Get Played - Date Everything with Ray Chase

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

Heather, Nick and Matt talk more about the Nintendo Switch 2 and meeting Hideo Kojima and Ray Chase (X-Men ’97, Final Fantasy 15) returns to discuss the video game he designed Date Everything. Date Everything is available on all platforms June 17th! Check out our brand new merch at kinshipgoods.com/getplayed Follow us on social media @getplayedpod Music by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.com Art by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.com For ad-free main feed episodes, our complete back catalogue including How Did This Get Played? and our Premium DLC episodes and our exclusive show Get Anime'd where we're currently watching Gurren Lagann go to patreon.com/getplayed Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Advertise on Get Played via Gumball.fm All of our links can be found at linktree.com/getplayedpod See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. Well, I've been arrested! Oh my god. Oh my god. Fucking shit, man. What happened? I just got released. I had to post so much fucking money.

Geez, you could have called any of us. We would have been there in a second. Yeah, we would have been there 100%. It's fine, it's fine. I spent the night in jail. You know, you've heard that sentence, life imitates art. Yes, I've heard that sentence.

Well, we played this game this week that was, you know, Date everything? Date everything, right? And I was like, wow, if you can do this in a game, you should be able to do it in real life. So I fucked a cop car and I got in so much trouble. Like, I got the shit beaten out of me. Like, so many cops got so angry and I was like,

hold on, hold on, just let me do this. And they were like, no, I got shot with, I got shot with a gun in the leg. So I had first they had to transfer me to the hospital, and then they put me in jail. Look, I was gonna, since Heather shared that, I guess I can just be candid with y'all as well. I had a similar incident,

and actually I also ended up in some hot water myself. What happened? We're playing this game, and we know the expression, life imitates art. I know that expression. Yeah, that's a sentence we all know yeah I was at IKEA I fucked a Banff bookshelf

Just fuck this shit out of this bookshelf Here's the thing Thing just fell apart. Oh, yeah sure of course it did yeah, Ikea furniture is Notoriously fragile and then all of a a sudden I'm like surrounded by security guards. I'm getting, I got the zip ties on me. I'm getting tased. It's a fucking nightmare. And it's like, have they not heard of the game?

It's coming out tomorrow. Like, what is their deal? Yeah, people are going to be fucking things. I was blowjobbing the exhaust pipe of a cop car and they had a problem with it. Well, since you guys shared I have a similar thing happened to me. What I got so much trouble, you know, I was in New York this weekend Yeah, the Statue of Liberty ate my ass. Okay, I

Gotta ask how'd you get up there? It took a lot of climbing and I was really scared I was so scared to get up there. Wait a minute. Are you fucking Spider-Man? Uh. You gotta tell us if you're Spider-Man. Matt, are you Spider-Man? Matt, if your ass is Spider-Man, you gotta tell me. I gotta go.

Thwip. Holy shit, there he goes! Oh my God. Well, time to put this potted plant up my asshole. Ha ha ha ha. We romance trash cans and recognize voices as actor and developer Ray Chase joins and discusses new game Date Everything this week on Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played.

I'm your host, Heather Anne Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger. That's me, Tiger Weiger, along with our third host, Matt Apodaca. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast where, hey, we've got a guest today. Surprise. It's not just us three assholes in your ears. That's right.

Or on your car radio. It's a four. It's an additional asshole. It's a four. Well, hey, speaking of guests, we do have a guest engineer today, engineer of the year, producer of the year, Sam Rogich is back. Hi, Sam.

Hey, guys. Hi, Sam. Rachelle, unfortunately, has contracted the novel coronavirus. Yeah. That's right. Very 2021 of her. The government says that's done.

So I don't know how she got it. She must be a time traveler. The government says it's done. Everyone's behaving as though it's done. What the hell? So get well soon, Rochelle. But happy to have you, Sam. Happy to be here maintaining the throne. How are things in your world? How's your band Guk doing?

We're doing good. Records coming out end of August. Oh wow, congrats. Fuck. And you say record, you mean like a physical record. Twelve inch, baby. You got twelve inch. Wow, how about that? So we're excited about that. Full sub. Yeah, and you got a you have like a you say record you mean like a Well, how about that? So we're excited about that full sub. Yeah John am In the fucking window at Subway, what was the sandwich?

It's foot long nachos. Yeah, I've had the foot long nachos. They're made out of Doritos. Yeah, I know this is Heather This is what do you think you're talking? You're talking to like Michael Jordan asking if he's ever seen a basketball before Heather Did you know there's new Gundam series? Man did you know that the Kingdom Hearts mobile game was delayed? I don't walk past subway very often To be fair you shouldn't have to know that I shouldn't have to know that there's Doritos Nachos at subway that was for you connect with my fellow. Ho I like it that I like that you did that

I like that you made the effort I apologize for being dismissive the Doritos nachos footlong nachos are like all recent subway offering is pretty underwhelming unfortunately Okay, well, yeah, do you think if Jared was still behind the helm, they'd be a little bit better? I wonder. I honestly think he might be kind of operating as a shadow president and kind of running the show, and maybe that's the whole reason they're in trouble. You think he's like making phone calls from prison, being like, put all the shit on Doritos? It's like Johnny Sack in the joint running the New York family.

I know I bring up the show, the rehearsal, pretty much every week since I saw it, but one of my favorite bits in it is that he sets the time back so that he can experience something, back to I think the early, mid 2000s, and on the bus stop posters are Jared from somewhere.

That's very funny. We have a great guest returning to the show, a voice actor from X-Men 97, Jujutsu Kaisen and Final Fantasy XV. His new game, which not only acts in but designed is Date Everything, available tomorrow June 17th as of this episode's release. Ray Chase. Hi Ray. Hi Ray. Hello guys. Thanks so much for being here

Thanks for coming in what a what a treat last time we had you on we had you on via zoom It's so great to meet you in person. Yeah, it's awesome And even I remember as I was leaving I was like can I show you guys a trailer for something? That's right. Yeah, you guys sat through it and and promised me that I can come back and I'm catching it in yeah Yeah, thanks for having me in. And from what I've heard, you guys have played a little bit of it too. Yeah, we definitely got some time with the game.

Excellent. And we will get into it because I'm very excited to talk to you about Date Everything. Also, can I say something really fast? Thank you for announcing me with credits that are relevant because one thing as voice actors that happens all the time is sometimes

people just Google what we're in and they'll say like, from Naruto. And yes, I was in Naruto for like two episodes, but they'll say like, that's what Ray Chase is known for. Those are actually three heavy hitters. So thank you for that. We're fans. Who were you in Naruto? I love Naruto so much.

I was basically the guy who looked exactly like Noctis and his name's like lightning in Japanese. He's like Raijin or something like that. Okay. Yeah, he's like way at the end he's a wind guy. Yep, yep. You know? Okay, great. Cool. Cool. But not necessarily what I'm known for.

Right, of course. But still, I didn't know that. That's awesome. You're working in X-Men 97 as Cyclops' fan fucking test. Oh yeah. That show was so fucking good. You were amazing. Thank you. Uh, dream. You did it! Ahhhhhhh! Dream.

Your glasses are kind of uh, dream. He did it! He did it! Ah! Ah! Dream. Dream. Dream. Your glasses are kind of like Scott Summers. They are a little bit. I started wearing these glasses because I was working on this game,

Date Everything, and I was like, these date-veaders, and I gotta say, wearing tinted glasses, literally rose-colored glasses, the world does look different and better. Like, green pops a lot more. Interesting. It is pretty cool. And then Cyclops came out first and everyone thought I was doing it

because of that by the side. I love it, I love it, they're really cool glasses. Just a coincidence, yeah. It's a great look. Interestingly, you cite Cyclops because I see Gendo from Evangelion. Oh, that's true. I'm always doing a casual cosplay of Gendo,

who I did play in the Netflix version of it. Oh, shit! Yeah, I'm the voice actor for Gendo as well, yeah. What the fuck? So it's a triple, it's a triple thing. Wow. Yeah, maybe this is just my thing, I'm gonna stick with it for those. We're not supposed to have-

Where to some cons, I think it's perfect. Yeah, yeah. We're not supposed to have anybody actually impressive on the show. I'm the fourth asshole, remember? The fourth one, the fourth. We always got Matt here to balance things out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can't do fucking shit. Psh.

Ray, last time we had you on, it was during the WGA strike, just before what would be a months long SAG-AFTRA strike. You're here now on the other side of a second SAG-AFTRA strike for video games that just got resolved. Like as of this record, I have in my email inbox, SAG-AFTRA national board approves interactive media agreement.

A lot of this was over, you know, guardrails and gains around AI, which is a thing we've been talking about on the podcast, AI related to voice acting. But like, I don't necessarily, I'm not necessarily looking for like a comprehensive like labor like comment or anything from you. I'm just more wondering like as a working actor, what have the last couple of years been like?

I can talk, man, I can talk a lot. The question is always with this, like how I can go comprehensive labor profile. Hey, go for it. Do we make the listeners fall asleep is the thing. They're already asleep. Give that to me. Man, I gotta say-

They turned on the button shot themselves. For me, the strikes are, there are two in my career specifically, two video game strikes. One was while we were working on Final Fantasy 15 and the director and casting director, Keith Farley, was also heading the strike at the same time. Wow. And we had a weird thing where there was,

the game itself, Project Black was not struck during that strike because it would have already been in development for like a year, which I'm so thankful for that that rule was there because I was able to like start my career as a voice actor. And then the second one comes in with all these AI provisions.

And I gotta say the timing on that is really awesome. One criticism that SAG had the first time around or with a lot of these streaming services that they were late to the game, that like, hey, they're going to streaming services. They're saying we're not real television. We don't pay real residuals. And now we live in a world where everything is streaming.

And so we don't get very much residuals. And this time AI is like a year or two old and is starting to be used. Mr. Vader, right now, Mr. Vader right now. Mr. Vader, if you're nasty. It's coming out now and they're right on it, getting these provisions in place. And I'm so glad that it came out.

I'll have to say one weird thing as a voice actor and striking, you are part of, when I first started out, it was AFTRA and then SAG. And now you're SAG. Yeah, there were two separate unions that merged. Exactly. And then I had to, and then, but you work on so many different things.

Right. I work on a lot of video games. I work on animation. I work on commercials. I do promo. I do audio books. And all of those have their own separate contracts. Yes.

So it is one thing where like it was a strike, but it's, oh, and that's right. And this strike wasn't even for all the video games. It was just for those companies who were refusing to comply or put it into any language and who we got an agreement with. So I have to say, I just did an audition for those things and then continued on as normal. So it's been okay for me just because I'm fortunate enough

to have my hands in lots of different crevices of the voice actor stuff. Yeah. Since you mentioned it, the companies specifically were struck here because a lot of them, especially a lot of independent studio, video game studios just signed side agreements

and were in compliance. But the ones that were still struck companies were Activision, Blind Light LLC, Disney Character Voices, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, For Most Interactive, Insomniac Games, Take Two Productions, and WB Games. So these are all like big tent pole publishers, and we make a lot of AAA games, but yeah, this seems like a pretty positive thing for everyone. I mean, Heather, this was a thing we talked about when we were talking about AI James Earl Jones. And I don't, I,

my completely unsupported theory is that that suddenly becoming ubiquitous was almost just like a flash point where an agreement had to be struck by, like someone, things, this just had to be figured out. Maybe even from both sides had an incentive to come to the table here, right? because like if you're You know a legacy studio or an estate that has access to like a voice actor like for example I see no reason why Bruce Willis couldn't star in a video game in in the future

Especially if his estate is cool with it. He has star in a video game in the future, especially if his estate is cool with it. He has been in a video game previously. Apocalypse, was that what that was? I think so. I'm trying to remember, there was a PlayStation 1 game that was a whole boondoggle, and it was kind of like a Duke Nukem Forever, it got delayed indefinitely, eventually came out.

Originally, Bruce Willis, this was a time when celebrities of that stature were just not in video games, so it was a huge thing. Bruce Willis was a voice actor celebrities of that stature were just not in video games. So it was like a huge thing. Bruce Willis was a voice actor in that game originally. And then I think he became a, or maybe he was always on camera in the game, but he shifted from being a sidekick to being the protagonist you just played as Bruce Willis.

It was a whole weird thing. Yeah, but I feel like we're at this intersection of time and technology where it's still a little weird when you see a CG actor resurrected in like Rogue One. Like when you see young Princess Leia or young Luke Skywalker, it's a little bit unsettling. But in games, you don't have that problem

because everything already looks like a alien anyway. So it doesn't matter. So I feel like there is this moment that we're approaching where you can have these estates License these actors, but if these deals and the structure of the the rights negotiation isn't already in place Then how are these game companies going to get access to those estates without them being exploited? Yeah, there's also been a lot of like pushback because Vader was racist.

Yeah, in Fortnite. He was racist, pretty much off the drop until they patched him. Wait, really? Well, yeah, cause you could, like there's a lot of like TikToks and stuff of like the first week of like people being like, hey, Darth Vader, rank your favorite races.

Right, sure. And so you have the voice, the authentic voice of James Earl Jones, like saying defamatory awful shit. And it's one thing if he's like, Italians, obviously the bottom. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's one thing if it's like, if it's like, you know, Vader was never supposed to say skibbidy toilet and he has to say it because it's one thing if it's like, you know, Vader was never supposed to say skibity toilet and he has to say it because it's a decorative item inside the game, but it's another thing to have these,

like to have no structure about like, how do we prevent the legacy of James Earl Jones from being like duplicated like this and made to say like racist or defamatory or homophobic statements. Yeah, that's wild. I didn't know about that, but of course it's what happened. Yeah, instantly.

Yeah. The first person to. It is hard. You're essentially giving access to all your players to a Pandora's box in your game so that you have no control over what your game is doing. Right. What if, yeah, you boot up Mario

and you can just talk to Mario and go on a date with him. Or like, yeah. Yeah, right. And there's also- Yeah, what if I could just go on a date with Mario? There's also ways that you can structure your queries. Like you can have him be like, you can say, hey, can you say these phonemes

and get him to say awful shit that way. Like, because there's no actual intelligence behind the AI. So, I don't know. Like, I'm glad that the deal was struck. I hope it's very protective to these legacy voices, as well as like the future generations of voice actors. Yeah, and I mean, I also just hope people are getting paid because that's ultimately the main thing. Hey, buddy, you know what doesn't belong in your epic summer plans?

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That's meundies.com slash get played, code get played for 20% off plus free shipping. Me Undies, comfort from the outside in. ["Skyfall"] Ray, I have a different question, a different subject for you, which is that you've narrated all of Jason Schreier's books for the podcast, Jason Schreier.

Yes. I'm just curious, as someone who does audio books, what is the audio book recording process like? Cause that seems, I mean, audio books are fucking long to me. I mean, it just seems like a lot. They are really long. It is a lot.

It's why I don't do a lot anymore. I just do Jason's books or something comes by. I did one about the Strong Museum of Video Games had an audio book and I was like, hell yeah. I want to learn about this. But yeah, when I first got my start, it was a thing, I forget if I said this on the podcast last time, but Amazon just wanted 100,000 books

in their library for Audible. It was when they were first launching and so they didn't really, they cared a little bit about quality, but they just wanted to be able to say we have 100,000. And so I had the time and the attention span to just say I will narrate as many as you want. I worked for a bunch of production companies

and just did as many as possible. I did two. And you did all 100,000, right? I did all of them myself. That's a lot of books. And I did 200, very close. That's a lot. Oh my God.

In two years, I did so many books and they were just random, just whatever. They just, they didn't care. It was a lot of like 1970s sexploitation sci-fi ones. so many books and they were just random, just whatever. They just, they didn't care. It was a lot of like 1970s sexploitation sci-fi ones. I did a lot of just erotica for sure. I did a King Henry VIII erotica where they had sex in a bathtub,

but it was new for technology for the time. So they talked about how like they had to bring up the hot water so that they could fuck. It was great. How the fuck do you work this thing? Yeah. Yeah. Now take a dump in this water. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it's really hard. I've done 99.9% of them. I've only worked with a director like twice. Yeah.

I've done them all completely by myself. Wow. Do what's called punch and roll recording, where if you make a mistake, you just have hotkeys in my DAW of choice, which is Reaper, shout out to Reaper. And you just go, and as far as the process, you get like, if you're working with a good publisher, they'll give you a pronunciation list,

which is always the biggest thing. And so I have a lot of WhatsApp messages from Jason Schreier saying names of Blizzard people with really good enunciation. And then you're just off to the race and you just do it and you sit there and you do it. It takes a lot. Wow. Yeah, you wanna aim for like two to one recorded hours

to finished hours if you're really cooking. Yes, wow. It's time consuming, yeah. When is your home set up? I know you do a lot from home. Do you have a full booth? I do have a full booth. I have a Sennheiser 416 and a USMC 1820 is my other guy.

And then some fancy headphones, but I've never been so much of a tech guy. In fact, even during COVID, I got a really nice setup and the feedback from all my clients was it sounded worse. And I didn't know how to work as well. Yeah, yeah, I'm no Sam Rogich, I can't do it. So I returned it all and I'm just doing the regular Sennheiser 416 which is the famous,

it's famously used as just the boom mic in all of stuff, all of movies and TV and stuff. Well Ray I have one more question for you and for the room. The question is, what are you playing? What are you playing? Hi, it's me, the Resident Evil Merchant, and I'm here to ask Ray Chase, what is playing? Hi, Ray. Thank you, Resident Evil.

Hello, it's nice to meet you. Big fan, big fan, gotta say. I'm a big fan of you. Thank you. I like a big fan of you. Thank you What do you what kinds of things do you like anime do you watch stuff what do you watch jujutsu kaizen I'm not allowed near a television But when I do get to see one like through a window at best by I do like what I see famous TVs in the window at Best Buy.

In the window at Best Buy, yeah. You know what they do? I didn't realize this. Apparently, Best Buy now gets compensation from manufacturers to display panels in store because they know that people like Samsung or whoever knows that people will go to Best Buy to look at a screen in a real space

and then just buy it online. But like, but it sounds like we're still getting value out of it being in Best Buy because it will still motivate customers to purchase it, them having seen it in person. So they're like, that's part of their business now. Part of how they stay afloat is they just renting out their floor space.

I wish somebody would pay me to drive a car around cause you'd be like, hey, I like that car, I want to drive it. I'm sorry, I'll explain what this transaction is. I mean, you could see any car anytime, anywhere. Yeah, but like, what if it was going fast and you were like, I got to go so much fast. So, if you saw me driving fast, you might might be like that's the car for me I guess you're right or I didn't know a Prius could hit 230 miles an hour

Hey, we should care about the environment. Love the environment. I'm playing Deltarune On a switch to, per chance? No, just on my PC. It's a great game. I don't know if you've talked about it on the show. I don't think I've heard you guys play. We haven't really dug into Deltarune, have we? You just played Mother 3.

I feel like we're in a watershed or maybe even a Jump the Shark moment with the show, where you guys actually played Mother 3. Oh, fuck. No, no, no, no, no. There's other games. Okay, good, good, good. But it's Toby Fox keeping that spirit alive of just such creativity, such bonkers stuff going on. I highly recommend it right now.

It's basically, it's kind of a prequel to Undertale and you have a lot of remixed characters from it. We're not quite sure where it is, but he's four chapters in. He just released the first four chapters of what might be a seven chapter series, and every chapter. He's just getting more and more confident with his skills as an artist and a writer.

He's, with these last two chapters, he's introducing like 3D effects and like weird stuff, and just playing around with the form, and it's so good. I highly recommend it. Doug, this is, it's quite an endorsement. I mean, like, I really liked Undert good. I highly recommend it. Doug, this is, it's quite an endorsement. I mean, like I really liked Undertale.

I've liked it more in the years since I originally played it. And on this podcast, honestly, I'd never played Undertale until we covered it. And I like, I really respect Toby Fox, like it just as a creator and what he's built. But Deltarune, part of why I've kept it at arm's length is the episodic nature of it.

You're waiting for them all to come out. Yeah, and I'm like, do I wait for all of them? Is this gonna be a kind of thing? Cause like, I don't know. I mean, part of me is like, I've dealt with Telltale series in the past where some of them, Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us are masterpieces, but other of them,

I'm just like, this kind of loses steam over time. But you feel pretty confident in this one. Yes. And even in its current form, it's just worth playing through chapter four. Two things. Yeah. One, it's already longer than Undertale. Wow.

And so I wonder if you wait to the end, it might be like a 60 hour, 16 bit era experience, which might be too much just to look at that for that long. And then number two, as a man of culture yourself, there's a really sexy lady named Queen in chapter two. She's the sexiest 16-bit character I've ever seen. She's got big dominant energy. Yeah.

Play it for Queen. Wow, okay. Yeah, yeah, she's great. She's great. Wow, Nick is leaving. I'm interested in it because of playing Undertale previously and I want to check it out. And so one of the games that's on Switch to game and you mentioned Mother 3 and it's just like that's again a game I just played and had had known its reputation.

And like again, just looking at Undertale again, reevaluating Undertale after having played Mother 3, having that context. It's like, oh, okay, wow, this is really cool. That's again, quite an endorsement. I think I'll maybe dig into Deltarune as a result. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, of course. Someone else. You only asked me, Resin Even. I didn't answer your question.

I forgot the other guy's names. Uh, Nick. Nick, Nick, what are you playing? I didn't answer your question. I forgot the other guy's names. Nick! Nick, Nick, what are you playing? What are you playing? Wow, Resident Evil Merchant, thank you so much for the question. I made a pledge to myself to play something other than Bellatro this week.

I did not succeed. In fact, in time I could have spent playing other games. I was watching Blacho University videos. Blacho University, great streamer. He's really good. Although it does verge on very sleepy content. It's hard to stay awake. I kind of like it.

Wow. Because like, again, Blacho kind of puts me in a chill mood and I put on some Blacho University videos before I was going to go to bed and I was like, I am getting sleepy. And he's kind of like nodded off. But he is brilliant. He's great. He knows all the strats. before I was gonna go to bed and I was like, I am getting sleepy. And he's kind of like nodded off. It was quite nice. He's great.

He knows all the strats. I think a big part of my current Bellaccia relapse is honestly it being on Game Pass, which I know happened a bit ago, but I think like the pull of Xbox achievements, which to me feel more tangible than Steam achievements. Like I play most of my games on Steam, but I never really chase achievements

because I just like a Steam achievement just doesn't feel like anything to me. But the game pass achievements just feel more tangible. I don't know what that is. Why do you think that? I have no idea. Are you printing them out? Are you printing them out?

No, I think what it is is just like Xbox, you know, it is where like the gamer score and it's like the origin of achievements, right? So just kind of association like Xbox achievements feel real to me, PlayStation trophies feel real to me, Steam achievements are just as real as either of those. They're all nothing, they're all meaningless, but the Steam achievements don't feel like anything to me.

You explaining it this way, I sort of, I do know to me. And Switch is a trophy, a trophy, it's tangible. It feels like a real thing, yeah. And then the Switch, I mean, Switch just of, I do know to me. And Switch is a trophy, it's tangible. It feels like a real thing. And then the Switch, I mean, Switch just obviously doesn't have any of that. So it's just like, why even bother? But I will say, beyond just playing a shitload of Bellaccio, I did get a Nintendo Switch 2.

Yeah. Yeah. Did anyone get the Switch 2 since last time? Anyone else? Yes, me.. Oh Heather got yours I got my switch to we should we talk about this like maybe we can we can both go in on this the switch to a little Let's go. So I've got so much gaming stuff to talk about Matt. It is indeed a big boy It's a big boy. It's a big boy. Chunky boy You can visualize it Sam you haven't seen the camera but you can you can picture the length of a pencil and that's a normal everybody knows what I'm talking about when I say that You can visualize it Sam. Hey, you haven't seen the camera, but you can you can picture the length of a pencil

I've never seen a pencil New generation pen guy over here I guess it's like the feeling of setting up a new console. I find very calming. Yeah. So I read this book, the gentle art of Swedish death cleaning, and it's about a practice of like, I guess it's a Nordic practice of when you're, when you're, when death is maybe not imminent, but on the horizon, it's just like, oh, I'll get my own house in order.

I'll do the cleaning that other people will have to do after I am gone. It's just kind of like a nice, it's both a, like a bit of self care, but also like a gift to like your, your successors, you know, to your family that they're not gonna have to get rid of a bunch of clutter. I have the same sort of feeling when I'm like going through it was like, okay, well, I don't need to have

whatever, you know, panty party or whatever bullshit I play for this podcast on my home screen anymore. And so just like getting rid of all that shit was after the transfer was very satisfying. Can you explain how virtual game cards work? Cause I don't understand. Wait, wait, hold on though. Like, cause we played that game long enough ago

that it should not have been on your home screen. Yeah, but it just shows up in your home screen sometimes. I don't know what's going on. No, that's not, you have to like bring that game to your home screen. Yeah, and it just pops right back to the top of the queue. It wouldn't be on your menu bar. I don't get how these things work.

So this is my understanding of virtual game cards. Because I had a concern, because we're multi-switch households. So sometimes you have a digital game loaded on two switches, and all you have to do is switch between downloading the save from the other one via the cloud or whatever. Unless it's like Animal Crossing, we have to do a whole fucking thing. This is basically just that,

but you used to have to have one switch be a primary switch. Yeah. Right, where like one always had to be online for you to be able to transfer saves or download games from or whatever, and then the other one you could take and not have to be online to play any of the games.

This is basically, this virtual game cards gets rid of that. And you can now just like have the data loaded on all of your switches, but the license, like the game card has to be loaded onto the switch to play it. Okay. So like, it's like basically like taking out a physical card. It's like checking it out from the library.

Yes, but the data is still loaded on your switch. So when you do, you know, download it or you know, download the virtual game card, I feel like I'm explaining it correctly and also that it doesn't make any sense. That was the whole thing was because I was dealing with it was like I was like ejecting and then but virtual game creators was like, I don't really know what I'm doing here, and it feels like just an extra step to, you know, adding or removing it from the cloud,

but I guess the way you explained it makes sense. What I like about it is that there's a UI element that tells families the game is here. Yes. Like that I think is like the description, because otherwise there's this nebulous relationship to the cloud, whereas there's a nice little piece of animation where you see the virtual game card enter

into your system and you're like, oh, now it's here. Whereas before it'd be like, I don't know which, cause it's telling me that this isn't synchronized. Like which saved, what one's better? Am I gonna lose it? Like all those things are, I believe, issues that my mom would have if she had multiple switches in her household, but my dad will never play a video game

because he thinks they're an abomination. He only likes working with wood or boats. That's fair, he's right. I do find it a nice piece of hardware. The magnetized Joy-Cons are shockingly satisfying. Yeah, I love that. And a lot sturdier than I expected. I think they've got too much action.

Really? I think they're a little bit too wiggly for me. Even when they're snapped in, there's just a tiny bit of action and travel on those. And also we know that when I crack an egg. This is what I was gonna say. a tiny bit of action and travel on those. And also we know that when I crack an egg. This is what I was gonna say. Like I explode the egg all over my. Is it possible you're choking the switch?

As I said it I was like, oh no, I can't crack an egg. You should see me in my house, just very gingerly removing the Switch 2 from the dock, because I don't want the screen to touch the sides of it, like I'm playing Operation or something. Yeah, whereas when I try to eat a carrot, it explodes in my hand. My hand's a carrot wet.

It's just crushed in the dust. My hands are carrot wet. It's just crushed in the dust. Yeah, I was surprised how big it was. I'm also excited because there's a lot of bezel on that screen. And when you compare the bezel on the Switch OLED to the Switch 2, you're like, oh, wow, they're going gonna be able to make this screen significantly larger in the same form factor, which is really great when they upgrade it,

inevitably next year. So what I've played on it is Mario Kart World, which is fine. Yeah. It's fine. I am not someone who's enthused about Mario Kart. I understand that this is going to be probably just the biggest game of the system. And I know for some people it's all they own a Switch for and all they're own a Switch 2 for. It's just like I'm not super into Kart Race.

Right. It's fine. What has been surprisingly joyful is the Switch 2 Tour game. Oh yes. I downloaded this and I haven't started it yet. Which is so playful, it's like, okay, Sony's concept of how we build brand relationship is Astro Bot and you just travel through the machine. With this, you're in a museum and you're walking around on your Switch,

but you also learn about the Switch, it demos it in these mini games. The mini games are the same fucking thing that like Astrobots Playroom did for the PlayStation 5, except those games are also references to older Nintendo games often. Like the first mouse demo is very Mario Paint. Like it's very much like, oh, I see this game. It's very similar to the games very Mario Paint. Like it's very much like, oh, this, I see this game. It's very similar to the games of Mario Paint,

but there's also little quizzes built in. And the quizzes also have nice Nintendo references. So for example, when they're, they tell you how the Joy-Cons work, and then you have to answer quizzes about how the Joy-Cons work in order to get coins, in order to open up new mini games. But they also have things that are like,

how does the switch to stand, like how does the stand work? And they show you like four different options. And one of the options is the kickstand, as is on the system. Another is the kickstand of the Switch One. So you're like, oh, that's not it. Another one is just like a mystery. And then the fourth and final one is the Wii U stand.

And I was like, I kind of like that that's there. Yeah, that's good. So it's stuff like that where you feel like it's something that Tingle would talk about in a Zelda game. Like it's just a little like Nintendo nerdsiness. And I like it. Is it a pack-in or do you have to pay for it? Oh, you have to pay for it because it's fucking Nintendo.

It's not Nintendo either. You know what? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah. Heather, we on the Switch too, what are you playing? Well, I want to shout out the SoCal Gaming Expo. This weekend in Pasadena,

at the Pasadena Convention Center was the SoCal Gaming Expo, which is, I would call like a retro gaming convention. They had an enormous amount of tangible retro games. And I even bumped into a listener there, which was really nice. But yeah, like, you know, giant crates of like, unboxed Genesis games, but then also in box,

unopened, still plastic sealed virtual boys. And so like the price, the price point varied between like, I saw a Pokemon card that was $14,000. Use this. But I also saw like, you know, I made a purchase of the Legend of Zelda Game and Watch, which you own. Yes.

Matt owns a copy of it. And I was like, oh, you know, I don't know that I ever would have picked this up if I hadn't physically seen it. But it was like a really inexpensive, it was like 30 bucks. And I was like, oh, that's my take home from this expo. The other thing that was really cool was they had gaming tournaments. And so I got to watch about 30 minutes of their Tetris tournament,

which was an eight player live tournament that was also projected on these giant screens. Each player had a Sony PVM CRT so that the refresh rate was identical on everybody's system and an NES with the actual NES controllers so that nobody had any particular advantage over somebody else.

And one of the fascinating things about watching them play is they would sometimes also show the way they were holding the controllers, which I guess when you get, like one of the guys who I was watching is like in the top 20 worldwide on Tetris and watching him play Tetris made me feel sick. Because I couldn't even see, by the time, by the time the way the tournament was working,

at least when I was watching it is of the eight people, each person had an individual person that they were competing against, right? Like one by one. Like one by one, but all happening simultaneously so that the tournament didn't take forever. As soon as your opponent crashed out, you were done, unless you had less points than them,

in which case you had to keep playing. But by the time people were crashing out, I was watching this guy Dylan, who I guess was seated 17 in the tournament. I couldn't see the fucking pieces. They were talking about how one guy had invented the role. One of the guys I was watching play had invented the Tetris role, which

was a new move that revolutionized Tetris tournament play. But it was like walking in an auditorium thinking you know what basketball is. And then like everybody who's playing basketball is flying. And you're like, oh, I thought this was like a game that you play by walking on the gym floor.

It was incredible and super enjoyable. It happens every year. It's a three day convention. And that's the shirt that I'm wearing is the SoCal Gaming X. That shirt is cool as hell. It was a really great experience. I love e-sports, the toxicity of some of it aside,

but I just love watching mastery. I love people who are better at something than I could ever be, it's so amazing. You would have sat there all day. I would have been transfixed by it. I don't even have the vocabulary to articulate what I was seeing other than Mastery. What you were talking about with the controller,

from what I've seen of the competitive Tetris scene, some of the players have the controller like upside down, like it's like face down in their hands. And it's kind of, I'm not sure the role is this exact technique, but some of it does involve like kind of like moving the D-pad in a way where you're almost like inverting how it would normally, where the pressure would be.

Yeah, like there was that, there's people who had it like sort of balanced on their leg and were typing with it. Okay, yeah. And then there were the like traditional players and everybody, like you go into Evo and you expect everybody who plays Street Fighter to use a joystick. And so when you see somebody using a traditional D-pad,

you're like, holy shit. And in the same way, like there were enough, there was enough specificity to the way that each of those players played that when I did see somebody who was just holding the controller normally, I was like, are you at a disadvantage or are you God? Like, how is that possible?

No, I believe the, I could be wrong. I could have the wrong game, but I think the Street Fighter six grand champion at EVO used a dual shock and it was just like, you know, up against other players with fight sticks, but just, yeah, to be that high level. And to me, I would think you'd be at a competitive disadvantage,

but some players are just that good. Yep. Did you guys hear about the new Super Mario Brothers World Record tech that came out just a few weeks ago? No. It's kind of crazy that the Super Mario Brothers World Record tech that came out just a few weeks ago? No. It's kind of crazy that the Super Mario Brothers World Record, like Tetris, one of those older games

that everyone's still playing forever, and you think that it's optimized because of tool-assisted games that are doing it, someone found it out accidentally by playing poorly. There's a thing in World 8-4 where if you jump into the lava deliberately and press a fireball at the right time, you're able to skip a little earlier than you had. And it saves, then you normally would,

it saves like two seconds. And the thing that blew everybody's mind about it is it's exactly the image on the cover of Super Mario Brothers one. It's him inside a little block right with the lava, underneath him with the fireball. It is pure coincidence as much as magical as it would be like the devs knew, but it's one of those like

crazy magical coincidences. That's awesome. I saw a really cool, I think it's Ocarina of Time or it might've been Skyward Sword, but I think it's Ocarina of Time. Like there is a any percent hack that was discovered in the last month where if Link holds up a rupee, you know, like it's like ba-da-da-da,

his animation cycle, his breathing pushes him backwards by like a 10th of a pixel or something. So if you open certain chests with your back against locked gates and then let the game run for 17 hours, he will phase through the gates without ever having to open it. I don't understand how that works. Oh, that's faster.

Well, I don't understand how it works in the context of speed running, but it was a brand new exploit and people were like super excited about it. And I was like, this is, how does this happen? How does anybody find this shit? Yeah, a similar thing. I can't remember the details and I couldn't find it with a quick bing,

but there was a Metal Gear Solid 1 speed run, like a development that happened like in recent years. And I think it was a similar thing. It was somewhat similar upon it by accident, but it completely upended how. They looked at the box and they just pulled on the box. Yeah. Yeah.

One of the other things that I wanna just mention now that the Sagstrike is over, that is that I'm playing Fortnite and the new season launched this week, it is a superhero themed season. But one of the most exciting things for me is that it is completely playable on the Switch 2. It is PlayStation 4 level,

like totally passable game of Fortnite. If you don't have the system actually tangibly plugged into your ethernet cable, then it's still going to have that wireless lag that you try to avoid when you're playing online competitive games. But the flip side of, or once that's set aside, what's interesting is that now everybody

has a built-in mouse on Fortnite. And there is a controller settings in the Switch 2 version of Fortnite where you can play with one of the joy cons as a mouse and the other one as a As your movement stick your standard controller stick. I Tried doing it. It was a fucking nightmare. I Just fell off of everything. I couldn't tell where I was looking but I was like what an interesting

step in like Evening the play field because when you run into PC players when you're playing Fortnite, you're at a disadvantage. Although the PC players might say that if you have a controller, you have aim assist. And so you're at an advantage, who knows? But it seems like if you're playing on a PC, it's a better experience. And now there's a kind of a built-in,

because you can plug a mouse and a keyboard into your PlayStation. Like anybody could technically do it. But that, because it's not the default, a lot of people just use the controller. So I wonder if there's going to be an expansion of mouse aim in Fortnite now that you can play it on the Switch 2.

Since we haven't checked in with you in a long time because of the strike, who's your skin now? Who do you play as? Well, in the previous season, what was the season that just ended? Oh, it was Star Wars season. Um, so I was just playing as blank stormtrooper. Because I thought it was funny.

Because, like, also there were so many areas where there were just stormtroopers walking around. So to just be plain stormtrooper with no, like, accents, no nothing. It's also like you're meant to be shot. You only exist to be killed. Also, like, when you die to stormtrooper with no accents, no nothing. It's also like you're meant to be shot. You only exist to be killed. Yeah, yeah, it's like plain. Also, when you died a stormtrooper,

it's like you died to stormtrooper. It's just like nothing. And also, though I did cycle through a bunch of different skins, because it was funny to hear Darth Vader say, Sarah Connor, I understand that you have been hunting the Terminator. You must hunt the rebellion.

Because also, the AI knew context of the skin that you were wearing, which was interesting. But now that it's the superhero season, I don't particularly... I've heard rumor that there's going to be a One Punch Man collab, and if that's the case, then I will definitely main Saitama for the superhero season. But right now I'm just playing as my standard Ivor Viking

because I had to take her off for a season to play Stormtrooper. There you go. Nice. Yeah. Matt, what are you playing? All right, I'm gonna run through these just real quick. Mario Kart World, obviously, I'm loving it. Went to a big party, got 16 people playing Mario Kart.

Oh shit. It required a lot of Switch twos because you can only do two per switch but it was fucking awesome and guys if you haven't tried knockout tour yet oh baby knockout tour fucking rocks on Mario Kart it's really really fun it's the battle royale racing mode in that they've added to to the franchise how'd you do? I got second place on an online one. OK. Wow.

I was doing pretty good. Nice, man. How did you organize a party, basically launch week, with eight different Nintendo Switch 2s? My buddy, look, shout out to my buddy Connor McCabe. He's a real gatherer of people. He's just like, he's just that kind of guy. He knows a lot of people that are very enthusiastic

and he knew a lot of people getting Switched to. He was like, guys, I got the big TV. Let's get everybody over here. There was like 30 people at this thing. It was fucking crazy. It was awesome. It was a really, really fun party. That's cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's the best and I love him very much. And so I'm playing that. I started a new save on Pokemon Scarlet because of the up-resing of the visuals of the game. And let me tell you something. The game's good now. What? Wow.

But I didn't think it was bad before. It was obviously running very poorly on the Switch one. It's running like velvet butter almost. It's so damn smooth. Velvet butter. That's how smooth it is, Nick. You look confused, but it's kind of like that's how smooth it is. I'm trying to picture velvet butter.

Buttery velvet? Just follow me into the bathroom. Anyway, it's very, very smooth. And also for the novelty, I had to get Cyberpunk 2077 physically on a tiny, tiny little cart. The whole thing is on the cart, including the expansion, which is insane.

And it looks fucking incredible on a Switch too. It does. It looks fucking great. Wow. Yeah, and there's a lot, I've seen a lot of- How's the frame rate? It's stable and it looks like incredible on a switch. It does it looks fucking great Wow yeah, and there's a live scene I'm right. It's stable, and it looks like it looks To me as good as playing it on any other console that I've played it on it's great And I've seen a lot of videos of like you know comparing You know switch to to the Xbox Series S version of it

and things like that. And it looks sometimes better, because I think it's working with less or something. I don't know, or it's running versus a Steam Deck. And they figured out that if you're playing it at full, I saw this video that was like, if you're playing Cyberpunk on a Switch 2 or a Steam Deck at full brightness, like full, like everything settings.

You get two minutes less on the Switch 2 than you do on the Steam Deck and it's about like two hours and 30 minutes of playtime because it's just a very like, you know, yeah, sure That thing is gonna make the Switch 2 hot. It's gonna make the switch to feeling a little hot in the hand But it's a great game playing a nomad run this time so I could see how that goes because I've done the other two so far And then we had a little experience here today Heather. Yeah, Matt and I had an experience We had a little outing we friendship outing. We had a friendship outing Wow. We went we went out we were out in town Which town And and we were being good What?

We weren't doing anything we're just we're in a beautiful night in Los Angeles where nothing bad is happening. Oh, okay. We were being good. I get it now. We went to the Death Stranding 2 On The Beach premiere here in Los Angeles, the Orpheum Theater downtown. Yes, we did. And we found ourselves, through varying circumstances,

which I won't fully get into, we found ourselves face to face with the man, the myth, the legend, Mr. Hideo Kojima. Yep. And he saw Heather, was happy to see Heather, which was, that was enough. Yeah, sure. That was honestly enough. It was very exciting to see somebody

you look up to and respect. Yeah. Visually clock your friend and be excited to see them. That was like like that was enough That's incredible to me a rock Heather Immediately goes this is my friend Matt My man puts his hand out shakes my hand. He's got his translator. Aki nice to meet you

We take a photo It was just the fucking best take a photo. It was just the fucking best. It was the fucking coolest. Cause then the thing, we didn't have that much, I mean, here's the thing. I couldn't have strung a sentence together to say to him anyway.

Yeah, sure. It was a fucking nightmare. It was like, it was extremely, it was a huge honor obviously. And like, cause he obviously is somebody we've talked about for so long on this show and played a lot of his games and just like really just admire his work.

So there was not enough I could say in like the very brief interaction that we had with him. But then we got to watch the, it was like a live stream presentation part of Summer Games Fest or something I think, that where they were, you know, Jeff Keighley was, you know, interviewing him and then interviewed some of the cast and the musician who did the score, Wood Kid. And then they showed some new clips from the game. And then they showed the first opening five minutes of the game.

This is all on a video, you can see this. Yeah. And there was a moment when they started showing the beginning of the game where Heather and I thought it was real. Like it scared us. Yeah. Real in which documentary footage?

It looked like live action footage. And this was a screen that is, you know, an enormous theater screen. So to have the footage of the game internal, in-engine gameplay, look photorealistic at that size was staggering. I think we turned to each other and just went, holy shit.

Yeah, it was crazy. And it was showing us rocks and dirt. Like that was all it was and we were like, oh my God. It was running on a PS5 Pro. And then there was like a funny segment where somebody backstage was playing, somebody from Kojima Productions was doing the live gameplay of it and Kojima was like a funny segment where somebody backstage was playing somebody from Kojima Productions was Doing the live gameplay of it and Kojima was like roasting him. He's like he's been practicing all day. He's not very good

Everything we saw was like more mind-blowing than the previous thing that we saw which is great And then you also have no context for it. So you're like what the fuck is this game actually right? It looks crazy and context for it. So you're like, what the fuck is this game actually? It looks crazy. Often, because they had, you know, like Troy Baker's on stage and he's talking about the game and he just kept emphasizing what you've just seen, which was L. Fanning's character Tomorrow slipping in and out of the earth via like oil-based portals while like doing incredible action sequence. Again, this footage is all available online so it's no shock to anybody who's following the game.

But to have that clip end, which was staggering and wild, and then have Troy Baker be like, I'm telling you guys, this is nothing compared to how insane this game is. Like what, that's all I want out of Death Stranding 2 is for it to be crazy. I just wanna be like overwhelmed. There was a lot of action in the preview as well,

a lot of combat encounters and stuff like that. And while that stuff looked really, really cool, and obviously there's not that much of that in the first one, Kojima did keep saying, it is a delivery game still. Don't do this again. You're still just delivering stuff.

But it was, and then we got to talk to him again afterward, and we were like, hey, that stuff in the beginning looked real, and he laughed at us like he thought we were dumb. You know it's a video game, right? That's kind of exactly what he said. And it was just very, very surreal meeting him and just an unbelievable honor. And I appreciate and thank Heather for taking me. It was super fun to go with you, Matt.

We walked around, I got a beer, that was cool. I'm wearing this t-shirt that says, should we have connected? That was from the gift bag that we got. Oh shit, your shirt's totally different than mine. Seemed like they got a lot of different stuff. Wow. We should have grabbed all of them. Mine's like a white baseball tee

with the Death Stranding logo on the front, and should we have connected on the back? That's really cool. Wow. That's really cool. Wow. I was, so I'll disclose and I'll be vague. I was supposed to go to this as well. I was somebody's plus one and that person opted not to go

because of the police state situation in downtown LA. So I would have had to get to the wait list. So I ended up opting not to go. Yeah. And my ass is almost like, whatever, I'll watch this online. So I would have had to get to the wait list. So I ended up opting not to go. Yeah. And my ass is almost like, whatever, I'll watch this online. And then, of course, you both get a photo with Hideo Koji. Damn it.

A photo that we had to scrounge for. Because I sort of knew when we took the photo, I was like, there's no way we're ever going to see this photo ever again. And everyone's going to think, well, fucking liar. But then we just happened to be in a video that was posted, which is very, very cool. And it was just like, it was insane.

It was unbelievable. The person who flagged that for me was a friend of the pod, Gene Park. Wow, how about that? Gene Park was like, hey, you met the man. And I was like, I have no idea what you're referring to. Hell yes. And then he was like, in the Game Informer video.

So, pretty cool. That's so awesome. All right, let's talk about date cool. Incredible, that's so awesome. All right, let's talk about Date Everything. Also, wait, hold on. Before people in the audience think I'm like a dick, I also invited you, but you already had a- I already had someone who offered me,

so I was like, oh, don't worry. So I wasn't just like ignoring you, Nick. Yes, yeah. No, no, no, no, not at all. Let's talk about Date Everything, which was developed by Sassy Chap Games and published by Team17, releasing tomorrow, June 17th, if you're listening to this.

Ray, as we're talking about, we've got to spend some time with this game via pre-release codes. I want to start by just asking, like, how did this... I apologize if this is a vague, a broad question, but... Why? Can you give us a... Yeah, why? Yeah. That's always the first question. No, I mean, like, how did this whole thing come together because like, you know, you're obviously someone

with a ton of credits in gaming, but development is something that like is kind of a whole new animal. Yeah, definitely. I was always a big indie game fan, always following it, always going to GDC every year, and so I had a lot of developer friends. Hideo Kojima was not one of them, unfortunately.

And I was just always interested in it, and it was always just in the back of my mind, like maybe one day I can be a part of making a video game. I never thought in a million years I would direct one and do all the stuff that I ended up doing. But it was just me and my friend Robbie Damon, who's voice of Prompto in Final Fantasy XV, a tuxedo mask, a tuxedo mask,

and Goro Ketchy in Persona 5. Wow. Yeah. He is a very good friend. We were just goofing around in studio one day saying, what if we could make a game where we could, I don't know, date everything, date the charity, the table and stuff. And we laugh it off.

And then the next day I go to him and I go like, I think I wanna make that game. I think that game should exist. And I think I'm the person who should make it cause I have some free time. I didn't know that it would take over my entire life. And it was just kind of fully formed as like just that title and living up to that title

that like, can you make a game where once people played it, they did date, they dated everything, and they said, I got my money's worth. And that kind of was the overriding like design philosophy going through it. Like, can we reach every single tendril that we possibly can? Right.

And you said before we got started that it took seven years. Seven years to the day almost. Wow. When I first reached out, because Robbie and I first reached out, because Robbie and I had that idea, thought about it for a week

and then I sent my first email to Adriel Wallach, who ended up becoming our lead programmer on the vertical slice, June 17th, 2018. So coincidentally, seven years from when we first really started production on this thing. Wow. Yeah, I have no experience in coding, in design and anything like that.

Sure, I've written stuff, like all actors write stuff, but I never done it, never done any story programming. Through the course of this, I learned a ton of lessons, getting my teeth kicked in over and over again, and then just like finding out, like for whatever reason, I was just really good at that kind of abstract thinking that story programming needed. And there was this language called Ink,

Inkle, which the sorcery game used, and 80 Days is the other one, the other famous one. And I just took to it. I just really, really enjoyed it. And I really like understood it. And I built, what ended up happening, I built a lot of little machines inside of it to do all the little narrative things that we wanted to do.

But like, just learn so many weird things that I never thought that I would. It was a four-year journey to make the vertical slice that was all self-funded, trying to get it and listening to feedback. And then we got our publisher, Team17, on about three years ago. And then it has been a rocket ship since

developing that game. The scope expanded so much many times over it based on feedback. At first we thought it was gonna be like, did everything we can like have, but the only way we're gonna make it is if some characters are really small and some characters are big. And then we had this feedback,

Arma, the smoke alarm was one of them where it was her story ended right after you talk about her trauma, and then that was it, and you got an ending, and one innocuous comment was, oh, that was abrupt, and I took that to mean, I will now double the size of this game. And so there are no small characters in the game at all, even if you think you got a joke ending

or something like that, that usually is only the beginning of what that character is. So just talking about an Inkle, is that the kind of the scripting language you used for the retail game, for the final game, or was that more what you're using for the vertical slide? It's the controller that Unity uses. So I didn't learn any real, real programming.

That was done by our lead programmers over the years. But I did do all, basically you write in, in Inkle, and you can play in Inkle up to a certain point, then our game got too complex to be able to play in it. Cause you have like characters like Curt and Rod were very location-based and you can't, you can't simulate that in Inkle. So you couldn't do that.

You'd have to play it in build. And yeah, it was just, it was learning all that. There's 2000 variables in the game, 1.6 million words, which is almost as big as Baldur's Gate. It's crazy. Yeah. I will say from playing it, it is like a staggering amount of text

and all fully voiced. It's like, and it's like a murderer's row of voiceover talent. I just, you're just going, like I was making a list and I was just like, I can't make this list because I don't know where to stop. Right. Because there's so many people that you just recognize from so many things, so many voices that are familiar.

It's a, I feel like Sakurai announcing the Smash Brothers Ultimate roster. Everyone is here. Everyone's here, that's true. Yeah, I texted my buddy and past guest, J'Kese J'Kees Neil when I found him in the game because I didn't need confirmation that he was in it because I just am friends with him so I was like that's J'Kees. It was great. Very very exciting. He was like hell yeah. He said he had a lot of fun doing it. You mentioned Unity.

That's the engineer you say for the game. I'm curious about a broader design decision, because there's a version of this game and there's other dating sims that I've played as the resident dating sim fan here. And I know you don't necessarily think of this game as much as a dating sim, which we can talk about, but where the environments are like static backgrounds. And like there's an approach that could have been like,

hey, each room is a static background. You just click on it. Boy, that would have been cheaper. Yeah. Damn it. No, but that's the thing. Like this is a full, this is a 3D engine. These are 3D environments.

And I actually really liked that about this. I like that you can just explore in first person, look around. There's an element of surprise of like, oh, look at that over there. Like I didn't notice that kind of tucked away. Hey, I can interact about this. I like that you can just explore in first person, look around. There's an element of surprise of like, oh, look at that over there. Like I didn't notice that kind of tucked away. Hey, I can interact with that. Oh, this is a character now I can romance.

Like it's, or become friends with. Like I think that adds to a great sense of discovery for the game, but yeah, it does blow to its scope to some degree. Huge amounts. Yeah. There's a Nintendo article that it did that team 17 grabbed as a headline.

It's on our Steam page, it's in big letters. Ray Chase, this game was very stupid to make. And it was, it's, normally you have like a game where it's a loop, a gameplay loop where you're doing this, you can test it and you can have variations on the loop, but this one you had to create every single asset by the nature of it, by the nature of these branching pads and stuff.

And we did go from a vertical slice, which was in the laundry room, was our first room, and it was first person, and we felt like this felt good. And then once we got funded, we were like, actually it might be better to make it where it's isometric. And it looked like the ideal was the Legend of Zelda, Link's Awakening remake,

which is what it could have looked like. But it necessitated a player avatar, which also added to a lot of difficulties because they would block, it added a lot of things with like camera angles where if you did it isometric, you either had to rotate the house a lot or have the character, or just have walls that had nothing on them, with like camera angles where if you did it isometric, you either had to rotate the house a lot

or have the character or just have walls that had nothing on them, which also felt like not a believable house. Yeah, right. And then because we wanted everything to animate all the objects in the game, I don't know if you played enough to unlock the magical animations,

but everything has a regular animation for what you would think it would do in the house, magical animation when it loves you, and then, but then you also have to animate the player for every single one. And we wanted to have multiple body types of player and all that sort of stuff. And so that was like a, we had that for like a year,

and then we had to throw it all away and start basically from scratch again. Yeah. Yeah, development was tumultuous, no word. We failed every single milestone that we had, and to Team17's credit, they did not cancel us. Somehow we kept chugging along. I ended up putting my life savings into it.

I hope I get it back. But yeah, we just did everything that we could to make it go, and Team17 still believed in us all the way through, and I really have to commend them for that because we were first time developers, all learning, all just grabbing whatever we possibly could and making a game that had never existed before. There isn't a 3D dating sim like that,

a 3D visual novel. Can I say something that just goes to, speaks to the level of like honesty of the game? Yeah. Which is that when I opened up one of the closets in the bedroom to see what was in there to date, I was like, okay, here's like, I can see this stuff. And then I closed the closet and I was,

and it's one of those double-doored closets where like, you know, one side can swing in one way and one side can swing in the other way. And I was like, oh, of course, you can only see half of the closet because that's what I would do to save money. But out of curiosity clicked the closet the other way and then entire other side of the closet opened

and there was two separate closets. And I was like, the fuck did you do this? Like I would have never ever judged the decision to just open the closet one way. But as soon as I could open it both ways, I was like, oh, this game is deep. This is just gonna keep going. Thank you.

That was something I fought for. But not in the way that you think. There was always two closets, but those doors themselves aren't replicated because all the doors in our house are slightly askew. And we were like, let's just replicate it and put it on there. It wouldn't fit, the door wouldn't slide.

It was clipping through. So we had to make extra doors for all of those things. And each door, and I mean, like, that was a design philosophy that like, if you could, if it's there, it has to have all of the things that are there. If you, if there can't be anything in the house that is not datable, it has to be a part of a character.

Everything has to have an examine. So if you examine every single thing in the house, it has it. And if you have a love or hate examine, it changes. And then there was even stuff like you can leave the house in the game, like leave and glitch out because you can date the glitch and he tells you how to do it.

And even all of those have an examine in it like that. It's just, you have to, I'm that kind of gamer who's like, oh, maybe they forgot about this. And I did not want that in the games. That's what I like, cause like, you know, I'm not playing this game. I'm trying to break this game. I'm not trying to like, yeah, I'm, but I,

but I have that natural curiosity of I, like, I just want to see what happens or honestly, a better way to put it is I want to see if I can do this. If you can, yeah. And like, yes, the answer is yes. Like it's just that all these options, all these contingencies are. Yeah, it's also what I wanted to do.

Like as far as narratively, there's games where Michelle Cleo, who was a narrative designer and I watched one of her GDC talks, was really inspired is about kindness coins in dating sims and in RPGs and stuff. And like in a lot of RPGs, you just romance by just being kind, just being the kind option,

giving the gift, all that sort of kind of stuff. And because we had a hundred, they all had to be different in some way. And so you had to like make it so that like, you're free to experiment, that some characters like the nagging, they like the drama, or they want very specific times for you to be kind when they open up. you're free to experiment. That some characters like the nagging, they like the drama,

or they want very specific times for you to be kind, when they open up. And I wanted to have that be in the narrative too, that in the overworld, you can do whatever the hell you want, click around, you're always gonna get something fun. And then also in the narrative too, that you're never punished for a hate ending,

you're never like, if friends are loves, it's all the same, you get the same amount of points in the end. That was really important to me. Going just to something you said a bit ago, because I was all of a sudden having flashbacks to my time in development, you know, over 10, 15 years ago, and you mentioned milestones.

So when we were hitting, when I was working, we were working, the publishers were, you know, like, like Activision, Bethesda. And milestone was like a big onerous thing that would that was oftentimes at the end of the month. So sometimes the end of the quarter, but you basically had to present a new threshold of completeness for the game, for completion for the game. And we were always crunching in advance of milestones. We were always there like past midnight

when milestones needed to be delivered. And it was just such an onerous deadline that was always putting pressure on the development team. What is a milestone like? Cause I never worked for an indie publisher. What is a milestone like from the indie side? The same, exactly the same. Yeah, very difficult.

And for us, because of that design change that I talked about where, well, three design changes that were like very massive, that we were always running to catch up to make sure that all 102, because there are DLC characters. You can date the microtransaction, I don't know if you got. I didn't give you the DLC, that's right.

I didn't, oh yeah. But in the DLC, you get like two extra characters, Michael Transaction, who's a gotcha guy who can help you with your specs points and stuff. But it was changing it to first person after we had already spent a year doing it in the isometric, making them all five, what I would call five star characters

where they're all really deep. And then the last one is a part of it, which I think the game's coming out now and I'm okay with just saying it. And I don't know if any of you guys got to this part, but there's a whole other layer of the game called realization. Did any of you guys get to there?

No, I didn't get there. You have to talk. Do you have to awaken 50 characters to advance the plot. I'm close. You're close. Yeah, I have 39. Oh, nice. You can bring them to life. And they leave the plot. Okay, I'm close. Where you can, you're close. Yeah, I have 39. Oh, nice. You can bring them to life.

And they leave, you leave the house, they leave the house, you get an ending, and then that further advances the plot, the more characters that you realize. We should, I guess we should, at this point, and if people haven't inferred how this works yet, you are basically talking to an object. We didn't talk about what the game was, did we?

Yeah, we didn't really talk about it. We still gotta jump into development side, but that's. Yeah, we didn't really talk about it. We still got it jumped into the development side, but that's on me. Let me begin. Go for it. The game begins where you've got a job in a new city and you need to work remotely. And then you sit down at a computer and you file some emails.

And let me tell you, I was like, oh no, I don't wanna do this. And you're immediately fired. Yep. We're such different kind of gamers because we're in there. I'm doing customer service. I'm like replying to chats. I'm having the time of my life.

That was your old job. It was great. Did you talk to Emmanuel? The guy with the paper clips? Yes, yeah, yeah. I play him and he's romanceable secretly. Wait, he can romance? Oh wow, the paper clip guy?

Yeah, yeah. That's great. I loved it. I was totally on his side. Oh, good, yeah. So a mystery delivery comes to your door. I think this is all not in spoiler country. It's the first moments of the game.

And it is a pair of glasses. And when you look through those glasses, you can then anthropomorphize anything in the house in order to date it. You look at a toaster oven and it will turn into a person and then you can have a relationship with the person personified version of any of the objects in the house

and you're off to the races. Remind me the term it's in the game, but there's a term for a, is it Gijinka? Oh, Gijinka, yeah. Gijinka, yeah. And we do refer to it in the game, that's correct. Yeah, when we were coming up with like, what these guys look like.

And one big design decision on day one was, do we make this an anime game? Right. And the answer was pretty much like, no, let's not lean into that. It tends to be way too much more parody, that KFC dating simulator kind of energy. Sure. It was like, I want this to be genuine.

I want this to be its own sort of thing. But yeah, they're all kajinkas. And you directly acknowledge a thing's existence or date them. It was another way to like sidestep, like if you just went on a hundred dates and it was always the same, we're going out to eat some pizza,

that would get annoying. So there's some of the characters you do, like traditional dating sim dates, and then a lot of them, like, I don't know if you've talked to Microwave, is like ready to fight the swarmers and the barons. I met Luke Newcomb today. Yes.

It was very, very, very exciting. Can you talk about the writing process of this game? Because the first thing I did was look through the credits before I even played the game, just because I wanted to see how big the development team was, and I just wanted to look at all the names of all the voice actors.

But I noticed there were a lot of credited writers. Was this the sort of thing where someone would just kind of take kind of like the narrative lead of an individual character and kind of author their voice? Yeah, and this was part of the development process where we had this draft, and this was where we had a bunch of writers on, like 25 writers or so that we all brought on,

all from wildly different backgrounds, wildly different writing backgrounds, taught everybody how to use ink in a basic way. And then we pitched the ideas of what these characters could be. And that was where a lot of these characters came from. And also where I, as the lead writer, had to go like, we can't have too much overlap with a lot of these characters could be. And that was where a lot of these characters came from. And also where I, as the lead writer, had to go like, we can't have too much overlap

with a lot of these characters. There's a lot of things in your house that warm things up and clean things. There's soap things. And it was like, how do we tell different stories with I'm a thing that warms something up? And so that was my responsibility to try to make all these characters narratively distinct and visually distinct.

And so we had that, we put it all in, we had those one star through five star characters where some of them were a little bit shorter. And then about a year and a half in, I was like, we're gonna do realization so all of these characters have to have a new ending. And then all of these characters have to be brought up to five star potential. And we brought on a couple of new writers,

other writers she's credited as the senior writer, Suha Alsamkari, who has a lot of dating sim experience and ended up writing 23 of the characters. Wow. Taking the inspiration from the first drafts, like these are what the characters are. Now put them in. And she was really good at,

she's because she has such a good experience in dating sims, traditional dating drafts, like these are what the characters are. Now put them in. And she was really good at, she's, because she has such a good experience in dating sims, traditional dating sims, she's really good at writing sexy dialogue that's not gross. You're not gonna hear any totally dirty words that are gonna put you off. But like, but just really like,

oh, that feels good to hear. Yeah. Yes. Because I mean, I guess this game is horny. The game is, this one's horny. Oh, this will be kind of silly and fun. And then Yes. Cause I mean, I guess this game is horny. The game is horny. And I was like, oh, this will be kind of silly and fun. And then pretty early on I meet Betty. I was like, oh, this game's horny. Yeah.

Betty is the bed. Yeah. Yeah. And the first encounter, she talks about how she touches herself at night. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. But she's canonically the only character that you sleep with.

You don't, I mean, I don't know, you're personalized, but you probably don't sleep with your toaster, I don't know. But the bed is, we're always like, we want her to be this super sensual one and put her in the tutorial. The tutorial day, you have to talk to five very specific ones who all have like a gameplay tenant that they have to teach you.

And I'm really glad that you end with Betty to be like, hey, I know this first date was weird and very high concept, but it is a dating sim. Feel free to be horny. You also get steered towards, and there's a detective character who comes from, it's a magnifying glass that kind of is personified at the primorphias that you interact with,

who gives you like a lot of, kind of steers you towards certain things. And I do like that character. And, but I like, one character I get steered towards was The Shower. And I'm a huge Elvis Presley fan. And The Shower, because of singing in The Shower is like a, you know, like a true, an aspiring troubadour. And it is very much just like an Elvis character.

I was like, I'm dating this guy. I'm really glad. He's Elvis and he's bad at singing, which I really enjoyed. And he shows up in a lot of other dateable stories, which I was glad to. That was another piece of feedback that as we were going through was like, we found that players really enjoyed

when other dateables entered each other's scenes, that you weren't just looking at one thing, just focused on that, that you had multiple guys coming in and out, and it felt like an RPG town where they had their own lives going on as completely aside from you. On day two, what was the very first thing that you guys made sentient?

Where was the first object that you went to? Because I know mine was the garbage can, because I was like, I gotta know where the garbage can is. I talked to the towel pretty early. You would. I liked the towel, but I honestly. You would? Just do it while it's getting dry.

I think I did, I might have gone all the way down, I might have gone down to the washing machine, I might have gone down to that down. I'm I might have gone down to the washing machine I might have gone down to that area I definitely talked to the water cooler pretty early but I honestly don't remember sequence wise when I talked to the top of day to hard for me to remember to because I started to like Once I figured out that you could like open things to like that was like very exciting to me So Ben wah very early

Who is the yes who's the sex toy in your nightstand. Voiced by Erika Ishii, which is a great performance. I remember I went to the toilet pretty early. And the toilet is a French rapper. It's very funny. But okay, so I do wanna speak to this. The character designs are all very unique and like very on theme for what they are.

And a lot of them, I would say for the most part, look like people wearing costumes of the thing that they're wearing. Sort of like, maybe I would go as far as to say, Met Gala representations of the item. So it could be like a sort of like, a beautiful gown that evokes bathtub or something, right? But then you meet some other characters,

and like I can't remember the guy's name unfortunately, but the guy whose head is a sink. Sinclair, yes. Sinclair, I was like, this guy's different. He has a human man's body, but he's sinking. It's very funny. That was what I was talking about. Like there's a lot of characters

that are water or cleanliness and stuff. And we just had this, we had a soap character and we had a sink character and they were all like, I'm the OCD soap guy. And it was like fine, but it was very on the nose. And I was like, what if you, what if one of them, when you use the glasses, they all say, hi, I'm this guy, or maybe they're in the middle of a quest or something, but what if one of them just says,

help, I'm not a sink, I'm a man, my name's Martin. And you have to find out who is this guy, he doesn't belong here, so he's part of the Magi mystery. I don't know if you went down that. I guess I'm asking you guys what you did, but it's so horizontal in terms of what you did, but it's just so, it's so horizontal in terms of what you can do. Like you can miss so much.

Here's what I can say. First off, I think the game is very funny. And I do like the credit to the writing. Like I'm like laughing as I'm playing this thing. And I also think it's like very satisfying just like as a dating sim in terms of like, oh, I get to meet a bunch of different people of, to me there's a big dating sim thing of like,

you just kind of want there to be something for everyone in terms of, and it does definitely sort of feel like this. There's all sorts of different, you know, all genders, all sorts of different body types represented and a bunch of different kinds of personality types. And like, so I found that super duper satisfying. We were talking about the character designs. I am kind of curious about the art direction of this game.

Like, you know, how did you settle on this, the art style for these characters? And I do find them like all really, really appealing. Like, so shout out to your art department, but like all really really appealing like so so shout out to to your art department but like I thought I'd really like just I To me to me the most satisfying one of the most satisfying parts of this game was just Interacting with an object and then like like being surprised at what character was generated in front of me Yeah, it's like oh like opening a deck of cards, and you just you bring up the next one

You're like right could be on the other side? Yeah. It's, the credit all goes to Nijuku, Erin Wong, who is our lead artist on this. She was, when I did Final Fantasy 15, she would do like fan art and send it to me and meet me at cons. And she has a full-time job at a board game company, even throughout working on date, everything.

She's still worked there, Red Dragon Games. And she does, she's just a genius, man. The fact that you are looking at, and she did all the UI, which also was like myself, like just learning a new skill where just like we didn't really have UI that matched the art style, Neige, would you do it? And she just did all of it without having any UI experience at all.

And I think it just, it works because you're looking, the whole game, there is a house that you're looking at, lots of stuff, but that can get very boring. After a while, this game's like 30 to 40 hours, but you're looking at a text box, you're listening to the voiceover, and then you're just looking at the characters. And as you're looking at them,

I just, even now, I still notice like little things that I didn't notice before. The level of detail, the sense of humor and play that she has is unmatched. I keep telling her this, but I'm like, you have to become the next Tetsuya Nomura after this. You're so good at this.

She absolutely deserves all the credit. Did she do all of the character designs? She did every single character design. Wow. I also found out, so she didn't, she designed all the poses, like sketched. Each character has five different poses. And then with each pose, there's nine different expressions

and they all blink. And so what she did was sketched out all the poses, design the characters, sketched out the poses, and then the other artists would do the poses. Sometimes she did like half of them, and then she did all 13,000 expressions by herself. I did not know that until just the cast part of the other day, she was like, I just did,

I just did all that. That's why I was hard to get in touch with at certain points of development, because she was just doing the blink expression for every single character. I feel like, I feel like the story of this game, you spending seven years working on it, her doing all that insane amount of work,

the publishers not giving up on it, because the idea is too good for it to not exist. You know what I mean? It's like everybody just had to give everything they fucking had to make something actually, to will something into existence, which is very, very cool. And I hope you're like super proud of that.

Thank you, I am very cool. Thank you. Yeah, it felt, you know, like I'm not Nick. I'm not in the dating sim scene. But what I appreciate about it is that in the same way that it would. I just, is just a funny identifier. I I told my wife I was like as like I played this game She's like what are you I was like I'm playing this game. I'd date everything. It's it's for the podcast

Okay She goes have fun fucking everything have fun fucking everything. Which there's an achievement for. But what I like about it, in the same way that like, there's a character for everyone, is one of the things you said earlier. There's also, you can conceive of what you're doing in a different way.

So because I'm not, you know, typically warm to dating sims, I was thinking of it as a collection game. And I was like, oh, this is like getting to see, so like if I'm playing Pokemon Pocket, right, I wanna see all of the art for all of the cards. And that is as important to me as my ability to play the game. And in the same way, I was like,

oh, I wanna know what the air conditioning vent person looks like, which frustratingly, that person is behind the vent. Yeah, for most of his story. Yeah, he's like, hey, he's shy. He's concerned about his body image and that's kind of his story. Yeah, but like getting to go through the house

and knowing that you have a limited number of like, that day you can only charm like several characters. So you're like, what do I wanna see? And that was to me, the doorway into the rest of the gameplay because I was like, yeah, talking to these people is fine. I don't really like talking to anybody in my life. So it's really frustrating and scary for me

to even have these virtual representations of a person being like, hi, what's your name? And I'm like, oh, okay. But being able to be like, oh, there's like eight boxes on the floor of this closet. Which of the boxes do I want to see what they are? And having each individual thing be unique was so, it was just charming and pleasant for me.

Thank you. I also like that there's a limited resource in terms of how many things you can date in a day because it's kind of like, oh, what do I wanna pursue? Do I wanna follow up with an existing character? I don't know. I know sometimes that drives people,

like people are completionists, like kind of get like, analysis, prolices, like what should I do right now to maximize my time? But like for me, I like that you're kind of get like, you know, analysis, prolices, like what should I do right now to maximize my time? But like for me, I like that you're kind of limited in your decisions and you have to prioritize who you wanna pursue. So you do have unlimited days.

Right. Yeah, you shouldn't feel that scared. Yeah. And you're like into that point, you're in the next day immediately. Immediately, yeah. Like that's really, really fun. I'll say that that design decision came

towards the middle of development because we wanted to feel that time was passing. How do you make it so that you just don't talk to the vent over and over again? You just keep talking to him and then just go to the next one. I really didn't want people to just tunnel vision, just talk to the TV, romance the TV, be done.

Go to the next one. I wanted to feel like you're circulating around the house, you're seeing the house change because of your actions. And that's kind of where that came. And then we got to put in traditional dating sim elements like, Jeremy the Chair only performs at 6 p.m. Timothy Timepiece tells you to come at a certain time, but his story does change if you don't come at the time.

And- Yeah, he gets really mad at you if you're very early. Yes. Yes. I remember I started the day and the first thing I did was I forgot that he had told me. Yes, which is fine. To go at a certain time.

And the first thing I was like, let's check in on this clock real quick. And he was like, no, no, no, no, no. I feel like I have to say this. And you don't have to respond to this, Ray. There was another game this year where you're walking around the house. And I gotta say, I like walking around this house more.

The movement is more pleasurable to me and I like the house more because everything is where I want it to be always. Are you talking about P.T.? No, actually, my favorite movement in any house. I've talked to two friends recently who listened to our Blueprints episode. One of them told me I was furious.

And the other one told me, I'm so glad you also hated that game. I'm in the, that game came out of nowhere. I was like, there's two games about houses in the same year, had to play it. I really enjoyed it up to the point where you don't enjoy it. And then I was able to let go and be like, this is okay. It's an inarguably impressive design. But yes, as far as I agree with Matt.

I wanted to ask a little bit about the voice acting side. Yeah. I'm just curious about directing some of these characters. Because obviously, they have real personalities that are analogous to real people, but there's a layer of like, this is a very abstract thing that you're embodying. Yeah, it was run and gone.

This, we started in March of last year and we recorded for four months straight. We had a rotating cast directors with Robbie Damon being the lead director. During that time, I unfortunately wasn't able to make most of the sessions because I was finishing writing a Damon being the lead director. During that time, I unfortunately wasn't able to make most of the sessions because I was finishing writing a lot of the characters. I wrote 14 myself and like seven of those were all

in that last thing while editing everybody's stuff and fixing bugs. So I missed a lot of that. But I will say like those sessions are run and gone because there's so many lines for each character. And again, this game was very stupid to make. Normally you have a lead characters and then you can just bring them in

and they can go at their own pace and you pay for another session fee. But for us, we had no lead characters. So every single voice actor had to be different, had to be one session. And if you needed them again, you had to pay for them again to be in the session. So there was no economic smartness to that at all,

but it's cool. And it meant that you also had to explain the entire game to every single actor who came in, which is a bad shit crazy game and that took a lot of time as well. So those we had, our actors were, the feedback that I got from a lot of them were, that was very hard, that was the feedback that I got from a lot of them were,

that was very hard, that was the most fun I've had in years. So that was, I think those are the two sides of that. I'll also say about the voice actors bringing it back to the sag thing too. This game rose out of the ashes of the first sag strike that I was such a big power in my life. And that one was about residuals in video games, which there are still basically none.

You get a couple hundred bucks when a game comes out and that's about it, which is great, not to complain about getting a couple hundred bucks, but it's not like an actual residual based on sales. We made in our game, a special contract where all of the actors get real residuals based on sales. That's amazing. Wow.

That's so cool. Every single person, we have 10% of all of our profits given to all of the actors, all equal share. And we have, and that was, I think, another reason why we were able to get so many big talent in. Some of them, we do have personal relationships, sure, but we just had like a most favorite nations contract.

Everyone's working for scale, but if this game makes some money, we're able to share it with our actors and like be the change that we wanted to see in the world. I hope it's a huge hit. Yes, I hope so too, yes. I'm going to double dip on this game. Me too. I would not have expected, and this isn't lip service,

I would not have expected the game to grab me. And usually when we have a guest in who's involved in the game, you're kind to it and you're like, oh wow, this was really cool and I'm glad you brought us in your favorite game or whatever it is. So seeing that it was a dating sim, I was like, oh I know that the boys are probably gonna talk

about this more than me. I'm fucking in, man. Like, wow. I got it. My thought was, oh, I want to get this on the Switch so I can play it in various locations, take it out and, and enjoy it when,

when I have a moment to, to play, especially since I don't have a lot of Switch content, because not a lot of stuff came out. So I was like, this is going to be my lead Switch 2 title, because it comes out as a record tomorrow. Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm in, man. You know who's gonna really like it?

Mary. She is, dude. She's gonna really like it. She's gonna like it a lot. She's gonna think it's cute. Yeah, she really is. Because she played another one. I forget what dating sim she played that she really loved.

Doki Doki Literature Club. Yeah, it might've been Doki Doki. Yeah, but yeah, I'm sold. Yeah, for me, to me, just still my favorite dating sim, and I know it's an obvious answer, is Dream Daddy. And I think Dream Daddy just kind of hit the, it's totally sincere, but it's also funny and engaging, you know what I mean? It's not making fun of what it's totally sincere, but it's also funny and engaging.

You know what I mean? It's not making fun of what it's doing. And that's the sort of thing of like, there's a version of your game that is like totally ironic and everything's in arm's length. I hate that version. I hate that version of the game. Yeah, exactly. I really didn't want that.

Yeah, and that's where I think this really succeeds in the same way that the Dream Daddy succeeds. And I agree, again, this is the compliment that Heather is paying you, but like, yeah, I'm gonna continue to play this game. I'm really enjoying my time with it. Awesome. And the thing I would say to what Heather said

about the game, we played the game before we scheduled you on the podcast. If we didn't like the game, we just wouldn't have done this episode. So I just like- Well, I'll keep you in it. I was like, if you don't like it, we can just talk about voice acting again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'll do a little plug. But that's the thing I always just say, when we did our episode about the Fallout TV series, there are other prestige TV series of other video game adaptations that we did not do episodes of. You know, you can kind of fill in the blanks there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate it. We didn't do the Nintendo land video, TV show. What was that cartoon? The Nintendo cartoon? Captain and the Game Master? Captain Town.

What are you, what? Are you okay? I need help. You're too young for that reference. That's the problem. You shouldn't have tried to pull it. Yeah. Like before your time.

You didn't even say it. You're right, that wasn't my reference. That wasn't mine. Your culture's not a costume, I'm sorry. I do have another question for you, which is about the writing process. And you wrote a number of characters. Do you have a character that you were like,

in the process of writing became like your favorite? Made me horny. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I guess more generally, I'm gonna put that in my soap away. I guess more generally, do you have like,

like a personal favorite character that you wrote? And do you also have a character you have a lot of affection for favorite character that you wrote and do you have do you also? Have a character you have a lot of affection for that you didn't write. I absolutely do. Yes, my favorite character I've said this on interviews is Dorian the door. I love by the inimitable Ben star Yeah, and he he's there. He's in 17 locations around the house. I don't know if you guys talked to any of them I love Dorian Dorian he's facing the wrong way. Oh my God, that's so funny.

We were supporting him, muffling his mouth, like all that sort of stuff. Each of those has three different levels of conversation through it and tells a story around it. And what I really like about him was not only that, he's kind of surly, he gives sense about characters. He was fun to write, even though he's really complex, but he is the proponent of friendship.

Yes, yes. In the tutorial, it's the second character you meet, and he's like, I don't want all this dating. I don't like hate. I don't like love. I like friendship. And I think that to me is like such a huge, important pillar of the game

that I really wanted to do designing it, that like, you don't have to fuck them all. You're not, that is part of it, but it is like, and you can go for a hate ending, which also, the full hate ending, which I balanced to make like still, it still changes the critical path a lot and goes in different ways.

But all the different pillars that you can play through, all the different role plays that you can play through should feel really good. I just have to say something real quick. Voice actors are so amazing because why do you have a pocket Ben star? Why were you able to do this?

Listen to all his lines. I create you the man you see. One of my favorite Dorian lines, he's talking about the closet door and he says, do you want to know a fact about closets? You say sure. And he says, so do I. And he leaves.

That's it. There's nothing there. I really like that guy. he says so do I and he leaves And then who do I like who other people wrote oh my god, I mean I I fell in love with so many of the characters I I have to say I know we brought him up again But I do like the ones who are the the more wacky stuff Yeah, my my Forte in writing is is writing the ridiculous ones dishy the dishwasher I don't know if you found him But like the ones who are more plot heavy, very high concept characters are the ones that I'm like. Suha, who's really good at the romance stuff is amazing.

And my lovely wife, Julia McElveen, also a voice actor herself, wrote a ton of the characters. And she wrote one called Teddy the Teddy Bear. Oh yeah. He tells you these wonderful stories to help you go to sleep. If you go to it in the daytime, he tells you advice. If you go you these wonderful stories to help you go to sleep. If you go to it in the daytime, he tells you advice. If you go to nighttime, he tells you to go to sleep.

And those stories came from some of her own experiences, came from the heart, and I love my wife very much. Which makes me cry. I've been looking at Teddy, and I haven't spoken to him yet, but I'm gonna be lying toward Teddy by next day. We had our cast party last night, and the voice actor,

Charlie West, who voices Teddy, came in a, oh, I guess if you don't know his character design, he's wearing a wonderful brown jacket and a bow tie. He showed up in a bow tie last night, holding a teddy bear. That's really great. So I was like, that's amazing, yeah. Remind me of the name of your character

that writes the stories. Lyric literature, yeah. Remind me the name of your character that writes the stories. Lyric literature, yeah. So Lyric's Game Mechanic is really fun because you can sort of pick options for writing a story. He's always wanting to write a story. He's never written, he is literature. He's read them all, he's never written one, yeah. So he's writing his own story,

and if you pick the wrong ones to pair with it, there's always a little funny result with that. But did you voice that character because you wrote so many of them? So yeah, it was a mathematical challenge to myself. We had this character of lyric literature, he was written and he was kind of overlapping on a couple of other characters and so I was like,

let's start over again, kept the Chuck Tingle references because you've got to. You have to. But I was like, let's start over again. Kept the Chuck Tingle references, cause you've got to. You have to. But I was like, what if he's writing a book and you start with four options, one which is noir, adventure, comedy, and erotica. And then from those four options,

each one goes to another four options and another four and another four, and you tell a five beat story so that there's 1,024 different stories. And then he gives a grade on each one of them. And then you publish the book and you get an ending based on that. But yeah, I wrote the character

along with my writing partner Logan on that one. We shared duties on that. And we did have an actor in for it, but it was like, he has like 3,000 lines. And it just was, I'm like, I'm free. I will just do it. I'm here the most. With my audio book experience,

I was able to do it really fast. I was able to do that in like an eight hour session and just do like 3,000 lines like that. I really like talking to lyrics. I'm glad, and hopefully you can play it through many, many, many times, really, really quickly to just hear all that ridiculous dialogue.

There's some really, really crazy stuff. The stories get crazy. Because yeah, because you can be on the erotica path and then go straight into adventure and then noir and you're like, what is this story? And as we were writing, we were like, some of these are pretty good stories. Yeah.

I appreciated the Chuck Tingle references. It reminded me that I not only met, but like basically spent a day with Chuck Tingle once, which I don't think I've ever told the story publicly. But this was on Comedy Central. I worked on, I was a writer for Comedy Central's At Midnight, which was a panel show with game show trappings, got semi-rebooted as After Midnight.

We were doing a live episode and we brought Chuck Tingle in to, he was going to come into the studio and live write a Chuck Tingle book, like a portion of a Chuck Tingle book that the audience would vote on the title and they would decide and he would just like come up with it on the spot, which he actually did. Like he was, he's like that much of a pro. He was just able to like whip up together a chapter on the fly. But so he, so here's the thing.

It's a level of commitment to performance art that is like, I wish there was a more contemporary reference than Andy Kaufman, but it was very Andy Kaufman-esque. Chuck Tingle showed up with a handler, and his handler, his assistant, may very well have been Chuck Tingle himself, and the other guy was the actor I never knew. Bob Zamuda kind of.

It was a Bob Zamuda sort of thing. So we had to come on to a studio a lot. And as anyone who's gone into like a studio, like gone through any sort of corporate security knows, they were like, well, we're gonna have to check your ID or whatever. They're like, that's not gonna, like Chuck Tingle is not gonna put that.

So we have a whole thing where they're just like, all right, well, I guess we'll just let this guy, Chuck Tingle, come in without any sort of ID, any sort of proof of who he is. And Chuck Tingle shows in without any sort of ID, any sort of proof of who he is. And Chuck Tingle shows up and he is- He's not on camera? He is, here's the thing. Chuck Tingle showed up, head to toe,

wrapped in gauze like a mummy. He had sunglasses on and the only part of his body that was visible was his mouth. So I'm interacting with this mummy who's talking to me and is a lovely guy and a funny guy, but like, I still don't know, like, I don't know who you are and I don't know, like, you don't even seem like a person to me.

And then I also don't know if you are the guy or if this other guy who is the guy and he's pretending like you're the guy to protect his own identity. I don't know like any of this. I'm not at all, I don't feel like I'm in on this at all. I feel like this is happening to me, but I'm just like kind of along with the ride. He was so nice.

He was so funny and he was like super like, you know, seemed to like me, I guess, because I think I was just kind of like along for the ride. And then he does this whole thing and he's great on the show and it ends. And he's like, Nick, and he's like, I got you a gift. And he hands me a box of dry pasta and a bottle of chocolate sauce. I'm believable. It just kept him on his shelf in my office

until that show got canceled. That is so insane. He was the best. Was it good? Did you eat it? Yeah, it was great. It is insane that there isn't a more contemporary reference than Andy Kaufman because he's like the only guy who did that in a way that anybody knows about.

The fact that this happened a second time is kind of crazy. Forgive me, I don't know who Chuck Tingle is. You're about to go down a rabbit hole. I'll send you a bunch of stuff. I'll send you a bunch of stuff. Well, for our listeners who might not know who Chuck Tingle is, like who is Chuck Tingle? How would you best describe him?

Chuck Tingle is a romance author and all of his books are about, let's see if I can find one that is, here we go. Here's a good Chuck Tingle title. Space Raptor butt invasion. Okay. Bigfoot pirates haunt my balls. These are level one, these are level one Tingle titles.

Yeah, okay. Nick is doing a good job of like getting you started, this is the entry ramp. Yes. Then they get. Let's see. Okay, here's one. First buckaroo bill pounded by the handsome living White House. So the idea is that the White House has become sentient and had sex with this man.

Slammed in the butt by my smartphone's missing headphone jack. This was a topical one that came out when the new iPhone removed the headphone jack. So it's that sort of stuff. I get it now. He did write to us and said, thank you for the reference, Buckaroos. Very sad that you didn't give me a character to voice in the game.

But I really want to make a character. I'm gonna reach out to this man. Although from what you say, this does sound a little terrifying, though harmless. I loved it. I thought it was a great experience. Congratulations on the game. I hope people play it.

Thank you. And there's a demo people can check out. So yes, there is a demo and boy, was it accidentally well-designed to be like, just perfect for people to like get into it. This was, I can't believe how well it worked out for like streamers and stuff. It's the tutorial day. You play through it once, you learn how to into it. This was, I can't believe how well it worked out for like streamers and stuff. It's the tutorial day, you play through it once,

you learn how to do it, and then you can infinitely loop the first two days. So you can just get to know all of the characters. And usually from what I find, like from people playing it, they'll play it like two or three times. Some people have 50 hours into that demo. Wow. So please play it. There's 50 hours of content in that demo.

The save doesn't go over to the main game unfortunately, but yeah, completely free. But although it is only on PC. All right, it's time for a segment. Ray, you brought something in for us. So I'm just gonna toss it over to you. Thank you, Nick, for the toss. I have been burying the lead.

I'm not saying, thank you for the toss. Of course. I've been burying the lead. Sure, you might know me from my voice acting roles as Noctis, Gendo Ikari. Other of them that I can't think of at this moment. Because the only one I can think of is the one that you guys reference all the time

on this show. I am in fact, one of the eight people in The Last of Us Part II who says, they got Jorge! Yes! This segment is called, they got Jorge! Yes!

Oh my God, that, look, I was a fan of your work. This is like finding out that you're the President of the United States. I was a fan of your work, but I wasn't familiar with your game. I'm so glad I was able to keep it for you guys this whole time. Yes, I was one of them. We worked on, last was part two, I did almost as many sessions as Militia, male number three, as I did Noctis. It was around 30 sessions of voice acting. They brought us in two at a time. I had my partner, Davey Mitchell, we would just say the lines.

And one weird fact, we did all the lines and they brought us back in for a wet session because the Playtesters said they don't sound wet enough And so we did all of our lines while gargling water and spitting it out into the studio Oh like so that it sounds like the rainy or like the like no like blood like Just like vomiting water But that's the Naughty Dog way. They do it, man.

That's wild. Fuck, that's great. Okay. Your job sounds hard. That sounds like a nightmare. They took, I will say, like vocally stressful and stuff. Like no one takes better care of their actors than Naughty Dog.

Our sessions were two hours at a maximum. Like they were amazing. Wait, so there's an option to be dry? I know we can't get to the bottom of why you're wet all the time. Science can't prove it one of these days, but Naughty Dog might have the answer. So this is the game called, They Got Jorge.

We as a group said 74 different names of people who they got. Wow. Yes! This game is played in two rounds and answers must be made in the form of They Got Jorge. So please, for round one, this is called Open Season and it's worth three points. Can anyone name other names who they got

in The Last of Us Part II. Wow, okay. We just kinda take turns here? I imagine you just shout it out, or you can buzz in, and then you must answer in the form of they got Jorge. So just to, because everybody loves when we

litigate the rules for a really long time. A really long time. So to buzz in, do we say they got Jorge? Yeah. And then we say... Or no, I guess say they got Jorge? Yeah. And then we say- Or no, I guess you say your name, yeah. Okay.

I just wanted you guys to just scream lots of names all the time, I guess. Maybe that's bad podcasting. No, this is great. I'll go first and I'm gonna go for one. Oh yeah, turns is good, okay. I'll go first and I'm just gonna say, they got Matt. That's pretty good.

That's probably possible. Should we do Dead Letter Perfect? They got Matthew. Oh! Should we get half points? I think give it. Yeah, okay. Three points.

Just get one on the board. Three points for they got Matthew. Three? Hmm. Well, yeah, this is open season. I'll take a half point for it. This is open season. This first round, in my opinion, is harder.

And then the other one, I'm gonna give you hints. Okay, good. And there's 10 of those. I'll go next. Yes. They got Carl! Heather, they did not get Carl. He lived! Matt, I'm gonna say this one,

just to get this one out there. Yeah. They got Samantha! They might've got a lady. Yeah. They got Samantha. They might've got a lady. There are much many lady names. Yeah. They did not get Samantha. They have not. Wow.

Carl and Samantha happily ever after. Yeah. You're safe. Shh. I think that the one that I always say on the show as the example is either they got Stephen or they got Kevin, both of which are funny names to me. So I don't think they're actually in the game.

They got Stephen. And what was the other one? They got Kevin. They did get Kevin. Wow, a reverse home alone. They did not get Stephen though. He's doing fine. It's the Stephen's too funny name. It's a reverse home alone. They did not get Steven though. He's doing fine. It's because Steven's too funny a name.

It's a reverse Home Alone. They didn't get him in the Home Alone. No they didn't, yeah. They got Steven. It's too funny, they can't do it. Okay, okay. It's like, it's not quite minion rules. Cause if it was minion rules, then it would be Carl.

Like Carl would be the name of a Minion. But you know what I mean? So it's like- What the fuck are you saying? The Minion names are kind of like, Kevin is a Minion, right? Carl is a Minion. Bob, Steve. Bob is a Minion.

But some of these names, but I don't think they'd say they got Bob. It's not quite like, like, cause the- They got Roger. Exactly. The names are are I think have a little bit more flourish to them. You're right. Okay. And also like Matthew

in and of itself like it just even being Matthew it makes it non-miniony. I don't know a lot of Matts in general I try to keep I'm like the one right I don't want to be like the less popular Mat in the friend group. I don't know any Matt's that go by Matthew. I'm sure that they do, but I just like, I personally don't know any. Professionally some do. Yeah. But as far as like, what do you call me?

Like I think they, yeah, I've only known Matt. If he died in front of you, would you be more formal? Would you call him Matthew? I don't know. Should I start going by Matthew? I don't really seem like a Matthew. You could. We're also going, kind of, like, how's, they got Rashid.

Like that, like is that, like, I don't know how the tears of sensitivities went when they were recording this fucking game. I think that's why they got Jorge sticks out. Cause it is a definite, it's a choice of a name for sure. There's not a lot of those either, I would say. I'm gonna guess one, and this may be too close to one that's already been guessed, but they got Sam.

Has Wayne but. Sam, you're okay. Okay, all right. So, Nikoli knows names of people in the same room as him. Look, I'll just do it. I'll just do it. They got Rochelle! And they did, didn't they? They sure did.

Hey, they got Rachel? Is that close enough? I'll give a half, again, a half point. One and a half. Got half a point for a different name? Starts with an R, ends with an L. Come on. Okay, I have a legitimate guess. Yes. They got Stacy. Oh, that's pretty good.

Not in this universe. They did not get Stacy. She escaped by the skin of her teeth. They got Roger! Roger, he's okay. Roger's okay. Roger is okay. They got Clementine!

No fucking way. Nick? Wait, where'd it go? It was there before? Wait. They really got her. These are in alphabetical order. Oh No They did not get Clementine, but it was part of one of the clues that I was gonna give, that's why it was in my head. No, but very good guess.

Well, they got Clem. No. Okay. I mean, they probably got time then, right? They did not get time. This is just open season once I think once you guys have done your guesses now, we'll do the clues part. Okay, good. I think let's go with the two clues. I feel like there's gonna be more biblical names on the list.

Yeah. I feel like Jeremiah's too be more biblical names on the on the list Jeremiah's too too long and it sounds too Wild but I bet there's like this is around two Bibles. They got Jesus Christ They got Paul, oh that's a good one so, they did not get Paul. They got Pauline. No. They got Jacob. Ooh. No, but so close.

This is such a funny game, because we're just excited to hear names. We're like, oh, that's a good name. It's a good name. Well, it's also funny, because you're thinking about the writing process. You're thinking, like, they can't say Clementine, because it's too much.

They can't say Jeremiah. They can't say Stephen, because it's too funny. They can't say Jeremiah. They can't say Stephen. Yeah, it's too funny I could be like Calliope. No, they got two J. Bible names that are big ones. Joseph. No and You must answer in the form of they got Yes, they got John They got Joshua they got Joshua My next J one was gonna be Jesus again. I don't really know the Bible that much.

Sam, you got a guess? For Bible? Yeah. They got Paul. Do we? We did Paul. We did Paul for Paul, yeah. And they didn't get him.

They got Abe? They got what? Abe? Abe? They got Abraham. Oh. Yeah, cause you're right, cause like, if you're thinking of it from a design perspective,

what is going to feel silly if it's repeated? Right. So the names have to sound, they have to sound familiar, but like also like kind of bland. It is a tough sort of a needle to thread. Right. Let's- Go ahead.

No, you go. What? I don't know, you were saying- I was gonna try Steven one more time. They did! I was gonna say, let's- Go ahead. No, you go. What? I don't know, you were saying- I was gonna try Steven one more time. They did! I was gonna say, let's do the clues. Okay, so here's the final round called the clue round. What?

Open season Bible and the clue round. These are 10 that I don't think you guessed any of these yet. You almost got Clementine, which is wild. But I'm gonna do, these these are all I'm going to say The name or I'm gonna say the clue and then you guys can I do you think this one you guys buzz in? Okay, a little bit easier. Okay, and then I guess say your name I'll call on you and then we'll do the in the form of the car for him. Oh No, Joel went to Midgar and sniped clouds fair friend

Weiger yes, they got Sid No, it's okay. They got Barrett. Oh, sorry Heather. They got Barrett. No they got clouds fair friend They oh like okay. I thought you meant like just oh yeah, I wrote it down capitalized I thought my delivery was a very capital delivery It can't be Matt they got a risk Who are we forgetting? 13 his fair friend.

Fair friend? And fair is capitalized. Like, oh it's from the fair. No. Like, from the state fair. Not from the fair. It's a character from a family of a certain reason, his name is fair. Wait, fair?

His name is fair? Yes. They got fair? I see. They got justice? No. I see they got justice This game sucks game is great. We're just dumb The answer and maybe this will help for the rest of the nine before I go home in shame no they got Zack oh

That was the sample. His doppelganger, got it. Zack Fair. I forgot about Zack. I don't know Zack like that. I did not forget about Zack, but I was thinking party members. I was not thinking of characters that exist in the story. I sort of knew. And I was hung up on the concept of fairness and whether or not you meant justice or goodness.

And there's also a fair in Final Fantasy VII. I was thinking, what did I miss? What did I miss at the fair? of fairness and whether or not you meant justice or goodness. And there's also a fair in Final Fantasy VII. I was thinking, what did I miss? What did I miss at the fair? Was there something the Golden Saucer overlooked? I get a point for that. Okay, that was the practice round. Now it's round four, the non-practice clue round.

Wake up! Ellie is after Remedy's titular spooky rider. Oh Matt Alan Wiger they got Allen I'm humiliated I Knew one Okay, are you an Alan Wake fan? Me? I did enjoy it very, very much. That year was hard because that was the doldrums of development where I just could not play anything. I got UFO 50 and that was it that whole year.

Yeah, I didn't play Wake 2 until this year. That's the thing I was going to ask you about, but I imagine that you have a big backlog that you've accumulated because of development, but like stuff you can get around to playing. I don't know, I finally got to this year and I absolutely loved it. It was such a great experience. Yeah, just a lush experience.

Just walking around, I played like the first hour and just walking around that town was great. Wake, wake up. Dag nabbit, Joel just took out this prequel protag, which means John Marston will be the playable character. Oh. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, Matt. Yes. They got Arthur!

Yes! Yay! Arthur Morgan. Damn! Joel and Ellie teamed up to brutally murder valves VR vixen She's down to half a life Oh shit, um Weiger they got Alex yes Mel to the one! They got that unique Alex! Uh, okay.

Joel is fucking around in Marvel Rivals now with a Shiv, and he just took out the frosty Vanguard! Now who is Cyclops gonna fuck? Oh, Matt! They got Emma! Yes! How is Cyclops gonna fuck Emma Frost? It's like a real like, oh man, we didn't even think about the ramifications of this. Poor Cyclops. I don't wanna fuck my wife, Gene. Emma knew how to treat me right.

Okay, here's a British one. What's all this then? Abby assassinated a British twin. Must have been her creed to go after the lady one. Lady twin from England? What the fuck? And? Is this a royal family myth?

And twins? It must have been her creed. Yeah, this has- To only go after the lady one. I'm guessing it's an Assassin's Creed protagonist. This is an Assassin's Creed thing, but this is a series that is kind of a black box to me. I did enjoy a little bit of time with shadows.

The twin? In Assassin's Creed? Was that Brotherhood? Assassin's Creed Brotherhood? Anybody? I don't know, I only know the one that I played a little bit of, which is the most recent one.

I've only played the Viking one a lot. It's good news, because then she got away. Means they didn't get her. Oh, okay. Oh my God. They got Evie, was the answer to that one. Evie, okay.

Which game is this from? Assassin's Creed. Oh, the original. One of them. I just know it's Jacob and Evie Fry. I don't remember which one it's from. Okay. Ellie and Joel have blasted off to space

and took out the bald, brutal, bar-coated babe. Guess there's no romance option for us. Weiger, they got Jack! Yes. Mass Effect reference. All of these are video game references. I forgot to say that. Oh, wow! I forgot to say that.

My dumbass just put this together. The eighth one. Okay. What the fuck? Three more. Weiger's in the lead with 13 and a half. Holy shit! Heather with six, Matt with four. What? So it's Wiger's game at this point.

I think it's a win, I think. Okay, they got another one. Oh no, my darling Clementine! Joel just shot your surrogate father! You should be on the same side, Joel! Both games have zombies! Matt! They got Lee! Yes! walking walking dead telltale. Yeah, so Clementine was part of it I think I'm learning that I don't care about names. I just want to kill people

I don't know any of these people's names I think the name Lee specifically Lee Everett is like burned onto my heart. I love Lee It's kind of we've talked about it before, but it's kind of wild how similar those games are narratively and how close together they released. Yeah. The Walking Dead, the Telltale Walking Dead and The Last of Us.

You know? And they both work in their own way. There's so many different Walking Dead TV shows. Yeah. And then this game comes along, it's not based on the shows or anything, it's just like its own way. You know, there's so many different Walking Dead TV shows. Yeah. And then this game comes along, it's not based on the shows or anything, it's just like its own story. I think they should adapt it into a TV show.

That would be interesting. They're walking dead video games into a TV show. Yeah. That would be interesting. Why not? That'd be badass. Okay, two more. Ellie's on a goddamn rampage.

She used piano wire to slit the throat of a boy who took over the spider mantle and strangled tails from Sonic They got miles Ellie's violent Okay last one someone kill both Miles Morales and Tails. He's like history's greatest monster. Last one.

This is for none of the points, cause Wiger won. Ellie's sneaking around and found Bethesda's jacket sporting main man. This clue just works. Bethesda's jacket sporting main man. This clue just works. Hahahaha. What games does Bethesda make other than Fallout? It's not Doomguy.

It's not the hidden game. Jacket wearing protagonist of a Bethesda game. He's not a protagonist. This clue might not work. Hahahaha. Oh, okay. But yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking Fallout He's not a protagonist this clue might not work But yeah, I mean I'm just I'm just thinking fallout and and elder scrolls And I'm trying to think of where jacket factors and there's definitely something I'm overlooking. That's obvious. Oh

No, it's III main stage and they found Bethesda's jacket sporting main man on the stage. This clue just works. Uh, uh, Heather. Yes. Oh no, they got ghoul. I might know where you're going. They got Todd? Yes, they got Todd.

Wow. You're referencing a real person No, I liked it the best part of the game was when I explained the game, and then it was downhill from there It was a very thorough game for the segment too good Loved it are you usually mad being, what's a letter of the alphabet? Yeah, nobody goes straight to Reddit to complain about they don't like the game. Thanks guys for letting me play with that.

Thanks for doing it. Thank you. You're the only guest we've allowed to bring in segments. I'm glad. That's this week's Get Played, our producers Rach Rochelle Chen. Ranchyard underscore underscore sard. Special thanks to Sam Rogich for sitting in. Sam, anything you want to plug? Guk's Records coming out end August,

so keeping out for that. Nice. Can people follow you on social media or anything? Yeah, at Guk Band on Instagram. There you go. Our music is by Ben Prenty, benprentymusic.com. Our art is by Duck Brigade Design, duckbrigade.com. Our merch at kinshipgoods.com.

And Get Animated, our sister show is over on Patreon. Matt, what are we watching this week? Patreon.com slash Get Played. We're back in the thick of it, aren't we? We were getting down to the nitty gritty near the very end of Gurren Lagann, and oh boy, that's a show. Yeah, a lot of fun.

I just gotta say, that's a show. It's a show. That's a show. That we like. We love it. Ray Chase, such a delight to spend so much time talking with you. Thank you. I know you're doing a lot of press right now.

You were very generous to budget so much of your day to spend with us. Thank you so much for coming into the studio. Congratulations on the day to everything. Genuinely enjoyed my time with it. Gonna continue to play it. Please, please plug the game and tell people anything else they need to know about it.

You can get it on all consoles today, or tomorrow if this comes out on Monday, and then physical edition sometime in August. I hope you guys enjoy it and have fun dating everything. Wow. And we're very glad to have you, but unfortunately we have to end the show by telling you you got played. I did get my game got played. Your game got played. It is true. Thank you guys. I did get my game got played

Thank you guys I'm gonna date this houseplant That was a hate gum podcast Hey gorge, it's me got mech and me violetchotchke. And we want you to listen to our podcast, No Gorge, now on Head Gum. Each episode, we will be bringing you vlogs, answering burning questions, discussing what's going on right now, and diving into all things fashion, hookups, gossip,

and more. With past guests such as Heidi Klum and Deedavon Tease, No Gorge always keeps things hot. Listen to NoGorge on your favorite podcast app or watch full video episodes on YouTube. New episodes every Thursday. Bye Gorge!