Xbox Strategy and Exclusives

Hello everybody and welcome to a new episode of The Midnight Show Plays about games, friends getting better. I'm Ben Ans and joined by Jenn Giferarcia. Hello, joined by Kyle Hilliard. Hello. Hello, joined by Kelsey Lewin . Ola . And returning guest, Ellie Joy Panic . Hi Hello, welcome . You already have the best voice in the Biz You're worried that your voice was blown out. That was just from SGF and screaming for four days strip? Yeah, it's from the JW Bar every night followed by getting off my flight and immediately recording for the Nintendo direct yesterday and screaming at that. So yeah. Yeah, I watched your reaction stream it was just an hour of so yeah a bulge some excellent facial expressions that I didn't know I could do quite frankly, so there's so much to we have to cover. If you don't remember LA she was on a while ago , but Twitch superstar , let's see, mainly . Now you tell me if this is oversimplification , mainly known for playing from software games in as difficult as a way possible, is that the best way to phrase it? Yeah, like this SGF was the first time that I think my reputation has preceded me where I've sat down to play something and somebody's come over and been like, So you're the souls gamer, right? And I was like, Uh , I guess . Is there like a pressure to perform at that point? Like it's like, well, I got to be . Yeah, especially if there's like difficulty levels and they're like, you want to try the hardest one and see how you get on. And I was like, yeah, of course, why not? Like let's give it a go. So happened a couple of times this year and that was bizarre But yeah, Souls games and then Indies are my main kind of thing. So yeah, yeah. And you're at SGF and Janet and Kelsey were also at SGF this year travel coming up soon . I mean, I think there's going to be an episode of Bonus Pod for unpacking the show in a bigger more throw away and stuff, but like I Kelsea, do you feel at home at the show at this point? Do you feel comfortable you know your way around? It's not too stressful? Yeah, yeah, I think so. I really do enjoy this show. It's it's a pretty I mean to be honest, like the difference between this and E three is the scale is just so much more manageable. So when you say, like, do you know your way around? It's like, yeah, you'll know your way around in about fifteen minutes. Right. And then you just kind of got it. So and that is absolutely not true of the LA Convention Center. So this is one of one of the things that I really consider an upgrade for me three is that it is just easy to get everywhere and know where you are. Yeah, it's just a cozy little campus out in LA stuff. and And Janet, I mean how many, show s have you been to now ? I think all the ones they've had. Like when did they start doing this like twenty or two? I want to say it was like, didn't Sarah go to the first by her self I think five. Oh, ceramic going to the first one by herself. Yeah. Then I went to the second one, starting at the second one 'cause I was in there pretty early. So yeah, it's been at least this is at least my third one, if not a fourth. Jeeze, does it feel when you're at the event? Do you get a gauge on like how exciting this year is because it is like worth stepping back and if you take what Keley hopes and dreams for of like the entire summer season is one big summer game fest umbrella . Like it is I think one of the best , if not the best a summer game fest season has ever been, just for the quality like caliber of announcements happening here. Like when you're at the show, did it feel like an extra buzzy year or to feel like there's fun stuff to see, good appointments to be had, but not you know, record shattering . Yeah, I mean, I think it definitely was to me the strongest that SGF has been just in terms of having like the like higher triple I star power, like more interesting things happening. I think the fact that Nintendo was there, even though it was third party is telling. It's like, okay, where they're at with the Switch two and what they maybe like the boost they want to start doing to really make this have like a big ger name for itself in like the console ecosystem. But I think like in terms of like hype levels, people are kind of the same. I mean, we're all like pretty reasonable people. I mean, I think we're there we're there to work and get stuff done. So it's not exactly the kind of show where people are going to run up to me and be like, Did you play this? It was so cool and like shake me down. But it's the kind of thing was like, Oh, have you played, you know, people talk about it, they're excited about the things they've played. But it's not, you know, people aren't hamming it up. So it's a lot more chill and that's I don't think there's anything that would get people to start like screaming down the hallways or anything. This is what I really loved about this here was there was so many things available, like the sheer variety on offer in all the showcases and like the actual playables stuff , there was something for everyone. And that was what was my favorite part about this year was even though I wasn't like super, super hyped about anything hands on necessarily . There was so many games that were shown that I was really excited about. And it meant that it didn't matter who you spoke to, everyone had something that they were excited about and really pumped. That was really cool. Yeah, they put on a good show. They got a good spread. So that's what we're going to talk about this episode is what we see as the game of the show. And this is fudging in a little bit, but it's saying like out of all the press conferences, everything, we covered Sony's a bit last week, so maybe a little bit less on that, right? But covering absolutely everything, what we each see as contenders for the game of the show? The game we're most interested in most interested in talking about the biggest explosions of enthusiasm, all that fun stuff. And then also , thanks to Neil the mod and discord, I have a top ten list from the community where we got hundreds and hundreds of people in the next community to kind of rank what they see as the game of the show. So we can see exactly where all that stuff lands. And then back half of the show, of course, we have questions submitted over there on Patreon . Speaking of Patreon , we have an offer for folks, an offer that you can refuse if you want, but maybe you don't want to, which is if you want to support independent games media directly and jump in if you're a new supporter at the five dollars tier, or if you're a current supporter and you want to upgrade to the backstage pass tier to unlock the extended version of a ton of our content like the SGF Travelog , the Min Max Spotlight in Spain, the upcoming Min Max Spotlight from Kyoto. So upgrade or join if you're new supporters five dollars tier and we'll DMU a steam code for Sifeu , the game from slow clap from a couple of years ago that has just been, I feel like slowly growing in reputation. It has grown into one of Leo's favorite games as well. And so he said he'll never delete it from his hard drive. Exactly. Find out why. So we will send you on Patreon a steam code for Si Fu if you support us on Patreon june eighteenth. Check the description for availability, but jump in before june eighteenth and keep your eye on Kepler. They'll have some fun news coming up as well. Kyle, did you feel like it was a good show? Do you feel like it was a Hall of Famer? You're kind of looking like, yeah, was that one of the best? Yeah, no it was it was less like a judgement and more of me considering like oh yeah I think you're right. Like I think there was like a lot of stuff here. I mean like I don't know if we want to get right into it on a small level. I mean, the fact that we got to see Gen Atlas and kind of have an idea of what that is is like for me that that and PlayDead whatever PlayDad is working on are like my two most that is the most the thing I am most looking for to now, period. Whatever Ueda's next game is. And it's not even that like watching that trailer was like moving me or making me emotional as much as I was just like, I 'm glad that I know at least a little bit of what this thing is , and like, I'm happy to see it and I can't wait to experience it. Yeah . Do you have thoughts on it being a gun game? Guns in it. That's weird, right? Not really. I mean people are, I have seen some like, I don't know, I discourse is such a gross word, but like I have seen some people being like annoyed by it, but like I talked to Oweda around when Last Guardian came out and I went and found the old interview and he was like, I don't I just I'm not like committed to like a medieval era or something. You know what I mean? Like he's open to whatever. He just likes video games. And like, I love that this is like a sci fi direction. And frankly, I don't really know how those guns work or what they mean . Shooting guns in video games is fun. Like I think it could totally work here, but I don't see it as something that like he's not allowed to touch or anything like that . But I am definitely enamored with the idea of like having this giant floating robot head vehicle that you can like displace on other robots to like solve puzzles and things like that. Like and yeah yeah,, I just it's one of those that's like I have a million questions that I don't want answers to kind of games you know and that's like that's just really enticing to me. I fall in love with that kind of thing. Yeah, I'm glad it looks different from his work with Sony. It is so weird though to see what looks like a Shout of the Clause this light gameplay thing of like being on the top of this giant robot, but then you're just like unloading a gun into the weak points and stuff, but like I think it would be different Kelly if it was like we see Uaed as new game and it's just kind of college duty corridors or something like that and you're shooting enemies but the fact that it's like there's a couple shots where it seems like a weapon is firing a gun , but the rest still looks really bold and weird. And even like the you know, the color vibes and everything, it still feels like an Ueda game, even though it's kind of post apocalyptic desert stuff, you know? It doesn't it's still and I hope this is true and it could not be, but it still looks like a game to me that no one is giving him extensive notes, right? Like there's no executive kind of being like, you know, we really have you considered adding a gun and players really like shooting like and maybe that's what it is. Maybe Epic is more hands on with this thing than I realize but like my dream is that Epic would just backed up a truck of money to his house and said we'll see you in six years. You know, like that's what I want, you know? And that's the sense I get from watching the trailer, you know? Yeah, it's just fun to see like Away out there as well, like doing interviews, the fact that they cut to him at summer game fest showcase and stuff. It's like, I think I could have walked by that guy on the street. I don't think I really had a good idea of what a way to even look so just seeing him out and about taking selfies with people. I was like, this is surreal, but thank God that this voice is again. There's an interview on gameform dot com Marcus Stewart, talk toed him and he the fact that was asking him questions about like Wali and the Iron Giant and stuff and Hueda was kind of like, yeah, I like those movies. It's like, she's a guy that likes movies, huh? She's such a mysterious weird just like . Yeah, it's like, yeah, exactly. I really do have that with him in a way. So yeah, Jen Alice was very exciting for me. You know, I don't like the name. I think the name's kind of weird. Yeah, it feels like it should be like an extraction shooter or something, right? It's just kind of like and yeah no release date yet but very curious to see maybe ever maybe ever Ellie, what do you think what was the biggest game that was making you scream the most maybe during the reaction stream? Sorry to put you right in the deep end of the pool, but what was it? No, this is not the deep end. I've told this story so many times this weekend because this is like I had like a dream come true this weekend multiple times over like career highlight levels stuff, like so cool . So backstory, Spyro the Dragon is the first game I ever played. My dad was given a demo disc because his friend was like, This is a kid's game . You have a child kind of thing . And gave my dad spyro. I loved it. My parents bought me the full game. It was like all I played for two years because, you know, as a kid, you get like one game a year or whatever. And as a consequence, I lost my mind when the Reignited trilogy was announced . And then it released on my birthday and I took the day off work to stream it. For the first time ever, I did a stream on Twitch for myself, not for work. Oh wow. And a bunch of people showed up and were like, this is really cool. And I was like, Should we do it again? And here I am eight years later streaming, going to events , still covering spyro like once a year, twice a year, doing Marathon Streams, char ity stuff, whatever . I never in a million years thought we'd get another spyro game. So I turned to my friend when the little guys came on screen in the Xbox Theater showcase and slapped him and went shut the fuck and then just burst into tears as Spyro's little feet came on the screen and I cried for pretty much the rest of the presentation . And then I cried at my Xbox contact when I went outside after the presentation. And I was like, You don't know how much this means to me. Like couldn't even get words out at one point . And she was like, Leave it with me and then I got to interview the devs . Nice , which mostly resulted in me just again crying to Abram with a shy people and, you know, like just an absolute mess. I've never lost my composure so hard in a professional setting , but it was just this surreal moment of being so excited for something that I never thought would happen and being able to be in the room with the people making it happen I was like a child and just couldn't contain myself. So that is one hundred percent hands down my highlight of everything, even though I know it's not going to be everyone's favorite or game of the show contender or anything like that. But that for me was just such a huge deal. I get the nostalgia, but like did the gameplay, like the sort of flight focused element. Did that was that exciting or was it just mostly like a new spyro is coming? That's all excited for. Okay. Yeah, new spyro in the hands of toys for Bob as well. Like considering they did such a good job with Reignited , having previously done Skylanders, which kind of carried some of the DNA, but wasn't really a spyro game, you know ? And we've had like the PS two games and the GameCube games and the DS games and gameboy stuff. Like there's been iterations for the last like twenty years, thirty years, whatever , of a variety of spyro stuff, but knowing that the toys for Bob team did reignite it and then were like, we want to make more spyro and made crash instead and then were absorbed into the call of duty machine and then went to Microsoft and said, Hey , we want to make Spyro . And they said, Okay, diverge from iv Act ision, you can make this game. They're free, sort of. I mean that leash was extended to Spyro. It's so strange, I think, to be like, all right, we are technically under the Microsoft banner. We want our independence , just like Bungie got way back in the day. Please free us and free us and then we'll work on a property that you own still. Like it's a really interesting unique situation. A toys for Bob has been around for so long. God , were what the old space games they used to make? Like they're a really, really old cool studio and the fact that they're like getting to have a new stab at a spiral game because like yeah they said I guess it was two thousand eight was the last spiral game , Dawn of the Dragon, which I did not play at or even touch, but like we're coming up in twenty years and just for a franchise that you would think like the team to make it would be toys for Bob, but you know, they're not under the Microsoft umbrella anymore, and the fact that they actually are the ones getting to jump in there. Now this does mean they're not making crash. They're not making crash five, even though they did a great job with crash four. They're not making Banjo Kazooie, which I think a lot of people were like, this is the obvious team to make new Banjo . I was asked in the session I did as well. I was like, what about crash? What about Banjo? And they were like, We are so focused on Spyro. This has been where our attention has been from making Reignited . We had this idea to develop it further . And there was a lot of like, you know, my background in like games PR, media like media training, all that kind of stuff, marketing . I know when there's buzzword answers and like PR answers and I know when there is passion and I felt so much passion from the team where they'd give us the cookie cutser answer and then they would be like, but also and then expand on it with their own their own actual thoughts . And it was just really reassuring to hear from them that they are not using like a feature list that they're aiming for. They have a word cloud from the community of the things that mean spyro. Everything goes back to what is spyro for people . So that sold it to me and I was like, okay, being able to fly cool , interesting, excited to see how it works. Yeah , but they have heart, I think. That's nice. That's nice. Yeah, the there was some confusion about like, is it just going to be like a flying game? And so the way they've been talking about it is that like, you know, I kind of want to go back and look at gameplay for even the last one, like Don of the Dragon to see, but it seems like it's never really been done of like with Spyro, you can glide, that's part of the platforming, and then there's like at least in the original series, then there's like timed flying stages. Never the twain shall meet , but actually being able to in any environment like run and build up speed and then start flying around , it seems so obvious and simple but it's like, yeah, you should be able to do that whenever you want. You're a dragon, fly or run. And so just that yeah, but he's little felt . He said like 'cause that was one of the questions in the session was like has he grown up a little bit? Looks like he's grown up a little bit and they were like, yeah, he's a bigger, he's got bigger wings. Like his crast is larger. It's gonna be a continuation almost. Who knows? How old was he originally? He was a baby. I don't know. I always felt like he was like eight, right? Yeah. Like actually thirty wife way of finding out Spyro was thirty two and Richo just didn't clock? Yeah, James . But everyone's kind of creeped out by Spyro still hanging around. Yeah. That's interesting. So it kind of' likes Insignia's pitch for Spider Man of like him at the peak of his powers. Like we've only seen Baby Spyro before, but now he's eighteen and strong or whatever that helder angle is for profanity. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's edgy now. I'm right there with him. I was really pleased though that they're bringing Tom Kenny back. That was like one of the things that they were like, We're allowed to talk about the flying. We're allowed to talk about Tom Kenny. Yeah. And I was like, That's good that they're bringing him back because he's got the voice already. He's been doing it for what since nineteen ninety nine, I think his second Spyro too . So yeah, bringing him back is great. I am having flashbacks. I think we totally talked about Spyro the last time you were on this show and like that like dream project, yeah. It's one of those things that I just bring it up . Yeah, there's like five things that I will regularly bring up and all of them were appearing at the summer game fest under the umbrellas. So can you imagine if Spyro Realm Beyond has like a super meaty difficulty mode? Just like the hardest Perma death in a realm beyond. Oh the sweet LAJ panic fuel at that point Let's see, Kelsey, I mean, out of everything, what do you want to jump into? It's hard to choose, but I think I want to talk about stuff that we actually like played and did at SGO played first . And so I'll start with Onomusha, which is a somewhat newly minted onomusha fan after the deepest dive . I had just a really wonderful experience playing the demo for that game, which they Kyle, they told me it was a different demo than the public demo. I do not know what the difference is, but I think it was just a different section of the game that was kind of described briefly, like I've played both if you need. Oh, great. Okay. I just want to know that they were for sure different is. That's so weird that we're different. The public demo is what I played last year. In it's like the intro section of the game basically, whereas this demo was much deeper in it was kind of a more fleshed out full area that you could explore . There was side quests there but not available . And it was like go through a mission and fight a boss at the end . And the bos s had actual moves and it was it was a way more interesting and complex encounter as opposed to the public demo, which people are saying is quite easy. Right . But it 's not a moss fight in the public demo? There's two . Oh, there's two, but it's like, Here's your intro to big boy combat. Here's your intro to little skinny man with a sword combat. And then this is Here's your intro to fast punchy beast man that has a whole bunch of different things that he can do. I didn't play that one because I did I think I did the public one also last year but like at Games Com and that was that was enough for me I had my hand my play full on the combat . So I don't know , Janet if what you played if they offered the two different difficulty levels, but I was really this was my first time engaging with what I think they're just calling story mode with it, which is a lighter difficulty level , but not a hold your hand baby level . I was really I was really pleased with the balancing they did with that because I definitely I was talking to the Capcom rep and I was like, look, I played on Amusha one . It was definitely a struggle for me at times, particularly like the final boss. I was near throwing my controller at the screen level of like frustrated. And I kind of feel like these types of games have only gotten more difficult since then and so I was like , you know, tell me tell me that this isn't going to be like you can either have Dark Souls hard or , you know , just mash the X button or the square button or whatever and you'll just be fine . And they're like, no, no, no, like the story mode still, you know, you're going to have to learn how to dodge, how to , you know, do like you may not necessarily have to do all of your they call it Esen moves, is that the I forget the phrasing that's the like super exact timing stuff . But the like the dodge, the deflect , even the parry , I found pretty darn approachable which was really heartening for me. And so, you know, the boss only took me one try, but it also wasn't , you know, just like a cake walk . I really enjoyed the combat. I felt was able to feel very cool, like deflecting arrows back at people and and I am just so excited that Ben it is still just as weird, good and goofy and silly . And I was like the without spoiling it, the end of that boss fight that we played was just the goofiest little guy became such a goofy little guy and I was like, yes, this is exactly what I wanted. Yeah Just little freaks on they. It's a game film. Just a little freaks. That's what you want. That's what I've been rooting for in a big way. And they've like, they've teased it a little bit in the trailers, but not to the extent that I'm hoping for. I want this to be yeah, like the muppets. I want it just to be just a group . It's a little muppy. Yeah, but like , but like in 'll it does the wonderful job of like pretending it's a very serious thing . Right, perfect. And then you kick their butts and then they become a goofy little muppet and you're like, this is perfect. Love it. Yeah, I can't wait to jump into that thing when it comes out in September, of course, with everything else in the world . Yeah, same as Kelsey stuff we actually played. Control. I mean, this is like kind of the boring pick because it's like control a really good game and now they're making another one and it seems like it's gonna be really good. It's like a very obvious. It's also good . Exactly . That was also just a fun appointment because we know it was me Kelsey and then Isaiah also joined us and all three of us shared a st ation at the at the Anaperna control booth and just sort of were like getting to experience it together and pick like our little weapon upgrades and pass the controller. But yeah, it's still wildly stylish . I think the melee combat is amazing. I'm so excited for it. And I was heartened to hear that for me, I loved everything about control except for like the thing the map was like a little rough. But other than that, I kind of had no notes It was such a fun experience and I loved the gunplay of control, but I know a lot of people didn't. Like if you had a gripe with control, it seems like a lot of people weren't into the gunplay. Again, can't relate, but something I heard a lot. And I was very heartened to hear from talking to people that even if you were in that camp, those people were into the melee combat as well. So I think this is going to be just it's hard to imagine it going wrong, which I know is like I never want to be too hot on a preview, but I think the combo of knowing what the studio can do and then seeing what they did because we had like close to like an hour of gameplay. We sort of had us essentially like the beginning and then they jumped us ahead to like later when you had more moves . Unfortunately we all had appointments like where we couldn't really spend a lot of time with that. I was like literally just give me like ninety seconds in there before I leave just to like hit a but coutpleon see and how it can build . And it's so like natural but still engaging. Like I think they do a good job making melee combat that is like very button mashable, but also like you can bring in the intentionality with like dodging, with like having your meters fill up, with doing your special moves . And it's just it's really freaking good. Also, there's a lot of like weird parkoury platform gliding in it. Like Kelsey you did a big part of that where you were sort of like levitating. You basically looked like Jesus at one point in your session . There was some really good yeah, the traversal in the game was excellent and you know, I mean, you never know exactly what slice of the game the demo is or if it's going to be the same, but it seemed like you were just kind of unlocking new traversal things quickly and in a very satisfy ing voice you went from kind of like a basic slightly superhuman platforming kind of thing to then having the ability to just sort of like rise like Jesus through the air and like double jump and just do this kind of it was very, very fun traversal that made those sections very fun. Does it? We all picked a big hammer for our upgrade. We're like which one is which one do we want? like We' were want, the big bonk stick and like getting that thing was incredible and like weirdly goofy, but in a way that still felt like, I don't know, it's it totally works. I can kind of get away with it being like gameplay that's fun. What a concept, but genuinely it was it was a thrill to play. Does it Celsius a big fan of stylish action games? I'm curious like how much how much John Lry is in there in the combat. Is it like approaching that genre? Oh ye,ah. Oh it is. Okay . Totally. Yeah, I would say so . Yeah, very fun to just change . I mean, it also you have a pretty good amount of versatility, it seems in your weapon choices So I mean, you can make it faster or slower based on what you're choosing there. You know, like obviously big bonking hammer is going to slow you down a little bit with your with your combos, but like, yeah , it's I would I would absolutely classify it as a stylish action game. And you do are you like do you have to go into a menu to change your melee weapon or you can switch ? It seems like it's a loadout that you kind of it's tough to tell because there was only one of those like areas where you would be changing it in this demo . It seems there's certain things that you have to set in this specific area where you set your loadout? I don't know, I'm trying to remember Janet where we seem to kind of like how control was where you have like the morph gun. It's like you have a morph hammer where like it appears as like just like a stick. There's like a which I just love how Rummy does their stuff. Like it just makes it so like fun and specific to like their style world building where it like it begins with you having this like pseudo vision. I don't know if this happens, but like Fade and stabbing you in the chest with like the stick. Then you pull the stick out of yourself and they're in the game kind of asks what kind of stick do you have? You know, is it they give you like three options and one is like slightly more ranged and I figured what the other two were. So it's like okay I'm gonna go with the ranged one and then later they're like what's your secondary maneuver which is like just kind of mapped to a different button. So it wasn't like I'm changing from my more ranged style of like melee weapon to my big hammer like it was on it was kind of like my heavy attack also appears as being visually distinctive as this giant hammer. So it's very smooth in that way where it's not like you're going to be it's not a swap the way I feel like you truly think of swapping things. At least in what we played, again, maybe it builds more complicated later and you are kind of setting certain things, but we always saw a little bit of like it seems there's also like a bunch of things you can unlock like skill tree stuff, like upgrades, unlocks, like , you know, you get the perfect the perfect dodge and all of that and it's it flows together very smoothly and it seems you' likere going to have y'alla options. Like I had already chosen a distance thing, but one of the options like with the big bonking hammer was essentially like a whip . I was like, oh, okay, again, I'm just looking for Caslevania everywhere. So I'm like yeah mean it'll follow. You can just whip it. Yeah, I'm sort of just play how you want to play. Yeah. I mean, it's a really specific sort of I don't know criticism's not the right word, but a thing that I like is like I just I just want all my tools accessible. You know, I like the gun in control . It's like you don't go into menus to like change your gun or anything. You know, it's like I want to be able to like not have to pause, especially in an action. Yeah. It makes sense. It definitely felt that way in what I played, but again, you know, maybe later it might be slightly different. But yeah, the I have to tip my cap to remedy a thousand different times, but like for a game that the publishing themselves, I'm so amazed the video production team alone, they had trailers everywhere. They were in the PCG gaming show, they were in the State Play, they were in the summer game fest showcase, they just like fire everything we have to try and get the message out there. And even like them, you said they're in the Anaperna booth . Yeah , that's interesting because it's not published by Annapurna, but Anperna is working on films and TV. They announced a collaboration with Remedy for the contro ller. So that's like a weird connection for you. It was like the same there. I imagine it's the older imagined like a PR thing kind of thing. Like I think they're they're how like underneath the same like PR umbrella. Oh okay that's kind of thing I think like I think it's like a Terra Bruno PR joints it.' Sos like we're all just in one section with one kind of aesthetic and everything t shirts. I had anaponic t shirts that were like almost identical to the remedy t shirts. So like it was it was clearly like contain everything under that one link. Did you get those? Did you guys get those like PS two boxes that had like control? Did you saw them? Yeah, are you supposed to take those? I know they were just for a creation . I don't know this one. A claw machine, but not reachable to take and win. So I don't know if they were like available, but yeah, they had them for every Anapurna game at the showcase. That's cool. They had a game cube like N sixty four PS two, like it was really cool. Okay, because I just kept seeing control in a PS two box and I was like, that's yeah, cool. I like that. But like, are you guys trying to like get across the energy that this is like just who game I got? No, I did that's funny. They did it for every single game they had. So I think they were just kind of and they did this last year at their booth as well where they just had mixed tape Yeah for mixed tape. They were clearly just kind of going for like last year it was more of like an old you know you're like in some guys cool basement in the nineties kind of vibe . And this time it was more like a movie theater or video rental store in the nineties kind of vibe, but still same the range didn't quite make sense for, I think, the vibe they were going for because they had like they had super Nintendo and PS two at the same time. It was like a little bit of a wide range there, but yeah, walking out you're like, I can't do this. This doesn't yeah and I was like the seal on this is wrong. They're missing like this is Yeah, what was it called? The Age , yeah. Yeah, that's a classic on Nintendo Boxes. Although, honestly, I'd be impressed if they could replicate it because then they then I'd have to start worrying about like forgeries and stuff . It's good that they don't they didn't want to tip their hand, you know? They're like, You can't make the forgery too good or something Nintendo might get mad across the way. But yeah, their theme was like just kind of like theater, which I mean works for when you're doing a lot of other stuff like Anapero was like hands off theater presentations . That's it. Yes, not bad. I'll allow it. Backstage pass, they burnt up the real dire situation, which I think we're going to have to lean into because like obviously September is big, we'll talk about it later in the show . But like a lot of these September releases are really good options for deepest dives, like our big multi part game club discussions. So like last time with Allen Wake two we let people vote and like, are we going to have to have another vote for patrons supporters between Wolverine Control , Silent Hill Townfall and Onimusha? Wouldn't that be awesome just to have those four go head to head. If they all stay in September , I think control would win. I think. I mean, there's definitely some of those are stronger than others. World to be in there. Oh my god, who said that? That's great Where were the other two? Ony Musha and Wolverine? Yeah. Wolverine would be a one is not like the others, you know, I don't know. I'm just saying . Interesting. I really shouldn't be talking about 'cause I'm not gonna be on any of 'em, but probably. All right, yeah. Well, one that we for sure will lock it in at this point here and now are gonna be doing a deepest dive on. I cannot imagine a universe where it would not happen. Is a certain game called Final Fantasy seven . Revelation , everybody. Revelation's the name they went with after so much speculation, after the big prediction. And you did have that in when you went through and you did your like eight names .? I don't think so On the big predictions episode at the start of the year, I went through like ten variants. I did not have revelation. I might have had like revolutions or something . Or maybe a plural, right? Revelation. Maybe. I went because I'm like God did I call that? I went back and looked at my notes and I don't think so because I was I was on team reckoning . I think reckoning's gonna be a big climactic thing, but just an old fashioned reckoning would have been better. I think so too. But look, I didn't get to name it. That's fine. Also person a already has revelations. Like the first person a is technically Revelation's persona. So look, fantasize I just feel like a JRPG girl isn't fighting like that, you know? No, it's a mess. But then to make it even mess your own . We had the Doom Eternal or sorry, Doom the Dark Age expansion that is also called Revelations for that big DLC expansion. It's like everyone's claiming everything. Genesis, there were a couple different. It was like aen soeslisg, then Xenobl ade Genesis, we'll get to that in a little bit. Genesis. A lot of residence resonance is a huge . But this in a similar way to control , like, it seems so weird to care this much about phromacy seven, but also to care this much about like messaging and marketing. And I'm sorry I know it's gross , but I get emotional thinking about how happy I get at what a big push the grand finale of the Fantasy VIII trilogy is getting. Like the fact that the SGF showcase ended, not just with the announcement, the trailer, name reveal, but then they're like, hey, actually the, whole back half of the show, the final twenty minutes, we are just gonna show video after video. It's not gonna stop. And then when you think it stops and it shows the weapon coming out of the water to June on and then it cuts off to a big climactic moment and it's like actually no we're, gonna show you that entire sequence as well. We're just going to keep going within Keeley's showcase in a way that was like, whoa, they are ripping the band aid fully off this, revealing as much as they can. And then the part that I genuinely get emotional about is then it was like, alright, Hamaguchi is going to be doing interviews everywhere like and messaging the idea that this is launching in the spring of twenty twenty seven earlier than most people thought on every system switch to Xbox PC. We are there day one. We want to give this the best possible chance to succeed . And the one that really killed me was when he freaking the director of this game went to Maximilian Dude's house to record an interview. Like I have watched Maximilian Dude talk about the Fantasy VII remake trilogy for dozens and dozens of hours. He's a one man . Well, look, if you want to fly out to Minnesota, I will open the doors. You can come hang out in the studio whenever he wants . But just the idea of like they are so smart and so clued in that like, yeah, we need maximilian dude. Let's just go to his house in the middle of SGF chaos because we know that he is so influential when it comes to talking about this game. It's just super smart. I don't think I've ever seen something pushed this aggressive ly and this well because I don't know, you all let me know what you think . You know, people who liked remake were a little bit cooler and rebirth. I think it's fair to say the overall Midmax group was at. Like, did this get you excited ? Or what was your reaction to them just being more and more, more, more, more, here we go. Look at all this stuff. Watching your face. Yeah. I was like how sweet and happy you look spyrophy. My spyro. Absolutely . No, I am excited about it. I wish there was an easier way to get to the point in this story that I just I just don't see myself getting through the middle part. You know what I mean? Like I just for me and I'm a obviously a big JRPG fan and I think they've done a lovely job overall with this remake in general, but like it's a lot. It's a big ask and getting through two fairly long games before this , I don't know. I want there to just be like a little movie I can watch at the beginning to you know, like I know what happened in Flow Fantasy seven, but I'm sure you know what I mean? Well, look, you could watch Min Max's deepest dives on . Well that's not a little movie that's we talked about rebirth for over twenty four hours, so I don't think that exactly . That's like three seasons of a Netflix show basically. Yeah, but you can like eat dinner while you consume that. Well playing is way more I mean active. They're going to have the messaging of it's a great place to jump in just like for Mass Fect three . It's a great place to jump in, which whatever, I guess you could. I'm sure they're going to have some recap, you know, if you really need it here. But at the same time, Kelsey, what you're looking for is like, just watch a twenty minute video on YouTube and if you, know the beats of obviously seven enough, you'll be fine jumping into this. Like, I'd rather have you jump in and experience it compared to like, well, I might be missing a couple little nods to what happens. I want Kelsey to force herself to play the middle one to play the last one. So I know it's city. Okay, okay . Hundred percent, like also as a fan of very specific like JRPG franchises, I wouldn't want people to jump in at the end because then you miss all the cont ext that makes everything so juicy like at the end. Yeah, but look, you'll miss a little juice, but would you rather chug eighty percent of a glass of orange juice or none of the orange juice? I'm saying chug that juice What do you want to be like? Why didn't you finish thousand glasses of our cheese available to drink? Like is like as like a Xenoblade fan if you were like I'm only going to play three and then the DLC I'd, be like I'll play the DLC until you actually , you know, I have gone to town at people about that. People being like, Three was my first. And I'm like, why? I think I get really mad . Just don't just don't play the DLC until you've played the other ones. Yeah. You don't have to learn to I feel like we overemphasize like the sort of preamble up to you can get you can get caught up pretty quickly like in a story honestly. Like I went and saw He Man recently. I don't know anything about He Man at all and I was like, I get it . Like I understand who these people are. I went to like a movie recently with my daughter that was like on a web series that she's been watching for years and we watched like an episode of it. I had zero contacts. It's like, I figured it out by the end. It wasn't like Roms, you can you can catch up. You can watch my be kind of sad without any context and you could basically figure it out and understand and you can understand character relationships. I don't know. I just feel like I feel like as someone who did start with Mass Effect two, it's fine. You'll figure it out. Okay, look, here's look, here's the thing, crew , team aboard the highwind here. Like we are we punishing this team for announcing the game because they made two other great games. It feels like there's like the world of like no, it's just like what do you do with it? And I think also with that middle one looks good. We like it. You have opinions. Okay. With that middle one being kind of contentious, I think it is that question of like, well, do I like force myself to finish if I wasn't liking it? And I'm toxic. I say, yeah, I want you to do that because I think it'll make for a more thorough conversation understanding of what the franchise is and what like you kind of have to eat your vegetables. And just because they made the vegetables in an eighty hour game, I don't know. That's what happened. Now, I'm on the toxic position of like, what do I do with this? I think the gameplay is really fantastic in these games. Yeah. The story has been a mixed bag for me personally. Now when rebirth happened , I had made a promise to myself and I said, I'm not paying this third one unless I hear from trusted individuals that it's okay, that it's a safe space for me to enter . And yet, you know, it does feel like but I'm right there. It's like we could just finish the whole thing. So I'm torn. Do I want to betray the promises I've made to myself and to various audiences and go back for three is it a safe space? Like are you worried that the story won't be satisfying? Is that what? I'm worried that it'll feel like a kind of a slog because the rebirth felt like a slog for me by the end of it, halfway through, I just put it on easy and I was begging for that game to be over. I don't think they're going to have this problem because it is the ending. Like a lot of people have taught in Bed, I'm sure you can speak more clearly this because you know the franchise like yeah yeah they did kind of drag out the middle like maybe the middle should be a whole game but the ending is going to be so good like it's going to be so worth it to be back there well and it's like, will it go? Well, I don't know I don't know what I want to do with it. First of all, like there is so much game left. Bananas, how much of Final Season seven, they still have to teach you like all of my favorite stuff from Found ry seven they have not even gotten to yet, you know? It's like I feel a little bit like it's waiting for the avatar sequels of like all eventually they're going to really get roaring. Like this is kind of the meat and potatoes are what I think is interesting. And how they approach it, I think going to it be' ans interesting discussion because there's a lot of things they've already revealed like eighty percent of, you know, sort of call it revelation to be like, oh, now we're going to reveal the real story. So it's interesting at a couple levels. One of them is there's so much to squeeze in that I worry about oh like there,'s a this might really fly. It might just be action packed, big things happening bad bing, bad boom. But then on top of that, on top of already a lot to squeeze in, there's the meta layer, which without getting too deep, but the whole idea of spoilers for remake, but it's all just theoretical at this point is the idea that, hey, Sephroth knows that he's in a remake of a trilogy, basically to summarize what's happening here, right? And so there are so many layers on top that they also need to resolve. And maybe that's just Final Flaster seven ends as normal, and then there's one extra boss fight, Resefroth monologues for a bit before it. That's like the messiest but maybe the best way to go because there's so many layers to wrap up here that I can't wait to see how they do it. So it's going to be dense. Now here's the thing . So a lot of things happening, a lot of big things happening because as the trailers show, it's a lot of fighting the weapons, which are like huge guardians of the planet. That's kind of like the celebratory thing about the second disc of Final Tasse VII . But the thing that I think hopefully will win over some skeptics of rebirth is like, yeah, basically uncovered the planet in rebirth. And that was the part that was frustrating. It's like, oh, hey, climbing the towers doing the Ubisoft thing. It's a bunch of checklists. And at this point now, it's like, hey , bam , you have the airship, you have the highwind, and you can fly anywhere you want. So it's not going to be slowly uncovering the map anymore because the map is basically done. There's new environments we haven't been to yet, like Wutai, Rocket Town, stuff like that. That'll be cool , but it's not going to be as Ubisoft checklisty in theory because the wild thing here and it's so smart is that you can just parachute down to the ground. You're in the airship and then instead of the landing the airship on weird rocky terrain stuff, it's like you can just apparently skydive out of there. And I'm really curious if it's like set points in the map that would make more sense you can skydive here, skydive here, but it's so smart and I didn't think of it because I was really curious how they could do the whole airship thing that there is a sequence towards the end of the second disc in Final Fantasy VII where there is like a parachuting set piece . And so it's such a smart idea of like, yeah, we took that one idea and now have blown it out to this entire finale of the game, which is I can't believe I didn't think of it. Of course they're gonna be parachuting in like frickin' fortnite all the time, but it's super smart. Is it fun? Is this cloud in Fortnite ? God, I don't think so It just feels like he probably is, but I don't ever actually remember seeing this. I mean, honestly , they're marketing and it seems like maybe desperate push of like we need to get as many people as possible maybe there'll be the final thing to nudge them over the corner. I mean on top of them hitting every marketing beat possible, the fact that Tifa is in Street Fighter six, another way just to like how do we gin up as much excitement as possible. And so hey, if we have to put Vincent or whatever in Fortnite, like whatever you got to do to get people in. I mean, they were trying to make they made not trying to they made their own battle royale within Final Pain seven.. Yeah, specifically So I think they were like trying to probably withhold those characters for themselves, but that game's already done. Right. They admitted defeat. It's all done. Basically, I need a rebirth hater to do the reconnaissance form. Okay. I know many of them. So they're going and I know they're sick. They're going to play this. And I'm going to say, wait, what do you think? And they report back and say , yeah, I'll then in a partial opinion on a game that is already the expectations are up here right unfortunately, Janet, I don't think you're gonna be able to talk to them because every rebirth hater is in the looney bin where they should be locked away threw away the key. Don't worry, I got a direct line to Louis Finnish . Yeah, but I think that's what I should probably do. My sort of ultimate reaction is like I'm sort of committed at this point. I've played the other two and it's like I don't I don't really need any other incentive to play if that makes I'm in one of those situations where it's like great . I mean, honestly, like truly, like they could have just been like the next one's called residual uncertain , whoa, that's true. I'm confused. Revelation, they could have showed me a logo and a date and I'd been like, Yeah , I'm there. I don't really need anything else at this point. I've dropped what a hundred hours into boat across those two games. Yeah. So yeah, at least I don't really need all the sort of excessive interviews and things like that, but they're cool . Like sure, why not? Yep, yep. So the stuff like Queen's Blood is back. So the big thing is like having the high wind, having skydiving is massive . But then just when you think I think that the combat in Rebirth in particular is like my favorite combat maybe in any game ever. I think it's so awesome . And it's like, I don't know what they could possibly do. They have a couple new characters. I guess that'll be interesting and then sh ake it up in a way. But then the addition of what they're calling the fit system where you can change your class is such a smart idea. Just including classes for the first time in Final Fantasy VII is such a wild idea because that was kind of the radical approach with seven back in the day is like with the material system, you can kind of create characters the way you want them to be created. You can kind of make them into whatever class you kind of want them to be. And so now to kind of go backwards and be like, okay, you have the freedom of the material system and now overlapping on top of that, we're basically going to have a Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy V style job system where you can 't you think they started backwards from we need to give these characters different outfits? Probably shoot. Yeah . I know the outfits are so cute. They look great. Yeah. It's like hey, you want TiF to be a black major? That's a cool idea. His little sleeves. Kelly, there's dreams sleeves. Yeah. Sleeves. There's drack sleeves on the game. Maybe we should go back here. Hell yeah. So yeah, it's coming out spring, twenty seven. I'm so excited. It's just them teasing so many things about how they're going to handle the weapons, how they're going to handle nights of the round is the big question. It's worth an iconic summon that lasts forever in the original game. And so they are so smart about hitting the notes that they want that they know fans want them to hit that like I have complete faith that whatever they do with something as iconic as Knights of the Round is going to be awesome . So I'm pretty pumped. Although I was a little confused. In the Max Dude interview from his house . They were talking about Chocobo breeding, which is a big part of the original game. To get knights of the round, strangely enough, you needed to do this whole Chocobo breeding mini game which took so long to do, but it was kind of like an iconic thing . And they said like, oh, it's in there, but mainly you're going to be like leveling up one chokobo and then you will find new chocobos that have bred in a certain breeding area. And so it seems like they're kind of if there's anything where they might not be going all out for a way to satisfy fans, seems like the Chocoba breeding is not going to be maybe as detailed as fans would want. But yeah, super super excited. I think they nailed it except one thing and this shouldn't bug me and the monologue will end soon . But they changed the Cefroth voice actor , apparently. What from the previous two? The previous two. And it's one of those things that shouldn't bug me, whatever, actors can't live with them . But no, that's it's the same game. Like that's like switching the voice actor mid game. That's weird. It does. I know, it really bugs me into Israel noticeable ? Yes. So he's in the trailer. You get to hear the new voice. And the weird thing is they cast somebody else, they cast somebody who has played Superman famously and like two other Sefroth voice actors have also been cast as Superman. It seems like in their mind there's like, well, Superman's voice actors also wrote a Superman pipeline which is weird 'cause it's like all evil all good, but whatever. I guess it's a powerful voice. But like they're both kind of hot, right? It's like who are we splitting hair? Is the Superman hot? He can be. Okay. Depends on which Superman we're talking about. Yeah, okay. And please stop asking me. Sorry. Sorry, please . Thank you. But no, like , Rick goes to like, it does bug me. Like some of the voice acting in the series, I'm not a big fan of. I think Syd sounds like a butt and I don't wanna hear that voice anymore because that's my favorite character in the game. I think he sounds terrible. But Sephroth, like it has become so iconic . voice His of just like, oh cloud. Like he really nailed that and I got really used to it. And now to have the rug pulled at the last second, I don't know, it just feels they offer an explanation for that scheduling or something They said something like that where it's like, that's voice acting. It's probably just contract debates and the guy wanted too much money. I'm sure it's some crap like that, which just is a bummer . So I love the idea of someday there being like, you know, voice act or table at a convention and he's like, I'm the voice of Sephiroth in the third part . Yeah, right . Yeah . Yeah, yeah. I'd rather they got Tom Kenny from Spyro Fame at this point. But anyways, there's Phromisy seven, that's obviously my game of the show on this end. But Kyle, what do you got man? There's one that might be a little close to it . Yeah, let's let's talk about Accuray of Time. Do it, baby. I know so much about it and I have so much I can think about with it. Yeah, no frame by frame. Exactly . Yeah, it's it really is one of those like, which I don't really mind that much. I see people get upset about, but it's like , I'm glad to know it exists. Yeah, right. And like I do, this is like a weird point of comparison, but unlike the Ninja Turtles game, last Aronin , which was like a teaser, but didn't give you any indication of what the turtles will look like, which I was like really bummed by. It was like the one that's like the one you don't have to show me gameplay you can announce Platinum but just give me like just an artist's rendering of like what can I expect here, which I didn't get from that. I really don't like it when they just go, hey, here's only a CG thing , no gameplay, no indication of what the game will actually be, art style. Like if marketing material focuses on one specific thing as a first reveal, I'm always like ugh yeah. Like here, I mean I'm assuming that's all in game. Like I don't think that's pre rendered. I'm pretty sure. I mean, like there you could see some pixels on his hand when they zoomed in on it, right? But it's like it's the most realistic Zelda has ever looked ever, right? I mean, like even Twilight Princess has sort of an edge to it. And like my first reaction is like , I don't know if that's I like the stylized sort of cartoon nature of Zelda . But then I did see someone, I don't remember who it was, but someone pointed out that they were trying to make Ocarina of Time look as realistic as possible. It looks kind of absurd like with our twenty twenty six lens, but it's like that's what they wanted for it. They wanted it to look real ostensibly, you know? And instead it looks unreal . Yeah it does it does look that unreal it. I don't know if you sound like those comparison shots though of like here's that shot of Link on the bed in sixty four and three DS and the new one . And look, I'll have an open mind. We've seen so little of the game. I want to see environment. I want to see so much, you know, it's so early, but I'd have that moment of like, God, the three DS game looks good. You know, like that. I just it's got I think the right tone for this thing. But yeah, it's just funny how like the visuals of everything in this reveal trailer for the big remake , it's like it didn't get me that excited. But if I were to closed my eyes, I would have been just as excited because like just the hints of music that they had in the trailer and then like the big title reveal at the end like that musical swell is all like nailing it so well, which is tough not to do with Zelda, I guess at this point. So what I love about Zelda is it's like reinventing itself as well. Like I only got into Zelda like in my late teens , didn't realize it was a franchise. Like I started playing it like ten years old on the DS, didn't realize it was a franchise until I was like sixteen, seventeen. I was like, oh, there's a whole twenty prior years of game series. So for the DS one was your first, that was your starting line. So Fantom as? Not Ocarina. Phantom Glass was my first phantom glass. Yeah, that was a wild one to start with. I like Phantom Glass. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we love that game . People hate that game a lot. Yeah, and I'm like, it was fun. So we can draw a line. Let's figure it out. I don't know . But yeah, then spirit tracks came out and I was like, there's a sequel not knowing again that that was like fifteen years That's so funny So I came to Ocarina really late and didn't deal with the whole like oh look at this controversy surrounding Wimwakers graphics. Look at the controversy surrounding Twilight Princess's graphics and the shift and then now we're remastering Ocarina Time for the three DS and like oh Breath of the Wild and Skyward Sword like I came to it at that point like Skyward Sword was my first brand new one . So I love that there is so much variety within the Z elda franchise. And Ocarina has always been a darker game, hasn't it? So it makes sense, I think, for it to tone down the I guess kind of more kiddy nature of the gra phic . Yeah, like the brighter colors and stuff and like I don't care if it looks like that that animated short that the Kana Bridge of Spirits team did for Majora's Mask. Like that is kind of where my brain is going with what I've seen so far . Yeah. So I just think it's fun and it's exciting and it's cool that it's going to be in the hands of a new audience, a modern audience with hopefully modern controls and systems and, you know , not the jack of ' ninety eight or ' ninety seven whenever it came out. ninety eight, yeah. But yeah, it's I was wondering if that was like truly the beginning of the game and I like went back and watched the Ocarina intro again, which does that's how it starts. You know, it's like a voice over explaining about the Kochiri in fewer, far fewer words, but like there's the Kochiri and one of them doesn't have a fairy and then it kind of zooms in on link, which when I was young, I just found that so interesting and like sort of like rapturous of just like dark in this sort of sad lonely way of like you're this one kid who is unlike everyone here and you're just literally waking up like in the middle and it's dark, like it's literally dark. And I don't know, it just really worked with me and I don't know something about the voiceover makes me wonder if the tone will be lighter than sort of how I felt, you know, which I was applying my own sort of like seriousness to the sort of text on screen . But but I am excited for it. Like I don't think I think we talked about it before, Ben, but like in the way that you are so excited for seven remake , I don't think I'm gonna be that way about Ocarina despite comparatively it being my favorite game of all time and will forever be my favorite game of all time like, because it's just so important. It's like the reason I'm talking to a podcast right now is because I fell so in love with Ocarina of Time when I was young . But I just I just don't I still don't see them like sort of toying with its legacy in real time with a remake of Akari of Time as much as they're just gonna try to sort of like represent it with new visuals and write updated controls. But I don't know, I would love I would hope that they do something interesting with it. And I hope they're not scared to sort of poke and prod at it. I'm not that sacred about the idea of a remake because like I still have like versions of the original that I still go back to, you know? Like I want the remake to kind of try different things, you know? Sure, sure. The what about the theory that they're trying to make it look realistic, as realistic as they could maybe get at this point because of the movie coming out . I don't want people to be off put, but like they're clearly trying to synergize what they're working with here and they want people to leave a movie theater and be like, I want to play as a human looking link. Here we go. These Nintendo movies have taken so much from us already. It's just getting constant . At least what is it all for? I do think those silos are pretty separate, man. Like I don't think Starfox and Starfox you don't think that they're like, Hey, this is great. We'll have those Starfox in the movie who looks completely different than the game. It's animated and animated though as well, isn't it? And like the Zelda movie , all things are pointing towards it being a breath of the Wild Tizet Kingdom esque Zone movie . And this is similar I reckon will be similar tonally to those stories and they'll bring it a more I do think they will go darker with it with still the adventurous like brightness that comes with being kiddling and stuff . But I don't think it's necessarily going to be a we're going to try and match because that wouldn't make sense with the source materials that they're going from. I mean Nintendo's been working on this for years now. Like and like the movie just finished shooting like two or three months ago or something. Yeah, but they're still planning for a long time. You know, it's like on the Starfox front, you think about like how did it actually, how do they impact each other ? And I bet it was a situation of like, all right, we know Mario Galaxy is going to be the next movie. Trying to figure out how the timeline would work out. But then okay, galaxy space, maybe Starfox, let's do that, and then let's have a game on store shelves for people. Let's have Starfox, they're available. And so let's ramp up for that remake. Like, I don't think they 're completely separate silos. Like I think it's clearly the executive team being like this is timing. Yeah, yeah. Time one hundred percent . It's just more like tonally and hitting the same market, I don't think it's necessarily quite the intention to line those up, but it makes sense to have like with the Mario movie, oh, Starfox is in the movie. There's a game coming out in six weeks. That's a Starfox game. So it would not surprise me if we get Nintendo Director that is entirely Zelda focused, where they show off our corner of time, the changes that have been made, the new features, potentially some new content, full art style reveal, you know, gameplay reveal . And then they go and also here's the Zelda trailer. Yep. Yep in like maybe or something, you know, why not just throw it in with everything else? I think that makes yeah, I just don't think it's so like I could see I could see the team making the game and like Nintendo's sort of game sort of decisions like they're going to make better decisions for the game first like if they're like that doesn't really line up with the movie I. Nintendo's going to be like, yeah, that's fine. Like we were making these things to be like fixtures of our economy, you know? Like we want to create a Zelda game that will people will be able to play for the next two decades. We're not this is not promotion for the movie, you know, like corporate film. Maybe I'm giving maybe I'm giving them too much optimism. Yeah. I don't think it's like necessarily it's promoting the movie, but I think it's about having like the IP in the Ether and it kind of feels like it's part of like a larger like again I don't think that necessaries like the game is marred by capitalism because that's every game like you're selling the game like you know but I do think that like there I'm I'm on I hate to say this, but I'm team Ben on this one. I do think they are kind of say they hate to say because I feel like I don't know, whenever we agree, I feel like we end up on the wrong side of history together, you and I. Tape. Never want me about us being too close together in takes, it's like the universe kind of crumbles a little bit . No, I think it's smart marketing synergy. I think we go Yeah, that's a good word for it. It's keeping like you say, having both elements public eye at the same time or similar times is just smart . And we know that Nintendo releases a Zelda game every few years or so. Usually like every four or five years we'll get something and it's been a while so it makes sense for them to do an Ocarina remake releasing for Christmas, for the holiday periods, pre Thanksgiving, whatever. Just go straight in, release it on TTA. You know, who knows? I honestly well, so I mean my friend Ronnie was telling me about he's like, you know, the origin al released on november twenty first, which would be like a couple days after GTA six is released. But if there's a company that's going to be like effect, we don't care about GTA six and it's released, it's going to be Nintendo. And if they want to hit that Ocarin ananivers , I can see it. I can see it, you guys . Just do a Nintendo because everybody else is cleared out of the way. Yeah. Do Nintendo direct six weeks before, drop it right next to GTA around the anniversary, drop a trailer at the same time so the trailer can be in theaters or through the holiday period, release the movie early next year, you know, like down and down. It makes sense. It's the smart and logical thing to do from a marketing perspective. Keep them both in the space at the same time . And people will still buy it even if they're like, well, I'm going to play through GTA first, but they'll still pick up Accra in Time and we all know by now that those games don't go on sale anyway, so it doesn't matter. Yep, sure. And like Ocraner is one of my least favorite Zelda games, sorry, Kyle. It's one of my least favorite Zelda games. I'm going to start with his hourglass and oh wow, wow. Oh,'m I going know to that one . Yeah. He didn't like close in the DS, I get it. That was the only part I did like. No, I actually quite like that. You're done playing . No, I played it so late and I'd had so many other Zelda experiences before it and I didn't have that like, oh this is one of the greatest games of all time ideas going into it. So I had no idea really. I just formed an opinion based on what I played in twenty sixteen or whatever it was, you know ? So coming to it that late, it doesn't respect it for what it is. Sure. I think it's an exceptional game, like a cornerstone of the foundation of the industry kind of thing . It just doesn't hit me the way I wanted to. And I love doing Ocarina of Time Randomizers. Yeah , just to be just to be clear. like, I am so excited for this remake because I am hoping that it will fix the issues that I had with it of it feeling dated to play and like being able to appreciate it from a design perspective and like see what they were doing in the original , but not enjoying the doing and then being able to like play a modern version. I know it sounds kind of kind of gross being like yeah give me the fresh graphics give me, the fresh controls, you know, but I'm really excited to not have those pain points , hopefully. Kyle , right now , put the money on the table and back away from it . Will they have shrines scattered around the world ? No . So just all temples, no little puzzles. There's no shrines whatsoever. They're okay. They'll be little puzzles. They'll be like no up the rock. Not shrinking not shrines in the breath of the wild sense. Okay, okay, that's fine. I love those. I would be open to them , but I just think it's going to be very faithful remake. I just really do. Yeah. Yeah,. yeah I mean basically a mistake to do something like that, honestly. When the original design is so good and the pacing is so good, I don't they don't need to add anything like that. Yeah , yeah, I mean it's always the big debate of like how empty will high rule field be with that fidelity, you know, but I mean, again, all we know is to have shown it's not that empty on the nine sixty four game. It's small. I understand that but our level of things to discover on that f ield for sure. I know but if they kept the same amount of things to discover on that field with this fidelity, you'd say, what is this? Metroid Prime Fourge wasteland, it'd be barely anything like wow. It's true. Island than that. It's really small. Metroid Prime Measure is like, what did I I do? don't even know what I'm gonna call it now that they're going to add more sculptilers and they are going to be the cor ks that will be around the world in Mars you roll into a tree to see if a sculptiller will fall out kind of thing. I can see them doing like little set piece bits kind of breath of the wild ish where they fill out the field and the more expansive zones, I guess just the field really with a couple of little bits and pieces, move the sculpturals around because they have the ability to do that and make it a more interesting experience for those now. Yep. I think that's right. It doesn't need more. I mean, and again, we talked about like, you know, how faithful will it be going back and forth. The fact that their first reveal trailer was about as faithful as you can possibly get, that's probably them trying to plant the flag of like don't worry fans. And so that says something. Kyle, what do you think real quick about the studio reveal for Starfox? After much of speculation, it's a Veil and Studios over in New York who made Mario Cart Live home tour if you remember that and they made our favorite planetation shooter from last year, midnight murder party that nobody talks about on planet Earth. But interesting choice, right? Knockout Club. Thank you. Knockout City. Knockout Club City. Yeah. That's cool. It's not who I expected, right? It's like I had my various guesses, but it wasn't them . Yeah, did I want to I can share quickly playing the actually playing the demo? Yeah, yeah . I am embarrassed at how energized I got by that demo. Like it was like I was like I was like all right, come on, yeah I,'ve play,ed this a dozen times. I played on three DS and I was like totally enthralled. I was like, oh my gosh, I love this game so much and the music is so good . And like the boss fight at the end like they added like choral singing and stuff like that. And it just was like moving me in a way that I was like embarrassed. And like it's so funny because look at this . I never acknowledged when I was young was like the boss is like you, can't get me Starfox. And I'm like, Oh yeah, what if I shoot you like six times? And he's like, Oh my God, you're like the greatest person in the world. How could I ever do this? And I was like, and I just like realized like how much that game just builds you up , you know? Like they didn't rewrite any dialogue. I just like I never really embraced that when I was young. It's like, yeah, they are making me feel like the greatest pilot by basically not doing anything. I'm like not in control here, but like it was truly I was like the music and like just that like sort of reliving that experience of being the best pilot in the lilab system. I was like Himet, I am on board. I think don't I would be disenergized by Starfox sixty four remake . I mean , I'm now excited for it after playing through that level. You were excited before. You just went from like a seven to a nine, you know? Yes. Yeah, that's actually a great way to describe it. Yeah, like from a seven to a nine yeah that soundtrack is killer. What about this? Speaking of killer McGreavy wrote in from the community and it's so specific I had to read it when you talk about them not changing the dialogue. He said in the original Starfox sixty four when the crew enters the airspace over Canaria City and sees only rubble in the few buildings that remain have standing, Falco flatly says this is horrible . In the remake , he says, Andros sure has trashed the place in an upbeat tone . Oh yeah, I don't like that. I don't like that. Isn't that a weird choice? I love a dark N sixty four game. It turns out. I like that they're like, ooh, this is apocalyptic. Right. Now Salco's like, there's so much to clean up in here. Yeah, come on, get the chain or NIL four for the city. It's like all right should we stick to the Nintendo world? I mean Kelsey, I saw you in the chat during our reaction stream for Xenoblade Genesis. But there were so many comments that were like, We can't wait to hear Kelsey talk about Xenoblade and obviously Ellie as well. If they would have known you would have been here Ellie would have been screaming. Yeah . Yeah. What do you all make of the new big Xenoblade game reveal? So here's the thing, I trust Xenoblade inherently with my life. Like I trust that even if I am not excited necessarily that or like immediately draws me in that it is going to be a really good story because I've just never been let down by this franchise and it's always surprised me in a good way. I'm not crazy about it this sort of like school setting and this a little bit more high fancy looking thing. That's not really the thing that I go to Xenoblade for . So it's weird. I do have some kind of mixed emotions about it for that reason because I'm like, well, I'm really not sold on this premise or setting , but it sounds like this is going to be, you know, still a Xeno blade, but not necessarily like a prequel or not necessarily even like set in the same thing as the this is tough to talk about without spoiling right . I think it's still related in some way to the events that occur in the other Xenoblade games. Yes, they said . Yes, they said it is a new chapter in Xenoblade. So it's taken place in theory after Xenoblade three's events, but still the same universe technically as Wacky. Oh, interesting. They specifically said it's no they said it's a new chapter like following end of the trilogy was the way that it was a series of trilogy and there is Genesis . But they said that two wasn't related in any way and then they've like rolled with the series. So I felt very similarly, Kelsey. I was like, I trust who was related. It just yep, yep. It was the game. I was playing the games . But like I'm the same way. I love their worlds, I love their characters, I love their stories. I know I am going to be in for emotional devastation playing these games. I know I'm going to have an amazing soundtrack. I know I'm going to have a world that feels incredible to explore and experience . I know there's going to be something weird and funky with the combat that is not quite what we've experienced before in a JRPG . I'm also not super like fussed about the school stuff because I love that the others are more there is this big cataclysmic event happening and you have to go off and seek vengeance or find people that you've lost or you know , that is usually the hook for these games. So I'm curious to see what they do. But I don't know about you, Kelsey, but the thing that got me was like the vengeance of a fallen god. I was like, okay, I'm in. I'm in. I know that it's going to do something with that . And I'm sad that it's not all , but I'm excited for something different. I'm just excited they're still doing Xenoblade because I actually do feel like Xenoblade the that trilogy , especially after the DLC for three , I don't want I didn't really want a four because I really did feel like it wrapped up in a you know in such a good way that like you know when like a good show has like one more season than it really needs to have like I'm glad they're not doing that . Right . But I think just tonally, I was expecting something to be a little bit closer to what the other ones have been. I also will forever be wishing they went back to the art style of the first game . We have plenty of anime JRPGs. It looks wonderful. I have no shade to it. It's just like losing one of the things that made it stand out a little bit is kind of a bummer. I still feel like it was a mistake for the team to make X a Chronicles game . And I think this is a reattement at that is kind of how it feels to me. Like if they'd have just called it like Xenoblade X instead of chronicles X, that confuses people. It's not yeah. There's theories as to how it's related, but there is in no way any kind of confirmation or actual solid anything to connect it to that trilogy. There's like some references where you're like, I guess that's sort of slots in there eventually maybe yeah, like it's tenuous but I'm like I say I'm excited to see what they're going to do with it and like I just I love these games so much I'm so excited for monolith to keep going and keep making more amazing games I wonder you know since it seems like the hook and it seems like even from the beginning of Z imbably it's a series, the environments is always a real star of the show. And for this one, it seems to be the premise is you're kind of on the inside of a sphere. It's a little bit like the halo ring, but it seems like a three hundred and sixty sphere from the shots that they have. And so I wonder if it's a thing of like, yeah, it's kind of more old fantasy setting in this school, but at the end of the game you're going to break out of the sphere and you're like, oh my god, we're in a wild sci fi universe. And there is like they talk a lot about anima , which thank God for Reddit for being like, oh, of course going back to Xenosaga with anime, oh, I forgot about anima as a thing in Xenosaga. I had to go back and read the way I had to look that one up too. Yeah. Look, there's a lot of lore, a lot of lore you got to keep track of. Yeah, but super exciting. And I guess this is in theory confirmation that Monolith isn't the studio working on this Zelda remake, which, you know, some fun theories have been bubbling about, but yes, this is coming out in my Genesis twenty twenty seven , which is going to be a huge year for JRPGs in general Xbox showcase they also revealed person a six finally with a very moody, dark, weird trailer, that's basically just barely more than like a logo splash screen. But I don't know, Kelsey, do you have hot thoughts on Persona six reveal ? I love the for this one, I do love the tone quite a bit at first glance. But I mean, yeah, there's not much to say yet. I'm happy that I'm happy that it's happening. I'm excited that it does look like it is t aking a slightly darker shift back, which is, I mean three is my favorite persona . So I am looking forward to it going back to being a little creepier, a little bit darker that if the trailer is to be believed , but yeah, I mean, there's not much to say yet. It's a green logo, you know. Yeah, I mean that is the big thing is green is the color this time around, which they had kind of teased before and stuff compared to five being red , four yellow. Cool, what else are people excited for? I think my favorite thing I played at Summer Gamefest was Blood Dungeon. This is one that consistently everyone I've spoken to has an excellent game. What is that? That's my Yeah, please walk us through what it is. It's the Nidhog Devs and it's basically a cross between vampires survivors and Spalunki. It's very weird in like a cutesy kind of way you are kind of yeah little unitful guy and you gain power ups by defeating enemies and you have to try and survive waves and defeat bosses and stuff . It's levels that are always the same layout, like same map, but the POIs are in different places and you'll find like keys in different locations and chests in different spots . And it was super, super fun. Like it was the kind of thing where I signed up for an appointment, not knowing what the game was, learned what the game was pre appointment and was like , Ah, another survivor's game kind of thing. And I was like, I'll just do one more run. I'll just do one more run like at the booth on a steam deck in the corner like hunched out by playing for like forty five minutes. That was literally me. I was sitting on the floor with the steam deck because Janet was in the big chair. I actually think the steam deck is the better way to play it because Janet, you were, it was real front row of the movie theater vibes that we were crying. Areasa are like this for some reason they're like, what if what if you were like sitting on a stool right next to like a sixty inch TV? Yeah . And it's like, sure, why not? No, I was kind of in the same vein as the URL where it was like, I didn't know what was, heard what it was. And I was a little bit more intrigued in that. I think the pitch I heard was like it's a platforming vampire survivors and I love platformers and I'm really good at platformers and I was really good at this game I. was And like , I liked it before I was good at it. Like I died pretty early in my first run and thought, oh, this is like pretty fun to do. I'm a simple man. It's fun to just jump around . And it and I think what's nice about this is it's not like you have to be like super skilled at like eyeing, you know, distance or anything like that because you can crawl on everything. Yeah, it's like stick to the walls and the ceilings and stuff. So you can kind of just like traverse any surface, but there's so many enemies that you have to be careful when you're traversing . And the number one feature, I feel like you buried the lead , it has the super Mario World style net gate thing that you can flip one of the best things that Mario put out there. I don't know if you have done it. If other people have done it, I don't care when they do it . That's the feel that's there. Now they don't let you like punch through to the other side. I don't know if that's for legal reasons. I understand that you might not be able to punch through this side, but that is like such a fun thing to do in a video game. Again, normally something I kind of only do in Mario games. So I really love that aspect of it as well . But yeah, it's just it's fun. It's frenetic. Like if you if you're open to survivor style games and you like to jump stop, you know, head run and now it was so fun . Yeah, I actually beat the area that they gave us like on my second run. So I felt very full of myself and then I just sunset it off for the day. It wasn't the last apartment I had. I was wildly tired and it just is I just love and this is the thing I like about the genre of platformers. I love a game that you can assess within seven seconds of playing it. And it is one of those. It's like you kind of you'll be into it or you won't . But it is fun to see the extra like any rogue type game, the extra synergies appear where it's like oh,, I'm kind of specking into this aspect of money. Oh, now I make money when I'm, you know, doing this. So then you kind of like start to lean and it's always fun in a game like that to get to be part of but also watch a build take shape and kind of feel like the invisible hand of the designer almost underneath you. Like I think that's really that when these games are their best, you have that feeling of like hm m are they giving me this because somewhere under the hood they've coded if I have these things they're going, to present me with this third thing to just make it, you know, the perfect kind of synergy. But yeah , and I know me and Kelsey were talking about this one saying that like this will be our connective thread to Jeff. So excited for us to squat up there. Everybody needs a bridge. Yeah, so Blood Dungeon, there's a demo out on Steam right now. If you want to check out Blood Dungeon, which yeah, I forgot. So it's Meshoff's new developer, yeah, Nidhaug one and two, then I forgot they made real world , not that long ago . Yeah, and they developed this like casually on the side. Yeah, whatever. When they had some extra time, they just sort of threw this game together. And it's fantastic, which is like just insane to think about like from a development standpoint. Yeah, you know what I think is insane to think about Janet Garcia? Patreon dot com No. I love windmills. Yes. No other windmills. The little kaleidoscope. Kaleidoscope. They want everybody to impose. Kaleidoscopes.. You got it Come discover Pocahontas County, Iowa, everybody. Pokemon County, Pocahontas County is home to eleven large kaleidoscopes throughout its communities and county parks as part of the state tourism initiative to take some time discovering what Iowa has to offer. Our kaleidoscopes offer a way to enjoy an affordable and fun vacation with your family, friends or even independently if you're wild. Each kaleidoscope contains a unique design has its own color scheme to match the history of the town or county park you.' Whreile in the area , be sure to check out one of the three public pools, including the brand new Lorenz Aquatic Center located near the Lorenz galidoscope in Sportsman's Park, or catch one of the free movies during Tuesday, morning and Thursday afternoons at the Riotto Theater in downtown Pocahontas. There are several public parks to enjoy, places to eat and shop, entertainment to enjoy throughout the county. Add Pocahontas County, Iowa to your travel list this year. Visit discoverpokoco. com to start planning your itinerary. That's discoverpoco . com link in the description. Yes, Ellie, we're promoting Iowa. That is our ad read on this episode Janet just dropped out here and I crept out. So let's just give a clap in her honor. I guess those are she'll jump back a round of applause for a round of applause for the internet apparently in this situation, but she'll jump back in if she can. What are the biggies that we haven't hit yet that are like no does? Like there's one in my mind, Kyle. I don't know if you're leaning the same way I am, dude I mean, I want to shout out Veronica, Resino Veronica. How fun did we just get to call it Veronica now. This is this is the capcom route. We lost the code. This is I mean you say it's like mumbling out of the side of your mouth. I mean, I feel like it's been years of like debate about are they going to do a remake of one or do a remake of zero and everybody who's cool in hip wants code Veronica and they frickin did it. They announced it. Yeah , this is absolutely like the one most deserving of a remake for sure. Like I played it for the first time in twenty nineteen and it's cool. Like it is it is proper resinval three. Like the backstory of all that is like it was supposed to be three. They changed it and then three nephesis was meant to be a spinoff and that got the number. So like this this is is supposed to be like I think it just started like they were trying to put reson equal two on the Saturn and that wasn't even close to working and they were like, well, what can you put on the Saturn? And then it turns out nothing but, we can put something on the dream cast. So and like it is, it's also like there's a lot of resumable lore in it too. It's a lot more about like the founders of umbrella and stuff like that. So like this is, you know, given giving me the choice. If I were in charge, I would have been like, remake this one. So I was very excited to see that confirmation. They're that Organization. Yeah, it I mean, it's exciting to see them remake like a flawed game. I'm trying to think of like the history of like Capcom's remake so much and it's like, I guess zero would be another chance of like, okay, can they punch it up and prove it? But it seems like Kurdronica people love. There's a lot of nostalgia, but people like you that go back flawed is like, I don't know if Flaud's the right word honestly. Like I think it's as good as any other like , you know , a follow up to two. I think it's good, you know, I don't, but I think it's just underplayed is what happened to it, you know. Sure. I think there's something where like you can get stuck in this game more than any other old resident evil. Like if you're if you miss a certain piece of equipment or something, you're kind of hosed. You can totally you can when I played in twenty nineteen, I streamed it and people were watching me and they were very like, okay make sure, you don't do this. It seems like a problem. I bypassed that thanfully. Yeah. So it was a what if they included that? What if they kept at their rebake just to be like a jank in there? I thought it was an awesome way for Keeley to kick off the entire show though because it was like, Is this Resney Evil nine DLC ? And then like, oh no, it's just full on Veronica. And like it's all first person in the trailer, but the confusing thing is apparently at the show, I don't know if you all can confirm this. They said that it's going to be a third person game . Yeah. Yes. Actually, let me pull up my notes because I did go to like a sit here and we'll talk about the , you know, we had I think is it the producer Hiyuki Kobayashi, I think was Yeah. So yes, it is a third person game with no first person mode. Interesting . Yeah . And he was really most of the questions I feel like steered back towards like, hey, you know how we did the remakes of two and four ? It's gonna be like that in terms of like that those are the kinds of changes we made in those games, the kinds of considerations we had like expect kind of a similar , you know , it won't be literally one to one, but there's not going to be any huge surprises , right kind of thing. Apparently it's the same teams that did the remakes for two and four which is super exciting. It's such a cool choice. Yeah, what was the release? Did they say twenty twenty seven for this thing? I believe no window just twenty twenty seven. Okay, awesome. God, it's just so funny. We could just call it Veronica. What a good day. Yeah. And fun. And of course, that was one of the questions asked, like, why drop the code . And I don't know, like there's never really a satisfying answer to this, but it was basically like, well, when we thought about what part of the title is important , the important part is the veronica part. And it's like, well, yeah, I guess . I mean, I think call it red and evil code, I guess. If you need to drop a word, then just one to drop. Oh, so freaking Kyle I was so preparing for you when I set it up for like the game you're really excited about. I thought you were gonna take the bait and go for this new Star Trek game, which is one of those that like was that on the bubble? It's Wyf North yeah. Okay , because that was one that was like. I missed it completely. It was in the what PC gaming show or something. I was like, what does this blueber team are gonna come off the heels of the Soundhill two remake and Chronos and a Star Trek horror game? Is this what you want Kyle as someone who's played Blober and has been like diving in deeper to Star Trek than any mortal man should I think it's a good amount, a normal amount but no to, just touch on it briefly, it was a moment of like I was watching the trailer and it's like it's clear at Star Trek. They have the logo and the badge and stuff and I was like , I like Bluber. I'm liking them more and more. And Star Trek certainly has horror episodes, but it's like not , I don't really want a horror Star Trek game . But then the moment the protagonist was made apparent, which is this character named Ro Larin, who is like important to the later seasons of next generation , completely onboard. I am very excited for this be specifically because of the Rolleron character. Like she's like because for a couple of reasons like a she's like she represents like next generation which is like the sort of era of Star Trek I like. I don't really like modern Star Trek. So like, yeah, let's go back a little bit. And then also she's just like a great character who is kind of underserved ultimately. And like they were even building Deep Space Nine around her because she was so liked , but then for whatever reason Hollywood reasons, they just decided to make an original character that was kind of a lot like her, if that makes sense. Like there's a character in Deep Space Nine who was supposed to be Ro Larin and then became Kira just because of, you know, who knows why scheduling conflicts. Allah separoth from Fawfayazzi . But yeah, so like I like Blueber, I like horror games from Blueber and I really like you said, I have fallen back into Star Trek in a big way and the fact that they're having Roe Larryn be the protagonist is a big deal and is very exciting. Like when I watched the trailer and then I messaged Matt Miller at Cayman F cameormer in for and I her was like, He y, you're gonna play his role Aaron. And he was also like, Whoa, that's awesome. Was she in Picard? Are they? Yes. Okay. Yeah, she had it was like a kind of she showed up for like one episode and it was a big deal . Yeah. Does she is she part Klingon? What's going on there ? She is Bajoran who I mean you don't want me to get into all this. You do guys don't care about this. This is a safe space for Dorks , you can hear you heard this next generation. Everyone in next generation is basically perfect employees. They love Starfleet and they do everything right. Okay . Okay. And then at the end, this character Ro Larn shows up and she's like, Hey , Starfleet is bullshit, and this sucks. And like you guys are like perpetuating wars . And like, she's the only person who's like speaking up and saying like what you're thinking as someone who's been watching Star Trek for six seasons and Picard has to be like, no, no, no, no, it's cool trick home. No mutinies, no mutinies. Exactly. And then she's like, he's a troublemaker on a ship full of people who are like not troublemakers. Okay. And she's a fun foil to Picard and she's a great performer and she's a beautiful woman. And it was just like awesome. She's just cool. And I'm excited to play as her in a horror game. That's cool. That's cool. Okay, one other big is that we should definitely not miss from the from the experts that were at the show . I want to shout out a couple of indies real quick. I enjoyed. Mr. Records was a lovely little thing from the Day of the Dev's presentation. This is game that plays a lot like a rhyme writer caricon or a Viv on if you want my niche poles, but it's a rhythm game where you are doing button press es in time to the music to do different actions, whether that's, you know, punching an enemy or jumping over a puddle or sliding . And it was very fun. The music is incredible . Like just it's all made by the developers who are very clearly musicians and can capture a lot of interesting sounds . A lot of it's done like a capella, maybe not like entirely I guess maybe Acapella's the wrong word because there's instruments in I think all of them, but it's like one person every single piece and stitching it together, you know, you've probably watched a YouTube video like that . Then in between the songs that you play through is a cute little just like record store management sim where you're matching people up with what they're looking for . They're like, you know, I think I want this kind of sound or like I'm trying to impress this girl and I know that she likes this kind of sound and the color green and you go find like the green album with the wheezer with that s . Yeah as you play through the levels you learn the music and then you get the record to sell. So you have to like progress through and then you understand how to run your store better because you're getting more music and more intimate with the music. Awesome. Mr. Record is the name of that one. Ellie, there was one on the tip of your tongue too . I really like slap slap out of it. Slap out of it? Yes. A slaping game. Everyone's calling it the slapping game. And because I'm so tired I keep forgetting the name of it, but it's just very silly, very goofy. Reminded me of like Banjokuzui humor You just not like a slap like a right to left kind of thing. It's like a punch, like an open handed palm punch things . Puzzle solving game built around specific levels where you have to move between rooms and zones up and down an elevator, different floors and lots of spatial and like proximity based puzzle elements . Very silly, very goofy, really muppety . Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Slam. And also excited for bad magpie as well because birds doing crimes should be a bigger genre, honestly. Yes. So I wish I wish I'd gotten to play that one, but it looks fantastic. Yeah, those are in the Xbox showcase. And it's like, oh, this is untitled goose game. I think you can legally get to untitled goose game for bad makepie. But yeah, that seems super cool too. God, a weird announcement . I'm curious if it stood out for all you all during summer game fest, but crossfire . I am fascinated by this game's development for several different reasons. You know , multiple times when we talk about our prediction episodes at the top of the year, I'm like, I think this is the year where we're gonna see what that's no moon is working on, which is developers who used to be at Nauty Dog and then, they're at Infinity W ard working on the amount of warfare reboot and whatnot. And they left and formed the studio called That Snow Moon back in twenty twenty one. And so I've just been waiting for like, when are they finally gonna reveal what they're doing? And there was a le likeaked early screenshot of what they were working on and it was like a third person tactical combat looking thing. And so I thought for sure like, oh, this is going to be Socom. That Sony's tapped them to make the new Socom . And then they revealed it and I went to like attend a digital preview for like an hour just to learn more about it. And it was fascinating because it was literally thirty minutes of them explaining the game and really setting up what they're going for with this kind of near future single player story focused third person shooter and then they're like, by the way , it's crossfire , which is really confusing because it's like they didn't lead with them. They did the complete opposite. They wanted to make sure you knew exactly what this was before being like , it's an IP that you might have heard of, which is a big shooter in China in particular and it's all multiplayer focused. And so the idea of that this ambitious, this expense of a single player story as a standalone thing is being made here in the States is really wild. And like what gets even more confusing speaking of remedy and control, remedy made like a story component. What do you call it? Just a campaign for Crossfire a couple years ago? It was basically like a call of duty esque single player campaign and they did like two kind of I played one of them. Okay , that was plenty. It did not seem like Remedy's high watermark . It seemed like kind of a tough, troubled production and maybe not the greatest relationship over there . And so somebody asked in the Q and A about just like, how does this work? So you all were working on this while Remedy was working on their crossfire campaign and you know, there's never going to be a great answer, but they're like, well, we're excited. It's kind of like seeing multiple authors take on Batman. We're having different versions of the story for the crossfire IP. And so it's like, yeah, whatever. I'm excited to have scheduling conflicts. Right. I'm excited to have just like a big budget story focused shooter, you know? And if the only way that can get across the finish line is if it's technically under this crossfire banner, even though there's no multiplayer component, like I guess that's totally fine for this. And so the big hook, which is interesting for what they're showing off here is adaptive cover , which doesn't seem like a huge thing to me, but they were leaning into it in such a big way of being like an interesting example of like, hey, we look at like combat and what it looks like these days. Here's just like a field of boulders and a soldier has to take cover as they work their way through that field of boulders . And in video games, you just can't really do it. It's like it needs to be gears of war putting your back against cover or nothing, basically, right? And so the idea with their take on crossfire is to have adaptive cover where it's going to be a lot of slowly crawling and the character will like know exactly how to stay behind any object that's next to him, which is really silly like, yeah, sure, we can talk about that for like fifteen minutes in this behind closed door things. I don't know if a sing le human being seen that trailer is going to get an ounce of a thrill about like the cover system, but maybe I'm just not as deep in the weeds on the whole shooter market and stuff , but they're focusing on that and then focusing just on the narrative angle for everything here. And it's like, it's not co op, but there's two characters and Leila and Cross and Leila she's a bit of a progressive and Cross, he kind of likes things the way they were . And so it's kind of a little army of two misfit characters things here happening. But I'm super excited that studios revealed what they're working on, and I'm curious to see more from Crossfire. I'm glad to have it . I'm sure we'll be talking about it more in the future here at Min Max as well . One more note. Allow it . Kelsey, do you know what happens when you have to eat food for lunch , but at the same time, food takes a really long time to make . I think you just starve and die. Yeah, exactly. Really, it keeps happening to me. It's really terrible. I know , it is horrific. However, what if I told you there was a company called Factor with factor meals everybody. You can have delicious food ready in two minutes, deliver it right to your doorstep. You put it in the microwave, it's two minutes. It truly is great. They sent a couple of big boxes of factor meals here and I was so thrilled . And Sarah was like dropping off the camera after the big Japan trip and I was like, Sarah, take six factors out of the mail and it was like Christmas. She got shopping spree. How many factors can she grab? So Sarah is some of the factors she's the first to break the seal, yeah. So if you see Sarah next time and she looks like really healthy and like satiated for the first time in your life. It's all thanks to factor means. She's talking about all the free time she has that she doesn't know to do with it. Yeah, exactly. You go from what? Four minutes for dinner for two. Come on it's a piece of cake and the meals are so good. We're talking how penny, lime, cheddar chicken, garlic, cream, pork chop, Romano shredded Romano shredded chicken was a couple things I had here. They want you to know that Factor has meals built around your goals, whether it's weight loss, overall nutrition, more protein, for strength and workout recovery. Check out Factors Muscle Pro collect ion. You can tell we're all eating that. And it's ready in two minutes. They got so many different varieties of food. You can head to factormeals. com slash minax fifty off and use code minax fifty off to get fifty percent off and free daily greens per box with new subscription details only. While supplies last until september twenty seventh, twenty twenty six, you can see the website for more details here at factorymeals. com check out the link in the description to get a great discount. They truly are great. Keep them around. Okay, other things we should definitely hit here? A quick shout out to Bub which is an indie narrative game that is just really, really gorgeous looking . It is mostly hand drawn slash hand cut out , all kind of like this beautiful hand assembled game going through what seems like is going to be a very sad and t ouching narrative. I got kind of like a little bit of despolote vibes from it in the sort of like, this is going to be a pretty contained story about a person and their family and their world done in a really interesting style and it looks really good. Yeah, hell yeah. There is so much that we didn't get to. This is why I think it's so probably the best summer game reveal showcase sequence we've ever had. And we'll talk about more in the bonus pod and stuff like that, but I mean Kingdom Hearts four got a new trailer and gameplay of Dusk Bloods Ellie, Dusk Blood's got a new trailer. I know, I know . Is it did the trailer do anything for you as a huge freftware fan? Is there still just so many question marks about what the thing is going to be? So I'd already kind of sussed out what I think it's gonna be . When it appeared on the screen, I was like, I think this is Fromsoft. I think this is Desk Bloods. And I was like , looks like it's running on Nintendo Switch . Correct . From what I saw and then it showed like a couple of other characters and stuff, there's some things we've seen already, some things we haven't. Closed network test this summer . I'm scared I won't get in if you're listening , From Soft Nintendo , help me out, please. Yeah, I think it's really smart for them to do that. I think it's super smart for them to just be like, Hey, here's a little bit more. We're doing a summer network test , sign up, see what it is, play it, tell people . Very, very smart way to let people disperse the news and like getting hands on with multiplayer games is so important for something that is as unknown as this. So yeah, yeah, for sure. It's still no release date, but if they're doing a test in the summer here, maybe that's going to be a big fall winter game winter. But other stuff for them heavy groove got a bunch of demos still that game's going to be awesome. Can't wait to jump into that one? One of the quietly. One Wolf Amongst two Wolf Amongst two huge. Yeah . One piece Grand Gourmet, which is Karosoft, making just a super smart restaurant, Sim set in the One Piece Universe where it's like, yeah, perfect. Yeah. Stated to K three, got a big showing Xbox thing. That's gonna be huge. Final Fantasy Resonance , which is HD two D very exciting. And it's like, oh no, turns out it's a remake of brave Exvious , which is the mobile final fantasy that some people really like a lot of wind out of my sails, honestly. Yeah , but honestly, anytime I see a returning character it takes the wind out of my sails, like I've just, you know, cloud shows up and I'm like, Ah, never mind. I don't need to care about this. I mean tactics had cloudy care about tactics I looked on Reddit though to be like, did people like Brave Excuse never played it? And there's a reddit thread that was to everyone who's played Brave Exfius, how good were the st ory and characters in this game? And the top comment just said, Ariana Grande was in it . So you know, I love working with exactly. But people did say the core story was good in that. But also sixteen sixty six Amsterdam, which I'm excited about. It's an old THQ project from the original credit director for Assassin's Creed that he's been trying to make forever. So the fact that that's happening is crazy. Ninja Theory announced Sinua, the third hellblade game is happening . Crazy Taxi is returning. Gears more Ede got a big demo a whole bunch more Metro twenty thirty nine due to Dark Ages Revelations. Monstunerner H Wild Ascendants. Big expansion there. Clutch, I thought looked cool from former Fortun Horizon developers as a very one that I know that has played that loved it. Ooh, okay. They were like, oh, it's kind of like Fortuna and then they just go completely off the rails and it's like, oh no, this is different. This is good. So I've never read any jay weekend. Yeah, Brian Shayfront was talking about it like in a like maybe one of my favorite things I saw. Wow , awesome. Star Wars zero company, the Star Wars Excom, that got a demo. So Genesis we mentioned, TMNT, the last Ronin from Platinum Games, that seems like a biggie . Kelsey, Tales of Eternia is getting like remaster and I was like, that's weird. Yeah, I played that one. And then I was like, wait, no, Tales Destiny two I beat that game back in PS one. I just didn't know that it was called Tales of Eternia in other regions . And I think we haven't had because Europe got a rem ake of it on PSP. Oh, okay . But I don't think we've had any way to play it other than the PS one . And honestly, it was probably like a digital title on PS three and Vita or something like that, but yeah, yeah. But yeah, I'm very excited for that. Yeah, for sure. Kyle, do you see Vivarum , which is very Gibli style thing ? Which earns that Ghibli title in the way that like a lot of games don't, you know, 'cause like they'll just use Gibli as a stand in for like pretty Gibli inspired game. It's like Vivarium actually does look like, you know, the Miyazaki style. So yeah, they'll look cute . Jenna Garcia returns to the show . Hello. I'm Tether Jimmy Tony and I'm very nervous about it , but I'm excited to be back because there's like two things I want to say and I would I feel like the dude knitter stellar yelling to the bookcase in backstory pass being like, Oh, I really hope someone mentions this and they're like, anyway, I'm like no that was my job. Like ten, fifty minutes after the fact Ben , I'm actually really into the adaptive cover and the crossfire . I think it looks really yeah, I think it looks and I'm not a shooter person. I think I'll be brief because I know we're out of order now, but I think it looks really cool. I think it makes like the play area feel way more engag ing. They like spent a lot of time emphasizing how much you walk into a level and you're like obvious this is a shootout. And I think that's true for even games that I think have felt fresher in the space. Like I really have been enjoying zero seven, and that is definitely a game that has elements of that, but I think makes it feel fresh. And just some point kind of made me realize how stagnant I think that formula has become and how interesting like the adaptive cover thing is for shaking that up . I do think these they did not talk much about the story, but my biggest concern is the story. It just seems like having how you described it, Ben you know, it's like she's progressive this way. It's like it seems like this is going to be like a headass both sides or y ass story. Like I don't know if that's true. Maybe they will do it in a way that's like really tactful and engaging and moving, but it did kind of feel like you know like it would just be , wow, we have really different views, but we're not so different you and I. And it's like, first of all , what are those different views? Because I'm kind of afraid of what this man is thinking. Yeah, that's the value . It's interesting. They went out of their way to talk about like, hey, we want these to be grounded characters. It's a grounded shooter, all this stuff . You know, this is the creative team that we had a big back and forth back in the day on the game for Compassmerory trip for modern warfare about whether or not college of duty was political . And then this is our team that like I debated that with for quite a while . And so they kept emphasizing over and over again that like, look, Smile Gates funding this from China, but there's been no creative limitations. We can tell whatever story we want. And we're not being censored in any way. We can tell the story we want to tell. It's one of those things the third time they said that, I was like, well, no, I'm not believing you anymore. It's such a weird point. Just keep reiterating like, I swear to God, we can say whatever we want. It's like, okay, I would just assume that, but it's interesting you're pointing that out repeatedly. But I guess people would worry about like a story about the American military funded by a Chinese company, how that would look. And so they're definitely sensitive to that topic. But I'm with you, Janet. I'm curious about this one . But that's crossfire to go back in time for that sucker. Janonathet. And then my other thing was just the Sonic Pico Park which is like the doofiest thing to be like wildly passionate about but it was yeah if you play Pico Park it's the same formula you know it's multiplayer you're kind of doing environmental puzzle solving if you've never played Pico Park, there's a lot of other similar games like Foxboy Boxgirl almost has some of that energy but a little bit more thinky . Yeah, it was just a fun game that's gonna make for some really good multiplayer. It goes up to eight. I thought it was really cute, really delightful. Again, really quick hit levels. Like I was really it was one of the most enjoyable things I played. So even though it does feel like I don't know, like a smattering of different IP, kind of a known quantity. I'm really excited to play that when that comes out. Right on. Cool. Yeah, Sonic Pico Park. That's definitely one of the strangest reveals throughout the whole thing. Okay, bonus bod, we'll unpack everything that we haven't gotten to yet, including Stranger than Heaven, stuff like that. There's still a ton more and the SDF travel is going to be coming up as well. We do have the top ten or the list I should say for the game of the show according to the Mid Max community. Six way Six way tie . Working away up the list. Six way tie No, going from the bottom up here. Six way tie, person a six, fable, Fire Emblem Fortunes Weave, Marvel's Wolverine, Aquarin ofa Time and Thief the Dark Project Remastered . Then there's a two way tie for Xenoblade Genesis and Gen Atlas . Then Accreen of Time being number ten is quiet. I mean, they showed a boy sleeping, you know? I mean, yeah, you're not wrong. Yeah . Number four was Resin Vo Veronica. Number three, control resident , number two, Godawar Lao Fei, and number one, what is this? Final Fantasy VIII Revelation is with the community had in the Minax community as the present. They didn't vote for it. Hacked this list. Bonus pod or for National Plus, I should say . There we go. I mean, do you all being at the show, do you feel like there was a lock for game of the show? Is there anything definitive in your mind? I feel like there was a blend. There was lots of people hyping up the Indies , lots of people being like Onimusha was I think the higher end A if we're lumping them both together. Yeah Animusha or control would be the ones that people were talking about the most, I think. Yeah. From my experience from the hands on world. And I think part of that too is that both of those were like fairly accessible to get appointments for. Like I don't know if some of these other ones had like yeah I assume that like the Kyle, you know, the game and former folks sometimes get access to things that not everybody else gets to play at the show. So from a creator standpoint , it was really hard to get appointments for them . Yeah. Like oh, interesting. Even for us we and I think we got the press list later than everyone else, like later than press and media like did not have like there was one slot left for Capcom when I booked. Oh boy. So and I booked ten minutes after getting the email . So yeah, it was really difficult to get hands on with a lot of games . Yeah., so yeah Well, I'm glad you made it. I'm glad we're able to get as many people as we can. Janet, by the way, I heard her and I crapped that again, but I'm glad she got back in here to talk about Peaco Park and adaptive covers. That's going out the way she wanted step in. That's right. Kyle, do you know how this whole thing operates, dude? Adaptive cover. Yeah, that's right. The adaptive cover, crouch behind your URL, as long as that URL says patreon. com Sashimax with two winds. Again, if you're a new supporter, you jump in at the five dollars tier before next Thursday. We'll DMU a steam code for Seafu or if you want to upgrade to the backs of past tier, we'll DM you a steam code for Seafu and we'll post on social media and you can check the description to see if that's still available, but we have plenty of code. So please jump in. And of course it's brought to you by people like I'm Apit. They want everybody to know about Scott Pilgrim EX, the physical version on PS five and Nintendo Switch two, and they have the vinyl soundtrack on their wonderful online store as well. They make great physical products. They know what nerds like because they are a bunch of beloved beautiful nerds over there at IMAPIT. So keep them around, please check out the wonderful online store and use that promo code for this month, Return of the Sixth , Return of the Sixth , no space for ten percent off of everything under one hundred dollars . We should point out IMAP bit also builds up all of summer game fests. They could not be more intrinsically connected. So fun to have them as a supporter of ours for oh so long . All right, community questions. Everybody ready? Hm , okay. Yeah . Here we go. Are you ready, Ellie? Because these are gonna be tough We'll see. Okay, it's kind of a test. It's basically just for you and it's not multiple choice. Fancy Graham writes in, they say, I know publishers are trying to avoid the GTA six blast radius, but isn't packing September full of releases just as bad as that? And before we all answer, let me just run down now the current list because it's only been updated since the last episode of September. Okay, september third, orbitals on switch two, then september third as well, Blood of Dawnwalker, that big RPG , then you don't have to give us the dates. Like them up. Real Move. Orbitals, Blood of Dawnwalker, Halloween Marvel's Wolverine, Runescape, trying Six somehow , warhammer forty K Dawn of War four, of course, Lego Batman on Switch two, Doon Awakening Control Resident Hell is Us on Switch two. If you care about that, Hot Wheels, Infinite Rush, Silent Hill Town Fall, Valor Mortis, which is that new game, only Mushaway the sword, Gothic II , Minecraft Dungeons two. It's too many and that's not there 's a lot of stuff packed in there as well beyond that. And then like early October is also just stacked. And it is like I'm convinced that the twenty twenty seven is like February March and people are afraid to announce in case GTA slips again. Oh yeah, I think that makes sense. I'm absolutely convinced that like all of these titles that we're seeing where it's like, that looks pretty done where it's just a loose twenty twenty seven is actually gonna be spring and they're just waiting for GTA to actually come out. Oh god, yeah. So these are like not knowing the GDA date, like what was the safest window we could hit? So everyone's like, oh, September seems on the early end. I think we can do it. And now it is just a stock. Apparently I forgot Fire Embloom fortunes weave as well as on the seventeenth. there Thanks back . That's also September. That's also September, just that little quick jaunt of the game Yeah, just a small one. I'll squeeze it in. Yeah. I could see I could see some slippage, some strategic slippage. I could see something like a control being like, We could bump to october twentieth or something, you know? Like just still have the wiggle run before GTA six hits and everything . So I could still see things slipping around, so I don't think this is hard and fast at this point for everything in September . But yeah, they are going to eat themselves alive a little bit . Although Bajora writes in with a hot take they say Heyman Max, let's assume that instead of everyone releasing their game their games in the month before GTA six, what if the gaming industry collectively decided to all release their games in November? Do you think they could reach a critical mass where they would cause Rockstar to delay their game ? I love the anarchy idea that what if is every one of these games and awkward time of they all, switch toed exactly GGA six's release date. Would Rockstar blink ? No . They wouldn't . G eight five is still like top of the chart every month , even now , like it's what thirteen years since it came out or something, fourteen years, like it still rules the charts. Like no , there no . It is telling, I think that 's the blink. They don't blink for anything . But thinking about we got so many community questions about GTA six. And you talk about just how much it's kind of dominating everybody's mind . It had no presence at Summer Game Fest and still for the Summer Game Fest episode, everyone just wanted to talk about like the slumbering giant. It's so awesome . Yeah. We were talking about it this weekend. Like I'm just tired of hearing about it. I just want it to come out so that it's done and we can move on from it. Like it's at this point . So if you just talk about the characters as the personalities that they are, you know, like the content of the game. Right. Oh, what a novel idea, yeah. Which of course Popquiz le, the name of the characters are Mr, Mrs. Rockstar. That's right. Jason and I don't know. I forget her name. Oh, I did know Jason actually. Yeah, I forget her name though. How typical of us gal? Kaffeine Dad writes in. They say, Hey gang, I don't say this to trash Xbox, but that translucent plastic on their twenty fifth anniversary Xbox, it's ugly, right? Does that translucent effect on plastic hardware ever look good to you ? Yeah . Do we like it? Just 'cause we like gaming things from our youth where they were more likely to have this through ? Okay, okay. I just like I just want things to be colorful. It doesn't I think the translucent part is like that's neat or is fine if we don't have it. I just I just don't need every piece of technology or every car for that matter to be black or white or silver. Like just I just want colors man. Yeah, I'll be excited about colors . I don't like the metallic panel. Like there's there's clearly a flat piece inside the front of the Xbox that's like it's like all pretty and green and translucent and then it's like shiny on the inside for like a good, I don't know. You have to have heat sinks in consoles. You can't. Yeah, like that it doesn't look as good when it's like that where it's got like you can clearly see the patchwork, I don't think, but yeah, I've got a translucent controller right here. Like I love him great. My thorough is that translucent purple, which is like a throwback to the gameboy color. But like I do know that when I was young, I was really enamored with it because I was like, I can see how it works. Yeah, right. But it's not moving parts. So like it doesn't just stare at this long enough, you know You can see the computer doing computer things . Yeah . So I think I would rather just have a color, you know, as Kelsey says, I don't know, maybe I could maybe I could drop the translucent. So they had like throwback rooms. I don't know if this was in the summer game fest of like, hey, here's what an Xbox gaming room looked like twenty five years ago, all that stuff. And I saw people like post pictures of like the translucent Xbox next to like , you know, the Mac that's like seats through the kind of famous Mac design that's the same thing and like a bunch of other translucent stuff. And I was like, did Microsoft have a bunch translucent other consoles and systems there or did people bring those from home? What was they looking at? I don't know like Kelsey I don't know if you went to the Fanfest stuff. I briefly went and had a look around. They had the console like in the entrance to Fanfest. Like on a little podium in a glass case, and then the rooms were kind of down the side of the main walkway . And the rooms themselves are really cool, but they were very much like set up as photo opportunities. You had to line up and filter in, and then you could go to each one and pick up like a guitar hero controller and stuff like for the three hundred and sixty and things like that. And it was cool to see, but no, there wasn't like other tech there. It was all very Xbox like okay. Xbox Centric, not like Microsoft Centric. Gotcha. Tom Blackburn speaking of which they say, I think it's an important question for that showcase, which is that Xbox show case was really good overall, but they say, what would you say Xbox's strategy is at this point to carefully go back to exclusives while not making people upset who don't want them to be exclusive. It's like they're sort of tiptoeing around it, but eventually it's just gonna be back to how it was with exclusives again. So they 're just so funny because we so recently heard them be like exclusives don't work. That's not the way forward . And then everyone is like, I know it'll work. Exclusives. It's just incredible. We just will say I know. And I think that they're reacting to their mistake . Like it didn't work for them, right? Yeah, no, it does it does make sense. It's just a very funny like to go back so quickly. Well, especially because for Xbox in particular, you know, they were like they cited that as like a reason that weren't doing well. They were like, we think the exclusives are like a bad thing for us or like hurting us. And so it's just like a lot of times I think, yeah, companies will change direction, make another decision or anything. But it's just weird to be like, this, this is the thing that's hurting us. You know what we should try ? The thing that we said was hurting us again. Like, you know, I do. I agree it's the right choice because that you just you have very few buttons to press, you know, very few levers to really work with at this point, but it's it is just , you know, they already they're not a trustworthy organization already and so it's like just another layer of like we were just hearing you say the opposite. This is weird. Yeah, they've pressed every button, including the black and white button. So it's confusing, right? I found myself rooting for them to announce for exclusives, which is so weird because I normally would think I don't like exclusives. Let people play where they want to play, who cares? But I just said for them to pick a lane and run in it. And so when they started the showcase and the Gears of War Eday , Xbox Console exclusive. It's like, oh, okay, big new direction. You know, everybody thought it was coming to PS five. Some of their marketing thought it was coming to PS five and was pulled down last second. I don't know if you saw that but like on the podcast they had, the visual video podcast talking about it, there was a slide that said that here's where ED was coming to PS five. And so people took that to mean this was a pretty last second shift and they went out there and said, o likeh no it's, just that we didn't let everybody know exactly what was going on because it wanted to be a small circle and they wanted to leak. And so who knows what to believe . But it is we're going to be rooting for them to pick that lane and I thought that was going to be it. And then they continue to reveal all these other games like state of the K three , Senua, like, you know, big new either reveals or kind of re reveals of these games and they're like, yeah, those are coming to PS five though . Or it's like Senua is PS five. Like, how are you picking and choosing this stuff anymore? It is so confusing . And so it seems like the idea is they just want a couple of big exclusives every year, maybe just one. They announced that Clockwork Revolution , which is that cool looking game from in Exile, the Wasteland team, that in twenty twenty seven, that's going to be a console exclusive . And so I just feel like we're biding time until they drop the megaton of Elder Scrolls being console exclusive . I wonder if it's related to the whole news coming out at the moment about how the series S is difficult to develop for. Yeah. And it's like a production cost thing.s Like do we develop just for Xbox and make it better and make the pipelines better for series and stuff? Or do we develop for everything and potentially damage the reputation of our own console , like that is potentially playing into it for like further out projects , which is why things that have closer release dates might be the ones that are across everything because they haven't made that pivot with them yet because it was so recent . Yeah. Potentially. Right, right, it is just it's odd. It's as always, Xbox is just a little odd. And it's an interesting one to try and squint and understand the strategy of, but I think realistically , it's probably like they're making so many moves of just like, how do we just make our core Xbox fanbase believe in us again? What levers can we possibly throw? We're going to say this is, of course, the return to Xbox . Return to Xbox. We'll let you vote on Twitter on if Xbox is all caps or not. Like what else do we got? We'll do everything. We'll have a throwback console. Here we go. Hello everybody, gears everybody. And it just feels like it is trying to play into that crowd of like gears is Xbox exclusive . And then meanwhile, also be like, yeah, but we kind of need the money that we'd make on other consoles if we release those games elsewhere. Like Sun was probably not going to make its money back unless it gets out there in PS five, like it's just an interesting spot as always . Philly Yeatst writes in this say, Heyman Max, for some reason, I am currently playing through a ghost recon breakpoint and was befuddled to discover that the skatebo arder Rodney Mullen voices a major character in the game . And the weirder part is he does a fine job . I love that. I love that . I didn't know it. Fine. Apparently qu,ite fine. What random celebrity performances in a game stuck out to you and made you wonder, what are you doing here? I'm trying to look Susan Sarandon in Dishonored. Oh right, right. He stands out for me. Yeah. Like she's arguably the most notable actor in the game and she plays like a homeless woman who doesn't have that much dialogue. Right. It's really weird . Forgot about that one. So that's my answer. Yeah. No, I think that actually is correct as any game Susan Sarandon has appeared in a familiar spirit writes in and they say, Do you think there are more games that take place in Japan , the US or the rest of the world combined? If it's a real world setting, Japan, US or the entire rest of the world. I think it's US is a fantasy settings or US do you think so? Where would you put a fantasy setting? What do you mean? It's fantastic. I mean, I guess like no final yeah, I guess yeah, right that you can't JRPG is not sad . I mean, look, I mean, you could say like worldwide have your kings and queens over there still. But that's basically JRPG land. I think the thing I was getting at is like is that a fourth category? Is it like is that where ? No, I don't think so no. But there is like it's interesting trying to think of those games that kind of blur it. I don't know, like Pokemon, it's, well, I guess there's one based on a US region, you know, it was like a lot of it's inspired by Japanese regions, but I don't think you'd count them. I mean, there's not a lot to them . Yeah. Because then there's like France and yeah , we're figuring where Ruben Empire based on yeah, I think it is just maybe the two generations . But I mean Japan there are a lot more Japanese games that take place in the United States than there are United States developed games that take place in Japan . Right, right. Like maybe Yotai and Tsushima are like the only two that come to mind. Plus I'm just going to get all of the racing games, all of the shooting games, like there's there's huge amounts of those that take place in US or US related like US campaigns. Yeah, a lot of things like that. US like military games aren't based in the US, it's just you are from the U. S. But also like you think about like, you know, what's filling up the shelves, every Maden game , that's as US as it gets. That's that's something that you can stack in there, right? , yeah, I guess if sports games are part of this sure . Although Japan will be giving them a run for their money because they also have a bunch of baseball games and then a bunch of Japanese horse racing games. Interesting . I still think it's US I would put my mud . My gut is US Yep, yeah. Okay, there we go. We nailed it. We nailed it. No , and if you watch the Min Mac Spotlight on Virtuous Ledgehammer, the Spanish developers talked a little bit about this in a way that I find interesting, where they said that like for their previous games even they were just making games the way that you should make games . And it wasn't until like the last couple of years they realized like wait, we're not representing Spain. When we're designing what like fire hydrants look like and stuff like that, we're basing it on either U. S. designs or Japanese designs. And even though we're trying to make a game so interesting inspired by Spain, it's still just reflexively. They're like, well, of course , everything needs to look like it does in the US or Japan because we know what Venue games look like, and it's either the US or Japan . And so now they're trying to shake it up more . A familiar spirit. Oh, that was their question. Chandler wrote in and they say, would you find it weird if a fan met you and didn't tell you that they're a big fan . What if they use their knowledge of you to make the interaction go really well? Have you ever gotten along a little too well with a stranger that you became suspicious of this? It's important that Ben answers this . Thank you, Chandler. Did you do exactly this Chandler to me at some point? I don't know. I know that feeling. Do you know that feeling of like talking to somebody for a while and be like, do they listen to the podcast? I don't know what this is like Okay, you know what I'm talking about ? Yeah. Well anytime someone just casually brings up the Wonderswan to me I'm like that was a calcul ated move, obviously. That's not like a you're not just bringing that up with every person you meet, even in a retro game store. Right, right. Yeah. That so is that do you appreciate that ? Or would you like them to say by the way, I listen to every word you've ever spoken Kelly Lewis and I know you like I think the only way in which that would make me uncomfortable is like exactly what this person is describing where they're like if someone met me organically, tried to develop a friendship but was secretly like peppering in like trying to social engineer a friendship without disclosing would feel a little icky . I would hope that they would be themselves more and you know , but I don't know. I mean, I don't think you have to like disclose that every time you talk to someone, but it would it would feel underhanded, I suppose if it was like but I also think I'd figure it out. Like if you just knew a little too much of the correct buttons to push, I would be like, that's not a coincidence. There's no way that didn't know these things about me but still brought them up in this order this quickly. Right, right . I tend to get it where people recognize me and tell me that they recognize I've been around in the industry a while. People know me for different reasons . So like people will be like, Ellie. And I'm like , hi Hi . And you're like, do I know you and I just forgot your name or that is so yes, please I guess I'll add, please do say that we have not met if we haven't met if you're open ing with that because like how you gives me anxiety every time because I default to the like hey buddy have you been like assuming that I'm supposed to remember who you are and I 'm giving a very awkward person . Like I don't mind being awkward because that makes me more comfortable because I don't have to pretend to have . You know? There's somebody like I literally had this at the weekend. Somebody like tapped me on the shoulder as I was walking by and I was like defensive and project you know and they were like Ellie , I follow you on social media. I watch your streams and I was like, okay cool. Hi didn't introduce themselves immediately. And I was like, I don't know if I know who you are kind of thing . But yeah, just getting some context as to how you know a person could go such a long way, but please please don't make it weird, don't do the I'm going to start talking to you about stuff that I know you like without introducing yourself or like acknowledging that you know a person especially as women in the industry, it's very weird to experience . So yeah, I had a weird one the other day where I was at like a farmer's market and it was kind of close to my kids ' daycare and it was strange because it was like, Oh wait, there's a couple other kids from the daycare that are also here just like running around and playing on the playground next to it and stuff . And so I was like talking to some of the parents from daycare and then this gu y just comes up and he's a very nice gentleman and he goes Hey I know you and it was the most confusing tone and I was like from daycare from tickets and he's like no he's like, I think you podcast about games or something. I was like, oh weird, yeah. So it turns out like dad a dad at the daycare where my kid goes also listens to the podcast. So hello out there. I won't reveal your name, but listen to great est time. To get in good with your kid. Right, yeah, exactly. Okay, so make sure you talk to that guy's dad about Final Facing seven . Revelation is going to be a big thing and it's weird that they changed their frozen voice actor . But also it's kind of a double whammy. I think it's like within the same week I was like playing baseball on the field and guy stopped me and he's like, Ben Hansen. I was like, whoa, weird, hi, who are you? What's this? And then he's like, Hey, I just recognize you. I'm a fan. And then it was very sweet because he got a little choked up talking about the ice coverage and how it me muchant to have Minnesolis represented that way. And I was like, oh, that was very sweet. But it was, I don't know, when that happens in a short span of time from two strangers, just a little bit like, okay, I guess there's face and voice is out there. All right Chuckles eight hundred and twenty five, which is what Kyle just did . They say, Hey, Man Max , I wanted to thank Kyle and Sites like Game Former and Kotaku for reporting on their generative AI concerns with crazy taxi world tour. The initial steam disclaim er for the game was incredibly vague and follow up questions are apparently needed now to allow consumers to make informed decisions. As AI slowly encroaches on my job and hobbies, I'm still figuring out where to draw the proverbial line in the sand. For now, I'm just appreci ative of everyone here for speaking out to developers and publishers, asking questions, making sure they are aware of the issues with this industry. Are you seeing any positive shifts in the industry away from AI usage ? No No . Um , I mean, yeah, it's first of all, shout out to Brian Shey. Like my byline is on that story for Game Informer, which ended up being a popular story for the site, but Brian is the one that went and got that quote and toked talk the SEG teamA and stuff . But I mean sort of the positive direction that I see from it is like people embracing developers who say they don't use it and are proud to not use it and then rallying against those who openly do use it, you know, which I think is like that's I mean I don't want you know, don't go attacking people online or anything but like the best thing we can do to like share that that's not something we really want in video games is to , you know, share that opinion often , right? I mean , which I think it could like encourage a positive sort of direction for that . I hear tips into the skin , which we never want. Yeah, no, I hear them on like the vague steam disclaimers because even reading those, I'm like, man, what exactly does this mean? And as we talked about before in the podcast, like it is such a blurry line of like, okay, do you care if programmers are using AI in some ways? And it's like, not really. It's just a bit of a mess at the moment. And then there's just lightning bolts or lightning rods of being like, okay, well that clearly sucks. For example, the Kingdom Hearts collection key art that is pretty clearly made using AI. I'm like, Kingdom Hearts key art were at that level of AI usage. That is no there's see this one's weir d too. Like it seems like it might not have been AI but just like bad like bad drawing like AI was used like after the key art was made or something like that. It's that one's a little fuzzy and a little unclear. Okay because Donald Like Nora did the art and then they used AI to sort of rearrange the layers, you know, and things like that. And that's why like Donald 's hand has five fingers when it because Donald's hand was supposed to be behind Sora, you know, and stuff like that. Anyway, that's the assumption, right? That's not like square Enix is not comment in the moment. Well yeah, we don't have an actual answer, but there's definitely some there's some questions about that one that I , you know , I don't I don't want to just outright be like definitely AI if we're kind of still digging into it . But I mean, but that is, I mean, you're still right. Like that is the level that we're at and it really sucks that we are having to question even like no more art , you know? Yeah. I've been talking with my community and like industry people about this recently like we're probably going to start hitting a point if we've not already hit it where dev teams have rolled back AI usage and they've been like, okay, yeah, bad idea. We didn't like it. We're not using it, but they're still going to have to disclose that they've used it . And how is that going to impact games going forward? Because games theoretically for the next four, five years, if they've had AI touch it are going to have to disclose it. So how is that going to impact things too? And with the current sentiment around it and people boycotting things so hard as they should, you know , like how far is this going to go reach wise ? Yeah, I thought it was interesting . We helped out with the showcase for second wind, the whole second wind showcase. And they had a spreadsheet of like, gosh, I forget thousands of indie games that were in contention. We had to like go through and choose a couple that we liked that look promising and stuff to kind of be like, Hey, this is a Mid Max approved entry in this showcase type of thing . But in their spreadsheet, shout out to them. They're really clear about like, Hey, you need to disclose if you used AI this game's development. And so it's really interesting to have that data of just like, Hey, here's a spreadsheet of thousands of developers like how many are actually using AI or admitting they used AI . And I got this is not scientific, but I remember it was like maybe like fifteen percent, twenty percent or so in that spreadsheet , we're like, oh, we used it for prototyping some stuff, yadda, yada, but we replaced it. And so I'm sure the number is actually higher than that, but it is it does feel like we're at a bit of a tipping point now of I mean, what the new tombid Rera reboot. They're like, ye,ah yeah, we use it. Of course . Amsterdam, sixteen sixty six, even that game in the demo, people are finding some AI art. It just feels like so many huge games now. It's just kind of baked into how people use this stuff. And again, find your own level . I think it frickin' sucks, but I don't know if I'm just being realistic or pessimistic or what in thinking it sucks. I never use it at the same time like everyone's gonna start using it more and more it.' Ands if like bl atant in your face and it sucks, call it out, but otherwise it's just probably in the mix forever now. You can't really extract that swirling poison and maybe bond, you know ? I mean, the people the people who say that are the people who stand to profit from its proliferation . It doesn't have to be inevitable , you know? Like it doesn't have to be , but I mean , it's hard to fight against, you know ? Yeah, yeah, it doesn't have to be I don't know, you're right. It technically doesn't have to, but realistically, right direction you think I'm going. The thing that I'm saying is the people specifically who are like, look, just embrace it. This is the future. Like you can't avoid it. Are the people who want us to pay for it ? Yeah, you know, like so Jeff Britton writes in and they say, Hey Nexers , what's your best impression of the Nintendo Direct voice ? And what game or feature would be the funniest to hear in that voice Personally, I think the Nintendoified overview of Insomnia's Wolverine's dismemberment system would be great to hear in the Nintendo Direct voice . Well, that's a very good are we talking like a Nintendo Direct Voice that's like all upbeat and nice or like the one where it's like okay, we're into the eighteen rated games the games like the same actor . Yeah, yeah, same actor just like different tones. I think you'd have to be I like the upbeat one a little bit more, I think , before he gets too dark. Does anybody have an impersonation of it? I'll kind of is anybody wanting it. I got it.. All right, here we go Kelsey. This is Kelsey's take on Tun Direct Voice here. We go hang on. Verb, verb and verb your way through this stunning new game. Wow, ladies and girls . This adjective new game is what I should have said. Beautiful . Yeah, okay, so let's see, it's like okay, hang on, let's see. So I think I'm joking as I let's see what's the stupid sentence say. It's like the castle is already occupied . Just like the stupid most vague, like cryptic leading to the and then they just over explained everything. Did you guys also think that direct was it's weird to say oddly paced , but it just felt like yeah there was just moments that I'm like this should, have been like take a breath , kingdom hearts for . Or even just me like, here's a new Xenoblade game. It felt like everything was given exactly equal weight, which is weird. Right. So having just done a reaction video with timestamps, I can tell you . There's like a section in the middle where there was just two huge chunks of like six minutes of each thing and then there would be like forty seconds, forty seconds , forty seconds like for titles that should have had more airtime. Right. And like, I love the endearing. I'm gonna do a thumb war, but like it was a long texture. Long thumb war. Yeah, it just felt like it wasn't the right level of gravitos and kind of rhythm to those reveals and stuff. And it is weird. I know people talk about it, but it's like if you look at the high points of that show , it was like almost a Nintendo direct hall of Famer, but it did not feel that way watching it. And it was like a lot of ports, a lot of just like blog ports coming to Switch to or kind of okay announcements. And then I think the thing we should talk about is like that Ocarina of Time Leak deflated everybody in a huge way. I think people would be like, that direct was a eight out of ten, nine out of ten if it was a complete surprise that Ocarina Thomas going to the remake, you know? But because of that leak the weird pacing issues, it just felt like, why does this not feel as good as it should be on paper ? You know? I loved so much about that direct . Like it just kept hitting. I'd get like a breather where I'd like calm down from something and then there'd just be something else. Whether it's the Judici en game or the one piece cooking sim, like restaurant sim and then Zenoblade Chronicles and like some of the ports that are coming surprised me like Lies of Pea I was like, what is this doing here? You know just it kept getting me throughout, but the pacing was strange. Felt like I didn't have time to think about what was happening for most things . And then far too long to think about things like splatoon to say that we're getting a Splatoon direct . Right, right. The thumb wrestling thing was was really funny to me because it was like it f,elt to me like kind of like an old school like E three presentation where you were just kind of like, what are we doing here? Like why are we putting time on this ? But then as someone who's like writing stories about it actively, I was like so grateful . I was like, yes, play this for like ten minutes so I can try to catch up a little bit . Absurd. Okay, Ellie and everybody else, what do y'all like for a question of the week? Which one the show better? There's stuff like September releases , getting out of the blast radius, translucent consoles, Xbox's strategy . I really liked Kelsey's impression. I'm going to throw that out there with her nintendo. Yeah. I feel like that improved the sharp. You're right. You're right. That's true. It's also the one about people that meet you, but they don't say if they listen or how they know. I think that was an interesting question we've never really had before, but Ellie or Leanne one way or the other I always like I always like talking about like strategy and timings and things because the marketing brain so like mine is over in that realm from like earlier on in the questions. So okay, like the Xbox strategy. A lot of good questions though. Yeah. All right, let's do it. There you go. Tom Blackburn. Congratulations, just one question from the week. Thanks to Im eight bit. Now it's time for the lovely jingle for get a load of this Hey, get a little this everybody. Boy, I have a couple different options. Here's one . It's a little redundant because I think we talked about it. I forget if there's a community a little bit or something a while ago , but it was a show and it's Frank Salchdi from Vitamrinit Pican History Foundation. Kelsey knows it well . And it's a podcast, but then also a YouTube video and it's just called We Launched the NES forty years ago . And we mentioned on the show. This is so good. It is ridiculous. I not mentioned this on the show. We talked about it at some point on the show. And I think I was in the camp like, oh that's great. That's great. It was in my Q forever. I finally went through the entire thing this last weekend . Blew my mind. It's just that level of history that's so amazing. Like this seems incredibly important and the video only has like ten thousand views and there's so many tidbits in here that I had no idea about launching the NES and specifically it's just like a panelist of people from Nintendo of America who, yeah, designed the NES and launched the whole thing. And it's amazing just to have them still around , being that open, talking about it, and just like the level of control they had over the NES is so wild compared to Nintendo today, you know, it's very much like, all right, we launched the Famicom. Use that as like a starting point, but make whatever you want is kind of the idea. So there's a thousand interesting things. And there'll be a link below if you want to check this out. Just a truly crazy get of a group of people. I mean, getting anyone , even if they are retired from Nintendo to speak like intimately about the company and what was going on at the time, I think it's enormous. Yeah. And so a couple interesting factories . They talked about they're trying to come up with a name for the system . And so they had so many different options and their number one pick was the advanced video system was what the NES was going to be called because they're like, we can't put the word Nintendo in there because if the console isn't hit, it'll damage the big brand. So you want to make sure it's like a siloed brand just in case the entire thing goes down in flames. And then I guess Furakawa in Japan, he's like, put Nintendo in the name like it's a bad idea. Don't do it , but they ended up doing it. So anyways, the original plan , they had a whole list of early names. Yeah, advanced video systems was number one. Do you know what the number two name that they had on the list kile was for the NES Mario Box . The complete opposite literally Genesis . They were gonna call it the genesis . But then the weird part y Genesis. That's right. Yeah, it's everywhere. But then the weird part is then somebody on that team after Nintendo they went to work for Sega. I'm saying oh that's where Genesis came from then. Like but I never that's a wild idea that the NES was this close to being called the Genesis. Like that is such a weird thing that I don't know how that factoid dodged me the whole time . And then interesting stuff as well, like you know, with the market crash , with the Itari and Atari's games and so many people were burned specifically as they saw it by the box art of games because like the Atari box art, all that old box art is so incredible. It's like these vivid paintings. And then you play the game and it's just two dots attacking each other. It's just an absolute zero. And so if you look at it, it's really interesting because remember like the you all know it, the box art for Mario Brothers, right? Where it's like Mario like falling into the lava, right? It's like, this is such a weird image. Why this? And the idea was like we needed to represent exactly what the game looked like when you play it . So that's why all the NES art or most of it is like pixel art of just like what does the game actually look like? Because we are trying to dig ourselves out of this hole of Atari just burning us and the entire industry. So anyways, link below if you want to check it out. It's interesting. Look at gaming history. Get a little bit this. This is also technically from SGF, but I don't know maybe not a big enough announcement to make w aves, but studio MVHR, the cuphead folks are, you know, they're making a new cuphead and all that. They're also making an eight bit game called Mighty Cuphead Adventure. And when I say an eight bit game, that's right. I do not mean they are using eight bit graphics. This is hand programmed in assembly language for the Sega Master System hardware . This game will run on a Sega Master System and that is just the most beautiful, dorky dedication to a craft I have seen recently . I'm so excited about it. I can't believe that you kind of have to dig to get that information, like lead with that. That's awesome, you know? Yeah, it's on their website, but I don't think they said it during the showcase. I don't think they said that this was going to literally run on master system architecture and is actually programmed and assembly. I think that's crazy. Yeah, Keeley, I think is pretty good with the messaging generally, but he just had a moment where it was like, It's actually an eight bit game or something. I was like, okay, but what does that mean? But if he would have said it runs on a master system that.' Ls exikeactly the type of dorky stuff that would land so much more, you know? So I blame Kyle Bossman for not getting that word again there. Hey, get a little of this. I don't know if you guys saw this. You and Kelsey , Ben, do you know Cable Sasser from Panic? I think that's a very well. Yeah, yeah, old man my spotlight about it. Okay, he shared this post that he was playing Lego Batman and there's like a screen that flashes on Batman 's monitor. Yeah . And it and he was like, and he looked up and it said that looks like Commodore sixty four basic. And like he went and got the code and like put it in a machine and it was like a Batman screen saver, like a little bat symbtol bouncing around the screen . And it's just like the most like , I mean, that's an easter egg ass ter egg . And also only one that I expect only Cable Sauser would have discovered. So right. Yeah, it's very cool. Yeah , right. Links below. You can see it because you made a little video about it, but it was very charmed by it. Ellie, welcome to the part of the show where we only talk about throwback engineering and programming. So if you have any retrogram cussing edge engineering . What do you got? Yeah Get a load of this. I did not know this until this weekend, maybe public knowledge. I don't know, but remedy have a really specific method for recording facial cap ture for their games , which if you've seen any kind of performance capture for video games like motion capture, did you do all the little dots on the face or they'll do like the little camera that's like right in front . I know the Baldersgate three cast talked about this recently , but Remedy have their actors like in a static position , like stuck in, they put their head on like a little rest and then they have really intense facial capture and they have to like hold on to bars so that they don't move. And that's how they do like all of their facial capture . Because I had the absolute pleasure of chatting with Sean, who's playing Dylan in Control and I was like, how is it doing like being yourself in a game? And he was telling me about these processes because they're not allowed to move when they emote and do like the more physical side of things because they have to get such a t ight scan of the face. So yeah, he's like forced into this like almost straitjacket type situation and they have a variety of different instruments to allow them to like strain their body and their shoulders and their neck so that the sound changes, but their face and head doesn't move. So I thought that was really cool. That's cool. Oh, by the way, that we saw that on the quantum break cover story trip, do you remember that? I don't remember seeing like they just We went into the room and I remember thinking at the time I was like this seems like weird and like I'm sure they will improve this tech assume like this make it like so the actors can be more free. Like, I'm not saying it needs to be improved. It looks great, but like, I'm frankly surprised to hear that that's still happening. Yeah, 'cause I brought up like how good a likeness is, and he was like, Well, let me tell you about that. And he was like, t ak aen like scan of the inside of my mouth and my teeth and stuff. And I was like, that is wild the level of fidelity that they aim for. So I think they were quantum break I think they said they went they would go to dentists. The actors would go to dentists and get their like molds of their teeth taken so that they could scan it into the game and stuff like that. Yeah. Now they just scan it Over progressive . No more, no more plaster. I asked the developers of CrossFire, that's no moon. I asked them like why that phrase for the studio? What about that line from Star Wars? Where was like, that's iconic for the studio we're building ? And their answer was so odd like, well, you know how it's like that's no moon that's the space station, that's the DeStar. It's kind of like a secret weapon type thing. And we have a secret weapon at that's no moon as well, and it's our performance capture straight like stage . I was like, what? So it's like your performance capture stage is the Death Star. Okay, got it. That's the connection here. Hey, get a little bit from the community. They share this in the channel . The Discord channel where they share fun factoids all day every day . This is somebody sharing a blue sky from Eric Stirp who was at Tell Tale back in the day . And he posted and, he said four years ago in the Tell Tale Games alumni Facebook group, Michael Parsons, who worked at Tell Tale, was asking if anyone had advice for helping his fifteen year old son achieve his dreams of becoming a filmmaker. And then every body in this telltale games alumni group were like sharing links like ah, here's what I recommend. If you want to get started making films, yada, yada . And that person is Cain, who just directed Backrooms, one of the biggest movies of the year. It's just so crazy. Four years ago in a Facebook group, his dad's going in to be like, Hey, telltale, help this guy be a filmmaker and now he's just knocking on the park. And Kat, I don't know if you've heard interviews with him . He's twenty , he sounds like the wisest sixty year old man I've ever heard in my life. Like it is surreal hearing interviews with that guy. I've heard people say he sounds like a genius . Yeah. Thanks to Teltale, apparently. But there we go. That is it for this episode of The Min Mex Show. Thanks everybody for watching, listening, sharing, supporting all that fun stuff. Ellie, thanks for being here . Thank you for having me. You betcha. Your Twitch streams, number one plug, where would you like to appoint people ? Ellie Joy panic everywhere. Twitch, YouTube , social media, just come find me and watch me be weird on the internet. That's perfect. Links below if you want to check all that fun stuff out. Let's see Kelsey. Peep bang. Huge episode drop this week. Yeah, it's the end of the season . And so as is, I guess tradition for a show that's still fairly new , we did another huge DND campaign with Charles Hart, except this time, Charles Hart went even more above and beyond, if you can believe it. He actually kind of like created his own tabletop system tabletop's not the right word, I don't think, but DND like system and he's even posted the rules for anyone to play. I had a ton of fun with this. I found it way more approachable than D and D . So I highly recommend if you want to do a silly little thing with your friends. But yeah, come listen to our wacky story of going through the sci fi lands and yeah, it was it was a fun time and we'll announce new season stuff as soon as we can. We need to have kind of an end of season wrap up meeting about it, but SGF was in the way. So we'll do that soon. Right on. Bonus pod this week with the five dollar feed, five dollars here on Patreon, you get the bonus pod guest feed where you get the extended version of PPA with Sarah's loaded gun the segment at the start of the show every week, but also in that bonus podcast feed is Bonus Pod. And this week it was Haley and Jacob taking suggestions from the community that were awesome games revealed during summer game fest that deserve more attention. So it's kind of like the hidden gems of summer game fest. It's a very fun episode and you can watch the video version as well if you click the ring in the description there. Otherwise, we'll have the deepest dive on zero seven first light. That is continuing. We took the week off just to account for summer game festival, but that's picking up. We'll have the post up on Saturday on Patreon looking for your thoughts in the game up to two thirds mark. We'll let you know in the Patreon post exactly where that stopping point is . But then also we'll have the Summer Game Fest Travelog. I'm really looking forward to jumping in and starting to edit that tonight. So hopefully that'll be up by Monday of next week is the plan. So you can kind of get a sense of what summer Gamefest is actually like we are only able to go because of your support on Patreon and the community overall. So we want to share that as much as we can with you . But all right, that is it. Thanks so much everybody greatly appreciate it. We'll be back next week with a whole new episode. Thanks again , L.ie Appreciate it . Thank you until next time, be good enough, let's go