ever purchase a PlayStation 5, so that that's closed off to me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:56:55

Oh well that settles that.

SPEAKER_04 1:56:57

Yeah, no. I'm not paying, I'm not paying $750 for a console that a couple years ago I bought for $500. Right. Same year. Yeah, no, sorry.

SPEAKER_08 1:57:09

Uh that was kind of it for the Sony state of play.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:14

Okay, next is SGF.

SPEAKER_08 1:57:16

SGF itself.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:17

Uh we opened with uh it's just called Veronica. Veronica? Just Veronica.

SPEAKER_08 1:57:24

Um fuck yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:57:27

I mean they they mentioned the possibility, I think, in later interviews of them touching up the story to better work with current Resident Evil Canon. That makes sense. And I'll tell you for free. You know what I didn't see in any of that reveal? Any Steve.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:42

No Steve.

SPEAKER_05 1:57:43

Did not see hide nor hair of Steve.

SPEAKER_08 1:57:46

I definitely think trimmed the Steve. I definitely think you can't fully cut Steve, but based on what they've been doing to all the other characters, he will not be the worst.

SPEAKER_05 1:57:58

I'll I'll tell you for free, they can try and they will try to de-steve Veronica. They that's what they that's why they have to take the code. He took code with them before that contract.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:09

Oh understandable. Have a nice day.

SPEAKER_06 1:58:11

Yeah. Um it would be it would be hilarious if there's just no Steve.

SPEAKER_05 1:58:16

I I genuinely straight up think there might just be no Steve.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:20

I think it'd be really funny if they just fully cut Steve, yeah. Uh oh, um, what are the what's the fucking uh what's the fucking umbrella family's name?

SPEAKER_08 1:58:29

Uh Ashford's.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:30

Thank you. Uh I'm really hoping they don't because it's 2026 keep the weird relationship between the the main villains of that game. The weird twin stuff. No, no, I it's so fucked up. You we got you need that sauce. I'm sorry. Like, I think you need to keep some of that weird sauce. It's what makes that it's what gives that game any kind of like weird texture at all.

SPEAKER_08 1:58:55

You should you should at least not have Claire call him a cross-dressing freak.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:00

Well, yeah, that's I think.

SPEAKER_08 1:59:01

Well, they're not gonna do that.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:02

No, but I mean all of the weird stuff between those twins, you gotta- I'm sorry, you gotta keep that stuff. That stuff is is load-bearing to like the weirdness of that game.

SPEAKER_05 1:59:12

They'll find a way to keep it, I think. They might be different weird twin stuff, but I feel like they kept they they kept the the they kept fucking Salazar or whoever from our.

SPEAKER_04 1:59:24

That's true, they did. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:59:25

They made him different, right? They made him slightly less comedic, but he's still like the same guy. You know, he says a lot of the same stuff and is a lot of the same way, just like in a more grounded way. It doesn't completely obliterate the tone of the game.

SPEAKER_03 1:59:37

Right.

SPEAKER_08 1:59:38

They've so they've said that one of the gimmicks for Veronica uh will be like actual zombie hordes.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:47

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_08 1:59:47

So like not, you know, because you know, previous ones, you know, even even as far as like uh Requiem goes, like you're you've got seven to eight max in an area at a time, you know, of zombies. Like, they're talking like you're gonna open it you're gonna open a gate and there's just gonna be like dozens like clawing at you. So that will be interesting.

SPEAKER_05 2:00:14

I uh uh because it came out and I watched it recently, uh, Noah Coldwell Gervais did an additional Resident Evil video talking about the Resident Evil that have come out since last time he did a Resident Evil video, as well as some other ones. Um, and I was very compelled by the uh pitch of the one I think it was from RE3 remake, uh Ghost the Ghost Survivors DLCs. Yeah, that's in two uh two, okay. Of one of them just being, you're the gun shop owner or whatever. Yes. Uh you're in an entirely enclosed space, you have to kill a hundred zombies without leaving this enclosed space.

SPEAKER_08 2:00:49

Oh, that one's that one's the sheriff in the gas station. That's right. Yeah. The uh the gun shop owner uh gets a so like there the the whole thing is that they're what ifs, what if stories of like characters that canonically died, what if they escaped their their sudden fate. So the gun shop owner was like after his daughter gets bit, he kills her and then kills himself.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:13

Right.

SPEAKER_08 2:01:13

Right. Like in his what if, he gets a call from his w from his war vet buddy who's like, hey man, I got a helicopter, we're getting out of here.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:20

Cool.

SPEAKER_05 2:01:22

Um but like just like the thought of having an RE game where it's like, no, there's a fucking shit million zombies would be very cool.

SPEAKER_08 2:01:30

Uh I like this trailer because you see Claire walking around Chris's apartment and it's a fucking shithole.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:38

And then people bitch, you live like this.

SPEAKER_08 2:01:41

People thought back to Jill's apartment in RE3 remake. Yeah. And how it's also just like covered in cigarettes and pill bottles. Sure. It's like, oh yeah, there's a reason you two are partners.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:51

Yeah, that's that sounds about right.

SPEAKER_08 2:01:54

This like the way Claire looks around, she's like, this isn't surprising.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:58

No, this is what she's used to. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 2:02:00

This isn't this isn't the trauma of the Spencer Mansion.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:04

No, this is just what he lives like.

SPEAKER_08 2:02:05

Yeah, this is just how he's always been.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:07

Yeah. Uh uh tremendously beautiful Claire Redfield in this case. Oh, she's so good.

SPEAKER_05 2:02:14

This this is the first of like the the photo-realistic like model capture, like new things or whatever, where I see a character and just go, oh, that's Claire. Yeah. Yeah. That's not like a that's like not like, oh, this is the new Claire. It's like, no, it's just Claire. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:29

She is phenomenally beautiful. She looks great.

SPEAKER_08 2:02:31

Someone someone did did some comparisons, and that the old the old lady who lets Claire into the apartment uh is the same model as an old lady from RE8.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:41

Yeah, no. Reuse them assets! You reuse them assets every part of the buffalo.

SPEAKER_08 2:02:47

Listen, the RE engine is a miracle machine.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_08 2:02:50

Well, here's the thing. If someone notices, you just say in interviews later that it's the same character.

unknown 2:02:55

Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:55

Yeah, fine. Don't worry about it.

SPEAKER_08 2:02:56

No, it's it's just like like, no, every part of the buffalo reuse as many assets as you want. That's why you can get these games out every year.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:02

That's how you make these video games so quickly. Absolutely. That's so important.

SPEAKER_08 2:03:06

Yeah. Uh and then like we next, like we mentioned, uh Mighty Cuphead Adventure is the game. So funny. I what I really love about Studio MDHR is that they will depict Cuphead as a character in so many different styles. Like he's not locked into one aesthetic. This fucking Muppet ass thing with like the with like the cylindrical head and the human hands in the puppet fill puppet gloves.

SPEAKER_04 2:03:41

It's so funny. I uh I know they said it's gonna be another hand-animated game, which that's their niche, good for them. Um, but I want them to also make a puppet game because puppet games are hot right now. Yeah. And I think MDHR would make a really good puppet game. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_08 2:03:56

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 2:03:57

Yeah. Like MoCap, a bunch of puppets. I think they would have fun with that.

SPEAKER_08 2:04:01

Yeah. Uh yeah, look it's gonna be a classic Sega Master System style game.

SPEAKER_04 2:04:07

That's so funny. Brand new Master System game in 2027.

SPEAKER_05 2:04:11

The the box. Not even not even like catering to like the NES weirdos or the super NES or anything that anyone over here actually owns. Just like, no, it's for the Sega Master System.

SPEAKER_04 2:04:22

Yeah, you know they're real as fuck because they're like, yeah, we care about the master system.

SPEAKER_08 2:04:30

I love that the box art is perfectly 100% that era.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:04:41

I do think the only way I could be more excited for it is if instead of being a master system game, it was an Amiga game.

SPEAKER_03 2:04:47

God, please.

SPEAKER_05 2:04:49

And it was just the most British platformer of my time.

SPEAKER_08 2:04:52

Like, look at look at look at this. I remember this commercial.

SPEAKER_04 2:04:59

Oh yeah, no, it's so legit. I love it. Oh man, it's so good. It's so good.

SPEAKER_08 2:05:06

I can't wait. They're so good at what they do. We saw a little bit more of Gen Atlas, which is the new studio uh studio iPhone. Fumito Oeda. Yeah, Fumito Oeda.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 2:05:17

Uh very different from previous games, but also not really.

SPEAKER_04 2:05:21

Not really.

SPEAKER_08 2:05:22

We're still climbing a big thing.

SPEAKER_04 2:05:24

Yeah, totally. We're kind of still doing what we've always been doing.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:27

It's good to know that Fumito Oeda is still alive.

SPEAKER_04 2:05:30

That's right.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:05:32

Still making video games. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:05:34

The longer that goes between any updates about that game, the more I worry. It's like, did did they did the game die? And the answer is no.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:41

No, I just take it in hot minute. That's fine.

SPEAKER_08 2:05:45

Uh I don't want to talk about this, but we gotta. We saw the trailer for Stranger Than Heaven. Yeah. And you'll never guess who showed up. Why? Why? Why did you do it like that?

SPEAKER_04 2:06:07

What's the one post that's like the the prestigification of video games is such that like earlier in RGG's like cur like uh like Ouvre, they would have made a character named Six Pack and everybody would have loved him.

SPEAKER_08 2:06:23

Yeah. Right? Like So the thing is, the thing is that like when I first I I first heard about like uh because there's a Japanese actor there who they're also uh defiling the grave of.

SPEAKER_04 2:06:34

Right, resurrecting.

SPEAKER_08 2:06:36

Um uh what was his name? I want to make sure I actually acknowledge. Yeah, Bunta Sagawa Sugawara.

SPEAKER_00 2:06:42

Saga, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 2:06:42

So what I th and I I looked up, he he was an actor in the 60s in Japan. So what I thought was happening was that your character in the game, because it's all across different time periods, right? In the 60s era of the game, you would have a uh quest or whatever, or a chapter in the story where you meet the actor, Buntasugawara. Right, and he needs your help with something, you know, or you go into a film set.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:08

It's like the it's like the least egregious version of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 2:07:11

You know, it's like so we're we're taking this historical figure and we are portraying him in this game.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:17

As like a side quest giver.

SPEAKER_08 2:07:18

Where we're we're getting his we're getting his likeness to portray him as a historical figure of importance in Japan in the 1960s.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:26

Right.

SPEAKER_08 2:07:27

And then they're like, no, no, no, we're just gonna get his fake body to play an actor, and we're also doing it with 90s rapper Tupac.

SPEAKER_05 2:07:37

Bizarre. So very bizarre. And again, this is this is actually the thing with Booster Segawara too is the thing that that like got brought up in that post that Sarah mentioned is the fact that like, you know, you play Yakuza Zero, right? And they have fucking uh oh my god, why am I why why is his name escaping me right now? Uh film director uh Spielberg? Uh yeah, they have Steven Spielberg with like an obviously fake name, but clearly it's supposed to be Steven Spielberg. Right. And like it's literally Steven Spielberg because I think he's literally like you have to help him record something that Steven Spielberg directed. Right. Yeah. Like like it's acting, like it's literally just Steven Spielberg. And like they couldn't, if they were gonna do that for Buntasu Gawara, they would have just called him like Suntabugawara or something, you know?

SPEAKER_08 2:08:25

Like you can you can totally portray a dead actor or performer in your story, what you can't do is pretend that they're doing mocap and facial scans for your game because they're dead.

SPEAKER_04 2:08:43

Right. It's weird. I the pre it's the it's the prestigification of of RGG, which is really it's devastating. Um and then you know, to find out, even you know, putting aside all the digital necromancy that nobody that that want nobody likes. Nobody wants, yeah. Nobody I mean, instantly and immediately everyone was like, why would you do that?

SPEAKER_08 2:09:04

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_04 2:09:04

Like I went very bizarre.

SPEAKER_08 2:09:06

I went to the Yakuza subreddit afterwards, like no one is happy with this, right?

SPEAKER_05 2:09:10

And like, and and because of something we'll get to later in the show, uh maybe not even that much later, we have to worry, like, well, aside from just being his likeness, is it also gonna be like fucking AI slop Tupac voice? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:09:22

Like, are you gonna feed it through like an LLM and then have that parrot lines at you horrifically? Like, what the fuck? And like putting all that aside, I was like, oh, this is a new game from RGG, but I don't really like or care about those Yakuza games. This is like a new unique thing. No, it's actually just the universe. It's a pr it's a prequel, it's just another Yakuza game, and I was like, oh.

SPEAKER_05 2:09:47

It's just all the the two like uh and like but like I was willing to go like well Bunta Sugawara, maybe you have a compelling reason to do that. It is a pastiche. Like, I feel like it's one of those things like if you're making like, I don't know, like like ghosts of third one, right? And you have like the likeness of Toshiro Mifune, right? As like a samurai, and it's like you're not trying to be like, oh, it's literally Toshiro Mifune, but like we got permission to use his facial likeness for his character because we're doing a samurai movie thing, like it's not great, but I get why you do it. Why the fuck is Tupac Shakur here?

SPEAKER_08 2:10:20

Yeah, it's what does he have to do with this?

SPEAKER_04 2:10:23

It's it's just very absurd, especially like considering the the kind of all the suspect stuff around the around Tupac's estate, and how like it's not owned by his family, it's owned by some ghoul who who bought it from like who like acquired it in a very uh suspect way, let's say. Yeah. Um putting all that aside, it's just all.

SPEAKER_05 2:10:50

And then and then your guy who's like, no guys, it's cool. You got fucking Snoop Dogg to get on stage and be like, no, dude, trust me, it's cool. It's me, Snoop Dogg. It's not like you know me as the guy who would do literally anything for a paycheck.

SPEAKER_07 2:11:05

Right.

SPEAKER_08 2:11:06

And it's it's funny you mention mention specifically Toshiro Mifune because the Onimusha game, like the new Onimusha game with Miyamoto Musashi, is using Mifune's likeness for the character.

SPEAKER_07 2:11:17

Oh, it is. But like I know that.

SPEAKER_08 2:11:19

But like he played Miyamoto Musashi in a movie. Right. They're not, and Capcom isn't advertising their game as saying this game is starring uh Toshiro Mifune. It's we're using the likeness of a famous representation of this character.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:37

Right.

SPEAKER_05 2:11:38

I I will say uh credit to uh the newest season of Baki. Uh only it is the only manga of or anything I have seen that is committed to going, no, the rest of you think think that Musashi was so much more handsome. He was kind of an ugly guy.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:11:58

Our Musashi is. Is really fucked up looking. There's literally a sequence in the thing where they're like, because like part of the premise is that they're trying to Jurassic Park the fucking dead body of Miyamoto Musashi just for funny science reasons, like you do. And like he's his clone is lying there, like like just kind of inanimate and perfect and like perfect looking. And they're like, Well, I don't know like what we did wrong. Like, we got the like the clones, like the body's perfect, it's in great shape, but he's not he's not coming alive. And in rein and in getting a spirit medium to put Miyamoto Musashi's ghost into his body, you watch this extended sequence where as it remembers the things it went through in life, his body gets all fucked up and weird looking. And then he he finally wakes up and comes to, and he's so he's like 15 times uglier than he was when he started.

SPEAKER_08 2:12:48

God.

SPEAKER_03 2:12:50

God.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:51

Oh so yeah, no. Um Strange to Heaven, at least I'm saving money.

SPEAKER_08 2:12:57

Yeah, I'm not gonna pick that one up.

unknown 2:13:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 2:13:00

Just not worth it.

SPEAKER_04 2:13:01

Not worth it. It's fine.

SPEAKER_08 2:13:03

Uh what else? There.

SPEAKER_04 2:13:08

There really wasn't much.

SPEAKER_08 2:13:09

There wasn't really a whole lot except for the very big thing at the end. So looking through this now, there was uh we got confirmation of the four characters in Street Fighter VI.

unknown 2:13:19

Sure.

SPEAKER_08 2:13:20

Welcome Tifa. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:13:21

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_05 2:13:22

You're going to get me to spend a lot of money on that game that I haven't touched in like two, three years.

SPEAKER_08 2:13:26

So they had they had like a story, like an interview afterwards with Maximilian Dude. Like he was just like, hey, can you want to come over to my house and we'll we'll do an interview? Um where they talked about like, you know, uh how Tifa got picked for Street Fighter 6, and like Cap uh Square Enix was like, yeah, a lot of fighting games reached out to us to get Tifa and we settled on Capcom. Tekken blown the fuck out. I like to imagine that it's like since Cloud has experience fighting against like Ryu and like Kazuya. So Tifa's like, hey, which of these three would you go to? And he's like thinking about like Kazuya shooting lasers from his eyes and he's like turning into demons and shit like that.

SPEAKER_01 2:14:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:14:07

And he's like Ryu. Cloud's just like, Ryu's kinda, you know, he's like normal. He's kind of cool guy. And then Kazuya, he's kind of like Hojo a little bit. And Tim is like, got it, Street Fighter. Street Fighter, yeah. Understood. Roger, say no more.

SPEAKER_08 2:14:24

I'm like, what about Terry? Well, like, yeah, he's he's kinda eccentric, but he's harmless.

SPEAKER_05 2:14:31

Cloud just like, I don't want you talking to any other Guandman. Also, technically, isn't he in Street Fighter VI as well?

SPEAKER_08 2:14:39

Well, no. Well, Bayes. No, he is Terry. Terry. Yeah, so he's like, he's like, yeah, he's like, no, Terry and Ryu are cool, and they're both in Street Fighters, so yeah, go with Street Fighter.

SPEAKER_03 2:14:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 2:14:52

And then it turns out turns out the lore is that T Fa fell in a portal.

SPEAKER_03 2:14:57

Well, yeah, obviously. Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:58

That's what else you do. How's that gonna work?

SPEAKER_05 2:15:01

I think it should happen in 7-3.

SPEAKER_08 2:15:04

There's just like a moment where like Deep like trips into a portal and comes out five minutes later.

SPEAKER_05 2:15:09

Like, wow, that was weird. Here's the thing. Oh, you know what would be sick? I'm gonna make another uh out there shot call gamer premonitions. This is secretly a cross promo. In 7 remake, there's going to be a secret extra boss where Akuma steps to the form.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:26

Could you imagine? And it gets you Akuma as a summon in FF7. Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:15:31

You're trying to do your attacks and he keeps like fucking Shungokusatsuing every way.

SPEAKER_04 2:15:35

That sounds sick as fuck, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 2:15:36

That sounds awesome. Uh but yeah, no, it you know, it ended uh It ended on the big thing.

SPEAKER_04 2:15:42

It ended pretty big, and on the real and that was funny because like most of that show, you're watching like it's front, it's very front-loaded. You're watching it and you're like, oh, okay, Veronica, and all this other stuff. That's cool. And then it's just a really long stretch of just like, we're gonna have to kill Jeff. We're gonna have to kill Jeff, sorry. And then it ends on uh Final Fantasy VII III Revelation. Revelation, Revelation. Kill he gets to live. I changed my mind.

SPEAKER_05 2:16:04

I will also bring up they did uh get an announcement for Guild Wars 3 in there, which is pretty exciting. It's pretty big.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:09

Yeah, it's very cool.

SPEAKER_05 2:16:10

That I played Guild Wars 2 when it came out when I was in uh like 13 years ago at this point.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:16

Uh that's the game that I can't believe is still running and doing pretty well. So yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:16:21

It it was very weird like seeing people I follow on Blue Sky, and they're talking about like like they're talking about like the setting that is uh gonna be uh the that the Guild Wars 3 is gonna be primarily set in. They're like, whoa, wait a minute. I worked on the writing for that part of the setting in Guild Wars 2 when I was working at that company.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:40

13 years ago, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:16:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:42

Wow. Yeah, no, I mean I like MMOs now, so fucking anything's possible.

SPEAKER_05 2:16:48

I'll I mean I'll let I'll I'm there's a good chance I will just try it just out of curiosity, so I'll let you know if it's any good.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:55

Absolutely. Uh but no, the the big thing is it ended on finally, and you know what it's crazy? That game's coming out early next year.

SPEAKER_08 2:17:04

Yeah, less than a year from now.

SPEAKER_04 2:17:07

So they I mean the big story is of course they got three of these fucking things out in less than 10 years.

SPEAKER_08 2:17:14

Yeah. Hey, do you do you want to know why?

SPEAKER_04 2:17:16

They kept they kept the fucking team together for the entire time.

SPEAKER_08 2:17:20

They had assets, they made those assets once, and then we're like, we can use those assets again.

SPEAKER_04 2:17:24

We are going to use all the assets, and we are not gonna arbitrarily break up the team just because their contract expired or some fucking horseshit.

SPEAKER_05 2:17:31

And since you have all those same people and they're all still working together, they can develop their skills and their their you know, their uh training for the processes to make the fucking game instead of having to retrain people on a running 18-month cycle, micro soft.

SPEAKER_04 2:17:47

Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_05 2:17:49

Because you want to meet contractor quotas, you fucking morons. Who do you think's making the game?

SPEAKER_04 2:17:56

Uh but no, 7R, uh part three. I'm very excited. There uh looks good. They're making it.

SPEAKER_08 2:18:02

They're making Dirge Cerberus good. They're making they're making we saw Vincent gameplay, and I was like, wait a minute, that's just what Dirge Cerberus played like.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:11

But it's good instead of bad. Uh I'm very, yeah, I'm just I'm excited to see the end of it. I think those games are kind of bloated. Um but listen, especially I made the massive mistake of playing of replaying Final Fantasy VII right after we finished Rebirth and be like, oh. Huh. Uh but that being said, I still have fun with those games when they come out and they're brand new. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_08 2:18:38

I'm I'm so happy we saw Tifa in the gas chamber, which means we are getting the Slap minigame.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:45

I hope it means we're getting Slapbite. Um I'm I'm very excited. I'm glad we're getting dress spheres. It's dress fight, it's just Final Fantasy 10-2 dress spheres.

SPEAKER_08 2:18:56

Um I I like that they're like, you will get all of them at the at the beginning.

unknown 2:19:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 2:19:01

You don't have to unlock them.

SPEAKER_04 2:19:02

FF102 continues to be vindicated with every passing year that that game is good, actually.

SPEAKER_05 2:19:08

Um there's gonna be like four of them per character as well or some crazy shit.

SPEAKER_04 2:19:14

And um they can be they can just be unlocked as costumes. So if you like really like an outfit, but you want to use a different playstyle, you can just use it as a costume instead. Oh hell yeah.

SPEAKER_08 2:19:26

Tetsuya Nomura has never abandoned an idea.

SPEAKER_04 2:19:30

Never, not even once. Um this game. I'm I'm very excited. I'm I'm interested to see how this all ends. I'm overjoyed that it's coming out in a reasonable amount of time. Yeah. Basically, coming out a couple months after. Basically, as soon as I'm done with Evercold, I've like really burned through all of Evercold. You're right! Yeah, no, exactly. I will Evercold will come out in January, and I'll spend about four months playing it obsessively, right? And by the time I'm like done with Evercold, the last bit of FF7 will come out and be like, oh okay, I'll just play more Square Enix games, right?

SPEAKER_08 2:20:07

You can just pivot right to it.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:08

It's easy. Yeah. Um, so I'm very pleased with that. Um, yeah, no, I'm glad Square Enix was like, oh shit, we should probably put out video games. Yeah. Right. That's how you make money. Oh my god, we forgot. So um that game looks good. I'm really excited.

SPEAKER_08 2:20:22

So Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:25

I want to see how it all I want to see how this whole cluster fuck wraps up.

SPEAKER_08 2:20:28

Vince Vincent and Cid get boyfriend moves.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:31

Vincent and Cid get boyfriend moves. I can't believe they're canon. I mean, I can't believe they're canon, but you know, I can't believe we're here.

SPEAKER_08 2:20:37

The old man yaoi is real.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:39

The old man yaoi is real and it's really good. And um girls, we climbed that whole stupid mountain together.

SPEAKER_08 2:20:46

So I want to point out one funny thing, I one thing that made me laugh when I saw it, where where it's like, so uh the uh the actor for Sephiroth could not make it for Revel Aten.

SPEAKER_04 2:20:58

Tyler Hedchling, because he's literally he's literally playing Superman on TV right now, I think.

SPEAKER_08 2:21:02

Yeah, he's he's a film actor, okay? He's busy. This is one of the most logical replacements ever, okay? Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_05 2:21:09

It was one of like I when uh the Gigabots were talking about this, I remember being like I think it was Chris' uh noted opinion, noted sometimes crazy opinions have her of like, what do you mean it's a 10-year project and you couldn't be there for the last one? It's like, yeah, man, it's a 10-year project.

SPEAKER_08 2:21:24

He's got shit to do.

SPEAKER_04 2:21:25

I have like other things to do, man.

SPEAKER_08 2:21:27

He's gotta make three times as much money being on camera for 15 minutes than he gets for the entirety of this project, okay? Yeah. Uh, so he's being replaced with Travis Willingham, who again has played Superman, so he checks out.

SPEAKER_04 2:21:42

That's fine.

SPEAKER_08 2:21:43

But I saw people talking about how it's like, oh, this is Matt Mercer hiring his critical role friends to do projects. And it's like, no, it's hiring Travis Willingham, who has been playing major characters for over 20 years.

SPEAKER_05 2:21:58

Also, like his critical role friends, you know, all those voice actors. Yeah. Those accomplished decades-long career having voice actors, which is why their podcast is so successful.

SPEAKER_08 2:22:10

We've we've forgotten that critical role started because all of Matt Mercer's voice actor friends wanted to get surprise him with a birthday present of getting to play DD.

SPEAKER_04 2:22:21

Yeah, that's it. That's where it all comes from. And it's like, yeah, no, oh, Travis Willingham. Travis Willingham got a job because he's friends with Matt Mercer and not because he was Roy Mustang? Are you kidding me?

unknown 2:22:36

No.

SPEAKER_08 2:22:36

No, this is like the most logical, like, replacement voice actor thing to happen.

SPEAKER_05 2:22:43

This is what you say if they get like a YouTuber to voice Sephiroth and not Travis fucking willing am. Like, come on.

SPEAKER_04 2:22:50

Be so real right now.

SPEAKER_08 2:22:51

Yeah, don't don't don't play with me on this one. Uh uh, but don't worry, he has played Superman, so he's he's allowed. He can play Sephiroth.

SPEAKER_05 2:23:00

He meets criteria, he meets minimum criteria.

SPEAKER_02 2:23:02

Exactly. Um what else is there?

SPEAKER_08 2:23:04

Next, we have we have Microsoft Xbox Games Showcase showing off a ton of games that I will not play on Xbox.

SPEAKER_05 2:23:12

Oh, that and that you will not play at all because they might not actually exist.

SPEAKER_04 2:23:15

They might not ever come out.

SPEAKER_05 2:23:17

I remember when we started, and I forget if it was before recording or if it's on like whatever VOD we have of that. Uh if we recorded a VOD for it, I don't know. Oh, I didn't.

SPEAKER_08 2:23:26

I might have. Yeah, we it's okay. We didn't there wasn't anything to pop off on.

SPEAKER_05 2:23:30

Um but one of the things I said very early, whether it was recorded or not, is the thing about Microsoft is they put on a very well-produced show, but you have to understand that there's a very significant odds that whatever you're seeing might just be a complete and abject lie. Right. And boy, howdy, did I hear the knuckle bones on the monkey paw curling.

SPEAKER_08 2:23:50

Yeah. Um let's so let's go down the list of things that are important. Clockwork Revolution showed off a lot of more, a lot more stuff.

SPEAKER_04 2:24:01

That game looks good. That game, you know, I mean, I I don't know if I'm gonna get around to playing it, but I mean that game looks good if it ever comes out, so you know.

SPEAKER_08 2:24:12

Uh I'm very exc there were there were a number of Bioshock likes at this show.

SPEAKER_04 2:24:20

The the children yearn working for 7th Gen. Yeah, the children yearn for 7th gen, as it turns out. Actually, despite all of its problems, 7th gen was a uh was fun. So I think we all just want to go back.

SPEAKER_05 2:24:30

The thing about 7th gen is that it did suck in a lot of ways, but it was also like the last time you could get a game where it's like this costs $50 and it takes about eight hours to go through and it's like well-manicured stuff.

SPEAKER_04 2:24:45

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_08 2:24:46

I love the idea that like they're really utilizing the time travel thing where like you fucking around in the past will have major ramifications. Like actually committing to that idea is if they can pull it off, like good on them, because you know, kind of like Bioshock, Infinite didn't really go with their whole time travel changing reality thing.

SPEAKER_03 2:25:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:25:13

Yeah, well it will remain to be seen uh to what degree they live up to the promise made by the trailers and pitch. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:25:21

Right.

SPEAKER_08 2:25:21

Uh they showed off a fable trailer that both Saturn I spent half of it being like, what the fuck is this?

SPEAKER_05 2:25:30

And it turns out it's Fable because it does not aesthetically or narratively or tonally resemble Fable in literally any way because they're insane, and they have a company whose primary output is making racing games, making the new Fable.

SPEAKER_04 2:25:45

For some uh deranged things. Like what because like I can't the thing is Fable, those games were never great, but I liked them. You know, like I I liked one and two. I played a lot of one and two, I didn't play much of three. Um but I liked one and two. I played them a lot because they're like they're not great, but they're fun, and they have most importantly, a very distinct aesthetic, right? They were very kind of cartoony and weird and and like kind of they looked like an Amiga game in 3D. You know?

SPEAKER_05 2:26:21

Um They looked very British because they were very British.

SPEAKER_04 2:26:25

Made by very British people, it's very important to point out. Like Lion Lion Head is in England, or was in England, they don't exist anymore because of course they don't um made by a bunch of very British people, so that game had a very distinct style, and it was trying to like ape like your uh your Monty Pythons and your whatnots, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:26:44

Right.

SPEAKER_04 2:26:44

Um, and so it was kind of like absurdist, you know, goofy humor. Um with like a fantasy kind of trapping. So it was like that's neat, you know? Yeah, this fable game, like what who what is this? It just looks like everything else. Who? Why?

SPEAKER_08 2:27:01

I like I couldn't tell what I was looking at. So that says everything.

SPEAKER_04 2:27:07

Yeah, it's just aesthetically nothing.

SPEAKER_08 2:27:10

Like I like we like I mentioned to Saturn when we were recording that, where it's like there are so many of these grim like these dirty fantasy games uh coming out that all just look the same.

SPEAKER_04 2:27:25

Yeah. They all are I mean it all just kinda everything kind of has the same look these days. We hit the uh we we hit the um diminishing returns, you know.

SPEAKER_08 2:27:37

Um we saw Senua. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

SPEAKER_05 2:27:43

Yeah, so remember when you're like, hey, the the things that they show off at Microsoft are lies? Uh so the funny thing about Senua is that it looked like a trailer for uh Senua 3, which is to say a game that we spent most of the time talking about, like why the fuck did they ever try to turn this into a franchise? The first game was very clearly its own standalone thing, and the uh attempts to expand it into something more than that are truly baffling. Um, and then it turns out that by the time they were showing this trailer and had already, you know, went to all the effort of commissioning this trailer, which like getting a trailer house to make one of these things is not cheap. No, you know. Um they had already basically uh decided internally that they're going to be trying to get rid of Team Ninja and that they are not actually going. Uh yeah, Ninja Theory, excuse me. Uh there's too many studios that have Ninja.

SPEAKER_08 2:28:31

Look, everyone ever mixes up Ninja Theory and Team Ninja.

unknown 2:28:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:28:36

Every time. But but Microsoft Microsoft is like, we're at, we actually had already at that point decided we're trying to get rid of them. We aren't gonna be publishing this game or like giving it any more money than what we literally already have. Yeah. Um, but you know, we'll still spend a ton of this time. Like, we bought the trailer. Like, come on, get excited. It's an Xbox game unless it doesn't exist, in which case it's not.

SPEAKER_08 2:28:57

This is announcing the birthday party of someone you know is already dead.

SPEAKER_05 2:29:02

And they love to do this too. They did this with the fucking perfect dark remake a couple years ago.

SPEAKER_04 2:29:07

They did it with Scalebound. I mean, they've done it multiple.

SPEAKER_05 2:29:09

They did it with um also um, what's it called? From Dust? Yeah, that kind of weird hardcaller thing.

SPEAKER_04 2:29:17

Yeah, it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_08 2:29:17

I forgot about that.

SPEAKER_05 2:29:20

Every year or two, Microsoft just loves to show off a complete announcement trailer, an in-depth special, or whatever for a game that they have already internally stopped making.

SPEAKER_04 2:29:29

Why do they do this? I don't understand. I mean, I guess because it's all just investor slop, right? Like it's not for us.

SPEAKER_05 2:29:38

But what do you gain out of being the publisher whose reputation for these shows is the one who is telling you lies?

SPEAKER_04 2:29:47

I I mean, truly it's because they're Microsoft and Xbox has never mattered until extremely recently.

SPEAKER_05 2:29:54

Until Xbox is like, we need $80 billion.

SPEAKER_04 2:29:57

Right. Like that's the whole thing, that's the this is the truth. Like Microsoft has been able to lie to the extent that they have for so long because for years Xbox was just a write-off. Like, if Xbox didn't make any money, who cares? Because you're Microsoft, you own Windows, you make Windows and you make Microsoft Excel, things that the entire world runs off of, right? Yeah, like so who cares if Xbox posts, you know, a couple hundred million dollars worth of losses every year. That's a peanuts compared to what Microsoft makes annually. But then they spent $70 billion on Activision Blizzard. And now, like I don't I don't understand. I don't understand.

SPEAKER_05 2:30:51

And now they're they're shuttering studios because they need to keep their bottom line up because they're buying all these studios that they can't actually afford to run or make anything with because they don't know how to actually make a game anymore. Because if you ask them what how do they make games, they point you at the Halo studios who aren't currently uh don't have anything announced, and also their last game was a huge flop because they had the they're pivoting to Unreal Engine 5 because they no longer actually support a like standing workforce who can learn bespoke tools that make the game work the way it's supposed to. And so instead you have a bunch of contractors making UE5 sloping and nobody likes it because it doesn't look or feel like Halo. Right, crazy.

SPEAKER_08 2:31:26

They added a sprint button to Halo campaign evolved.

SPEAKER_03 2:31:30

Great.

SPEAKER_08 2:31:32

I'm gonna walk into the ocean. I don't even care about Halo.

SPEAKER_05 2:31:35

No, no, man, you're going to sprint into the ice.

SPEAKER_08 2:31:37

I don't even care that much about Halo. Like all of my Halo knowledge comes from red versus blue, but even I saw we added sprint to Halo, and I went, that's wrong. They didn't make that game with sprint in it.

SPEAKER_03 2:31:49

No.

SPEAKER_08 2:31:50

That you shouldn't have done that. You Master Chief already hauls ass. He doesn't need to sprint.

SPEAKER_04 2:31:54

That's the whole thing, is that he already goes fast. It's like putting a fucking sprint button in Doom 2016. You don't need it.

SPEAKER_08 2:32:01

Like That's like saying we're coming out with a with a Mario game with a double jump. You don't need that. He already jumps good.

SPEAKER_04 2:32:06

Yeah, it's very weird, very bizarre to me.

SPEAKER_05 2:32:10

If you're making yeah, okay, my Microsoft executives who are listening to this podcast because your AI assistant turned it on because a Google bot has been transcribing her podcasts, and like this is now being fed into your AI's, like whatever. Listen to me. If you're going to have a studio make an old-fashioned shooter, like Halo old-fashioned, or Doom or Wolfenstein or whatever, you don't need a sprint button. The character just needs to move as fast as you need them to move. Yeah. We're on we we have solid state drives now. You don't need to worry about movement speed making things load too slow. Just fucking make them go fast. It's okay.

SPEAKER_04 2:32:48

That's absurd. Uh the what else? What else? I don't want to, you know, a billion years on Microsoft because it's a it's an absolute nightmare over there. Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_08 2:32:57

We saw a spiritual successor to Untitled Goose Game, Bad Magpie.

SPEAKER_05 2:33:02

Looks cute. Funnily enough, not not uh the thing developed by that studio shown off at these shows.

SPEAKER_08 2:33:07

Uh looks like you are you are playing a one-winged magpie who can light things on fire and otherwise harass all manner of cuddly things.

SPEAKER_04 2:33:18

Yeah, it looks cute.

SPEAKER_08 2:33:19

Uh speaking of harassing cuddly things, we saw Castlevania Belmont's Curse, in which a uh a woman uh breaks into a castle and harasses the occupants and tears them to pieces.

SPEAKER_03 2:33:31

Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_05 2:33:32

Uh this is a great-looking Castlevania. Uh I'm glad this is not published by Microsoft or anything. It's also on Steam, so I don't have to worry about, you know, giving them money at all. I can just be like, damn, look at this sick ass Castlevania game where the aesthetic's gorgeous, and also I play as an extremely beautiful woman. Sign me up.

SPEAKER_08 2:33:49

So the trailer shows a bunch of like cards, and then it's also by the creators of Dead Cells. They said it's not a roguelike. Don't worry, it's not a roguelike, it's a value. Troid van, yeah. We're not adding roguelikes to it.

SPEAKER_04 2:34:03

That's fine. It's very funny to let the Dead Cells guys make this game.

SPEAKER_05 2:34:07

If you want a studio who's making contemporary like here's the thing it's them, or it's the studio who's currently making Bloodstain 2. And they s and they sat very sadly earlier this year, lost their director uh early, so I don't really think they're in the market to be taking on any additional work.

SPEAKER_08 2:34:26

Uh looks fucking sick. I'm so excited for it.

SPEAKER_04 2:34:29

It looks gorgeous. I'm very excited for that.

SPEAKER_08 2:34:30

Uh a local Metroidvania fan, excited to play his first Castlevania. His first real Castlevania.

SPEAKER_05 2:34:36

You you never played Symphony of Night? No, I have not. I need to get around to it, but I I would love to. I'm not someone who plays like a lot of older games just because like I don't have that much time and I prefer to like stay current on like what's coming out and like you know what people are currently making instead of like revisiting the well most of the time. Castlevania Symphony of Night is a game that you should play. Yeah, I will I will get around to it. There are not many Metroidvania's that even stand in league with it. Like it has just been 20 plus years of trying and failing to make a Metroidvania that is as good as Symphony of the Night.

SPEAKER_08 2:35:19

Uh next, I'm not allowed to have nice things. Sorry about it. Crazy Taxi World Tour. And then they were like, we're putting AI in it.

SPEAKER_02 2:35:28

Yeah. Whoops.

SPEAKER_05 2:35:31

AI. I'm afraid that between between RGG and this that I'm gonna have to start like scrutinizing every fucking Sega game that comes out for Gen AI disclosures, including another thing that was announced at this show. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:35:44

Persona 6 very briefly.

SPEAKER_08 2:35:46

Persona 6. We we uh we got a uh you are slave want emancipation trailer from Persona 6.

SPEAKER_04 2:35:52

It's no, we got something with way less stock. Yeah, no, it's even less like it you are a slave, you want emancipation was something at all.

SPEAKER_05 2:36:04

This is a thesis statement for the game, whether it delivers on it or not.

SPEAKER_04 2:36:08

Yeah, no, it's at least making some kind of like declaration about what this game is going to be about, and then the game wasn't about that, but don't worry about that.

SPEAKER_08 2:36:15

Don't worry about it, shut up.

SPEAKER_04 2:36:16

Um Persona 6, it's just like what's this game about? Uh green. It's that it?

SPEAKER_08 2:36:23

There's a cemetery and there's a bunch of like cutout photographs and crime scenes. And green.

SPEAKER_04 2:36:32

And green, and a lot of green. Although I did see somebody quote that because this game is about like supernatural shit, the reason it's green is because ghost hunting shows use night vision filters. And those are green.

SPEAKER_05 2:36:45

It would be so here's the thing. If Persona 6 is about if Persona 6 is quite literally the Scooby-Doo adaptation that everybody jokes about fucking like Persona 4 and then also Diamond is Unbreakable being 100% I'm their daywise. Absolutely so on board.

SPEAKER_04 2:37:02

If the green is because of like ghost hunting night vision camera like gimmick. Yes, absolutely. I think that sounds hilarious.

SPEAKER_05 2:37:11

It would it would so it would be so persona to be like a gang of ghost hunters, and the thing that you keep realizing is that all the ghosts are actually just money grubbing old people.

SPEAKER_08 2:37:22

I think I think what like what what my pitch would be is that it is framed and stylized the same way that Silent Hill F is, like it's very horror adjacent, like supernatural or horror adjacent, but it's not scary because you have superpower stands.

SPEAKER_04 2:37:39

Right.

SPEAKER_08 2:37:40

Like you have your own stand, so it's not really that scary, but everything looks scary.

SPEAKER_04 2:37:45

Sure, that's fine. But I would love that. I would love a uh it's a completely now that excuse me. Now that Hashino is gone, um I would love a totally darker, weird fucking persona game. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_07 2:37:59

If he's gone, yeah, does that mean we won't get a hot spring in this game?

SPEAKER_04 2:38:05

Inshallah.

SPEAKER_07 2:38:06

Could it happen?

SPEAKER_04 2:38:07

Are we finally free?

SPEAKER_07 2:38:08

Is the curse lifted?

SPEAKER_04 2:38:10

No.

SPEAKER_07 2:38:10

No, you're not.

SPEAKER_04 2:38:11

We're gonna get a haunted hot spring.

SPEAKER_08 2:38:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:38:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 2:38:16

Um so like seeing this trailer though, my my initial takeaway was boy, I hope those leaks of the what the protagonist looks like aren't real.

SPEAKER_04 2:38:23

Fake.

SPEAKER_08 2:38:24

I hope they're real. I don't wanna play as that fucking dweeb.

SPEAKER_04 2:38:27

I don't want to play as the French kid from Persona 3.

SPEAKER_05 2:38:30

People look people were like. Like, look, okay, okay, I understand. But these games come out on PC. We're just gonna do a thing we all did with P5, and we're just gonna wait for someone to mod in a character with some swag.

SPEAKER_01 2:38:39

Yeah, yeah, to be a girl instead, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 2:38:41

Please, please just like mod in the protagonist of like P5X, at least. He has more drip than this game. Yeah, he's definitely mod in Takumi Sumino from Underwater.

SPEAKER_05 2:38:52

He deserves nothing.

SPEAKER_08 2:38:56

He deserves a nice thing to happen to him once in a while. Sarumino deserves some friends that might actually like him.

SPEAKER_02 2:39:02

Be helpful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:39:05

Um like not getting into it because uh I like Sarah, Sarah, you didn't actually go through. I need to keep playing more.

SPEAKER_04 2:39:13

Yeah, no, I'm sorry. I got other things to do.

SPEAKER_05 2:39:16

I was gonna say, you should uh they should do this, but the the catch should be that also while you have modded uh Takumi to be the protagonist, is that you have an additional party member that's just Hirokoshizahara. Because she would not she she would not cotton to being left behind.

SPEAKER_04 2:39:31

She would she would uh so enthusiastically go build, like, yeah, let's go hunt ghosts. You know.

SPEAKER_05 2:39:36

Oh, I don't she's like, oh, I don't need one of those personas.

SPEAKER_08 2:39:40

I have this thing. Yeah. Um really quick, I forgot to mention it during my thing. Speaking of 100 line, I also watched the Among Us Show.

SPEAKER_04 2:39:49

Oh, that's funny.

SPEAKER_08 2:39:50

Um, The Among Us Show is indistinguishable from your average 100 line route. That is my review of the Among Us Show.

SPEAKER_05 2:39:59

I thought I saw that clip of the end of like the doctor trying to ask engineer, like the engineer or whatever, for like bio samples or whatever, and it's very clearly framed as the engineer thinks the doctor is like is trying to fuck him, but he also wants to get fucked by the doctor real bad. He's like, fine, take the bloody samples.

SPEAKER_04 2:40:17

Um that's an incredible review, completely indistinguishable from 100 line. Thank you, Ben.

SPEAKER_08 2:40:22

Yep. Uh, but yeah, no, I I'm I you know I fucking I am excited for like a supernatural themed persona game. That sounds great.

SPEAKER_04 2:40:31

Yeah, no, I mean that sounds like my shit. I love spooky stuff and I like personas, so fine.

SPEAKER_08 2:40:36

Just please, please make please give us a protagonist with some drip. Please, that guy looks so fucking lame.

SPEAKER_04 2:40:42

You know, it's fine. Listen, we're getting a persona 4 remake, so your your swaggy protagonist is in there.

SPEAKER_05 2:40:47

Look, it's a ghost hunting persona. The protagonist should look like a dead Victorian orphan.

SPEAKER_04 2:40:52

True.

SPEAKER_05 2:40:53

Maybe, maybe you're right.

SPEAKER_08 2:40:54

Um yeah, we we also saw the persona, we saw actual Persona 4 uh revival instead of just like a desperately cut together like 20-second trailer. Yeah. Uh they almost immediately showed Marie, so like, yeah, we're the golden's in it. It's good.

SPEAKER_01 2:41:09

It's the golden.

SPEAKER_05 2:41:10

I was grousing it for at first, and like, I'm not seeing, I'm not seeing any golden stuff in this trailer, and I'm gonna be pissed off if it's just Venilla Persona 4. And then they show Marie, and I'm like, oh thank God.

SPEAKER_04 2:41:18

Okay, never mind, we're good.

SPEAKER_05 2:41:20

Uh looks. I will say, very funny note on her, uh, her new English voice actor is Ari Thrash, who was uh not a character, not someone who does a lot of voice acting yet. They're a very they're a newer talent, but they were uh do Mursame and GQux. And it's very funny seeing uh them post on Twitter like from like 2024. It's like putting this out there, but if they make that Persona 4 remake and like you get new voice actors, I would love to be like Yukiko or someone, and then someone replies to them after things like, oh it turns out I guess that you were really more of a Marie, and she's like, I'm gonna be real with you. I never played the Golden, so I didn't know what Marie being was at the time.

SPEAKER_08 2:41:57

This one is coming out no uh February 18th, which means you might have to slot this in between Revelaton and uh God Evercold.

SPEAKER_05 2:42:11

Good fucking look. I I'm I'm sorry, Persona 4 of the Golden. I I still remember how that plot went from when I played you uh you know 14 years ago or whatever. I can wait a little longer.

SPEAKER_02 2:42:21

I uh we'll see. We'll see.

SPEAKER_05 2:42:24

We'll see which one grabs your fikes your fancy. Because I'm with it is Persona 4. Like, Evercold, I'll be able to make time for. And like independent of the plot stuff, like I'm usually not huge on keeping up with endgame content grinds or whatever, so like I'll be done with that real quick. But for once, I'm kind of like Revel A Tens is gonna come out, and there's gonna be a three-pack. Yes. And I'll finally have a reason to play all three of those games in a row, like a fucking lunatic.

SPEAKER_04 2:42:55

Yeah, absolutely. That's a lot of Final Fantasy VII.

SPEAKER_08 2:42:58

I am 100% in agree with you, Sarah. This is the most unnecessary remake ever. Persona 4 the Golden is fine, it looks great, it's immaculate.

SPEAKER_04 2:43:08

It still looks great. It's still, it's honestly like I was saying, like, the aesthetics of like OG Persona 4 and Persona 4 the Golden have always been exactly what they needed to be for that setting of like Inaba being like a small town in backwoods Japan. It doesn't need to look fancy. The reason Persona 3 always needed a remake is because it's set in a big city, so it needed to be a little bit glitzier and more glamorous, you know, kind of like Persona 5, right?

SPEAKER_05 2:43:35

And also, and also unlike Persona 4, uh Persona 4 the Golden is a game that you can buy on Steam because they kept that shit around when they made it in 2012. So they just be like, Yeah, we made a PC port, here it is for $20. You have to remake Persona 3 because they don't have any of it anymore. Right.

SPEAKER_04 2:43:51

And like you can play you can play portable, but that's not quite the same experience. It's a very different video game. It's more, it's more of a visual novel, right? Um, and so like to me, I'm like, okay, so Persona 4 to me, Persona 4 the Golden to me is kind of like uh uh platonically perfect, right? Right? Like as like as like what it is, like, yeah, okay, some of that writing does not hold up in 2026. But like for what it is when it came out, when I played it, you know, at a very formative time of my life, right? Um, Persona 4 the Golden is kind of functionally perfect. It doesn't need to be any prettier, it doesn't need to be any sleeker, um, it has everything you want from Persona game. Like, Persona 5 couldn't even iterate on it that much more because of how perfect P4 was. Um And I'm still gonna buy that remake. I'm still gonna buy that remake because I'm stupid.

SPEAKER_08 2:44:40

Day one, like oh, but it looks so pretty though. Look how cool everyone looks.

SPEAKER_04 2:44:44

You're jangling fucking it's fucking Cocoa Melon for uh elder millennials. That's me. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_05 2:44:50

Like, I can't be mad at them for not putting in the Persona 3 portable content because like they they're click they're putting it in. Yeah, they're they're putting in they're putting in the stuff from the really good version of the game. They're doing all of it.

SPEAKER_02 2:45:02

It's gritty.

SPEAKER_08 2:45:03

They're the the thing that I saw the trailer that like got me like sitting up in my seat was they're canonizing uh Narukami's uh ultra in the arena, the cross slash.

SPEAKER_04 2:45:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 2:45:15

He just gets that now.

SPEAKER_04 2:45:17

He just gets it now. And it looks fucking sick! It looks sick, and I'm just I'm an idiot. I'm stupid. Uh yes, I will buy a Persona 4 remake. Does it need to exist? Absolutely not. Am I gonna buy it? Of course I am. I'm an idiot. Like, Persona 4 was so formative for me um when the first one came out, and then again when the golden came out. Yeah. Like both of those games have like have like influenced me to such an extent that like shit I make now in 2026 has the bones of like my persona 4 obsession still in there. Right.

SPEAKER_05 2:45:57

100%. Like Persona 4 is the first game I went to go get at a GameStop, had to go to a different GameStop because they didn't have it at mine. And then when I got to that other GameStop and I asked about Persona 4, like, yeah, we got it. Um we don't have like a box though or anything. So we just have this like little paper CD sleeve to give you. And I'm like, oh my god, I feel like I'm like buying pornography, but I'm like in I'm like in I'm I'm like in high school, but like I'm going to the GameStop, but like I feel like I'm participating in some kind of illegal trade, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:46:28

No.

SPEAKER_08 2:46:29

I'll like, yeah, I'm like the the the just the core concept of Persona 4 alone has actually never left like one of the burners on my brain.

SPEAKER_00 2:46:42

No, never.

SPEAKER_08 2:46:44

Like I'm always, always low-key, kind of thinking about the cast of Persona 4 a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 2:46:50

I love that game. I'm you know, warts and all, I really like Persona 4. Even, you know, a billion years later, I I will kind of probably always love Persona 4 to a certain extent. It happened, Persona 4, the the first one, the OG Persona 4, happened to me. Happened to me.

SPEAKER_08 2:47:08

Yeah. Um You encountered it like you would like a crash UFO.

SPEAKER_04 2:47:12

Yeah, or like getting in a car crash, right? Um Persona 4 happened to me at a very specific time in my life where I was also forced to move from the big city to a tiny little shitty house in the country, and I had no friends, and I was alone all the time, and the only thing I had going for me is the fact that Persona 4 came out. So, you know, I'm gonna buy this game. I'm gonna buy this game. I'm 30 to 40 years old and I will buy Persona 4 for the fifth time.

SPEAKER_08 2:47:44

I am 30 to 40 years old and I do need this.

SPEAKER_04 2:47:47

I do need this. This will be the fifth time I've bought Persona 4. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:47:51

Also, like whenever I'm thinking of Persona 4 in like 2026, I'm always like, you know, it's really just unfortunate that because of Hashino primarily, that is a game where you have two of your characters be very visibly teenagers struggling with their identities as queer people. And then Hashino's big solutionist is like, well, no, they're fine, they're normal and straight. Yeah, you know, and like it's it's fine or whatever. Naoto Shiragani can be a conventionally beautiful woman if that's what you want her to be. And it's like, uh uh, okay, okay. And and but and then despite this, I see that trailer and I see Naoto Shiragani's beautiful, beautiful face of fear, and I'm like, hello, gorgeous, I've missed you.

SPEAKER_01 2:48:26

I missed you so much. I love you so much.

SPEAKER_05 2:48:28

I've I've missed my boyfriend so badly.

SPEAKER_01 2:48:31

My boyfriend's back from the war.

SPEAKER_08 2:48:33

And I'm gonna say something right now. If any of you on the Discord fucking bring Persona 4 discourse into the into the Discord, you're getting banned immediately. We have a zero tolerance policy for Persona 4 Discourse, okay? We already know.

SPEAKER_05 2:48:46

Only I'm allowed to because I'm the host and I'm always causing problems and treading the line and otherwise we all already know.

SPEAKER_04 2:48:53

We know, we know, it's fine.

SPEAKER_08 2:48:55

I also think that Naoto is at least non-binary and Kanji is bisexual, but that's not important to their characterization in the game as it stands. Okay? That's a separate topic.

SPEAKER_02 2:49:05

It's fine. Listen.

SPEAKER_05 2:49:07

I can con here's the thing. I can I I'm I can condense it to not being a problem with Persona 4. It is my problem with Hashino as a human being.

SPEAKER_08 2:49:15

That's correct. So, so Saturn, I uh I think of like the idea of like Kanji and Naoto coming out individually to the rest of the group is like that that one uh Homestuck comic with John and Dave arguing about Sasuke and Naruto's relationship.

unknown 2:49:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 2:49:33

It's like like years later, being like, okay, listen, I have something to say, but I want to clarify it has nothing to do with what happened to us in high school.

SPEAKER_05 2:49:41

I I think I mentioned this on the podcast, Sarah, but like one of the funniest jokes in Homestuck is that there's a very early conversation between John and Dave, where John's like, dude, Sasuke and Naruto were totally gay, and then Dave's like, no, they fucking weren't, dude. Get over it. And then in between, they they go a very long time without talking to each other due to plot events. It's literally about the span of three years. Right. Um, and you know, they're both nominally heterosexual of 13-year-old boys at this time period. And then Dave shows up, and the first words out of his mouth to John are like, hey, John, I have something to tell you vis-a-vis the- I just need you to understand it means nothing vis-a-vis the Sasuke Naruto to me. And the thing that he has to tell him is that he is is in the intervening three years, he's started dating another boy.

SPEAKER_03 2:50:20

Great. Amazing.

SPEAKER_08 2:50:21

So it's like to clarify, it has nothing to do with what happened to us. It's an unrelated circumstance, but I need to tell you something.

SPEAKER_02 2:50:28

Oh fuck. Okay. Okay. Yeah, well, what else?

SPEAKER_08 2:50:31

Moving on. Something that I'm very excited for is uh Magician's The Devil's Deal, the other Bioshock-like.

SPEAKER_04 2:50:38

There's so many of these.

SPEAKER_08 2:50:39

Where you are, where your uh plasmids are magician card tricks and like pulling rabbits out of your hat looks awesome.

SPEAKER_05 2:50:48

Sure. I'm very excited to see more of this when it's not the hyper slick scripted trailer showcase cut. I want to see how it actually plays and feels and stuff. But I love the premise.

SPEAKER_04 2:50:59

Conceptually, it's great.

SPEAKER_08 2:51:01

The aesthetic looks great, you know. Love that I love that concept as a video game. Sure. Um what else? What else? Vivarium looked interesting, which was the uh 70s anime uh point and click adventure game. I didn't catch the name of that one. Yeah, Vivarium, which looks, people were saying, like, you know, Miyazaki style, but no, it's there's definitely some Gundam influences in here as well.

SPEAKER_04 2:51:29

No, the the the big influences, what's that fucking Tim Rogers video, Saturn? The long one about the kid in summer.

SPEAKER_05 2:51:34

Oh, uh Boko no Natsiosami?

SPEAKER_04 2:51:36

Yeah, it's literally it's a Boko no Natsiosami. It's it is a one-to-one copy. That's kind of the reason it took me out of it. Um because I was watching it and I was like, this is just Boku no Natsiosami, but as a girl, as like a little girl instead. Yeah. And like the blatantness of it kind of took me out of it. I I am I have a growing, and I hate I hate to be hater, but I am a hater. Sorry. Um I do have a kind of growing distaste for Western studios that are just like, it's not in Japan. Is this a Western studio? Vivarium?

SPEAKER_08 2:52:08

Uh it's being published, it's being developed by Crunchyroll.

SPEAKER_04 2:52:14

Oh, that means it's probably a Western studio. Studio Meadowflower.

SPEAKER_05 2:52:17

Oh, yeah, because Crunchyroll is Crunchyroll is basically the uh now at this point, the English presentation of Sony's anime holdings. Right.

SPEAKER_08 2:52:25

Studio Meadowflower is. Oh yeah, no, they're from New York. Oh, really?

SPEAKER_05 2:52:31

So I remember posting about this because I tried to look them up, and all I found about them, because that they had literally didn't have any of their information public before this went up, literally all I found about them is a is a thing from a registry from like February that they incorporated the company in Albany, New York.

SPEAKER_04 2:52:47

So I do have like, because like this was it's becoming like an over it's just becoming a very oversaturated aesthetic of everybody wanting to make Japanese games besides not being Japanese. Right. Um and between this and the the kind of blatant stealing from Boku Nai and Natsyasumi versus and alongside taking like you know uh fucking um um what am I thinking of my neighbor Totoro aesthetics, right? I was just kind of like okay, I've seen a hundred of these games before, right? Like not exactly this game, but this game.

SPEAKER_08 2:53:24

Like I hate to be a hater because a lot of people are interested in it, but that's I appreciate them using an aesthetic that is not necessarily common.

unknown 2:53:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:53:34

From for me, it's mostly like I tend to be a little more like if you're having it set in Japan and like with a sort of archetypically like J RPG or J whatever aesthetic, and it's because it's important to the game or the story that you're telling that it's Japanese and that it's you're specifically not doing a Western thing, then like sure. Like I'm I'm okay with that. But I feel I do feel like it's weird. I I it does take me out of it whenever you do have like a Western, like like an American or English.

SPEAKER_04 2:54:03

It's just a very oversaturated thing, right now.

SPEAKER_05 2:54:05

Yeah, where it's just like it look, it looks like anime and it's set in fictional Japan because that's what we wanted to do. And it's not actually we we could have really done this anyway, but we wanted it to be kind of anime evocative, so we set it in fake Japan and gave it a vaguely like 70s anime or something.

SPEAKER_04 2:54:22

It's like you could have set this anywhere, and I honestly think you're in New York, you could have set this in upstate New York, but with the same aesthetic. Um, and I probably would have vibed with it more because taking kind of like this 70s anime aesthetic but applying it to like your memories of childhood in the 1990s, which was the the time when all of us were getting into anime for the first time because that's when like the kind of anime revolution happened. That makes more sense, right? Yeah, like that I think is more evocative than just well, we want to make a Japanese game set in Japan, right? Right. I I think that's more interesting to me personally than just we uh there's no English version of Boko no Naziosome, so we're just gonna take that idea for ourselves, right?

SPEAKER_05 2:55:09

Did it so Oh yeah, I guess they wouldn't have. Well, because I was like, wait a minute, didn't they? And I'm like remembering, no, that crayon Shinchan game is also Japanese exclusive. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:55:18

That's a shame. Oh, did they they really never put out Boko no Naziosome?

SPEAKER_05 2:55:22

It has no English and maybe it might have a fan translation at this point, but Well, I mean, I know the the original uh just has a fan translation, but like I know there was later ones on the PS3 and PS2 that I don't remember if any of them ever came through. Yeah, but like they covered it, they covered one of them on a show.

SPEAKER_08 2:55:42

But I think it was one of those things like because like how Nintendo sometimes has two different shows where they show different games. I think the crayon Shinchan game was only in a Japanese show.

SPEAKER_04 2:55:53

Yeah, because they do that a lot.

SPEAKER_08 2:55:54

And the trailer was also like made by the same company. And the the trailer just kind of got. Like was to like got notoriety in in uh um no um English speaking territories because like it it had a really sharp aesthetic like that was like this is a lot of production for a crayon shin chan game.

SPEAKER_04 2:56:14

Right. So yeah. Uh there is no official Focuno Nazi aside. It's just there's um there's like English fan patches and stuff like that. So you know. Um anyways, I hate to be a hater, but no, that's okay.

SPEAKER_08 2:56:28

I understandable. Uh the only other thing that was really of note here that was like kind of like okay, uh was Valor Mortis, the Napoleon Bonaparte game.

SPEAKER_04 2:56:39

That's just funny. Yeah, like I don't I will never play that game, but conceptually it's kind of funny.

SPEAKER_08 2:56:43

Yeah, Saturday.

SPEAKER_04 2:56:44

Who's that who's that actor they got?

SPEAKER_05 2:56:47

Um Vincent Cassell. Yeah, they're like, and we're thrilled to announce that we got our dream actor for Napoleon. It's like you're not even playing as Napoleon in this game, I don't think.

SPEAKER_01 2:56:57

Oh, are you?

SPEAKER_05 2:56:58

Yeah, that's Napoleon. I thought you were playing as like I thought you were playing as like one of his toadies or something.

SPEAKER_08 2:57:02

No, you think he's like a character. Yeah, you are you are playing Napoleon.

SPEAKER_04 2:57:06

That's funny.

SPEAKER_05 2:57:08

What a bizarre. Strange video game.

SPEAKER_04 2:57:10

Very mysterious, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 2:57:12

Um, but that was the Xbox show.

SPEAKER_04 2:57:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 2:57:15

We have one more show to go over. We have we have one more thing to show you.

SPEAKER_04 2:57:20

There's really only there there's it's the Nintendo thing. The Nintendo thing has one really important thing. Uh but first we gotta talk about uh I don't know how to feel about an Ocarina of Time remake.

SPEAKER_05 2:57:32

Uh I'll be real, that that reveal doesn't look very good, and I don't like that they didn't show off any gameplay or what the game looks like, despite the fact that it's nominally coming out later this year. It makes me worry that this is like uh we're running, we're we're doing this the the the oblivion remake thing and we're just literally running emulated Ocarina of Time in a UE5 rap where it's gonna look and feel really well.

SPEAKER_08 2:57:51

Well, I don't think they're doing this. Is clearly like I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 2:57:55

I got a feeling we're gonna get an Ocarina of Time direct in like three months, right? Right. Where because that that's that's kind of their thing these days is like we're gonna do a whole thing that's just about this one game. Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_05 2:58:08

It's just rough to be getting that a month before it comes out.

SPEAKER_08 2:58:12

Compared to, you know, comparing this to the Star Fox remake, where it's just the original game, but scaled up, you know. I feel like that uh that's that's probably what they're going to do for Ocarina of Time. Like it's it's gonna play, it's gonna, you know, the dungeons are all gonna be more or less laid out the same.

SPEAKER_05 2:58:34

It's just gonna be- But we don't, but we don't know, because they didn't show literally anything. Yeah, like that's what I'm but we don't even know who's actually developing it. We found out later that the Star Fox thing isn't isn't actually being developed Nintendo in-house. It's by a studio that's made of former Vicarious Visions people. So I don't know. Like, that's what I'm assuming it is gonna be.

SPEAKER_08 2:58:49

Is it's just gonna be, you know, uh it's gonna be the same game, just scaled up slightly. But we have we have literally nothing to do with that. There's nothing to yeah, there's nothing to go off of.

SPEAKER_05 2:59:01

It would make sense if that was the case, but it it could be literally anything.

SPEAKER_04 2:59:04

And and the one thing they did show us is like this very like Nintendo hire this man model of Child Link that I looks so bad. Looks so bad.

SPEAKER_08 2:59:12

Okay, I'm gonna be honest. I think the fact that he looks kinda ugly works.

SPEAKER_05 2:59:19

I I wish I got to see literally any other ugliness in context of it. He looks like a UE5. I think it was I I forget which one of the Gigaboots it was who called it UE5 skin baby.

SPEAKER_08 2:59:29

I'm like, yeah. Like, like, I think I think if we see the other Kokiri and they also kinda look like a bunch of ugly kids, then it kind of fits.

SPEAKER_01 2:59:39

I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 2:59:40

Still just like, I don't know. Again, not to be a hater either, but it's like, God, imagine if we had seen any of the other Kokiri and we could have like literally anything to form an expectation about instead of absolutely fucking nothing. It it literally would have been better if they shadow dropped the game. Yeah. Then give us such a weird announcement for something. It's very strange.

SPEAKER_04 2:59:58

So close. Yeah, that's the thing. It's so close and has nothing. Yeah, it's very weird to me.

SPEAKER_08 3:00:03

I I really don't know what to make of this because like it already has a remaster on the 3DS. So like it's not gonna be a good thing.

SPEAKER_04 3:00:10

My big thing is why not re-re why not re-release re-release the 3DS remaster. That game looks great. Like that game is kind of like visually perfect because like it doesn't really change anything about Ocarina of Time. A game I like a lot still. But it does, it just changes the graphics to look more like the character art, which is the thing that everybody likes about that game a lot, right? Yeah, um so I I would love it if you could just make that three because you can play like OG Ocarina of Time, of course, off the Switch store, right? Like, of course, but it's weird to never make that 3DS remake available to anybody, right? Like that in the Majora's Mask one, which is not a very good game because it changes a lot of stuff, but like it's weird to have those games and exist, and those games did well. I mean, they did well enough to make it to the second one, but like just not make them available to anybody anywhere. It's very strange.

SPEAKER_08 3:01:13

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know, like what is this go if they had shown us anything, like if they had shown us recreate the cutscene of Zelda and Impa fleeing from Ganondorf.

SPEAKER_02 3:01:30

Sure.

SPEAKER_08 3:01:30

Right?

SPEAKER_02 3:01:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 3:01:31

Give us an idea of like how a cutscene is going to be framed.

SPEAKER_05 3:01:35

Yeah, it would have been great, but they didn't do that. They instead wasted our time for no particular reason.

SPEAKER_04 3:01:39

It's very weird, and I mean, again, I I think there's probably gonna be a direct maybe in a month or two, who knows?

SPEAKER_00 3:01:45

Right.

SPEAKER_04 3:01:45

Um, but I still just have a lot of weird feelings about remaking RPN of time in general, because it's it's a game that doesn't really need remade. That game was always you know, the 3D the 3DS remake was kind of always all anybody ever wanted. Because like that game is good for what it was when it came out, and it is still extremely replayable in 2026. Like, jank and all, that game still is perfectly fine, right? Uh it's not again, it's not Final Fantasy VII, a game that people have been wanting to see it be remade since it came out. Nobody, I feel like nobody truly has ever clamored for Ocarina of Time remake.

SPEAKER_05 3:02:23

Yeah. No, I mean people dead people did, but not in 2026. They did it in like 7th gen when the idea of like having Ocarina of Time, but it looks prettier with something that would be like desirable. I don't know. Like there was people who actually cared about it.

SPEAKER_04 3:02:37

And I gotta tell you, that thing kind of already exists. It's called Twilight Princess.

unknown 3:02:40

Right.

SPEAKER_04 3:02:41

Twilight Princess is kind of like a shadow remake of Ocarina of Time in a lot of ways, right?

SPEAKER_05 3:02:46

But the problem is that all the people who who hated Wind Waker for looking the way it is also just don't like Twilight Princess either. They just wanted Ocarina of Time again.

SPEAKER_04 3:02:54

I know, it's very strange. So, um, you know.

SPEAKER_08 3:02:58

Yeah. I mean, uh, there's nothing I can really say about it because we don't know what it's gonna look like. So until we get that direct, we're not gonna We've spent more time talking about what it could be than anything we got from.

SPEAKER_04 3:03:09

Ocarina of Time is another formative game for me. What do you want from me? I was just like, I saw it.

SPEAKER_05 3:03:13

I'm not complaining about you. I'm I'm just still like my madness is still just like, why the fuck did they even bother saying anything?

SPEAKER_04 3:03:20

Obviously, the game has to be extremely close to being done if it's coming out this year. So why wouldn't you just show us a little bit more at your fucking your finger quotes E3 thing?

SPEAKER_08 3:03:32

This should not have been their one last thing. The thing I really want to talk about is the thing that should have been their one last thing.

SPEAKER_04 3:03:37

Yeah, we can talk about the thing you want to talk about because we're already over the three-hour mark and I don't want to be here for four and a half hours. Nintendo talked about other things. Fortune's Weave, who knows? Fortune's weave. I don't know if it's gonna be good or not.

SPEAKER_08 3:03:48

I think it looks good. Four protagonists looks fun. Deltarune chapter five is coming out in uh looks at watch a week.

SPEAKER_05 3:03:55

It'll it'll be eighty dollars physical, which uh drives me insane.

SPEAKER_04 3:03:58

Yeah. Fortunes Weave is gonna be is gonna be eighty dollars, and I have no idea how to feel about it, so I'm gonna wait till it comes out and hear some reviews. Um and then uh Deltarune is literally out in a week from today. Yeah. So what?

SPEAKER_08 3:04:11

What?

SPEAKER_04 3:04:11

I literally did a cartoon like double tape where like Oats Oates walked by. I'm on my phone just scrolling, right? Because I did not watch the direct. Right. I just kind of like, you know, noticed, I paid attention to the news. Oates walks by and I go, Oh hey, Deltarune chapter five out in June. And she looks at me and goes, Sarah, it is June. I'm like, huh?

SPEAKER_00 3:04:35

Hello?

SPEAKER_04 3:04:36

Like I did a cartoon double take because I just sure, Deltarune chapter five, out in a week. Look forward to it. Cool.

SPEAKER_08 3:04:43

Can you believe it? Deltarune, one week from now.

SPEAKER_04 3:04:46

Delta Rune.

SPEAKER_08 3:04:47

Just a week to go. It will be longer for Saturn, but that's okay. No, I know. Well, the thing for me some Someday that game will be done. The thing for me is that now I am now I'm like on the hook to be like, I gotta replay all the other chapters, so I can't because I didn't do any of the bonus bosses. Fuck.

SPEAKER_05 3:05:02

Yeah, that's why I'm waiting. It's because I'm like, I I will make time for two playthroughs. The blind one and then the one where I do all the shit with the guide.

SPEAKER_03 3:05:10

Sure. Fair.

SPEAKER_08 3:05:11

Um, I'm gonna be honest, I'm kind of excited for One Piece Grand Gourmet.

SPEAKER_04 3:05:15

I didn't even see anything about this game.

SPEAKER_05 3:05:17

So uh it's a it's a Cairo soft game, which means it's a well-made, kind of good-looking pixel art like like number go up management game.

SPEAKER_08 3:05:25

Yeah, it's a restaurant management game where you can recruit every any character in One Piece to help you with your restaurant. That's so you've got like Inel cooking your food.

SPEAKER_03 3:05:35

Okay, that actually helps.

SPEAKER_05 3:05:36

And when I saw it, uh it's very it's like one thing I don't have a lot of experience with Kairosoft, but it's like when I saw it, it's like I was like looking at it, it's like, damn, this kind of looks like a Kairosoft game. And then I saw the thing at the end it says mid-developed like Kairosoft. It's like, yeah, you got the perfect company to make a Kairosoft game.

SPEAKER_01 3:05:50

That's honestly, that's actually a pretty funny hook. Okay.

SPEAKER_08 3:05:52

Seeing like like fucking like crocodile and ace in the same place, be like, nah, they acted like nothing happened.

SPEAKER_03 3:06:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:06:01

I mean, I mean, they want they want to know what's in that curry. Yeah, all the other stuff can wait.

SPEAKER_08 3:06:05

Um then uh we saw a little bit more Big Walk. Uh the Friend Slop game.

SPEAKER_03 3:06:14

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_08 3:06:14

Uh from the this one's from the untitled Goose Peter. Yeah, this looks fun. I'm excited to just wobble around with a weird-looking weird looking thing and uh throw and punch my friends.

SPEAKER_04 3:06:29

Um The big thing, Ben.

SPEAKER_08 3:06:31

And then um I got to uh finally achieve my final rest and crumble to dust content. So when they announced um uh Revelayatens, yeah, Chris Wolfheart was like, oh hey, uh the entirety of the Final Fantasy VII remake happened uh between the trailer for Kingdom Hearts 4 and the game Kingdom Hearts 4 coming out, and I felt really bad for like three entire days. Like I genuinely felt like I genuinely felt like active depression.

SPEAKER_01 3:07:22

Sure.

SPEAKER_08 3:07:22

Like I had taken damage like a status.

SPEAKER_05 3:07:26

And that's okay status of it. And that's okay to be true because ultimately we still don't have a year for this game, but they showed it at least.

SPEAKER_08 3:07:33

But I but I I felt really bad because it wasn't just that the game like all the remake had come out in between that. It's like the remake had had come out and was announced its ending before we had even gotten information on Kingdom Hearts 4.

SPEAKER_03 3:07:48

Right.

SPEAKER_08 3:07:50

And I kind of like held on to that that hope during the Xbox show because I remember they showed a trailer for Kingdom Hearts 3 at a Microsoft show.

SPEAKER_00 3:08:00

Mm-hmm. Right?

SPEAKER_08 3:08:01

Like the big one with the Pirates of the Caribbean was at a Microsoft show. And it didn't happen. And then I was like, well, there's no way they're gonna do it at Nintendo. Like, you know what? I'm just gonna be excited for Fortune's Weave when they show that, and you know, whatever else they want to show, I'll just be excited for that. And then they showed off the Kingdom Hearts 1 through 3 collection, and I was like, oh, cool, they're they're actually porting those games, uh like the physical version, not the Steam Cloud version, to the Switch 2. Cool, that's what they should have done in the first place, but neat, great.

SPEAKER_05 3:08:35

Well, well, yeah, well the thing is like the Switch 2 can actually run it because it's a PS4 instead of not at all.

SPEAKER_08 3:08:40

Yeah, and so I was like, alright, well, that's that's a neat, that's that's nice to see. And then the trailer kept going. And I was like, that can't be real.

SPEAKER_04 3:08:52

That can't be real.

SPEAKER_08 3:08:53

No, I'm just I'm just like I'm just No, I was put on this planet to suffer. I'm interpreting this as kind of looking like Kingdom Hearts because I just saw Kingdom Hearts, but there's no, oh my god! It's the Kingdom Hearts 4 trailer. Wow! They took a bat to this game to get it out on time.

SPEAKER_05 3:09:15

No, Ben, what they did is they took it.

SPEAKER_01 3:09:17

I'm glad you did.

unknown 3:09:18

No.

SPEAKER_05 3:09:19

No, Ben, what they didn't take a bat to this game to get it out on time. They took a bat to this game to get it on Switch 2. Yeah. Because they realized that making a UE5 game they were only gonna sell on the PS5 was a mistake. Well, you and Saturn, that's the same thing.

SPEAKER_08 3:09:34

When Square is like, we're putting it on the Switch 2, they went, okay, fucking cut it out and get it out.

SPEAKER_05 3:09:43

Make it. I think it will I think it would be really funny if when this game comes out or we learn more information about it, it does come out that uh despite what they what was said about it originally, uh, that it is in fact being developed on UE4.

SPEAKER_08 3:09:55

No, I would not be, I would not be surprised if it's not. Like, no, that's that's not even like the the they took a bat to this game positive. Like that's they should they should have done this.

SPEAKER_04 3:10:06

This is what they should have done a long time ago. They should have taken a bat to the fucking game to get it out the door, yes.

SPEAKER_08 3:10:11

No, it looks it's still it it we like you talked about earlier. No game needed to look better than Arkham Knight.

SPEAKER_04 3:10:17

It's true. Okay. I've vindicated forever about this one.

SPEAKER_08 3:10:20

Um it still looks great, still looks fucking amazing.

SPEAKER_04 3:10:23

And it's all that matters is that it's a new Kingdom Hearts, it's Kingdom Hearts 4, and it's actually gonna come out at some point in our human life instead of just being a dead franchise, right? Like that's what matters.

SPEAKER_05 3:10:35

Like you you people can't comprehend how actually bad I felt for like Ben, we're Ben, you're kind of like spinning into like a JRPG antagonist monologue. Your your your late motif is playing in minor key now all of a sudden.

SPEAKER_08 3:10:54

Uh literally, Sora reached down and pulled me from the darkness.

SPEAKER_01 3:11:01

From the muck.

SPEAKER_08 3:11:03

Pulled me from turning into a heartless myself.

SPEAKER_03 3:11:06

So true, Bestie. I'm glad for it.

SPEAKER_08 3:11:09

God, they showed, like, they showed off a like so the funniest thing is that they're giving Sora for the first time ever, giving him an actual JRPG party.

SPEAKER_00 3:11:19

Right.

SPEAKER_08 3:11:20

Because he's got Strelitzia as his as his uh quirky healer girl, he's got the smug-looking aristocratic guy, he's got the brooding anti-hero with the mask, and he's got a former antagonist who joins the party. Like. You know, like I love the shot of Sora on his knees in the rain and young Xeonor just holding a broken umbrella above him that is not blocking the rain at all.

SPEAKER_04 3:11:53

Shit, man. Like, thanks. But you could try maybe just a little harder. Um it's see the thing is the reason they're giving it's it's very funny to me now that now they're these these five these FF7 remake games are done, right? Of course they're giving Sora a real JRPG team. They're just gonna like grab they're gonna take so many parts from those those FF7 remakes and just staple them onto Kingdom Hearts 4 just to get this game out. They're like, we got a ton of great, we got a ton of great ideas in this one. Let's just use them here.

SPEAKER_05 3:12:25

My sincere belief 100% is that the reason why the FF7 director was cagey about whether the team will stay together after they finish FF7 is because he has already been told in no uncertain turns that the instant that game is out the fucking door, I'm moving all of you to go actually make Kingdom Hearts good. So we can say the year it comes out in.

SPEAKER_08 3:12:45

I so I think genuinely, this is not uh cope. Okay. I think late 2027.

SPEAKER_04 3:12:55

No, I think that's perfect.

SPEAKER_08 3:12:57

I think I think they took a bat to this game.

SPEAKER_04 3:13:00

Sure.

SPEAKER_08 3:13:00

And the reason it had been Radio Silence for so long is because they were working on getting it downgraded.

SPEAKER_04 3:13:07

Right, to work on a Switch 2. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 3:13:09

And now it's done, and now the FF7 remake is done, and now Nomura can focus.

SPEAKER_00 3:13:14

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_08 3:13:15

And it's they're it's gonna be smooth, much smoother sailing. Now that the LF Studio is not being divided in between these two massive projects.

SPEAKER_04 3:13:24

Right. I I it is, especially considering they are shooting for Evercold beginning of 2027, and then kind of late spring is Revelations, right? Yeah. It makes perfect sense to be like, okay, yeah, and we're gonna finish the year out and have a really strong fiscal year, right? Yeah. By finishing up on King Hearts coming out in like November, December. Right.

SPEAKER_05 3:13:47

I think See, I was gonna I was gonna say actually uh similarly though, like I would say slightly more cynically, my my my optimistic estimate would be early 2028. That's acceptable. That's also possible because because their fiscal year doesn't end until April. Right. So if you want a good last quarter, you put it out in like February. Sure, totally.

SPEAKER_04 3:14:05

Although I can also see, I mean, it would be it would be very nice. Um like a Kingdom Hearts Switch bundle for Christmas.

SPEAKER_08 3:14:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:14:13

Get the the one one, two, three port and then uh four. You know, just I mean the thing is though, they also said though that the three, like eve like three isn't going to be out until basically December anyway.

SPEAKER_04 3:14:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:14:24

Yeah, the collection is out on October October 8th.

SPEAKER_04 3:14:28

Okay, so yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_08 3:14:30

So I could I could see them but like but like in 2027, maybe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:14:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 3:14:34

2027, like they're gonna they're gonna chase the October 8th uh collection a month or two later, uh four.

SPEAKER_04 3:14:43

Yeah, I could see that. Like I could see early. Or like yeah, like January, yeah. Yeah, that's acceptable. January, February, March-ish, anywhere in there is acceptable.

SPEAKER_05 3:14:51

It's hard to say for Square Enix because also, even though they're like, damn, they finally showed off this game again after so many years and it still doesn't have a date. Square Enix also loves to be like, hey, we've decided to finally give a date for this game, it's like nine months.

SPEAKER_08 3:15:02

Well, yeah, and the other thing is uh, yeah, we didn't get a date, but D23 is coming up soon. And they like to chase like a Kingdom Hearts announcement with another with more details at the actual Disney show.

SPEAKER_04 3:15:19

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 3:15:20

So I was wondering what that was. Yeah, D23 is like D23 is a Disney thing, yeah. It's a big annual like Disney conference where they it's it's Disney E3. Yeah where they announce like their slate of movies and shows and whatnot.

SPEAKER_04 3:15:31

They talk about Marvel movies, they talk about Star Wars, they talk about Disney movies, they talk about like theme parks and stuff a lot. So kind of ancillary properties like Kingdom Hearts do get mentioned at D23.

SPEAKER_08 3:15:43

They very famously showed off the Big Hero 6 world and a lot of details about that at D23, not at any kind of like uh game conference.

SPEAKER_02 3:15:52

Right.

SPEAKER_08 3:15:52

So it's it's very likely that we'll actually get like a date and some more details at D23.

SPEAKER_04 3:15:57

I hope so.

SPEAKER_08 3:15:58

Um God, I'm between this and the Persona 4 revival trailer, like I've just been watching the same two two three-minute videos just on a constant loop, just be like, oh my god, they're real.

SPEAKER_04 3:16:14

I need some free dopamine. Okay, here we go. Like they're real.

SPEAKER_08 3:16:17

I still go back and watch the the Smash Ultimate Sore reveal for like a dopamine hit.

SPEAKER_03 3:16:23

Oh yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_08 3:16:25

Um the joke I made on on uh on Blue Sky was like, man, they put Nintendo put Sor in Smash and they were like, he's our son now.

SPEAKER_03 3:16:36

The father that stepped up. Yeah. Sony shirt shit isn't doing anything with it.

SPEAKER_08 3:16:41

Like I saw the thing where it's like uh like um all these sh like Sony project projects getting announced, like persona and Kingdom Hearts getting announced at a non-Sony show. Uh-huh. Is that tweet of just being like, man, just fuck my wife. I don't care anymore.

SPEAKER_01 3:17:00

Yeah, 100%. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_08 3:17:03

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 3:17:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 3:17:06

I mean, there's there's we already talked about the Hellblade thing.

SPEAKER_04 3:17:11

Listen, we don't need to do any more news. We've been here for three hours. Who cares about any more news? We'll talk about any any additional news. We'll see you in a week or two, okay?

SPEAKER_08 3:17:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:17:20

Uh, but it's been more than three hours. Yeah. And I have to pee.

SPEAKER_08 3:17:25

So, I mean, this, yeah, we had a lot to talk about, so it'll we had to get it all out at once. Uh that's fine. Thank you to Broken Free Fuser Background Music. Email us at thegorgepodcast at gmail.com. Uh follow us on our social medias, join our Patreon, join our Discord, patreon.com slash the gorge. Remember that on on the uh Disgorge, we are watching Anime Club. We're getting back to Hunter Hunter soon.

SPEAKER_02 3:17:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 3:17:51

That's right. I'm excited to be able to do that. We're gonna start. We're gonna be starting we're going to be starting Chimera Ant arc, and we're gonna and you're going to be like, damn, I wonder when Chimera Ant. Arc is ending. It feels like we have been building to a head for a very long time. And oh my god, it's been like twice the length of the show already. Uh-oh. We're still on Namek?

SPEAKER_04 3:18:10

Yeah. And then also Saturn's visual novel.

SPEAKER_05 3:18:13

Yeah, Play Saturn's visual novel when that comes out. Yeah, we uh have some. I don't I'm not sure yet when a new thing will be coming out, but in the meantime, uh do go check out my old shit. Uh the Butterfly Effect. You can go to Epicon.ish Iio. That's E-B-I-C-O-N.itch.io.

SPEAKER_00 3:18:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 3:18:30

And you can check out both that game, which I worked on, as well as two things that I didn't work on. Uh one of them being As If Through Glass, which is uh principally written by uh co-writer Alter, and is a very, very good uh if you like 1000x resists, I think there's something there for you. But it's a much it is a uh very short and uh comparatively linear uh thing. And then recently for Noise Jam, uh uh Alter and also uh CDLX, uh the person who does all of our music, uh did a like Noise Jam HTML5 uh like Yoi gallery kind of thing where it's like there there's a there's a Yowie story with some angst in it over a lot of uh very aggressive uh aggressive visuals and a not entirely stitched together narrative because the noise jam thing is like make something incomprehensible but real. You know? And so there's a lot of there's some interesting heat there, there's a lot of neat ideas and visuals and that. Uh I've really enjoyed it. Uh I won't pretend that I understand it completely um because I'm I have a small brain and also noise jam is you know it's all about lacuna, you know. But uh it's really cool. So go check that stuff out, please. Yeah. Awesome. Alright. Uh I I hate to have to say this like so early in a person's uh career. Yo, fuck Asha Sharma.

SPEAKER_08 3:19:51

Yeah. They really set her up to just like take all, like, they really fucking set her up to fail, didn't they? But still fuck her.

SPEAKER_05 3:20:01

Now, I'm not gonna like like to be clear, Phil Spencer's legacy is one of him uh resigning and then immediately pinning all of his crimes on some other woman who uh, you know, not not even Asha Sharma.

SPEAKER_04 3:20:14

Right, a different other woman.

SPEAKER_05 3:20:15

A different other woman who didn't actually have any power to make the decisions that he made and yet he's still blaming her for them. Um, but also like Come on, lady.

SPEAKER_04 3:20:26

Like it's egregious to do like a huge uh giveaway of like a shit ton of free Xboxes to only people wearing fan badges at that. Did you hear about that?

SPEAKER_00 3:20:39

I did not.

SPEAKER_04 3:20:40

Oh my god. Okay, so at the Xbox show in the aftermath, there's a there's a physical, you know, audience, right? Um in the aftermath, everybody who was at the show who was not wearing a press badge, but was wearing a fan badge got a free, you know that that that clear green anniversary Xbox that you everybody in attendance got one for free. But to do that a week before all of these massive layoffs and shit is just like it's so egregious, it's so pandering, it's jangling keys in front of the baby's face, right? To just be like, no, no, but you don't need people to make these games. You just need to take your take your toys and be like, oh, Xbox still cares about fans. It's like okay.

SPEAKER_05 3:21:30

Look at her green plastics thing that you can't actually play anything on.

SPEAKER_04 3:21:33

And it's like nothing's gonna come out for it, and everybody who makes those games is getting laid off yet again. Like, who could possibly care about your dumbass fan event? It's just smoke and mirrors, you know? It's fucking like it's just insulting. It's insulting, it's fucking horseshit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:21:49

Um all of us to say, I'm sure it's not the last time we'll say it. Uh I I'm sorry that your inaugural fuck you has to come so early, but also you do deserve it.

SPEAKER_04 3:21:59

Yeah, you are in charge of Xbox, so you deserve it. Yeah, no, absolutely. No, it's all it's all fucking horseshit. A bunch of people are about to lose their jobs again. Um, so yeah, it's cool. Don't worry about it. Uh fuck off Shasharma. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 3:22:13

Good night, everyone.

SPEAKER_04 3:22:15

Good night, everyone.