Cancelled Games and Vaporware

Hello fans and welcome to episode two hundred and thirty five the Snow Clip Podcast. It's a c crewast. The whole crew is here. We're all here folks. Ready and accounted for Sergeant Jesse Garasha stand to attention, sir . Yes, sir. I'm here to report gaming. That's all I've got to report for this . How does the Canadian army doing these days? Bad . We it's okay. We're doing a lot more spending now, so it's okay, but we do still ride horses at the federal level. So it's actually pretty mounty is what that's they mount the horses. They mount the horses. That's why they're called mounties because they mount the horses, but who mounts the mounties, Jeremy Jane ? I feel like any answer I could give on this would be would be a bad direction for this discussion immediately. It would be homophobic, probably. I was gonna say they're wives, so or bestiality or I guess you could just go play it safe. Frank , does anyone ever ride those horse girls ? Like do I say that in the yeah in the yeah is that is that we're working on the technology I know one man designed a way to ask. I'm sure Cojim is figuring out a way to the opposite. He said that's how you play Yeah, it's a three D printer to take the girls and print them in reality. Maybe. But they should ride horses really because they are just girls running. That's the imagine how fast, imagine if they were riding are there real horses in the horse in the what's the gall again? Is there real horses in that universe . I don't think so. I think I was looking at the lore last night. I think it's like in this universe . It's like horses of previous years have been reborn in the spirit of girls. So it's like, yeah, so all the horses are like gone. I don't know what it's like even more. Yeah, yeah. We needed them for like almost all of post agriculture human and probably a bit of hunter gathering human civilization. Horses were really important . But then when somebody made like the first like voltswagen, that was it. Horses were like soon as Henry Ford came around, horses became irrelevant and yeah, that's the story of Ubamusa. Do you think they have like because the horse girls are part horse but mostly human, do you think they would ride four legged creatures that are mostly horse but have like four human hands instead of hooves or something? I hate this. I would be thinking about that. That would be I feel like that would be a very that'd be a great way of just constantly breaking your hands as if you had a horse on top of them, a horse's weight . Like a like a face of a guy, you know ? I'm sure, you know, we're not we're not exactly pro generative AI here, but if I was going to make something weird, that might be it. I'll draw you a horse with a man's face. Yeah, we 'd be pretty we have the technology. I just like the idea that the horses were like shit. We're out of luck . What does in what way will society still find a use for us? And they were like anime anime girls. That's how we make sure that we are forever . No matter what happens , you know, politically, culturally, there will always be space for Waifus Yeah. It's one of the universal things. It's like if you want to get a job that lasts forever, work in a funeral and now you work as a horse racing girl. You work in there's only so many options. Yeah, the funeral home. Oh, a funeral home. Okay, yeah. You don't work at a funeral. Like, you're not like, you know, selling hot like you got one of those hot selling hots or something. That's what I do do. You guys don't that over the weekend so it's just great extra cash. Yeah, get your peanuts here I start throwing them at the people doing the eulogy. You got one of those long sticks just with candy floss bags hanging out of it all the time all that good stuff not to infinitely prolong the Umamus discussion preamble, but do you think the mounties in the world of Uma Musame are just horse girls with like Canadian horse girls? Yeah , that's gonna make the job really difficult . Again, again it's it's such a step down from just having a horse. You have a horse, you're high in the sky , you can move faster, you can move further , you know, I'm once again assuming that these horse girls are just teenage girls. Like they don't not exactly, you know, I'm not this isn't me getting on my sort of men's rights platform, but like, you know, it sounds like I think is it is it chauvinistic to say that a horse is more powerful than a teenage girl in many ways? I'm not I'm not asking them to like do complex mathematical problems or logic problems . Horses notoriously are terrible at those. They just, you know, they're good at eating apples and jumping over. Horses are good at accounting. That's the same as doing . They're good at accounting. Yeah. What's your evidence for this? Yeah. I've watched Shrek two and at one point, donkey who turns into a horse is great at counting. Was he not good when he was a donkey? Maybe also good when he was a donkey? Okay, so that's a problem. All right. Eddie Murphy is good at math, I feel like. Oh my Lord. Well, you know who's good at math or maybe bad at us out of here because they keep giving us too much money ? Who knows? Who knows? All of our incredible battle passholders who support us over patreon. com slash no clip, including see if you can find the new name Love Breast, YouTube Duane the Rock lobster, Anthony Thomas, Nico Paseteri, it's Ami Ferrario. I've Anthony Thomas has just gotten residual Italian because of the other two. I just alian I couldn't help myself because I knew I was about to cross the border . 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I'm looking forward to recording that actually it should be this week, sorry I forgot recording on a Tuesday. We were recording a Tuesday. Yes, later this week. As by the time we listen to this, it might already be up. All right, we got some games to talk about today . Tony Hawkesports Gater three and four, the altars . Jeremy has been playing dead stranding, not the new one , the retro dead stranding . But first of all, Frank, we've started , you know, we clip clopped in here on the back of some fantastic anime , video games , so why not keep the good party going? How was Animation Expo known colloly in LA as Anime Expo? It is. And as I've been telling my Japanese friends, it's like Komicette in L. A. Comic is the giant Tokyo thing. That was the equation. Yeah, AmXpo twenty twenty five was really fun. I've been going to AmXpo for almost twenty years. Like every time I go, it's under like a different context and so it's but yeah, I mean this year different context what do you mean like it seems like you are always opening new fandom doors yes. Well there's also been times where it's like I'll go with different girlfriends and I'll be dragged all their things or like doing artist sally stuff or like many years working at Mega sixty four booth, things like that this year though the biggest thing that happened to Amexpo is I met the creator of spawn creator of Venom, Todd McFar lane. This has been a five year pursuit to try to meet Tom McFarlane. Whoa. I'm not kidding. I've gone to like LA Comicon, specifically to meet Todd McFarlane. I show up and it turns out they rescheduled their meeting greet for n ine AM in the morning and didn't tweet about it, which makes me think that never happened to lie . But that was the first thing you said to him. No, I told him what did I tell? I forget I just geeked, I told him g Iun likeslinger spawn the most, but yeah, I finally got to meet Tom McFarland. It was so bizarre, weird. Tom McFarland did a panel at the Sega Booth for like thirty people talking about his persona figure. He came out and it's like hey, folks Tom McFar herelane talking about persona three unload I got my figure like it's on the back whatever but it was so cool. I love Tomic Farlane he is so eccentric. He's the owner of image comics. I listened to like all of his interviews , podcasts. I still bi spawn every week . So just being front row for a panel that no one at Animexba knows is going on or cares about, but it's like Tomic Franz right in front of me. So that was really cool. Outside that this year for the first time in Anime So they actually had Joshi wrestling . So which was amazing because all it's also a thing not most people care about at Animix, but again, everyone's very excited about VTubers , horse girls, things like that, real , you know, people that less interesting. But for me , it was cool. There was like panels every day. And so I would just keep going to like the wrestling area and basically like just keep walking into the wrestlers I wanted to meet. So it was another weekend of me like practicing Japanese, going up talking to these wrestlers. And for some of these people, it was like the second or third time I met them . And so there's one wrestler Reya Sedo I was showing her photos and she was like, oh, I remember from what I saw a few months ago . And so yeah, I was like just ecstatic because like to me it was like almost like WrestleMania weekend where it was like less about the normal anime expo stuff but more so like, oh I'm just seeing all these wrestlers every day . Wh wasere the anime where was the wrestling section? Because this happens in the hallowed halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center, of course, which was the home of E three, the electronic triple for a long time and I would almost go to Anime Expo just to walk the halls of the LACC . It's it's a really nice convention sitter. I do like it. So there's it's always confusing because there's like the West Hall and the South Hall but the, South Hall is like north yeah, it's like northeast of the I don't know. So why they didn't just say north and south is very confusing. But they don't want to incite the civil war again so outside the way anime exposed laid up is like the left side of the con is the dealer's hall, the artist alley. The top right of the con is like the entertainment hall, which is like they'll have like concerts, they'll have cosplay stuff like, just a giant hall of like big giant interactive booths outside in the sun . They're in the far right corner, they set up a wrestling ring like merch in a Boutothograph area and that's where all the wrest ling stuff was . And so again, it was like it was like a thing that was like hidden from the convention. Like I feel bad because I feel like if they had better placement or if it was like even marketed even better, more people know about it. But the inverse of that is like because so few people knew about it, it was so easy for me just to go up and immediately talk to the wrestlers. Like there was no also like the wrestlers that were sent out for this show are all of like Japan's like freelancers and like mid card talent for the most part. So most people like don't know who these people are . So it was really again very funny. Like I walked up to there's in Stardom the Anabas sisters and I didn't know that one of them was going to be there. And so I was just a. And she looked at me and the first thing she said was Stardom. She pointed at my hat and they like freaked out like, oh my god, like not in a bad way, which is what I expected, but they generally were like, oh my god, there's a stardom fan here in California. What the hell? Like, 'cause even Stardom itself is a hyperniche, but like , so yeah, I was very elated. And then yeah, Rest of Amix was stuff. I'm trying to think like any game stuff at all. You mentioned the person a three thing. Yeah . There was presumably some of the horse girls stuff was there as well. Yes I used to ask you guys this in our meeting because I was like 'cause you were all about like doing a quick look for this and I was like, I don't know, man maybe like I get that it's like, you know, if it's it's it's, you know, it's it's not our core sort of mission of highlighting indie games and all this sort of stuff, but then also we do quick looks of big games people are expecting. And this kind of falling between the cracks. And then I have one of those moments where I was like, Is my phone listening to me? Because for instance on Instagram, for the next week, the only ads I were getting for this girl horse game, which is name I will never be able to remember . They know you're into it. That's what it is. I just want to bet on horse race. Apparently apparently maybe when I was in Vegas and they were like, oh this guy's a little easy, you know, we'll get him with all the gotcha games or whatever. But I want to say that . That's exactly. So the you said you said that streamers have been playing it and stuff like it's it's legitimately picking up . It's like a mongus level. Like it is rated skyrocketing. Yeah, right . And so it's so funny because the booth the company that owns it I think it's called Cry Games or Ki games CY games right,? CY games games . All of their merch for Tech about that. All of their merch for the game sold out in the first hour of the convention. Like this blew up and they didn't expect all the battles all the they had like t shirts and stuff and like that all sold out. But like there's so much merchandise of this stuff in Japan that it won't it's not an issue but like yeah they had like giant statues, they had a clogging where people can get stuff they, had activations. I hate that term, but like, oh, if you follow our Twitter, you get pins. So I got horse girl pins and things like that. There was people cosplaying it, but yeah, it kind of was like it was also a thing where this is so new in terms of like for the Western audience, that like artist sally didn't, there's so few so little of it there. There were there was like a horse umamus cosplay meetup. I wasn't there for that. My friend took pictures. There was lots of cosplayers of it. But outside of that in terms of game stuff, like not a ton of things. Peach Milky was there at our booth and I was I was glad she remembered me and we chat a bit, which was always fun. Nice. Sega had some Yakuza stuff going on. Even at Sega's Booth, I forget like lots of merchant stuff, but in terms of like demoing games, it's usually not ame expos. It's always like VTubers and things like that. A lot of trading card stuff . But yeah, it's always just fun to walk around seeing all the cosplayers, talking to friends, big for having their booth. Rocko was cosplaying as Indiana Jones. Very fun. Indiana Jones. I didn't get the chance to check it out. Although I was invited for it, but at the same time the Tom McFarland persona three panel, there was a persona concert . They had Lynn, the vocalist for person a five there do a small show. And then at that show, they announced in twenty twenty six, they're bringing like the persona live concert experience to Tour North America. So that would be a really cool thing to keep which is video games live, isn't it? Is that is it connected to that or not? Is it Tommy Talerico? No, it's its own Tom Talico invented music, okay? He's got Mom is very proud. Exactly. Yeah. That's why I had to salad house he' 'scause had to buy a bigger house. It's its own like stage show like with giant lights and all that sex they're bringing that out here, but yeah, and then everyone's always like cosplaying his video game stuff, but you mentioned the uma musime that I say right? Um seum, uim Mus is there what's the is there any sort of male centric cosplay opportunities there? Like is there like a horse owner or like a I mean there's just guys cosplaying as the horse girls, so exciting. So I don't think there's any male characters that exist in the game unless it's just a suit. How do they make more horses? Yeah. I'm asking the wrong questions. Never mind. Never mind. I feel like I know what the answer is enough merchandise when the horse rolls retire then they fall in love with you. That's what they that's what the idea I think I was asking this lad because what I for some reason in my head what was happening was these old holes because they're all based on on known horses, but all the ones I googled were all dead twenty years . So I was like, oh, what they did was they injected these you know like all anime stuff, especially when it comes to like girls in school . A lot of them end up having this like real weird backstory to it. I was like, oh they just like got these girls from like for their shots one time in like the sixth grade and they injected them with like the essence like a vaccine. This is their hepatitis B shot . The B stands for Borcitus. Yeah, hepatitis A. The B stands for Ah, that's good. Well done. Exactly. I was thinking it was gonna be like , this is what heaven is like for horses. Like your spirit moves on and you become an animator still gets to run. They just have to like you die at your cubicle and you wake up in a cubicle. That sounds like a dream. Nice. I like the idea that everyone has their own heaven. Like my heaven would be the heaven is a half pipe heaven, you know? That was gonna say heaven is a half life. It's a half. That's what I was expecting . I should do that. I'll just be saying that's what Gordon Freeman is in sci aence fiction horror world for the rest of eternity. That sounds great. It's a really tough . Tony Hawk two does have skaters heaven, so it does. You're right. Yeah. Was heaven and heaven and a half I was never in an ATHBS soundtrack . I don't believe . I don't think so. Jessie shrugging, you even know this song? Is this like the you're speaking a different language to me at this point? If for a week at least in heaven, I can skate. Am I the only person who knows this album is crazy? Shirley, Frank, you know the song? I don't think I'm familiar with it now. Jeremy? That was a good song though. No was this PM was OPM? Yes, was this like ? Was this one of these songs that like was for an American band that only was popular in Europe? That would be that would be maybe a disturbed might be. It's sound like you've been the Digimon the movie soundtrack. Oh my digimon fans and what's up. W.ow These are saw. Probably. There's a Digimon for everything, if you think about it. Yes, there must be Rice. Yeah. There's one that has two guns for some. Just two pistols, just like a cowboy. Is there like a weed digimon? So like a exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Probably Juggle Digimon . Probably Isaby Clown did Clown Digimon. Yeah . Anyway , don't say anyway. We're not done talking about Digimon. No, we can move on. Wait, it's okay. Last time we talked about Digi Bond, it was a race again shut up about it. Now we're chilling in the hot tub. Oh yeah , Namco Bandai. They did have a boot. That was the thing is like there were booths games, but it's like, oh I saw this that gay. I saw this summer gay fest. I don't need a wait line to play it like, but yeah, so Namkai Namco Bandai I always messed that up too. So good. It's probably yeah, it's probably nord when I reach out look like his bando stop dai. I was saying whatever. Nam Dikazooi, is that I don't know. Yeah, that's symbols. So Namco Bandai did have a booth there. They had Code Van Zoom, I'm assuming they hadigit aal D gameplay. I think it was just their same summer game since lineup. I forget, yeah, now I think I think there are several game studio places that had demo stations, but it's like that stuff I just played. But yeah, I'm excited when that digital one game came out like the fall. October, I think. Okay, okay. Jesse is making the point that nothing is coming out at the moment because the steam sail is on. So everything's coming out next week. There's like a bunch of a bunch of indie shenanigans coming out We talked about it a little bit so let's should I just get my Tony Hawk minute out of the way here hock hock two I'm saying move over baby. This is Hawk three and Hawk four Tony Hawks awful Tony Hawks pro skater three and four is out from the folks and Iron Galaxy over in Chirok . They are they've put out a collection much like the Tony Hawk Proskater one hundred two that came out a couple of years back. This one is three and four. Three of course is, sort of tradition al early THPS game and four had a bit more sort of open world mission style stuff as Frank has talked about over the past couple months on the podcast here and they have reduced that down. They've tak en out sort of the open free roaming mission style of THPS four and made it a two minute sort of session run based thing much like one, two and three . And yeah, the collection is out technically on Thursday . We record these on Tuesday morning. They unlocked it for people who are sickos, who wanted the limited edition, exclusive edition, whatever it was. A premium edition , which I got so that we could play the foundry demo. And we did a quick look of that over on NoClip Crew for now a couple of weeks back . Today XP three and four, Frank you. t Houaveched this yet at all? You haven't unlocked your one? No, I'm waiting for game pass, which I think unlocks Thursday or Friday. Yeah, so I haven't like seen anything of it. I'm excited for it, but yeah, I'm curious about how you're enjoying it. So I would say there is very little to report that is out of the ordinary . Everything about this feels very much like the THBS one and two remaster that came out. The menu is very similar. The setup is similar. You pick a skater . You can jump into the career mode of three and four . Each skater has a percentage for how much of that they have completed. There is a fairly large roster. It's like maybe, I don't know, maybe almost thirty skaters quite a lot. They have them almost divvied up into like here 's the young crew. Here's here's the established folks you remember and and then here's some younger folks like we don't know where to put Riley Hawk and Nigel Huston now because they're they're old as well but they used to be young so they have a good break breakup of that. The levels, you know, if you saw the foundry stuff, it's it's very much that like they it looks good. It looks the same as one and two did the levels how much you enjoy them is very much based on how much you enjoyed those games probably a large drip of nostalgia. I really enjoyed there's some places that hadn't been forever, like that airport level, that other San Francisco level that I keep getting that's in four that I keep getting confused with the San Francisco level from one the it has the revert stuff in both three and four so you can extend your combos outside of oh wait that was in two. So what it's the transition thing, right? It's the bowl transitions. That's in this one as well. So you've got loads of opportunities to extend your scores. Same as any of these games. I played for two hours last n ight. I had unlocked almost all the games by that stage. If you know the levels, a large part of these games is remembering, you know, oh, how do I knock the snow down on the bully in the Canadian level or you know whate,ver? How do I wear the pumpkins in the college level at the start of THPS four , all that sort of stuff? I will say I think the delta in graphics isn't as impressive obv,iously. So in a weird way, I wish I could like hit a button and see what three and four looked like because in my head they look a bit sharper, but obviously one and two were PlayStation one games , three and four were PlayStation two games . So maybe it feels a little for whatever reason it doesn't have it doesn't feel as, you know , as much of an upgrade like I remember what one and two looked like and how shitty the frameway was on the PlayStation and all that stuff when I'm playing them . And I think I played three on PC predominantly actually when I was growing up. So it doesn't feel as crazy a leap. I will say the bay the one asterisks which people have reported on prior to this is the soundtrack . They there's a bunch like whenever a song that I member from three and less of four come on, I'm really jazzed , but like, you know, they have ninety six Guy Bitter Beans by CKY in there, Delta Funky Homo sapiens in there , a bunch of ones you'll remember, but I was like last night looking up THPS three soundtracks to be like, I know they're missing loads and yeah, I think there was a there's a report out from I think it's video game chronicle today on a post on Reddit I saw that said twenty percent of the soundtrack of this one is based on the original soundtracks. I think that's a little bit misleading because they have added a lot so that's going to sort of spread out that number a little bit. There's a bunch of Mick Gordon tracks in here because they have doom there's a revenant and a dooms slayer model in here. So they have music from a bunch of the doom games in here, which I immediately turned off all of it because it's just totally completely inconsistent with the experience of playing this game. Yeah, and aside from that, it's just, hey, man, it's Tony Hawk. It's a it's a it's a good time. I think the nostalgia on these ones hits a little bit softer for me than the original one did because THPS two is definitely my favorite of the bunch. Three is probably my second favorite, but you know, for whatever reason yeah, it's not quite hitting those levels, but yeah, otherwise it is very widely sees why you get if you played the first one of these remakes, then it's basically what you're going to expect, I imagine. Is there a clear reason that they did this sort of like rewrapping of four into the traditional format of one, two and three instead of doing the sort of like career mode. Like I wasn't sure if there was a rationale behind that or it was just to be cohesive with the other ones. The reporting on it suggested that it was a decision that they sort of hemmed and hawed over a little bit , but I never heard like a definitive why they did it. I imagine look, if I'm guessing, this is Iron Galaxy doing this. So this is a third party stud io that's been hired do this remake. They did not do the first one, right? Who did the first one? Was that Vicarious Visions? It was the studio that was like decimated work on Diabolo after. Yes, they're based just out of Nevado here as well in the in the North Bay. Whereas Iron Galaxy are prolific for higher studio and I suspect it was just it's going to cost a lot more and take a lot more time for us to do the open , you know, open world for the time , you know, free roam version of THPS four. So I think they and like I get like , you know, Frank is more familiar with the HPS four, but like I think I don't necessarily think it's the most compelling version of an open , you know, the thug kind of did it better , right? Frank . Yeah, like four was the growing pains to get to Thug. And like the biggest thing is like with four is like there's NPCs on the map and they all have voice set not all but a lot of them have voicing lines. So like having to record that and do all that it's like I mean again as a purist, I'm like, oh my but thing the that always annoyed me was like if they're calling it a they're calling it a remake, but in all the marketing it's like it's classic mode. We don't have the original stuff so it's like it's not a remake but it's not demake but it's I don't know the thing I'm so curious with is like how many goals does the Tony Ark four level have because in Tony Arc four each stage had like fifty goals. So is it just ten goals now? Is it still fifty? Like how many did they score like crunch a bunch? Like what are the actual goal is for Tony Ark? That's interesting. I didn't realize there was quite that many in the four ones. I would say it feels like twenty percent more than a three level. It might be the exact same. I'm not sure, but it seemed like yo it was, you know, okay, a pro score, six score, high score, high combo , skate , secret tape , yeah, right ? A lot of people don't make that connection by the way. Same with no cliff and then and then more bespoke ones I feel like in what's in there's an Iron Galaxy pickup in every level as well, which I think is new and then I would say that the it seems like the ones in four are more novel than the ones in three. The three ones are more, you know, do and those going over the gap or do a da da here. They have the skater out there with the with the taking the photographs and stuff. But it's not no, it's not like a massively hugely exhausted exhaustive list or anything like that and the unlock process is the same. It's it's just adding up a certain amount until you unlock the next level and you can spread those out across the various ones. And then they have I think it's the same as two. They have the attribute P upointgrades that you pick up, they have the money that you can pick up. They have the stores you can buy. I bought my toy machine deck again, got my spitfire wheels, got my they don't have I don't think they have truck manufacturers but I pick the onesed that look closest to Royals. Can't pick your bearings, any of that shit, obviously. You can pick if your Mongo or Mongo and Switch. It's all the same stuff that's in one and two , largely on that end . So if I've never played any of the Tony Hawk games that people like, I've never gotten into that series. Okay, I have friends who did and I skateboarded. The only Tony Hawk game I ever played was Ride, the one with the plastic Tony Hawk game. That's the only hot game ever played . I know, right? That's like the only final fantasy I've ever played thirteen. That's not true, but it was for a while. Okay. I know. It's disgusting. That's the only Orson Welles performance you saw was in that ad for the champagne. For the wine. Oh ex yeactahly. That's all I know of it's that in pinky in the brain which isn't him, but he's doing an Orson Wells I literally that's not even a joke. I didn't know who Orson Wells was until like seven years ago most of my life he was drunk or which I think was most of his life too. Yeah, there's yeah, does this work as if I wanted to play Tony Hawk for the first time? Do you think this is the right way to play three and four or should I go back and play the original ? Did you play the one and two one? I never played any Tony Hockey except for Tony Hawk Ride with the skate. But you also never didn't play the one and two remake that came out. No, I didn't play that either. Go play that. Yeah. Yeah. Don't play three and four. Where's the best? If you like that one, then good then play this like but it is but if I wanted to play if you want to play I would say play this three this is basically what it I don't know Frank, I think like I think the one and two remake are ninety, eighty percent the same as one and two if you were to play out on a PlayStation except for it feels different because the controls were different, the frame rate was different, . you know The, the contro ller you had was different. You know what I mean? But it's but it's like a very it's a it's not even like a black mace to half life thing. It's like pretty much the same, right? Frank . The biggest difference is you can manual in one and I think you can also do reverts in Tony Oc one remake and that's like jarring. So like original Tony Oak one it's like you can grind and go off half pipes and like that's it. So it's like the score mechanics are different, but other than that in terms of the level layout and goals are identical . you If just want to have a good time, yeah, play one in two remake. You don't need to like, oh, this is how with the settlers dude it back then like it's, you know I'm so skeptical of four though. Like having so I would say Tony Oak three, you play this yeah, go nuts. Four, I feel like to truly appreciate thug, you have to play four and it's raw on this. Because I also like the voice acting in four is so cheesy. It's like, hey, I'm Tony Hawk. I'm going to teach you how to do a kick flip. Yeah, it's like bad funny and I like it. Yeah, none of that stuff is in here unfortunately. Yeah , it's they basically converted the four levels into three or two levels. That's yeah, yeah. Tony Hawk four is like a mumble gore movie. Like it's like the tone of it is like they're just like, Hey man, we're making a video game. Could you just like say something and they're like, Hey, really, I lost my shoes over there. Could you go get them? They're like,, that ye'ahs good enough. Please. It's really that for fifty times per level. That's why I it's like, hey, man , well they'll have like Ollie the Bum and it's like Drake Drum mers see the pre elephants. Could you fry them? It's all just like courses . Yeah . Yeah. I like four a lot. I'm a big fan of four. Maybe it was like, I don't know if it's the couple years a few years of age difference where it like hit at the right time for me, but like I of the first four, I think one and four were the one cool for me. Nice. Four, I remember four looked really good as well. Four was like there was a lot of advancements in three D tech then. Even though Thug outclassed so much on the sort of like narrative structure and stuff. I do feel like going from one, two, and three to four, it did feel like it was this leap forward in game design where it was like, oh, now Tony Hawk has like levels. Like it's like a world. It's not just like these little sort of like instances.' Its feel its like continuous and I don't know living and breathing is a little fucking overstated for what it's doing, but being a there's like NPCs you can talk to. That's a lot of game feel you get out of that . And like that's the experience of skateboarding is you have a town, you have one big level and you go find the spots and you work the spots . And I think if you were like skating around then the evolution of into something like that, especially a thug because thug feels like a big world, you know, it opens up slowly and yada , but yeah, four kind of walked so Thug could run, if you like yeah, but you should definitely do that Jesse they're really good games and what Frank was saying about the manuals, the basic main scoring mechanic in these games is getting combos so just like not breaking your chain. So essentially you could use manuals and like reverting when you got out of a half pipe or transitioning into another bowl to just keep your combo going. But in the first game the original version, if you weren't grinding or if you went up a half pipe, you basically ended your your combo because you just come back down and then oh, well, you know what you meant to do now and you couldn't connect rails unless you jumped from a rail to a rail, but you can manual between everything. So you're just like constantly manualing and constantly grinding and constantly transitioning and it's ridiculous. So it definitely makes the some of the combo scores in those games a little bit easier. I think they might have put them up though in some of them. I found the ones in three and four to be very, very catchable without even specials. So I don't know what was going on because I just made my own character and of course I had the fucking nine hundred as my special . So I was like never using it because it's like half a second too long if you go up if you don't go up if you don't get a high enough pop and you tend to not if you're a created character, you don't have the stats high enough really. So that' thats's like my favorite disconnect to the Tony Hawk games is you'll be with these pros around the time that it's like, wow, Tony Hawk did like the nine hundred. This is like a physically inconceivable thing. And then it's like Thug is like, you're some fucking kid from New Jersey who, was doing like , you know, a fucking side flip over a helicopter. He would be he would be the entire world would know your name if you were doing that shit. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's good safe. THES three and four. Any more questions before we move on ? Available now. I didn't know it was on GamePass. That's pretty cool. How much is it? That's what literally I was just about to look up. I think it's what did I pay for it? It's forty nine dollars ninety nine cents or if you're a sicko like me, it's sixty nine ninety nine cents. Nice. Nice But yeah playing some Tommy Hawk a couple of days early shout, out to the folks at Iron Galaxy for putting that one out there. Good job . Dave blank . Thanks gone back All right, let's move on . Let's talk about the altars, Jesse Grasha. This is a game I really enjoyed. I think it was one of the games I talked about on NextFest last year Super weird getting just eleven bit joint. They just make fucking weird Eastern European nightmares and this is a pretty cool one. I don't know how far to go into this you know, I feel like the conceit of the game is in the kiosk. You can't talk like here's the thing. I was thinking about this exact conversation because you know how much you've listened to I knew you were going to be like , should we talk about this? You cannot avoid . Yeah, you cannot avoid the fact that this is a game about clones. Yeah . It's on the cover. Like you can't, you can't buy it without seeing. It's called the altars, which is like you can't. So okay, it's not that type of alter. It's alter you know. Or is it spoilers? No, there's the spoilers . It's Why does that keep it happening? Is it under the religious tag on steam ? They must have a tag. Yeah, that's a tag. It must be right. I am Jesus Christ has that. Does it? You're goatie, it must. I don't know. Does faith have that? Maybe? No, there's not anti religion. Oh my god, I am Jesus Christ is the tags are simulation , adventure , indie , action casual, just a casual Messiah game. Oh, they got faith down there. If you scroll down far enough, faith is one of the tags. No, isn't it? Yeah , yeah, there's also God game. Yeah, I'm saying God game. That's good. They don't have it under God game. They do. People is fucking that is amazing and ridiculous . Oh my god. Tab real quick. Yeah, I'm in the faith is faith inful the faith tab? Forget the it is, it is. It is cold . That makes sense. Yeah. Becoming saint is probably on there. This is if you were like a super strictly religious person and you're like I'm just trying to find some like good religious games for my kids to play. This is the most like it's this is mostly not that . Is there like a secret like most of these games are anime games in the faith tab . Is there just like mad Buddhism going on in here or what is that? Taoism or anything, yeah. Probably a lot of this devotion in here, maybe. Oh my god. Ooh, honey, I enjoyed the cult. Nice. The Bible The Bible is here. They made a game out of the Bible. The developer is called Bible Games . I think it's like a Oh my god, it's a trivia game. You read the Bible and then it asks you who wrote the book of Timothy ? Oh, dude, you should have done that in SGQ, you would have crushed it. Annotations . You have to say what translation it's from? King Oh my God, word English Bible, King James Bible . They have the Dewey Reems eighteen ninety nine American edition That's a good one. The Biblias ata . The fuck is that? Like the vampire Bible? Wait, if you okay , if you go through the screenshots about like almost halfway, there's a screenshot of correct and false for presumably if you get a question right or wrong. Okay. Correct is like God's light shining down onto you and false is like eye of Soron Oh my god, it's like a it's a it's an eclipse an eclipse INRI baby holy shit buy you can also buy Muslim three D. This is on excuse me . Yeah. They did a three D version of Muslim. Fuck that. Yeah. They finally I know, right? I stick to two D . The transition to three D was a really tough time. And yeah, it was hard to pull that off in Islam. Yeah. Oh my god, it's way okay, this feels sacrilegious because the first screenshot is you're walking around Mecca and I know I'm not allowed there. So you're allowed there. Is an educational simulation begin your journey in virtual Mecca visit, the Holy Mosque, explore the virtual museum or go back in time to relive a historic moment. That sounds ominous. It opens like death stranding. You have to do Hajj for like takes you like three days. You got to wait. That would be awesome. That would be awesome. Try not try not to die of exposure while you're on the on the on the way there. The yeah, does this looks cool. It looks like PlayStation Home for Mecca. That looks exactly that's PlayStation . You can buy the Muslim three D original soundtrack. I should also mention that God game do have a soundtrack for the Bible listed the Bible soundtrack. It says coming soon , but yeah, it hasn't come out yet. So away for that. Wait, I can't tell if this review is being facetious or if this is a real thing, but it says looking forward to the online options also couldn't find the website to purchase NFTs which grant you infinite prayers . I don't that's got to be that's got to be fake, right? I can't be real . I don't know, man. I don't understand the world anymore. That could be the most real thing there. That might be the most real thing in Bible in the Bible two D . I don't know what to believe anymore. This faith section looks cool. We should play some of these games . Yeah. Muslim three D might be the funniest named thing I've ever heard in my life though. Yeah, it's up there. That's it's like they could have they could have come up with a name that had a little more sauce than . Mecca three D might have felt like sacrilegious or something. You know what I mean? Mecca three D also makes me think it's like a giant robot band. So that doesn't really work. Mecca warrior . You're right . There's a game here called the Unholy Priest. Manage a haunted funeral service as a priest in a cursed forest, buy our cremate sorry, bury our cremate the dead . Perform exorcism, fend off demonic possessions and quiet restless souls, survive terrifying encounters, maintain sanity, and experience the pinnacle of horror simulation in the unholy priest . This came out in April of this year . Holy I might have to play this. It's an early access. It costs seven dollars . You can also buy it in a pack with old market simulator. I don't know what that. You know about Super Noah's Arc three D, right? I don't . You don't? Oh man, do I have a doom clone for you? Super No , I have heard of this. Okay, yes. But I don't think I've definitely never played it. Is it on steam? Well, now it's on steam for four dollars arc three D. Oh my god. It's described as a nonviolent Christian first person shooter. Is that what it's called? I can't find it it. Is called? Oh, it's super three D Noah's Arc now on steam, I guess. Maybe it was always in there it is, yeah. These religious games love to tell you that they're three D . Well, this was from nineteen ninety four, so it's like the Holy Trinity, right? They don't, you know, it's important that it's the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit as the X, Y and Z es. Yeah, that's why whenever I'm doing blender, I'm always like I do like a up down left, right to remember that which one does the crash? Yeah. I like the Holy Spirits the Z axis? Yeah, probably. It depends if you're using blender or unity . You used to pay up or down. It depends on which Z or John Riczalo makes you pay for the Holy Spirit for every time you sell a game in a if you make it one hundred it's called tithing okay have some recipes. Hey man, the streets in Salic City were pretty fucking clean. Let me tell you that. So Mecca looks pretty clean in Muslim three D . It does. Let me say that. You've been to San Francisco recently, the godless San Francisco. Ironically San Francisco. San Francisco , Saint Francis of Assisi . If he had it his way, there'd be no city there. It would just be a big park full of animals. Well, we're talking about cities real quick. You did name, I swear we'll go back to talking about the altars at some point. You did name the city that Iron Galaxy's from Chicago You said Chi Rak? I did. Yeah. And I did not know what the hell you were talking about. I thought you really heard Chi Rak. I've never heard anyone call. I've heard, you know, Windy City. I've heard my kind of town, shout outs Frank Sinatra. But yeah, I did not know Chi Rak as a name for Chicago. Yeah. That's crazy. It doesn't necessarily. I have no idea where it came from, but because of like vi Stratoff. I would imagine the death rate probably lined up with something in Iraq at some point during the war, yeah. I don't know. Don't fuck around you preani green man. It's rough times. Let's get let's hit a jack on this religious section we stumbled into to talk about the godless game, the altars . Godless because they use the devil, don't they, Jessie. They use true. They use the whole thing as AI generator used the devil on one picture and the internet yeah. That's an interesting conversation. It is. We can have that after I explain the game. Yes. I would love to talk about it. Let's talk about the game first on its own terms. Sure. Yeah, let's explain it. So this is an AI generated game where everything's fake No, so the altars is I think honestly , one of my favorite games of this year is so awesome. I really, really like this game. So the altars is a third person crafting survival game, I guess is how you, would describe it. You play as Jon Dolski, who's been marooned on this planet . He works for a corporation. I can't remember the name. It doesn't matter. Call it like science tech, whatever you want. It's futuristic company or space man in the suit and you are trying to survive on this planet with the limited resources that are there . You also are as part of the crew that you were in, you have this giant wheel that is like the ship that you live in and it's full of shipping containers . It's like visually such a weird thing the planet is desolate. It has been destroyed by this sun that you know you orbit the sun. But as you pass it and the sun goes over part of the planet, it burns everything . So everything is like singed and dark and messed up. There's like lava flowing everywhere. It's really cool. But your ship that is a wheel, you have to maneuver it along the planet, not literally you just, pick the next point it's going to go to, and it requires a certain amount of resources. Now, of course, managing that giant spaceship and getting all the resources you need as one person on an alien planet might not be the easiest thing to do, so you have to create tars, which are like the other people that exist in the ship with you and can also go and perform tasks. They're sort of like your lemmings. And the altars are altered versions of J Doolhsnky created using unobtainium. They're like fake science fiction material. I think it's called Rapidium. The actual name . And you use that to create these clones, which I think is a really cool conceit narratively because the way that you do it is you go into the quantum computer and you can see all of the player character Yan's moments in life that are like pivotal like you can literally zoom in on the moments in life and see broke up with your girl friend. Car crash happens like all this . Yeah, your dad offers you a job and you say no because your dad's a bitch, like shit like that. It's really like and so when you go to do the altered thing , early on it's just there's one moment where there's an inflection point and you can select that. But as time goes on, you learn like, oh, there's other inflection points in my life where if I did something slightly different, instead of being just going on a space mission and having no direction in life, if I, instead of like letting my mom get beat up by my dad, if I beat the shit on my dad, I actually would have been a minor and like things change and all that sort of stuff, right? So it's really like it's actually a very interesting mechanic and it plays through narratively in a really good way. It's all done by one act or who does every single version of Yon, which is like so impressive. Some of them are a little silly. There's one that's like is a dude bro with a man bun who's like, Dude, just like chill out man and everything's fun. And I'm like, okay, yeah, that's the stereoty pe. If I needed to pick a character to play and I had twenty seven of them, I would do that too. So yeah, it's just that part of it, the story part is really, really good. The other half of it that's not in the base dealing with these different personalities conflicting is like a crafting game in that you are trying to mine resources. So like you'll see on the planet there are some lying around that you can just pick up or mining spots that you can interact with. But then there's other bigger spots that you have to build a mining outpost at. And you have to manage your resources in terms of connecting them the power of them to the main base and then also maintaining your storage. So it's a big management game in terms of resources. How much do you have? How much do you need to research something new or build something up? You have to be aware of different events that can take place like there's a magnetic storm that causes a bunch of problems on your ship and you have to prepare for that and have the same amount of resources that is requi red. So it's that back and forth of maintaining resources and maintaining your characters. You have to make sure that they're fed and that they're happy and that they're not losing their minds. One of them like self harms at a certain point. I will not say which one, but it's a really cool moment and it plays a big role in the story. So the way that you express yourself in the game and the way that you make choices both mechanically and narratively have a lot to do with how things play out over time. And the stakes are constantly rising. There's always some new challenge you need to overcome , which I just find so compelling. Like I can't stop playing it, which is hard to say for one of these guys. I do not like crafting survival games usually . So when this one is doing something, like if I'm tired of doing the crafting, I go back to the base, hang out with the altars , have fun with them. I'm like, I'm out like the okay, one other thing I want to mention before we talk about anything else or anyone has any questions . There is a lot of social stuff you can do in the game which I was surprised to find out and just see. Yeah, you can see the alters just having a conversation, which is really cool. Like they'll just talk or you can talk to them about what's going on, get updates on their life, sort of like just have regular conversations . But you can also build a social room . And in the social room, you can play beer pong. Like why can't you just play beer pong? It's so un like literally in first person you're throwing the ball trying to get it to land and then the other yon's doing it to you and you get drunk and it's like a little thing perk maybe or something like there it impacts their happiness Yeah, so they're more proud if you let them win but also I let the guy win and he was like, you just let me win, didn't you? And I'm like, No, man, I'm actually bad at this game. I swear, wink. What's the So when I played the demo, it was pretty structured around like, okay, we're gonna upgrade the, like you said, the spaceship is literally looks like a bicycle wheel that you were like within the spokes you were putting the rooms in, and then it just rolls to the next part of the planet, right? And then you sort of you have a new area. So I found that experience in the demo at least to be like it was open and that I could decide what I was doing, but the process was fairly linear. It was like because it was like, oh, I need to go out and collect this sort of stuff that's in this area, come back and build these rooms. And I could kind of do it in whatever order I wanted , but in general, what I was doing per area was pretty fixed. Is that the case? Because like a lot of survival crafty games are a bit more , you know, sandboxy and this felt like, oh, you're going from level to level still in this this. Yeah, is surprisingly a linear game. That's actually a really good point. It's not like survival crafty and minecraft sort of perspective of that or rust. Like you're designing anything outside of whatever you can do to collect the resources . But the resources that you need are explicit. Like you need a certain amount of organics so that you can move your ship to the next location. But sometimes you'll run into obstacles, like one of the first things you have to do in Act one is get over this lava river and eventually you get a scientist who can like research things, he'll figure out something etc , etc . It all builds on itself, but there are things that yeah, you do have to do. Like I said, the sun decimates everything that it hits. So you have a time limit that's stated to you every new day. It'll be like day fifteen, sun is far away. And then eventually it turns out oh shit the sun is coming. Do you have an oxygen limit as well? I remember I don't know No thing no. There's no like or there's a limit tether or something. I remember there being like a tether I had to extend. There's a limit to the amount of pylons you can build . So like you have only so many that you can connect and then you have to build up the resources to get more pylons so you can power things that are further away from the ship . And you have a certain amount of energy in your suit. So like climbing certain surfaces requires a certain amount of energy. Yeah. So that's one of the main things. Everything is a real like everything you want to do has some resource limit to it and you have to be cognizant of that and build around it. But like you said, it's mostly focused on building and getting what you need so you can get to the next point. It's a fun challenge. Like I thought that was going to be boring, especially as I continued playing through the game, I was like, this can only be fun one time. Nope. 'Cause there's lots of cool things that they introduce. Like there's these I will just call them anomalies or weird things that you see on the planet that mess with you in cool ways. Like sci fi wise, this is very clearly inspired by a lot of modern western sci fi, like almost to the point where you're like, isn't that kind of a rip off in certain points ? But it's still it does that then. And it also has this weird unique European spin on it. Like the Jon Dolski loves pierogies. Like that's his whole thing and his mom's pierogies . They talk about that a lot. They have these connections that seem culturally based but then also sort of idiosyncratic, like that's all done really well. There was one moment. I will not say anything specific, but there was a moment in this game that made me go , what the actual fuck did you just do on the screen? Even my wife who was sitting next to me who didn't give a crap because she doesn't like sci fi looked up and went, Excuse me, Jess, what is this game? Like I thought this was a crafting game. What's going on right now? So it gets weird. It gets really weird in its own unique, strange way . And I really, really like it. I want to see where it goes in the end, but ultimately, I think even where it is right now, I love it. Unless it doesn't do anything new or interesting, which I can't possibly imagine, this will probably end up being one of my games of the year. It's so much fun. Great to hear it. Yeah, the altars. I'm looking forward to to playing a bit more of it. It came out when was it? Was it just last month or yeah about three weeks ago or something? Which is pretty cool. Do we need to redecate the thing? So what I hear was that there was folks found that there was a screen inside the base that had used some generative AI imagery. I don't know if was it only this one image? I this had one texture and then they were playing . So there were a couple of things that I saw when the conversation sort of sprang up. If you missed the discourse, I'm happy. I wish I was you. For a brief period there, a bunch of people as Danny mentioned, noticed that there was some text on a unimportant ish panel that you kind of have to play with the camera angle to see if you're playing on console, I don't think you can read it because the resolution's too low and like it's all smeared. But basically it had a chunk of a chat GPT looking response of like you type in. Can you tell me this? And then it's like, oh yeah, here's a description. And then it gives you a bunch of text . And then another one was there are these movies you can watch in game that have subtitles, one of the subtitles in a different language was translated using Chat UBT assuming or yeah, that was the case. Nothing new for translations, to be fair. Machine language translations have always propped up in a bunch of different media. That's not an excuse. I'm saying it happens a lot . And there was some images that maybe were AI generated. Like there are portraits that you see when you do certain calls with people on Earth I remember like they might be. I remember seeing the key art when it first came out and thinking, I wonder if that was only because I don't think it is, but it was it was one of those things where and I think we all had the same conversation a bit indica about the key art because for I would I don't think there's a way that those old ladies have so many teeth in their mouth unless they change it as bad . Go look at the picture and count the teeth on some of those wrinkles are also very uncanny. There's literature lines uninterested. There's some stuff where I'm like hmm okay. There hey. The main character looks fine because it's probably the model they have but yep. Yeah, it's an interesting conversation to have because like I understand the frustration. I hate generate A. WeI've talked about it on this pod multiple times. I think it's bad. I think it's bad for the industry. Even using it in production, obviously, it can leak through and that's not a great thing. But also, I think if we're only getting mad when we see it, then we're not getting mad at the reality of it. Like I think most , you know, don't quote me. I've done a little bit of research, but a lot of big games have been using generative AI and not just recently. Like the outer worlds used generative AI voice technology , they did a whole feature with the company they worked with in pre production when making the game. So like this is not a new phenomenon. That was in the final game or no, they used it when they were deciding how they wanted to do some of the performances I am embedded with a couple of games at the moment and anyone that they have any voice work at all, they're using AI voice at the moment. Like they're not going to use them for the final ones. But then I say the final ones, the finals is a game that does use for the announcers. It uses machine learning voice stuff . And they've given their reasonings for that and said they paid the people above board yada all that sort of stuff. But we've had these conversations before, right? It's yes. It's this case by case thing where, you know, no one's given out to us for like I use content aware fill on Photoshop for the past four years. Is that gener ative AI now? Maybe I don't know. Is it like no one would have been mad at the alternator about this if they, didn't have the prompts still left in the translation of the text, no one cared. Like Expedition thirty three had a similar problem where there was a handful of textures on a pole in the early game that were clearly AI generated and they were replaced after the fact and it just kind of came and went. Well, you're having a lot of studios doing it as well because of the funding stuff because especially last the past two years nobody was funding games based on pitch decks anymore, you basically had to have some version of what you're saying. And then it's a case of money and time and everything else and people were spitting out these versions or even just mood trailers that were based on that stuff . Like it has become a tool for people to to , you know, do stuff faster and cheaper games you like and games you don't like. And I think that's a big it's tough. It's tough. Like we're we're clearly in the middle of this thing and trying to draw the moral lines is tricky and some people's are earlier than others and some are like late than others. Yeah. So it's it's a bit funny. Like I don't, think the alter s loses any of its quality artistically just because the stuff is there. Like I feel this is the conflict that I have personally, right? This is my sort of cut off point is like the game is still impressive. It's still very artistically driven. It's clearly it has a vision. It comes from a specific culture that drives that vision . It has a lot of love for sci fi, although I do think it's a little funny that a game that's about like taking a bunch of sci fi ideas and cramming it down, use generative AI in its production. Oh, also, there's a scientist in the game, like I said, who's like very optimization driven. The game kind of pokes fun at him. At a certain point, he's like, you guys just don't appreciate the joy of AI fueled ec iclic jazzt , which is like they're making fun of this guy and it's like you guys are doing it. So that's funny. On the one hand as in particular is a funny, right considering how much the human touch is so critical to enjoying that. Eclectic AI fueled jazz is just the what was that old connection? Old connection, sorry guys, to the internet, like the fuckin' the dial up sound. That's AI fueled eclectic jazz. Yeah, that's what it sounds. I wish the same thing sang every time . So yeah, I just it's a real tough spot. I think on the one hand , don't do that like you don't need to, right? Especially for text, like just write whatever. Use Laura Mipsen. We already have that . On the other hand , I get like there are economic reasons to need to do it. Like Danny pointed out, there are legitimate points to it. Maybe there's funding behind it in some cases. I don't really know what the specifics are, especially with eleven years. I can see the reason why you would use this, like yeah all it looks like. Everyone uses it. I haven't been to a restaurant in the last four months where I haven't overheard a conversation of somebody being like, yeah, I use AI for this. I'm like, you're a doctor. Don't say that. I guess I'm saying is you're saying like you don't need to use you could use Laura Mipsum. I think like there's when one of the problems they run into like I'm not a game developer, so what do I know? But like in the conversation I'm having with people is that like previous versions of how this stuff was done was just gray boxing, right? And then certain games, you do need to do an art pass at a certain stage to make sure that there's no considerations that need to be made before you go with the final look of stuff and I do understand like the thing about making anything and especially games that are so complex is like any piece of software you can use to make the boring fucking work go faster you want to do, especially on these smaller teams. Obviously, we're running into a problem where this is creating problems with junior positions, probably more than anything else. And the people who are on these smaller, like games right now unfortunately are in this terrible economic position where the games that are doing really well, a lot of them are either from very, very, very, very small teams or teams that are full of folks that are of a particular ability, like veterans of the industry or folks who've been around a long time. Those people don't want to have to fucking do all that work or manage five people to do all that work. That's why it's a bit like it's it's the conversations we often hear about outsourcing and about like buying assets used to be the bad version of this as well, right? And I do think AI is there's all of these other implications with machine learning or baking these brains or whatever it is that is about how much energy we're using and stuff like that. But again, it's sort of a selective argument we're making on that and then people are taking airplanes and not complaining or doing this and this and this. But anyway, I think like I can see the use case for it and ultimately it sounds very similar to , you know, I'm not saying I'm I hate generative AI stuff. I think machine learning can be used in interesting ways. Obviously ethical ways when it comes to like medicine or whatever that way, I think in other ways, there's probably implications for it. I think the people running these companies are shit heads and the way that they're trying to sell a lot of this stuff is on content churring bullshit or replacing people's jobs. So I get why the sensitivity exists, but I do think maybe there's an element of throwing the baby out with the bathwater if you're looking at a game like this, which is like from a small Eastern European team who've clearly made a very artistic game that is also fun. And like let's cut them some slack, maybe it's just a fucking screen. Like who fuck, you know, like, I get it. That's how we get to AI generated video games 'cause you cut someone a slack six years ago. No, I'm just if it's happening, it's happening. That's the problem. Yeah. If it's going happen to, it's going to happen. Like there's I don't know if there is a commercial like a market ing of a bottle, right? Like a market reaction to this that is going to be enough that is going to from both a corpor ations are going to corporate and also from a there are situations where creatives want to use it for . You know what I mean ? And yeah, you know, it's not just content turn and bullshit that's going to want to use this. There are going to be use cases where it makes sense to people. Like in the same way the ProcGen is that we didn't we didn't, you know, and again I'm not I'm trying really hard not to be a fucking not not to be a devil's advocate for forgiver of this shit, but like this is one of these situations A sixteen Z money got to your head man exactly. Fuckin' hell . I think a lot of what you're saying is really valid. I think the sort of like bit of nuance I'd like to inject here is that for most imaginable use cases if it is temp art that is like going in and is designated as temp art, it should be clockable as temp art . Like there are sort of like multiple passes where it's like do like a quick rough and dirty texture for something. We'll see how it looks, see how like the colors play with the world and see like cohesion and stuff. But I think that those things can be done very, very quick and dirty in a way that is like very clearly temp and still serves the purpose of seeing how they look in context. Whereas like yeah, I don't know. I guess I would need to speak with someone who was using this technology to try to understand a use case where generative AI is saving that much time by generating a texture to put it into the world as opposed to like , you know, like hopping into like a sprite and just having the right sort of like color palette and just drawing like the most rudimentary programmer artist Imagining you're texturing a big fucking wall that had vines coming down at it. You ask you prompt you ask a prompt engine to make that for you. It makes it you put it in or you spend fifty minutes drawing it yourself. Like that's that's but there's but there are but there's like an unbelievable amount of creative commons open source public domain textures for vines, for rocks, for all of these things. You could layer them. I could take two of those and combine them in Photoshop in about thirty seconds or if it's a matter of like color scheme , I could just like grab a picture of rocks that's public domain and draw green lines on it if you want to see how it fits into the world. I just struggled you can also just say red I'm not making the moral argument for it, but there is there is no argument No, no using text using prompt for this stuff isn't orders of magnitude faster. And then we're only talking about one thing. If you're arching an entire place and you're just trying to get this done and you're behind schedule and it's Friday and you're working remote and you're a contractor. Like this is how this stuff happens. It's it's not the moral argument isn't the tip of the spear. It's it's all the and then it slips through the crack s. You know what I mean? Like I'm with you. It's not but this is this is how this stuff I feel like happens. Is it just I guess I'm not making like a moral argument so much as I'm making like a product ion pipeline argument about like I think the amount of time it saves in the minds of people who are advocating it is overstated because I think the only reason is if it needs to be something that is like not clockable as temp art. And then it's hard for me to understand like what sort of intermediary role that plays where it's like good enough to go in the game, but it can't go in the game. But you know what I'm saying? Like I think people put their stuff in games. The only reason they don't is 'cause they don't want to piss off gamers. I think otherwise they would , a lot. Yeah, I think for sure. But like if we're so look, in fairness, I am making the argument that this was temporar. It mightn't have been , like, this might have been , who knows if they were just a reaction. Yeah. Or it's a texture artist that they hired that then went and did a bunch of it. We've heard that one a lot where people have like, oh, we contracted this person to do a logo or whatever it was and then it ended up being that they used a bunch of similar problem, right? Like Chris Brat's done that documentary about the way that people are abused in Asian companies where they're like outsourcing work and then it's outsourced again and it ends up there and these people are being abused. It's like they're bound to do that, right? They're bound to if they have a workload they can't possibly hit, they're going to end up doing that. Yeah, what do you even do if we if none of the text in this game was explicitly had a little prompt in it. What do you do like are we gonna have every single writer's work go through an AI checker, which is also inaccurate? It's also driven by exactly. Like there's no the genie out of the bottle. There's no solution to this problem anymore , I feel like other than just like incredibly strict monitoring of work, which is also not conducive to quality art . And like, what do you do? Like we're so far removed from even having the debate anymore of whether or not this is morally good. It's just like it's happening. What do we do about that? And I don't know if we're there yet. I might be wrong on this. And this is where I think I share the most common ground with most people on this is that I don't I'm trying to think of a proxy that's like this, but like when I see that stuff , my toes curl , I just don't like it like artistically . Like in probably that has a lot to do with how it's made and why it's made and all that sort of shit as well. But it reminds me of like no offense to anyone who listens to our podcast who like is one of those cartoonists under the Eiffel Tower or in Times Square. You know that art that people draw? A caricature? Caricat , that stuff makes me sick too. I fucking don't like how that shit looks. It looks like somebody got a bad caricature done twenty five years ago. There's a dude on the Santa Monica boardwalk right now listening to this and he's like, I'm fucking unsubscribed or we talked before about guys with the fucking paint cans who make the like planets , right? Like yeah, the planets, that's what AI is to be. And I don't like it because of the process, because of the cheapness of it because that stuff throw away as well. Like those guys are just spray caning that shit so they can it makes money and they can da da da da. And so I think the one thing that is good at least is that people see that stuff and it just turns their stomach because it's so gross and weird and usually doesn't fit the rest of everything else . And that's going to be the saving grace of this stuff. The worry is I think if it gets past the point, if it crosses the Uncadi valley of this is gross into this is undecipherable from AIRS, like I had that with Inzoy with two a bit where it was actually really hard to spot the parts that were that way or this way. And then they had their own generator in the game for making textures , which if that was something that existed in a little big planet fifteen years ago, I wouldn't have said boo about it , but with all of this stuff and then I used it in the game and I was like, it kind of made what I want the curtains I wanted it to make, right? You know what I mean ? So that's that's a moving target. I feel like once people aren't able to spot the gross thing, we'll forget about the gross thing a little bit. Yeah , which yeah, I agree with you. I think maybe that highlights the need for some degree of like expression of resistance against these things , even like, I don't know, even if it is futile, even if like expressing resistance to these things is because they're clockable and then they become unclockable. And then you, know, it's not like it becomes this sort of like self destructive witch hunt of like, you can't enjoy anything because you're like, is the new Iselda's like dress AI generated? Like, I can't fucking tell. And then you're at that point, you know, she's like, Link, you have to save me, and you're like, give me a fucking minute. I'm like, your dream. Hold on. So yeah, I mean, it's like it mustn't become a thing that destroys your ability to enjoy art, but at the end of the day it is, you know, it's it is important to sort of like interrogate these issues and interrogate our relationships to them. And like you said, not to become like a anti AI reactionary where it's like, oh, they're using machine learning to like figure out how to cure cancer. You're like, that's fucking bad because it's like machines, machines are bad. Then you're, you know, it's like the naturalistic fallacy where you're like, oh, something is natural, then it's good. And if it's artificial, it's bad. And it's like, yeah, tell that to like poison ivy and aspirin. I was talking to somebody recently about how we were we were chatting about how all of the right wing people are anti vaxx. And he was like, It's weird how that used to be a lefty thing. And I was like, did it? And he was like think about all the why you just said all the like natural therapy people, like the sort of the like extremo hippie stuff. And I was like, oh yeah, I forgot about those people. They're like, I wonder are they still like that or are they hmm? Are they find a lot of those people in Nevada City California? Yeah exactly . Hey, look, they are they're working at the crystal shop and they're selling dream catchers and they're they're still pretty anti backs. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, ultimately, it's like, it is a weird discussion because we're in this moment of transition. And I think ultimately it's important to express resistance to these things. And I mean, I'll be curious where it goes because, you know, you can go to fucking mid journey and type in, you know, generate me a picture of Boss Baby. And it's like clearly like one to one creating like stolen dreamworks assets . And so there's obviously a lot of litigation floating up in the air. This is all sort of being decided right now. So the reason I think it is important for sort of like public sentiment to be expressed about these things is because it's like that is the background radi ation whether, or not that affects these massive cases of litigation, it is the background cultural radiation, that zeitgeist of like how people feel about this stuff. It should be something that people are aware of. And so it doesn't mean you should get like shit on any dev that gets caught with Gen AI, but it does mean that we should hold people accountable. So like the alter both things can be true. The alters can be one of the best games of this year and you can also say to the dev, hey, I noticed you did this thing and I don't fuck with it. So like if you want to retain me as a customer, I am not invested in this vision of how things are made. Yeah. Well said , well said, yep, yep The altars available now for oh it's only thirty five bucks as well. It's something Yeah, it's cheap Yeah. And it's on the day pass exactly what it costs. That's why it's so cheap. It would have been more expensive. What are you really, are you that mad about it guys? It's affordable. Listen, I know I know Jeff Bezos is a bad guy, but listen, I can if I had a two hours later today that I just ordered it during this spot. It's like I don't like corporate consolidation or the like the reduction of the cost, you know, the how much we value ours, but game pass is a pretty good deal, you know? Yeah, game pass is the evil that needs to be defeated right now. Yeah. I love game pass now. Everyone loves game bass because it's too good to be true on the consumer side, but it's good and it is too good to be true. It's rotting the industry . That's the latest one. There was a report out earlier today saying that it is profitable even if you take into account first party lost sales so we don't know we'll never know that one because that's gonna be all internal Microsoft stuff but also maybe gamepass Jeff because they keep closing all of these fucking studios . The Romero Games thing, that was super upsetting last week. But at least they're not closed which also was improperly reported and not followed up on. But initial reports of my death have been very exaggerated. It says John Jomero, just like I live bitch in the hospital bit . Yeah, it turns out the initial reports were saying that the studio was shot and everyone was laid off. I think I want to guess. I think it's like something like forty fifty, people actually work at Romero games and then there's an extra forty or fifty working as contractors. And then I also think that that might be a mix of people who are remote and on loc ation in Galway in Ireland . But yeah, it sounds like they legally I'll just read the fucking statement that came out yesterday just because it was a bit of an update clarifying some of the the news it says we want to address recent reports regarding the status of Romero games. These reports have contained inaccuracy. We feel it's important to set the record straight . Five points here. First, the funding was our sorry, the funding for our project was pulled and our game was canceled . Due to confidentiality agreements, we cannot disclose the publisher's identity, though some may infer it from public information. What I suspect is going on there is that this was going through Bethesda and Microsoft pulled the money. That's what I think was probably going on there. As a result, we have now to reassess the entire staffing of our studio. Romero Games is not closed and we are doing everything in our power to ensure that it does not come to that . Any suggestion otherwise is factually incorrect. Indeed, we were the in the studio today to discuss next steps with the team. We have been contacted by several publishers interested in helping us bring the game across the finish lineed and we're currently evaluating those opportunities. We appreciate the outpouring of support and we'll share further updates as we are able. Romero games. That doesn't answer a lot of questions. We don't know what this game was . If this was a game that was being funded through Microsoft and perhaps using an IP that is in their wheelhouse, that could be a big problem if they were making a sequel to an existing IP that they don't own. Maybe that's an issue . We don't know. Well, we don't know what the what the makeup of the thing is, but they're apparently talking to some other folks about possibly trying to get the game over the finished line . But yeah, it's going to be a very hairy situation over there, I suspect for everyone, especially as the money the money tap has stopped running. So not cool to see Next up though in our video game death walk , let's go to Frank. Let's go to Jeremy actually to talk about death stranding one . The first one's done. I never played it. I never played it. The second one is out. People are loving it. It's getting high marks even higher than the first one and our conversation last week about death stranding . I don't know, it got me, it got me interested because like you you seem Danny you, seem to have like a pretty sort of like middle link reaction to these games and think that maybe like all the hype is kind of overblown or it's like an autore theory thing where like everyone loves Kojima. How could this game must be great? Like maybe it's like an emperor wears no clothes thing . And I've heard other people say they like love it and really connect to it and it like touches them, it moves their soul or so anyway, I just I just fired up Destraying One, I've had it forever. I've never played it in my life and I've intentionally sort of stayed with blinders on to kind of preserve my experience for this moment. And I fucking I love this goo on Scape is really how far 're probably about third of the way through the game. I played quite a bit of it. Yeah, maybe like almost ten hours, but I'm kind of cruising. Like I've overpassed a few side missions where they're like go build a post box. And I'm like , there's already a postbox there that like eager put up. I don't need to fuck in. I have to I go check at Port Not City or whatever they're fucking Yeah, exactly . Yeah, it's it is it is odd. I've been thinking a lot about what you said that you were like , I don't know that anyone has like an authentic emotional connection to this story . And there are sort of like beats of it where I hear what you're saying where it's like Norman Norita says it's like his mom is the president and she's like sick and she's the president she's the last president of the United States. Like it feels a little bit like you're in kindergarten and there's like a creative writing assignment and they're like Timmy, would you like to go in front of the class and share your story? It's like yeah up and to hero and by Bob's to president and like yeah it's like it is bizarre and to drive I explained the story to my mom and she was like, I can't tell if that's like the best or worst thing you've ever told me about in video games and it's this I have this weird feeling I saw this in the No Clip Discord yesterday when people were talking about our Alex Garland discussion that I feel like Kojima and Alex Garland are like the inverse of each other. Alex Garland is very good at creating like micro level narrative be ats where his like characters and scenarios are interesting, but I feel like they yield no insight into larger themes or ideas. And Kojimo will have like these characters that I are so weird and cartoonish that most of them I just don't give a sh it about, but somehow through these like bizarre o characters, he's like touching my soul on like a philosophical or thematic level . And I feel like Death Stranding is like it's exploring all these bizarre ideas like death and what if death was like more tangible and less of just like a black box and yeah and about like connection and about a world where like connection is so like cold and verb from each other and like what that means and how it transforms our relationship to other people. And I think these things are like legitimately really like viscerally explored. I had this feeling when I used to see footage of death stretching when it first came out, I was like, oh, it's kind of boring that you go from all the place to place and every place every town looks like fucking the same. And there's just a terminal where you see like a hologram and every NPC is just a hologram. And it's like , that's the fucking, that's the point is like those moments are so dry and like, even like a lot of the dialogue you get from people is so just sort of like rote and they're like, oh, you're the delivery guy. You're the best delivery guy ever. I'm like, is that a design choice or is that just I because then Conan O'Brien turns up and they're like no I know fuck man I don't know the celebrity shit I think is I do think is over the line. The actor stuff I do feel like have you met Margaret Quali yet ? I don't know who that is. The actress? Yeah, she's I know the name, but I don't know. Have you seen that? Oh, what's the new one? It's so good. The substance substance she's in, yeah. Oh, I've not seen the substance. Oh, you'd love the substance you might like the substance I know of the substance, but I have not encountered it myself. Regardless, I for all of my misgivings about using actors and games and that like games and movies are these two separate things and never the twins you'll meet, I do feel like Kojima's like using the fuck out of Norman Reedis' acting ability in this g ame to generate like real and like heavy pathos. Especially his connection with BB has like this real like tender physicality that I think is a difficult thing to capture in a game without sort of like, I don't know, if someone could capture that with fucking PS one graphics, I would I would be knock me over with a fucking feather if someone did that. You know what I mean? If the seventeen pixels on a face are just getting closer to like a little square baby like this art baby who did it. Yeah , I mean, I would still I would still like it, but I'm a freak. But anyway, so yeah, a lot of the things that I sort of had reservations about when it came to this game and to sort of like contemporary Kojima methods . I feel like my skepticism has been deflated through just experiencing this game. Yeah, and I mean that all is sort of just like preamble. The thing that I think is the most interesting about this game is the obvious thing, which is just that like you go out of these , you know, Amazon warehouse fucking cities and you're in like what is supposed to be America but looks more like the like Icelandic foothills And it's just it's just like, it's just gorgeous. It's it's like I'm playing out on PS four PC PN I'm playing on PS C okay . Um it's it's not even because obviously like it's, you know, the Quixel Mega Scans are looking, the fucking eight K rock scans are looking good. Not much else surrender. Just Norman and a bunch of land. So yeah, that's true. That's true. But it's not even like it's not even the fidelity of it, though I do think that that helps sort of like you know, augment the off factor or whatever. It's just that it's it's this feeling I talked about this when we played peak and when we talked about peak is that there are not very many games that do that capture the feeling of being out in the world and sort of like root finding. I find that video games are either so open ended that root finding is trivial like an Elden Ring. I love Elden Ring, but it is one of my leavast f souorlsite games because it doesn't feel as tightly designed as the sort of like narrow corridors or something like Dark Souls two. So I even like Dark Souls two better than Elden Ring, which I know most people would disagree with . But like I find that Dathe stranding its world is so well designed that it feels like a totally open world, but it really does have like these corridors of passage that it routes you into . But they're not tangible as like walls or boundaries. Like you are route find ing within these places. And it captures the feeling of like actually going out and backpacking and traversing through the world . And that's like that's the macro level of it, but the micro level of just like keeping your balance and looking at actual rocks and like where you're stepping and being careful about all these things. It is a mechanic that transforms the physical space of the game into like such a core and visceral element of the gameplay that like I'm always hyper aware of my spatial position in this world and my kinetic relationship to these objects in the world in a way that like most game worlds are kind of just there. Most game worlds are like set decoration for the experience . I mean, there are exceptions, obviously you're playing gears of war and you see a piece of concrete and you can hide behind it and stuff. That is a lesser version of this, but this is just like every tree and rock and crevice and bump is constantly dreams like trying to get your ladder across rivers and cross gaps in the mountains and stuff. Yeah yeah it's very much about that sort of it's about touching grass it is touching touching grass inest game I've ever played . Yeah, and it just, I don't know. And it also obviously the async multiplayer stuff just reminds me of a lot of playing Dark Souls for the first time. Like this feeling of being both like togetherness and also isolation. Can you believe that game was pre COVID ? No, it is. It's like I mean that's crazy . That's the thing is like the levels of consciousness that Kojima is operating on, I don't know how aware he is of the thing the worlds that he is working in, but boy howdy is this man channeling some fucking zeitgeist on like a, I don't know, he's firing on all cylinders and it's like that's not even me just like hyping him up. I'm not a coachima fanboy. I do have a coachy pro teacher, but that's irrelevant. I bought it before I bought it before Yesterday was out because I was like, I want to support this guy. Did you get a sticker for the back of the shirt that says that . I will say the most fun , you know, I enjoyed playing Death Stranding One. I said as much in my review it was a lot of, you know, the moment to moment that game. I really enjoyed the , you know, completed it and liked it. I think Death Stranding two for me and I haven't I need to play more of it for sure. I think the most interesting aspect of death stranding was the first like half of Death Stranding one because it's like introducing all this weird shit and I really like the antagonist design, the beach things. I think they're really cool, all the blood grenade stuff. Stealthy pie is what I like to do , which is great and the combat and Desk Running one was pretty poor if you weren't doing stealth, which is really good . Please complete this game and we can talk about the narrative again because like I think okay I think the longer talk. The longer the more story this game does, the less sure I was that they had any idea what the fuck this thing was about . It may have the worst ending cutscene in video like it was like the fucking it is the ending of that game is fucking art and like I was like this is if Neil Breen had a budget. This is like fucking insane but like maybe maybe me saying that is also overblowing it abyss but yeah, I don't know. It's a shame that finish it. Sorry it's a shame that the narrative doesn't connect because like it sounds like I haven't played Destrina I don't know. I know about it you know through osmosis. Everyone talks about it. I just listened to that Chris Plant interview we did with Dunkey, which is the craziest sentence for his show post games. It's really good. And they were talking about that game a bunch, but it's a shame that the narrative for Death Straining doesn't connect, but it sounds like the exploration and the world stuff is like all like it's so good that it do you think it overpowers that at all? Is that or is it when Jeremy thinks that the narrative is he's been enjoying? I mean, I think the world I said but last week is I think world building for Kojima is really good. I don't think any of his games have good stories. I don't think Mel Garzalo is a good fucking story. I think it is interesting bosses. I think it's an interesting setup. I think the character, the enemy design makes things these compelling. I think like I fucking love like top ten video game characters, probably half of the ones I would pick would be like enemies from the Melgaria Solid Games. They're fucking amazing. But the stories are ridiculous. Like I don't fucking give it like I think it's funny like, oh look, there's a fucking arms dealer with a would a monkey with a fucking coke can. Like I'm not connecting to any of this shit at the end of the game where they're like doing the fucking fight at the end and they're fucking you know, it's like no the, you, know, moments are cool and the gameplay is cool and the characters are cool. It's like an action movie. You know what I mean? These games are based on like, you know, snake is snake plisket. It's action star cool guy shit. Like the story is an action movies aren't good, but the action is good and the characters are good and cool shit happens. And so I don't I don't think that his writing or the narrative in any of the games are good, you know? I think some of the big boss stuff trends because I largely agree that like a lot of Kojiba's stuff is just like eighties American action movie passed through like nineties two thousand's heady anime filter where it's like what if you took what if John McLean was in like serial experiments lane that's like Kojima? Serial experiments McLean 's hybrid I'm working on . But like I mean, there are exceptions. Like the end of Metal Gear Solid three makes me fucking weep, it's beautiful and has legitimately moving character dynamics and it sets it up really well. Like there are moments where it transcends, but I will be interested to see if by the end of Death Straining one, I'm like, oh no, Kojima is Alex Garland. He's just the Japanese Alex Garland, you know, who knows, but I yeah, so far I agree with you so far. A lot of the story is just every time Gear Mild uro calls me, I'm like, shut the fuck up and leave me alone in this like, I don't know, but like that's how I feel when anyone calls myself when yeah and I didn't need the story to be good in this game either. Like I wasn't going into this game looking for a good st ory and I'll happily play a game like half life doesn't have a good story. You know what I mean? Like half alex is a good story but like half life doesn't have a great story. Half life too is a better story, but like I'm happy playing games that don't have great stories so it didn't bother me. But I just when people talk about how maybe I just recall with the author stuff because I think like so much of the beauty of these games is the art and that's not his bag. That's not what he does. You tell me Kojima didn't draw every pixel on es, but he's but I don't know how much of an art door you know, he's got very, very strong people who've worked with him for a long time who are really good at making all that sort of stuff. And that's a lot of heavy lifting. You know what I mean? Yeah. So yeah, the aesthetic qualities of this definitely do a lot of the heavy lifting. Yeah, I'll be curious to see how I feel after sitting with it a lot longer because it is it is a game that tests your pati and thatence is, part of what I think is interesting about it is just like sinking into that world and just like accepting that you're just on this long fucking sludge of a walk . And there's, you know, it's right now 'cause everyone said it, but it is, you know, there is a meditative quality to it . But yeah, I'll be curious to see the story stuff is fucking weird, but I'm hoping that there's a point to it. So I will, if I get to the last cut scene and feel the same way as you fell, I will be a little disappointed, but ultimately it feels to me like it's sort of all of this like fucking mess is like gesturing at ideas that I find legitimately compelling. The thinking about the themes of the story to me is the way in which I 'm facing with this narrative. Yeah, which that's fair enough, you know, that's bouthwashing is similar, you know, that well, that gets out of the good story but it's more explicit. Yeah. Yeah, you get to talk her in. Yeah, I feel like I'm just like fucking asshole on this podcast. I'm like saying AI is not that bad and Kajima is not good at making games. You're watched broke that's it. I've turned into my greatest enemy. Why does anyone listen to this podcast? It's 'cause you three guys. That's why Seath Stranding one. I'll play more Death Stranding two. How about that? Maybe I just needed to get it off my chest. Yeah. I just keep rage watching things like You just watch on the beach instead then you don't have to play a ninety hour video game. Dude, I watch that Final destination movie? That's almost on the beach. The Final Destination movie is the best Final Destination movie. Whoa, impossible. Fucking hilarious. My wife had never watched the Final Destination and I was like, Oh, you are going to have so much fun . These games are silly . Everyone dies. Like it's like you cannot it's just it's nonsense. There is a part in that movie though. It was Tony Todd's final role and there's a part in it and he's very clearly sick when he's in it. And he plays a character. I mean, he's in a lot of those movies. He was in the first one, but he plays like a sort of character in this, which I think is a new character or maybe they develop the old one. I don't know you know, but he's part of that franchise as he is the candy man rich. And he's and he basically like in the in the scene, he is talking about his impending death and he's sick and like, you know, this is , you know, life is about blah blah blah. It's like so touching because you like if you know that he died soon after this, it's like really like emotional and touching and he almost looks at the camera as he's doing it. And somebody said on my replies on social media that he they let him write his final bit and it's like very, very sweet. And then it goes back to a movie about like folks being fucking just chopped into pieces and their brains , they're like death is everywhere and hilarious . Yeah. It's fucking mad . That's a wild tone switch . Here I am. Kajima is bad, AI's good, final destination is pure cinema. I have turned into a clearity I've got something. You're so forty. Give it off. I know, I'm not even forty yet. What the fuck is wrong with me? Tony Hox y cleanse yourself. Yeah, Tony Hoax kinier three and four base you're skating man . Games are shit. You should just watch every movie from the golden age of Japanese cinema and cleanse your soul. I should. You know what? Maybe I'll do that because that's I have a huge blind spot for all that stuff. You guys talk about it. Watch hierarchy. I've said it on this podcast. I say it on the clip discord every three months or so. You got me to watch it. Hierarchy. It worked. It's fun. Watching those movies is like ego death for media consumption. It's great Do not watch the Takashi BK remake or I will I will recoil in horror. The nineteen sixty two version I should watch. The nineteen sixty two version of Harikiri. It is a strong contender for my number one favorite movie of all time. Number two, the boss baby. The box art for this, the key art is fucking aggressively great . The one I'm looking at. Just a dude like I've been grimacing like Oh yeah. Yeah . You up. Okay . It's so good. I think I think you will love it. I think you'll like it or like it'll be like an eight or nine for the first half and then you'll be like, this is the greatest movie of all time as it crescendos. I'm going to have a I'm going to have a Robert Frost moment later where I'm Harry Carey's and on my TV and then F one the movie is trip to the cinema's over here and that will that will be it. That will be the litmus test for if Danny's washed or not. Okay. Yeah. True. Yeah, that's it. There's not hing is more forty than watching nineteen sixty's black and white film. Maybe. But also, you know, nothing's more dad than watching like a movie with no plot that's just Brad Pitt driving around in a formidable form two car. The middle point of those two would be Gran Trismo. What did you think about that? The Grant Rismo movie. Yeah It's interesting. I knew a lot about the story . So you know , there's parts of it that they messed up like the like arguably the biggest thing that happened in that guy's career was the crash that happened a couple of years later where somebody died in the in the crowd like it was a real terror person, right? That really happened. Yeah, that have you seen the movie? Didn't know? There's like a throwaway bit in the third act where they're like, oh yeah and he had that terrible crash and like a fucking wheel went into the I think it was at N theorth Schleiffer somewhere and it killed a spectator and like that was pretty messed up. The graduation movie is completely fine. It was directed by what's his face district nine New Bloom. So they shot it interestingly and it's about a real guy. It's about the guy who became a real driver through in Grantrismo, the protojimmy broadband as a work. And he yes, and it's it's, you know, it's it's very PG thirteen , like kind of made for a younger audience. It's completely fine. It's definitely not like cinema or anything, but you know, it's no fucking final destination bloodlines, you know what I mean? Good point, yeah What is though? But it's all right. And we forgot to put up the Minecraft episode. That's gonna be coming out soon. That's on me. Now, we'll take it as a group. I didn't remind you either. I was too busy . Sure. Enjoy it. And let's not group it, let's you and I forgot. That's fair . Okay, that's fair. That's fair So we will be getting that out soon. This week. Okay, this week. Okay, cool. So for patrons , not to speak to overhype it, not to overhype it, but it was one of my favorite podcasts that we've recorded. Jeremy drops the funniest bar perhaps of any podcast episode in that one. that one. I was unreasonably proud of. Yeah, it's so good you need to give us however much dollars a month in order to experience it. Please make sure that you have a full box of popcorn in front of you for the chicken jockey moment in the podcast. as well That's where I throw a tour of your living room . Those are the games we played this week. Frank we got some emails here . Yeah, you can send an email into podcasts at NoClip. video or in our Patreon Discord . We had a good email from Will about cancelled games. I was very sad to hear about the cancellation of DreamSettler. This is I think every fan of Hypnospace Outlaw was. Interview with Jay Thorn was one of my favorite no clip moments, and I'm glad you all talked about it a little bit on the pod a few weeks back. Maybe wonder do you guys have any canceled games from over the years that you still think about or wish would have seen the light of day or any vapor wear games that you still have a shred of hope will get finished one day. I'm still crossing my fingers for beyond good and evil two almost twenty years later. Aw, what's that game from the Camposanto team that like is never going to go? Valley the gods yeah that's the one for me. Hilariously that still has a like a coming soon or something in the It has I think it's ETA twenty nineteen is cember twenty twenty nine Yeah twenty nine . Yeah that is not a game that is coming out we can fairly easily say at this stage Yeah, they all got they all got brought into Valve and then some of the team left and then other ones have obviously you know they're on the half Alex projects and all that stuff . So yeah , who knows, who knows, but I suspect not. Yeah Star Wars thirteen thirteen is obviously a big one. Over the years, I remember one stage we were trying to get gameplay from it and then b alked when sort of the Disney stuff happened and it was trickier to maybe lawyer up for that particular one . I have reached out to Jay by the way. I know he's trying to get stuff about dream Settler out there and I just sent him our condolences on the project and if there's anything that No Clip can do to help you know get that stuff out there, let us know. I think he's trying to figure out what to do exactly . But yeah, that was that was a super sad one. I think it was episode thirty seven of the podcast was when we chatted Jay Tholan. I think it was me and Frank on that one. Yeah, it was yeah, four years ago, crazy. We look like babies. Yeah, what anything else you guys cancelled stuff? There's Rockstar's agent, which they're still working on probably . Well that's so gone stairs studio Bondi, right? Team Bondi, then in Australia Recent one, Earth Blade , the developers of Celeste, what is the name of their studio? Okay . Yeah, someone is yeah. Oh, really? I didn't know that . They cancelled Earth Blade, sadly. But you' hreype on the artist's new project though, right? Yeah, Pedro Madiros and another developer whose name is escaping me at the moment are working on what is that fucking game called? The name keeps slipping out of my brain. It's like even tide ever deep sounds right, Quest. All of those sound right . I don't know. I'll look it up. We'll put it in the description or I'll comment with it or something. Never , never way. Never saw it. Those are the people that made the It's our hero games, is that? It's never way. Never way is actually the name. Okay . Yeah, never way. Looks good from cold blood . But yeah, also Lena Rayne's soundtrack for Earth Blade dropped and it's fantastic. So if you're feeling sad about the cancellation of Earth Blade, just go listen to the soundtrack and play it in your mind. Why don't you use your imagination for once? It's I didn't know about the split in the team. I'm just reading their post. They have it here Earthplay final update on EXOK . com Sounds like okay that's the name of okay Noble and whoever was writing this post and Pedro split and then I guess it was an issue over who owns the IP rights to celeste Okay, well that sucks. Maybe it was I'm sorry breaking. The project, I read that a while ago, but from my recollection, the project also was experiencing sort of like a little bit of identity crisis . And it was not it's like a smooth development that then they had an interpersonal crisis that blew up the whole thing. It was a game that was they were struggling to sort of to find the way with it. So that's a bummer. You know what else I'm sad about? Perfect dark. I'm sad about everyone else I'm sad about , you know? Whatever arcane Austin Centamax game the Romero Yeah, the news the new MMO from the successful elder schools and online folks, YSO folks in Baltimore games. Yeah games . Yeah, exactly. No shortage of those . Wait in the podcast on a bummer will. Thanks for that I also want to say there was a Hide Kimiah. I was very excited for scalebound premiered at Xbox like a decade ago. It was like an Xbox one game, but they said ultimately like that was their internal decision . They just like couldn't find the fun factor or make it work. But I was like, the stuff they showed looks like it was a hack and slash game where you ride a dragon. I was like, yeah. Hey man, you've always got Dracan order of the Flame . You know, how 've always got a layer and dragon Heavenly dragon just layer, layer. Yeah, use the fucking PlayStation pad to fly your dragon around. Yeah. Whoa, now we're sitting . Whoa. You look like a when kid on a nineties ad for video games playing Lair. It's good. That's why my dad would play Mario Kart when we were a kid it makes you go faster if you had a do it. Everyone knows this. Get them . Actually, that's where they 're where they got the idea. Because Sony called up my dad and they were like, what, what do you think's next? He's like, Oh, what if you could like lean really hard for you playing? Mario car. Well, we can't get Mario Kart. But we can do the lean. How about dragons? He's like, Yoshi. No Thanks for email Will , podcast and no clipped off video if you want to send those emails in. We have some quick looks and indie game recommendations hitting the channel this week. We're going to do a Tony Ox three and four one. Jeremy, and Frank, you're recording one after this. You're recording some horse girls. Yeah, um, um, Mustame. Pretty Jerby, I would love to love to show off. And then I would love to see it. And then we do have there's a bunch of other stuff, but a lot of it's not coming out till next week so we're a little bereft of Indie stuff this week, but we'll be back next week with some others. Should we do an altars one, maybe or a little bit behind on that one, are we ? Yeah, probably been a bit cool though. Check out the altars. The altars. Can I would like to drop a very soft recommendation for a game that I played a little bit of and decided that I want to wait until it's way more developed because it's really accessed. Project Silverfish is a stalker like I played a tiny bit of it. I want to wait until it's more fully baked because it is there's so much going on but I just want to you only get one first experience with a game like that that's a sandbox game and I want to wait to have my experience when there's more of it existing. But what I played of it, very cool, very interesting , very sandboxy stalker inspired game with it's Furry Stocker, but it's not just Furry Stocker. Oh, hey, the furry on fire. Yeah, they're making great games, man. Very I've been playing an indie game that I can't talk about that's really good and that's annoying. It's not out yet. I don't think it's coming out until next year either. So it's a real pain in the ass What? An indo ndent game. Tarcraft ghost style. Hold it. Finally, it's cancel game. It's coming out. Bonus Fot for Minecraft will be upset to head over to Patreon. com slash no gift. You want to listen to that. Chicken jockey, chicken, jockey, chicken jockey. We'll be back soon with more video game documentaries here. Watch the opening , watch the stuff. Mouthing can't I don't want to rule so hard to do a podcast about Jack Black without us all just going . Yeah, fucking dad . Fucking ridiculous. Start scanning. Exactly Don't criticize Israel . That's it. All right, we'll leave a podcast there. See you later folks. Have a good one. Bye