Asmongold TV - EVERY PlayStation story is the same.. | Asmongold TV

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

EVERY PlayStation story is the same.. Asmongold podcast for all of his stream highlights, competitions, reactions & more. ------ ------------ Keywords: gaming reactions, gaming opinions, gaming news, gaming commentary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every PlayStation game is the same now. A lot of people linked me this video, and I think it might actually be true. I'm a huge fan of PlayStation's first party offerings. They've come to embody the sort of cinematic adventures I've always looked for when sitting down with a controller in my hand, feeling like genuine blockbuster events meant to be savored. But where in the past, this brand of glossy storytelling felt like new ground being trodden, I can't help but feel that recently it's become the well-worn road. It's not just that all of PlayStation,

major releases adhere to the now trademark third-person cinematic stylings. It's that Stable of Developers has become seemingly obsessed with stories that explore the exact same themes, grief and revenge. And I'm starting to get a little... The reason why it happens is because the games are being made by a bunch of boring, obnoxious millennial theater kids that have never gone through any trouble, trial, or tribulation in their life other than whenever their parents found their deviant art profile, whenever they were 15 and they got sent to therapy. That's it.

Oh, and maybe also whenever Amazon ran out of Lububoos to order. I had of it. As a rule, these games are all impeccably well made. But I'm starting to miss that era when PlayStation's range felt wider. And things were a little bit more fun. He brings up a really good point here. I think that a lot of PlayStation games are your third person over the shoulder, narrative RPG, story, movie, slop, video game.

There are a lot of them. There are a whole lot of them. The realization that so many PlayStation games have explored the same grim story themes... Props to Astrobot, by the way, that broke the mold there. Struck me when playing through Sucker Punch's new Ghost of Yote. While I thoroughly enjoyed it and admire

its consistently exciting approach to combat and genuine sense of discovery it creates for exploration, I couldn't help but feel I'd been told its story. before. As Atsu, you're tasked with avenging the death of your parents. How many fucking samurai movies are there where the beginning of the samurai movie is the bad samurai showing up and killing all the people and then leaving you and laughing at you? It's like this is Conan the fucking barbarian, it's Rise of the Ronan. Like, every single fucking one is like this. Like it is. It is. There's a whole lot of these.

Kill Bill, yep, there's another one. The Sekiro. Yep, there we go. A lot of it. It's not about necessarily the framing of the story. It's how it's told, I think. Blood-soaked journey across 17th century Japan. Jeez, we're going to have to watch this again. Of the Yote 6.

Not only is this tale unfortunately close to the plot of Assassin's Creed Shadows, which I... It is... Got them. It's the same thing. It also played to completion earlier this year. Oh, wow. Same combination of fiery revenge arc, crossed with meditations on what it is to grieve. Well, it's even, the thing is that it's even at the beginning of Assassin's Crut shadows,

a group of samurai that look different and some of them wearing masks and look like idiots, cause, you know, like, I think her name is Noway, they kill, oh, yeah, they kill her family too. Well, yeah, it's the exact same thing. Come something of a hallmark for PlayStation Studios in recent years. It came to this little wolf. 2019's The Last of Us Part 2 is an obvious trailblazer, with Ellie's dark descent into a rage-filled embodiment of revenge coming as a result of the death of her father figure Joel.

That, of course, was the sequel to the 2013 original that explored how Joel struggled to cope with the death of his own daughter. At the time, the Last of us were seen at a child. fueling a wave of sad dad games, including 2018's God of War. But in hindsight, these were just the building blocks for PlayStation's preoccupation with grief. Find your way home. This is another thing that I really fucking hate, but this is like a high school English teacher's idea of deep storytelling, is that comedies are for simpletons and dramas are for.

smart people. I hate this dichotomy and I find it to be absolutely fucking insufferable. It's almost like it's like the storytelling that they do. Yeah, comedy space. Yeah, exactly. It's so annoying. How many of you guys had to sit around, how many of you guys took like, you know, you took the AP English, honors English, advanced, whatever advanced English there is. And you had to read these bullshit fucking books about, oh, this is a story. story about a slave that is running away and she dies. Like, I don't want to read. It's so lame, bro.

Like, it's just, it's always the same fucking shit. It's this, uh, you know, faux sophistication that is just masquerading as if it's complexity. You know, it's not just a sad fucking story. I hate this shit. It's obnoxious. And the thing that I hate the most about it is the, the pretentiousness of it.

We're free. 2022's God of War Ragnarok is a story fueled by the loss of mothers and sons and the anger that comes with them. Insomniac Spider-Man series follows both Peter Parker and Miles Morales as they attempt to overcome super villain threats as well as wrestle with their demons stemming from dead parental figures.

She never thought about herself, even when she was struggling to breathe. 2020's Returnal is a looping sci-fi nightmare born out of the protagonist Selene's familial grief-related trauma. And then there's 2025's other big PlayStation exclusive Death Stranding 2 on the Beach, which may not technically be a first-party game, but certainly is a verifiable feast of maternal and paternal anguish. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of all the games listed above,

each singular in its depictions of characters and each offering wildly different gameplay experiences. But when viewed as a whole, it's easy to hear that their story, stories are all being sung from the same hymn sheet. Familiar grief is at the center of all of these stories. And while I certainly feel that mature themes have a place in games, it is all starting to feel like I'm getting hit around the head with the same. Millennial Theatre Kids Slop. That's what it is.

And also, why is it that so many of these stories are told about parents and issues with your parents? You know it, I know it, everybody knows it. It's because it's written by a bunch of people that, have issues with their parents. It is. That's the reason why, for example. See, people think the end of Return of the King is gay. They think it's Frodo and Sam are gay at the end of War of the Rings because they don't understand the absolute bliss and euphoria of being able to finally be finished with

a world-ending threat that threatens all of civil. and life itself. And why is that? It's because they weren't a trench fucking fighter in the Britain, actually not a trench fighter, an officer in the British army in World War I like

J.R.R. Tolkien was. And that's why when you have somebody who served in World War fucking one, which in my opinion is like in terms of like the brutality and you know, just like the absolute, like you had cavalry charging into machine guns.

It was just fucking, it was a meat grinder. The stories that come out of a person that goes through that type of experience are going to have a certain type of verisimilitude that a millennial funcop pop luboo ou collecting loser that is a furry just doesn't have access to. That's the truth. That's where we're at. At this point, the cycle of violence is in very real danger of becoming a loop of diminishing returns. You gutted my father.

He defied Lord Saito. Then you tried to burn me alive. Of course, it's true that not every PS5 game follows this pattern. Astrobot isn't an exploration of generational trauma in deep space, but you catch my drift. I think that's incidentally what I enjoyed so much about Timosobi's Ode to PlayStation of Old. With its joy and color stash... Owned to PlayStation, more like ode to fucking Nintendo.

This was a Nintendo game, okay? Manning out from the otherwise morose crowd. It felt like a rarity, but it never used to be this way. The PS3 gave us naughty dogs uncharted error, which, although it eventually ventured into more melancholy... You don't need that much life experience to understand Frodo and Sam. I think they're just dumb. How many of you guys have especially...

I'm going to be sexist here. How many of you guys have seen girls that think that, like, make comments about how gay the end of War of the Rings was? You guys seen that? Seen it on social media? Yep. Mm-hmm. There it is. They don't understand.

And you really, they can't understand. It's okay. It's fine. ... territory in a thief's end, firmly planted its flag in themes of adventure with a tone ripped from the pages of Pulp Fiction. Played this. That seems pretty bad. I've always had a soft spot for Insomniac's resistance and it's World War II slash sci-fi warfare match. Look at that kill zone game?

That was pretty cool. Whatever happened to that? As well as Little Bid Planet, which all the way at the other end of the tonal spectrum, celebrated creativity and community. Welcome to Buckham Chummy, Jumchum where the sky is strewn with circling clouds of imagination. Yes, these games all contained varying levels of character nuances. but were all fundamentally about different things. Treasure hunting, alien invasions and personal expression. They weren't all trying to serve the same story.

And I can't help but feel that if a new Jack and Dax the game were to come out today, it would be about an Ossal's first for revenge against the killers of his blonde-haired friend. I hope that future PlayStation exclusives can look to this more varied, interesting past for inspiration. Even when choosing to tackle more serious subject-mobile, matters. Team Eco's PS2 classic Shadow of the Klossus took on a morph... Why they didn't, why they never, they just didn't even do another one of those. Like this is what they should do, they should redo this. Full tone, but found something truly unique and poignant within it.

At a time when such ideas were far less common in games, it stands as a unique masterpiece to this day, telling its tale through vagaries and minimal cutscenes, a far cry from the trademark cinematic style. we now expect of PlayStation games. What we didn't have back in the mid-2000s were five more PS2 releases that took its exact contemplations on love and loss

and told the same story in a different wrapping. Every time you played something new from Sony Studios on the now 25-year-old console, it felt like a brand-new experiment with a different story to tell, not just a variation. This game looks really fucking good for being out in 2004, but didn't they remaster it or remake it or something?

Ginnon-a theme. They must have remade it. There's no way this is 2004. That brings me back to Ghost of Yotai, a game that is superior to its predecessor in almost every aspect, barring its central story. My name is Atsu. While I connect to Atsu more than I ever did, Jin Sakai,

she's a much warmer presence to spend a few dozen hours with. Ghost of Sashima's narrative explores different, fresher ground. The story balances the personal struggles of Jin against the backdrop of an invasion of a nation, with themes of honour, betrayal and belonging, striking a chord and making it stand out when it arrived hot on the heels of The Last Verse Part 2 in 2020, before grief seemingly took hold of every Sony storyteller.

Perhaps PlayStation's interest in grief is a reflection of the state of the world, though. When viewed through the lens of... It's just that people don't know how to write stories that are enriching and good without making them really sad to make themselves feel like they're deep, and they have some sort of greater meaning.

It's because they're just overgrown theater kids. That's it. That's what they are. That's all they can do. When PS5 exclusives like Ghosts of Yotai and Death Stranding were being written, that melancholy is somewhat understandable. The COVID pandemic in arguably took hold of our planet in the years 2020 and 2021. And as such, themes surrounding unexpected loss and mass trauma, would no doubt have been at the forefront of many minds.

It would therefore be intriguing to see if this pattern will continue much further then, now that the world has somewhat settled back into what it looked like beforehand. Will the stories being told in projects that began production post-2020 mirror a different state of the planet? Is an exhibition 33 story also about family grief? Yeah, and there are stories that are good that are about grief, etc. The problem really is that you just keep making the same story over and over and over. That's the issue.

And also, there's like so many extra levels and layers of complexity to Expedition 33 that a lot of other stories don't have. Or continue to look inside ourselves at our darkest moments. These are, of course, all valid tales to tell. And I'm a huge proponent of art being reflections of those creating it. But I can't help but wish for a little more variety going forward. I will find every last member of the Yote Six. There's a reason to be hopeful and skeptical, considering what Sony has coming up next.

Insomniacs Wolverine looks to be delivering on all of the gore and decapitation you'd hope to see. But will that mature rating be reflected in its themes? Death's always waiting. Logan is certainly a character consumed by Lost for Revenge. Will that see us taken down a familiar path of burying past demons through ultra-violence? Or will we get an altogether different story that taps into a different story. different part of his psyche. James Mangold's Logan already told us a tale that would have slotted nicely into PlayStation's sad dad. Yeah, this could have been a PlayStation game.

...canon, his X-23 tapped into the softer side of his adamantian body. So I do hope we don't just get a rerun of that idea here. We also know that Saros is on the way from Housemark in March, and it certainly looked impressive in the most recent state of play street. I haven't seen this. I didn't watch this. As for Nautie Dogg, the ground seems zero of this long. It's just really like, here's the thing is that I think that people need to just come to terms of the reality that like if you want to have a game do well with gamers, if you have a game about swords, violence, killing people and taking contracts, your primary audience is guys

and you should make your character look like a guy. It should be a guy, should not be a girl. and if it is a girl she had better be really, really hot. There is no audience benefit to having an ugly female protagonist. I'm sorry. There's not. Nobody wants it. Nobody advocates for it. And if you think that's not true, go ahead and next time you see one of the girls that are talking about how good these characters look,

give them a compliment and tell them that they look like this character. You'll see them switch up real quick You'll get blocked Running error of brief We know that the studio will be taking on the sci-fi realm Next with Intergalactic the Heretic Prophets Look like Lizzo, yeah, the Lizzo thing Yeah, exactly

Lizzo's so beautiful Okay, well you look like Lizzo What the fuck's wrong with you? Exactly, no I don't Why, what's bad about that? I thought she was beautiful His first trailer was promising delivering a more fun-filled tone

than we'd ever dream of seeing from The Last of Us. Of course, we've barely scratched the surface here, but it would be fantastic to see Nauty Dog rediscovering some of that uncharted liberty here. I don't know about that. Might not happen. I wouldn't expect it. Most of these upcoming PS5 games, incidentally, are stories about people investigating lost off-world colonies.

I hope for my sake that they find wildly different stories to tell on each of them, rather than discover reminders of the grief they've left behind. But after every death, I always come back stronger. For more on Ghost of Yotai, make sure to check out our review. And for everything else, keep it locked to IGM. Yeah, I just, bro, like, I see these games. And it's just such a, like, it's, this is a good video. I think he's bringing up a very good point that all of the games have the same type of cookie cutter storytelling.

telling and it's getting a little bit old. Rare IGNW, I would agree with you on that. I think that it is an IGNW. This was a good video and I appreciate it. Even paid IGN shells can't take it anymore. I think IGN is good. I mean, that's my, I've always liked IGN. But there it is. Funny, Alex Mission 33, one of the years most beloved games is a story of both revenge and grief. Yeah, exactly. The problem is, yeah, but they haven't told that same story. 30 fucking times either, right? That's another really big difference as well. That's why Witcher 3 random pleb NPC is hot. Well, yeah, obviously. I mean, why wouldn't they be? I mean, of course. I mean, fuck.

Yeah, I thought the video was 6 out of 10. Oh, really? I don't know. I think it's probably more like a 7 out of 10. Let's see. I'll go back and see if there's anything else that's going on. But, yeah, overall, I think that they do need to make stories and stuff like that that are a little bit more interesting other than just the fucking bullshit, right? What is this bullshit? Get the fuck out of here. I accidentally click the wrong

button. And when they had guys like Mitch doing gameplay, it was good? Yeah, I mean, I just, I'm not sure really whether games like this are going to be that exciting. I'll be curious to see how many people actually end up playing these games too. Yeah, I mean, you don't play these games so they're not for you to be honest. Yeah, but who are they? Right? Who are they for? And I, that's what I really want to know.