Get Played - Dialogue Tree: Open World Games

Episode Date: September 18, 2023

Heather, Nick and Matt talk about the iPhone 15's gaming potential, try Dutch licorice and talk more about Sea of Stars and Baldur's Gate 3 before diving into the main topic, what makes a good open world game! This month's We Play, You Play: Shadow of the Colossus! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @getplayedpod. Check out our premium series Get Anime'd on 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] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And I'll just be right back. Yeah, no problem. Hey, Matt, wait. Before you go, though, do you think is there like a place you might be able to get me coffee in between there? Yeah. So jet lagged. There's a coffee shop at Sprouts. I'll get you a fresh coffee.

Yeah. I'd love a black coffee. Great. Thanks. Got coffee. Awesome. I would love, yeah, I'd love a black coffee. Great. Thanks. You got it. And is there like a pharmacy near there? Because I got like this, it's a little embarrassing, I got like a toe fungus, so you could pick up like an antifungal for me. They might have a pharmacy section at the

store, but if not, I mean, there's a pretty close front. I can stop and get you that. Okay, great. Absolutely. You'd need that right this second? Yeah, I kind of need it. Okay. My foot is just like itching like crazy. I'm not going to be able to concentrate on the show. Great, yeah, okay. So fungal cream, coffee, sandwich for me. All right, I'll see you guys in a little bit.

Matt, Matt, before you go out, sorry, I heard you were running across the street to get a Sprouts. Yeah. I really need a cup for my milk. Do you think you might be able to get me a cup for my milk? Just a cup? A cup. I can't just drink it out of the carton here.

Oh, yeah. You weren't raising the barn. I would love a cup for my milk. Okay. Yeah. I'm actually going to get Heather in there a cup of coffee. I'll ask for an extra cup so that you could have cup for your milk. I don't want a coffee cup.

I would love it to be a glass cup. A glass cup for my milk. Okay. Well, there's a, you know, I guess there's a Target around here. I'll just get you a cup from Target. Thank you. Hello, weary traveler. Hello.

Rats have occupied the bottom level of the studio. If you can bring me 12 of their hides, I'll reward you with this gold key. Wait, okay. Hold on. Rats have infested the bottom level of the studio. Yes, like the basement level. I don't want to spring for an exterminator, but you're here. You've got time if you could just go kill 12 of them.

This is like... Again, this shiny key is your reward. Okay. I don't know what the key is for, but, like, I do want it. That's part of the fun. Okay. You know what? I'm sort of... I am in the middle of something.

I mean, I'm actually in the middle of a couple of things. This seems like it's going to be pretty time-consuming. Can I come back to this? You can do it whenever. I mean, like, yeah, there's no, like, a time limit on it, but I would love it. Souter is better than me, for me. If I come back, will you just tell me what I'm supposed to do again? Yeah, if you forget.

Okay. Okay, okay. You might want to just keep a little log or something if you want to write it down. Okay, I'll write down that there are a bunch of rats in the studio, and then I'll just come back and give you the hides. Twelve of them? Twelve. Okay, twelve rat hides for you. Excuse me, sir.

Excuse me, sir. What? My grandfather just passed away. He was so thirsty. He needed milk, but he had no way to drink it. Wait, no. So wait, I failed that side quest? He had no way to drink it.

And now my grandfather needs a plot in which to be buried. Do you think you might be able to stop by a park on your way to Sprouts and see if there's an available plot to bury my grandfather. Okay, yeah, I mean, I guess I'm doing a bunch of stuff right now. I guess I could take the cup off the list because I was supposed to get that and it didn't pan out.

No, I would like to bury him with the cup, so please still get the cup. Okay, so I'll get the cup. And you know what? I owe him the cup, at the very least. I'll get the cup. I'm know what? I owe him the cup, at the very least. I'll get the cup. I'm getting a cup of coffee for Heather. I'm getting a toe fungal cream for Nick.

Quest failed. Wait, which one? Matt, my fucking foot is so itchy. You give me the fungal cream in time. Everyone has something for me to do. It's my foot off. I'm trying to do all of it, but it's impossible to do all of it. Well, now you don't get the shiny key.

You had a key, too. Yeah. We do all of it. Well, now you don't get the shiny key. You had a key, too? Yeah. We've all got keys. What are they for? Have you seen the treasure chest with 12 locks? No, I haven't. I hadn't even gone in there. Oh, my God.

Let's just do this episode. We kill monsters and craft items and collect ingredients and deliver messages and ride horses and ride motorcycles and play poker and maybe build a house for all our wheels of cheese as we discuss what makes a good open world game this week on Get Played. Thank you. Welcome to 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 Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger. That's me, Nick Weiger, and I'm here with our third host, Matt Apodaca. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone.

And welcome back, Bucket. Holy shit. Wow. You know what? I've just decided I'm going to fucking bring it back permanently. Whoa. Permanently? Permanently.

It's back. Here's why. Here's why. A listener came to a show, my final night in Amsterdam. Also, welcome back to the United States. Yeah, welcome back to the U.S. I'm back. And we're in the same room.

We're all in the same room. Bang, bang. Bang, bang, bang. Yeah, okay. Bang. Heather's really bad. I had a listener who I think I've mentioned on the show before. He was this guy who gave us a copy of Kabuki Quantum Fighter.

Yes. His name is Alwin. And he came to my final show in Amsterdam, which was the night before I left. I did a show at Boom Chicago called Time Plus Tragedy Equals Comedy. And Mary Laws actually did a monologue for this show, too. It was a real send off. But in the second half of the show, we ask audience members to give stories to inspire improv.

And he was in the audience and he he talked about how much it meant to him to hear Welcome Back Bucket every week. how much it meant to him to hear Welcome Back Bucket every week and how it had made one of his worst years of his life digestible. That's wild. So I'm fucking bringing it back permanently. It's back. Welcome Back Bucket.

Welcome Back Bucket. For those of you who have joined the show in the last couple of years and have never heard this phrase. Early on when we used to play weird games or worst games, we

pulled a few catchphrases from those games and we played a game called, what the fuck was that game called? Watom. Watom. Which was by the maker of Katamari Damacy and I was quite delighted when a character in the game was introduced. Full screen text said, welcome back, Bucket.

And I was like, that's a great catchphrase. And so that's why I'm bringing it back. Was a fun game to experience. A little slight, but I'm glad we played a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Me too. I'm glad welcome back Bucket is back and I'm glad you're back but I'm glad we played a little bit of time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Me too. I'm glad Welcome Back Bucket is back, and I'm glad you're back. I'm glad I'm back.

I brought you guys some gifts here. Yes. Matt, don't crinkle. You're going to set people's misophonia off. You know what to that I say? I don't fucking care. Oh, my God. He's doing it.

He's crinkling. Misophonia? Shut up. No, I'm just kidding. Sorry to make anybody upset. You used to be able to eat a fucking peanut on an airplane, and now everybody's got misophonia. You used to just be able to crunch Cool Ranch Doritos directly into a microphone. Now everyone's got misophonia.

Oh, my God. that sounds so delicious. It's been a while since I've had a Dorito. Three months. Yeah, really? Three months since you've had a Dorito? I guess you were gone. You don't have any Cool American Doritos when you're over in Amsterdam? I did not purchase any Cool American Doritos.

But what I brought back is Droop, which is a Dutch licorice that is dark and salty. Wow. And I talked to you guys on the show about it being a little bit different than American licorice that is dark and salty. Wow. And I talked to you guys on the show about it being a little bit different than American licorice. So I brought you both back bags of the best drop out. You it out. And I hope you enjoy your drop. It says this word world here.

Word here. Mild zout. That means mild salt. Mild salt. Okay. Zout is salt. It also says Klepper on here.

Is that the brand? I believe that's the brand. Up at the top, it says that it has zonder, which means no... No gluten? No gluten.

No something else. No gelatin? Yeah. Yeah. And then, with some kind of sea salt. Okay. I think I just got to rip into this.

Yeah. Rip into it. We're going to have this now? Yeah, have it now, right on the show. And give me one too, because I'm so hungry. All right, I'm going to open this up. What was your first experience having this, Heather? When you go to the Netherlands

and you are there for any amount of time, you're like, oh, and I moved there 20 years ago. So my experience was pre the sort of food revolution. What do you? Apodaca is laughing. I'm laughing because the candy is the logo. It is the logo. It says Klepper on it.

And you're presented with a black diamond indicating the intensity of this experience, like a steep ski slope. This is a black diamond candy. So there's things that you're given, and it's like, oh, eat this. And one is a paper notin, which is like a type of cookie.

Bitter ballin, which is like a gravy that's deep fried that is the best fucking shit on earth. That sounds amazing. It's incredible. Deep fried gravy. It's deep fried gravy. And then, you know, Drop, which is Dutch licorice, maybe German licorice. I'm going to pull away from the microphone and start chewing.

All right. I'm going to have a bite of this too. Are we all chewing? We're all going to be chewing at the same time? I'll let you two chew. And while you're chewing, I'll talk and then I'll chew for a little bit. So this reminded me because I saw this specific, not this specific snack, but this kind of snack cited in a New Yorker piece I read maybe last year, earlier this year, that was about the disgusting food museum in Sweden.

And there is a it's written by a Chinese American author, and they had their own experience. Ji Yang Fan is the is the name of of the author. And they had an experience where like their first encounter with cheese, they were disgusted because they didn't have it growing up. Like they'd immigrated to the U.S. and never had cheese. And when they encountered like ricotta inside a ravioli, they were like, this is fucking revolting. But, you know, that's like in a lot of cultures, it's a normal thing to eat. So just talking about how relative disgusting food is. And so there's a point where they have this snack. And let me just read this a couple of these paragraphs right here.

The final item was was lacrys de jauflar, a type of salmiak or salty licorice candy that is popular in Nordic countries. Easy, I thought. I don't love licorice, but its herbal taste reminds me of the medicinal soups that my mother fed me as a child. One second after I put the candy in my mouth, though, I spat it out with such force that it left a sticky mark on my screen. Whereas Ahrens, Ahrens is the Swedish person who is running the museum, Ahrens' mouth was curled into a smile.

There was a bowl of the vile confection on his countertop. He ate to emitting a satisfying mmm as he chewed. It's one of my favorite things, he said. But isn't it horribly salty and bitter, I asked, incredulous, clutching my glass of water. When the candy was in my mouth, I felt as if I was drowning in brackish seawater. That's what makes it good, he said. People naturally like foods they grew up eating. I don't know. It's kind of a simple sort of observation, but I like the way this whole piece was written because it just talked about, again, the stuff being so relative. There's a Dutch and German cheese called quark, which is like a yogurt adjacent food that is my favorite thing to have for breakfast.

It is really high in protein, really low in sugar and kind of reminds me of cheesecake. And it is so fucking good and you can't get it here. Kind of reminds me of cheesecake. And it is so fucking good. And you can't get it here. There's been a couple companies that have tried to break through and bring cork to the U.S. And maybe you can get one of those brands at Whole Foods. But that's the thing. When I arrive, it's my first thing I buy at the grocery store.

And when I leave, it's the first thing I miss. Wow. What do you think? What do you think of drop? I've still got a little chewing left. It's not bad. It is extremely salty, which I miss. Wow. What do you think? What do you think of drop? I've still got a little chewing left. It's not bad. It is extremely salty, which I don't mind.

The licorice flavor I don't love and the gummy texture I don't love. I know you don't like gummy. This is why this came up because gummy ain't yummy according to you. Gummy ain't yummy, yeah. I'm a gummy guy.

I'm a licorice guy. I like licorice. I also like salt. This is what, I know this isn't the point of the movie, but this is what I would think licorice pizza would taste like. I'm just going to sit with that for a second and really let that rock my world. Right?

Yeah. That's really interesting. I think I do like this. I'm not a black licorice person. That's not my main go-to. I'm like a red licorice, like sweet candy licorice, basically. There are these licorice bites at Trader Joe's that are nice and thick, and they're really, really fucking good. They're not like this, though.

Are they red licorice bites? Well, here's the thing. Yeah. They can be red. They can be, okay. Sometimes they have yellow. Sometimes they have green. Yellow? Look, it's the thing. Yeah. They can be red. They can be, okay. Sometimes they have yellow. Sometimes they have green. Yellow?

I know. Look, it's what they got there. Sometimes they're purple even. Wow. They're really doing all sorts of different flavors here. In my mind, black licorice tastes bad. This doesn't taste like how I thought that would. And I, if we're giving this snack or whack

Hmm. Weird system. If we're going to make this snack or whack an arbitrary. I think I think this is a snack. I think this is good. I didn't hate it like I anticipated I might. It is bizarre and specific. The texture is doing a lot for me too.

Like it's easy to get down. I did like it and it wasn't salty upon bite, but it was like, it got saltier as I started to chew and it became sort of like a funny, like salt surprise kind of. Alex, you want to try one of these? I wish it was more salty. I like a saltier drope, but this is the sort of like... Alex is shaking his head vigorously. I'm living through you guys. Yes, thank you. So that's it for my... Can you tell us

what about this you love? The taste. It's really salty. It's aggressively salty. It's not salty enough. I've had saltier. It's mild's out. It's really salty. It's aggressively salty. It's not salty enough. I've had saltier. Wow. It's mild zout. It's mild zout.

Wow. It needs to be maximum zout. But you were saying you like it with like salt crystals on it. Yeah. I like a saltier drope and a harder drope. But are you like a black licorice person in general? No. No.

I don't like a regular. I mean, I'm fine with regular licorice person in general? No. No, I don't like a regular, I mean, I'm fine with regular licorice, but I don't like, it was the addition of the salt that made it like, oh, what a delicious treat. You don't think about it for a while, and then unlike most

candies, which I feel like you eat candy, and then you're like, I've had enough. And you kind of feel like, kind of gross. Right. With this, the flavor profile is such that you have like, I've had enough. And you kind of feel like kind of gross. Right. Yeah. With this, the flavor profile is such that you have one and you put it away for like five minutes and then you're like, man, I could go for another one. I could go for another one of those. Yeah. The flavor is not like uncommon to me. It does sort of have that, like we were talking about this before, that sort of like star an star anise, like, taste kind of.

Sure, yeah, yeah. Where, like, black licorice that I'm used to, I, like, can't place what that is. Yeah. Like, I don't understand it. Yeah. This, I, like, I do get, and I do, I did enjoy that bite. It's a good, it's a good drop. I also like looking at Dutch, like, the language, because it looks like how English would look if I couldn't speak English.

Did you see the back, that top word? Yeah. Jef een likketuur. Sure. Met de jankoep van de best drop uit. Yeah, yeah. It looks like the text in like a prop book, like for a movie. I just want to say thanks to all the friends I made in the Netherlands, all the listeners who came out to the shows.

I can't wait to come back to your perfect country. Wow. Yeah. And until then, I'm going to struggle over here and try not to get shot. You do a pretty good job most of the time. Or civil ward. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Heather, thank you so much for bringing these to us.

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That's when we dedicate a full episode to discussing one game. It's going to be Shadow of the Colossus because you demanded it. We're going to be talking about that next Monday. The election was stolen. Oh, yeah, because on Discord? I see. I see, yes. The voting happened on our Discord

and the votes were tallied and people were upset. Yeah. But we're still going forward with Shadow of the Colossus. Shadow of the Colossus. I don't think people should be upset because this is a classic game

and this will be fascinating to talk about, especially with this is Matt's first experience with it. Yes. And Heather, I know this is a beloved game for you and I'd love to hear, I'd love to get to unpack that. Is everyone playing it already? Because I've been playing it.

What's our colossi-feld count? I've done 11. Wow, okay. I've done 11. Nice. I've taken out seven as of this point. I mean, it's not the longest game. I've taken out five, but it's mostly because I've been traveling and relocating and unpacking.

Yeah. I'm going to have some more colossi slaying time over the next week and change. I'm absolutely on pace to finish it. We're going to finish it. We'll all finish it. Yeah. I mean, we'll talk about it next week. So look for that and play along if you like.

Well, in the remastered version, there's 85 colossi. Okay, wait. Then I'm very behind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a joke, listener. That's a joke. I am playing the remaster. Yeah. Me too. I'm playing behind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a joke, listener. That's a joke. I am playing the remaster. Yeah, me too.

I'm playing the remaster. Though now that I'm home, I could pop in the original and see how it compares. Yeah, I played the original. I'm thinking what I'm going to do is watch a PS2 play. I don't want to fucking talk about this next week.

I don't want to talk about what we're going to do, what we're going to talk about. But I think I'm going to watch a PS2 playthrough at minimum just to get like reorient myself of like this feels like the game I remember, but I know it's not

the game I remember. I'm going to. So I have the fat PS3. Wow. That I don't leave plugged in and only plug in for specific retro gaming experiences where I don't want to like

play them on my PVM or anything. And I feel like I could drop in Shadow of the Colossus and play it literally on the same screen as my current PS5, PS4 playthrough and compare them head to head. See what happens. I should have got that original PS3. I had one.

Get one. Get one. Can I get one now? Yeah, get one off eBay or some shit. Okay. They play PS2 games over HDMI, which is the only reason to have one. You can put a memory... There's so much shit that that original PS3 can do that nobody needs.

It's just a weird fucking system, yeah. Like, you can put in your photo cards from your camera into it. And, like, look at your picture. Like, your SD card is such, like, nobody was using it for that. But Sony was like, this is going to be the centerpiece of the living room. And people are going to take photos and they're going to bring him home and they're going to show their friends. That's always so funny. Like when technology sort of just like takes a like takes a chance on other technology.

Like I had this TV for a long time that had like a dock for an iPod and which became obsolete within like two iPods. Like it didn't fit. And then now I see there's this commercial. I can't remember what car it's for, but it has MagSafe charging for iPhones. And I'm like, well, we might not be doing that in four years. Yeah, exactly. So it's just funny.

Especially with a car, something you're going to have for 10 years or more probably. Well, as of the, all of the lightning as of today, the new iPhones use USB-C that was announced. Yes. So all of these cars with built in lightning connection, like that's all obsolete. I have so many fucking lightning cables.

I am going to say over here, I am like Zeus. I am going to say that the, the, the, that's like a, that was a euro like european courts ruling that provoked that right it's so it's so strange and they were just like well you know it's easier we'll just make them usbc well it's because they they want to eliminate waste

in the eu they were like guys we gotta stop making all these proprietary cables. What a bunch of junk and garbage. Get one fucking cable. Because like, it's not like. I'm in favor of that. I love that. Yeah, when DVDs or VHS or any of that shit was out, like people weren't like, well, I have VHS A. Oh, yeah, I got DVD B.

So I need a totally different DVD B player. Like one cable, We're done. Well, there are attempts at that. And then one format becomes dominant. And then they're just like, you know what? We'll just focus everything on this one format. You know, it's like that's the VHS beta or the what was the there was a I feel like I don't remember exactly what DivX was, but that was a thing. But then there was the HD DVD Blu-ray.

That was all. Yeah. Actual like defeated by the aforementioned PS3. There you go. Guys, speaking of iPhones coming out today in the iPhone conference, the new iPhones have this fancy graphics chip that will allow you to play Resident Evil 4 remake, fucking Death Stranding,

and the new Assassin's Creed game. Is the iPhone a viable gaming platform. Not as a phone, but not. Wait, what? Not as a phone. Like, you're not just going to hold your phone like a phone and play Resident Evil 4. But you'd snap shit onto it. Yeah, but I but I think the thing is, because those those are additional those are add ons.

I feel like that in and of itself, like, limits its reach, right? Because it's just like anytime you're making, like, something for a console that requires a peripheral, a developer is going to be like, well, I'm not going to do this thing that requires the peripheral because that limits the, you know, the number of people who are going to be able to buy this thing. I feel like the same thing will happen with app development. Now, what you're saying about, like, could you, will ports come to phone and could you use phone as like a console? I think so, but I don't think it's going to become like the dominant thing, but I could be completely wrong. I think if TVs, all the TVs that I've used in the last five years have been like AirPlay

compatible, like just built into the actual TV. And I feel like if you could, if your phone was your gaming console and you could just toss it on the counter and Bluetooth the controller to it and then play it on your TV. But which controller and which, you know, what are we using here? You could use a PlayStation controller.

But then do you just have a PlayStation? What? I mean, I feel like people aren't buying a PlayStation controller just to have a PlayStation controller. But they sell them at the Apple store. Yeah, I know. But I mean, I just like people aren't buying a PlayStation controller just to have a PlayStation controller. But they sell them at the Apple store. Yeah, I know. But I mean, I just feel like there's an extra step here that is going to be the kind of

people who... I agree. Yeah, the kind of people who are already interested in playing these games are just going to have a console. So I don't know. So then perhaps what Apple should do is release iPhone Gaming Edition, which just has a controller in the box. See, that would be smart. And if they do something like that, I think they could make a real, take a real, has a controller in the box. See, that would be smart.

And if they do something like that, I think they could make a real take a real have a real go at it. But I don't know how interested they are in that. Because, yeah, like I subscribed to Apple Arcade for a little bit. And me too. I didn't like find any of the games to be like that. Yeah. Like fun or interesting.

Like the Fantasian was the one that I was interested in, but I didn't ever play it. It's bundled with my Apple subscription because I have the one thing. And I have never opened it. Yeah. After Fantasian. Apple Arcade is like invisible.

That said, all it takes is like a Ted Lasso. In the same way, the Apple TV, no one ever is as Apple TV. And then there's like one hit and then all of a sudden people are paying attention to it. Like if they had one game that really broke through, they could potentially get people onto it. But I don't know. I mean, I just think like it's – fuck, I'm trying not to say the medium is the message. But I think that is the thing.

Like I think the medium is the message when it comes to gaming and your input device is such a huge part of it. And I feel like if people don't have the same input device, that the software that's going to be dominant on it is just, it's going to be stuff that conforms to the default, right? It's going to be stuff like Candy Crush

that plays well on an iPhone. Right, but the other thing is, I don't want to be playing games like that on my phone no that's the other thing no like because i got the fucking i got a controller i am a gaming enthusiast i got the what the what is that fucking thing i got a backbone and i was playing i was like streaming games to my phone for a little bit and i reached a certain point is like this isn't i'd like i'd rather be playing it on a Switch like dedicated hardware I'd rather be playing this on a screen. I want my phone to be my phone.

Yes, yeah. And like if I get a notification you know I'm playing Death Stranding I got a freaking Amber Alert or something immersion broken.

I have those turned off. So but here Can I do a Matt and Nick joke? Please. Playing Death Stranding, your character always has an amber alert because of that BB on his chest.

Very good. That is really good. I don't have any notes. Matt, do you have any notes? Why don't we just keep going? Yeah. Because we'll just talk about it afterwards. Yeah, let's get the notes at the end.

We'll just sort of like. If I'm being honest, I'm like too mad to like give a note. A constructive note. Here's what I think it is. Because I don't think I'm articulating myself well. But the thing about the backbone is because it's another piece of hardware that I have to detach or, you know, remove from my phone. Yeah.

That in and of itself is enough of an obstacle where I don't use it. And it's the same way as like, like, it's such a pain in the ass to like take the case off of your phone and put it back on. It's not that much of a pain in the ass, but it's just enough work where you don't do it all that often. This is unfortunately why I think a PlayStation portal almost works. Yeah. Because for this exact reason reason because if I want to

remote play from my phone I have to take my fucking phone case off. I gotta get this thing on and smack it on my phone and then it's also not the right buttons. Yes. So then the portal has the buttons that I want and it's all

one thing but it also sucks because it's not anything. It's just an old play. Matt, I think in the spring of next year, you and I are going to have two really funny techs, technologies. Yeah. I think you're going to have the portal.

I think it's coming for you. I think you're going to do it. I'll have it by November if I have it. And I'm going to have Apple Vision Pro, and it's going to be so funny when Juneune of next year neither of us are using those things no yeah no absolutely in the same way that like i have a dusty uh meta quest 2 uh or whatever it's called man we were so hyped about the about vr for a bit and i think that's another thing i am still hyped for it too but it's just enough of an obstacle where i don't play i don't use it all

that often i don't play games on it all that often. As soon as I expect you to die three comes out. I'm back in because those games are I love those games. If it wasn't so blazingly hot where I play video games, I would have a dedicated VR setup permanently because I love it. I just want to get the racing wheel and pedals and seat and drive in Gran Turismo all the fucking time. Did you see the Gran Turismo movie? I didn't. I didn't see it either.

I didn't see it either. I heard it was not bad. My mom liked it. Yeah, I heard it was pretty good. My mom doesn't know that it's a, didn't know it was a video game. She just like went to go see the movie. It feels weird. Like, I think, I think part of the way why we didn't cover it is weird to be, like, reviewing a movie right now, a new movie in theaters.

But I should see it. Yeah. I'll see it at some point. It'll be on, you know. PlayStation VR. It'll be on PlayStation VR, too. I'm going to watch that shit on Apple Vision. I'm so fucking excited.

Did you guys – wait, guys, hold on, though, because I love – this is the only place I get to talk about, like, technology stuff. Two things. One, did you see that the new iPhone shoots in 3D? You said that. That's wild. Yeah, that is really crazy. I was fucking excited. And the new watch, you touch your own fingers together to activate it.

So you don't have to touch the screen anymore because they're trying to incorporate spatial computing into like the language of how we use our bodies and computers. Wow. So the new fucking phone or new watch you touch, like if you want to open a thing, you touch your own fingers together and it opens it on your watch. I love that. I mean, I don't know how to work in practice. I love that in theory.

But that all that just makes me think of like I feel I get so frustrated with futurist stuff like futurist sci fi when it's just like I feel like it's lazy and like they still have just like laptops and like tablets and shit. And it's just like because that's not where we're headed technologically. We're headed towards like fewer screens and fewer input devices. It's shit like that that we're going to have in a few years yeah and when i when i can like literally in just a few weeks touch my fingers together to like text somebody without anything on my fucking fingers yeah oh my god i can't wait and then i'm gonna have the the goggles on i'm gonna record a whole show in the goggles uh i've learned that i i expect you to die is out. And I didn't even know. There's not messaging for VR games

in the same way that there are other games. There really isn't. Like the PSVR 2 is such an incredible piece of tech and you do not fucking see it. Like nobody is pushing. It should be on the splash page of my PlayStation every day should be saying, hey, play this game in VR.

But it's not. Yeah, that's weird. It's weird because the technology is, like you were saying, it feels like there's a lot of new places for it to go. It's going to be explored in a lot of interesting ways.

There's already a lot of compelling content onto it. But instead, it feels like they're trying to push everyone towards cloud gaming. That's instead where we're headed. I don't want that shit. I already know about Final Fantasy seven. Nice.

I get it. I get it. See, because when I position it as a joke that I would say, like, I'm at a Nick joke that I'm like, oh, that's OK. I guess you just got to, like, rewire your brain just a little bit. Again, we'll talk about this after the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no.

But right now, let's talk about what video games we've been playing.'s time for what are you playing what are you playing wow uh i'll start and i'll go fast because i'm playing i'm still playing sea of stars in addition to shadow of the colossus uh and shortly after just i think the day after we recorded our last episode i got to a big plot twist and i was like oh okay that's kind of nice. I wasn't quite expecting that. I will say the story to me is perfectly functional. This is for anyone who hasn't listened to recent episodes and is familiar with this game. This is a throwback JRPG that came out this year by Sabotage Studio. And it is just kind of a loving tribute to the mid-90s 16-bit and 32-bit RPGs of the era. And it is, but I would say the story just like gets the job done. It's perfectly that.

And I kind of actually like that. I was talking to a friend about this and it was like, I'm glad it's not like subverting like the tropes of this or anything. I'm glad it's just sort of like, you know what? This kind of feels like this would have been like some game called like Sky Legends of Tomorrow from like, you know, that was never released

outside of Japan from 1994. And I like that. It's just like a straight ahead narrative. The thing, another thing I really like is that the animation is so good in this game, both the full screen cinematics that they

go to on rare occasion, they're few and far between, and they're very brief, but when they do it, they're very beautiful. But then also just the character animation, just both the boss fights, which I've talked about, they're so detailed, but also just like the sprites of the individual characters. I mean, like a cape flapping in the breeze, those sorts of things just have so many frames of animation. And it's just such great craft. I'm at the point, kind of the mid-game, where the world has opened up. I have a ship, and so I can kind of traverse the whole world

and choose where to go and decide what to do. And that's a lot of fun. I feel like the way that your characters progress and level, it feels like each level actually feels like you're achieving something because enough time passes between leveling up and each level feels consequential, which isn't always the case with these sorts of games. So yeah, I just think it's really well executed.

I'll have some more cohesive thoughts when I finish this bad boy, which I tend to do in the coming weeks. But yeah, Sea of Stars, sticking with it. Remind me, what platform are you playing it on? I'm playing it on PC. It's on Game Pass. Ah, yes. So you can play it on Xbox and PlayStation.

It's also, or on Xbox and PC. I think it's also on PlayStation Plus. It is, yeah. Yeah, so you can, it's on everything. You can play it on Switch if you want. I played the demo on Switch. Pretty nice. Yeah.

Pretty nice. Nic. Pretty nice. Nicely done. Matt, what are you playing? Okay, well, yeah, I put a lot of time in on this month's We Play, You Play. Excited to talk about that. But I'm still playing Ballers Gate 3. Fuck yeah, here we fucking go. I, last, with this game, for some reason, I talked about this, I think, a couple weeks ago, where there's periods of time when I'm playing the game where I'm not really quite sure what I'm supposed to be doing or where I'm supposed to go.

But I'm just sort of vibing, kind of, and just walking around and seeing what's going on. And something happens that I don't like, I just sort of reload and just kind of go back a little bit. Not too far. Something happens that I don't like, I just sort of reload and just kind of go back a little bit. Not too far, you know. But I, like, discovered what I'm supposed to be doing, where I'm at right now. And I'm, like, I'm thrilled. I'm so excited.

Wow. But I'm worried about finishing Act 2 too soon. So, like, I sort of left what I'm supposed to be doing for a little bit and have gone, um, just exploring a little bit. Uh, and it's interesting cause I like, don't want,

I don't want to finish it. Like I, I just like don't want to be done with it at all. Um, and I know that there's still a lot more to do, at all um and i know that there's still a lot more to do but also the idea of starting a new game as like a new character and and like doing stuff that i didn't do the first time yeah is also like a daunting idea as well and like i don't i want to i want to see this game through and i know that i'm gonna want to play it again but i like like also don't want to see this game through, and I know that I'm going to want to play it again, but I also don't want to do that.

It just seems like it's too much. It's a lot of game, but I just really love it. It's really such a special game, and I'm excited about... I think I'm pretty close to finishing act two and um i might decide to just press on and i because i don't think there's anything other than side quests on the on the other side of what i'm supposed to be doing uh and like i found i found one that it was like kind of interesting that you know you're doing something and then you complete a task and you're sort of like, well, I don't even know if that was the right thing.

I don't even know I was supposed to do that. If the outcome is the outcome you wanted or if it's an outcome. Because you just don't know. That's like the vaguest catch-all explanation of every quest in the game. Sort of, right? Where I met this kid. I met this kid and he was, like, playing hide and seek. Mm-hmm. In, like, these, like, dark woods.

And I answered wrong and then he started to attack me with ghosts. And I was just like, well, I have to, like, kill these ghosts. And then he disappeared. Mm-hmm. And I was like, okay, well, like, where did... Where the fuck did he go? What's going on? Like, I don't know what I'm supposed to be actually,

like, doing. Am I gonna see this going on? Like, I don't know what I'm supposed to be actually like doing. Am I going to see this kid again? Like he attacked me. Right. So we'll see if I ever see him again. But I don't even know if I was like if I should have not engaged in that fight at all or what I was supposed to, you know, you just never really know if you're supposed to be doing something. It's the kind of game you want to finish so that you can read on about everything you missed and did wrong because there's just like so much in it. Yes, because I think it's the idea of having a playthrough of it that's like comprehensive is not possible.

Right. Like you can't do that. So you sort of have to like let that go and and then just like kind of see what happens. I went to a jail cell in one of the parts that I was in. And then like it was after I like reloaded and I never went back there. And I was like, I should go back there. That was like a cool part. But I think something else that I did made the events of what was going on in that jail cell area.

No, like it doesn't matter now. None of it matters. So it's just, I just didn't think when I started playing this game that I'd still be playing it now. Not that I thought it'd be done. I thought I just would have bounced off of it by this point. Because it's such a big game, it's a little overwhelming. But I'm playing this game at least an hour a night every single night. Yeah, I can't wait to get back to it.

Yeah. I also am playing balder's gate 3 wow um now that it's out for ps5 i can play the actual client um and uh man that game is such a fucking vibe i have accidentally killed so many people so like because I'm playing a thief criminal, I'm like, well, I'm going to role play that I break into every fucking thing I can. And I pickpocket as much as possible. Problem is, you know, when you're an early level pickpocketing, you're going to get caught a lot. Sure. When you break into a place, people are going to be like, hey, what the fuck are you doing?

people are going to be like, hey, what the fuck are you doing? It's early enough in the game that I think I can say, you know, in the Druid village, I broke into some storeroom to like see what was in there. And there's like a woman in there who's paralyzed. And I was like, well, I want to go into the chest behind you. And she starts screaming. And then like all her friends descended. And I ended up having to murk like half of the village before any of the

story happens and then later met like somebody else and nothing happened like I kill all these people and then nothing happened to me and I was like shit did the rest of the town were they okay with this no nobody saw

it so I get to leave that area and then there's no, nobody's coming after me. But then much later in the game, somebody showed up and was like, I saw what you did. I was like, oh my God. And I execute that person like in the middle of the woods. And that's a full quest that somebody else who I hadn't met was like hey I need you to do me a favor there's this person in the woods that uh that we really want to kill um and I was like well I don't really have a choice I've I I can't negotiate the morality of whatever this quest was going to be because I've already killed this person because I accidentally had to kill all of her friends in the druid village excellent fucking game uh another great

thing i got trapped in some cave uh set off a trap and got barricaded in between like a wall of of bad guys uh-huh and a and a and a trap behind me that had been that blocked the exit yeah it took me no fucking joke three hours to work my way through this encounter wow because the things that were attacking me i'm so i'm so dedicated to not save scumming in this game yeah because it's funny couldn't be me it's so fucking funny i've saved scum once and it was when i accidentally chose the wrong choice in a dialogue tree and then i was like fuck that isn't what i wanted to say yeah uh and i didn't want to lose all of my inspiration points to get out of that dialogue so i saved some there but otherwise i'm trapped in this hallway there's bugbears like a like a fleet of fucking bugbears

with like huge weapons i have to disconnect myself from my own party and hide them around corners because the bugbears could one shot everybody. And then I hide behind a rock and one arrow at a fucking time. Pick off through sneak attack each of these bugbears. And each time I kill one of them, I get huge amounts of XP because I'm not supposed to be there. huge amounts of XP because I'm not supposed to be there. And then I was still trapped and had to take all of the crates around me and build a bridge so that I could jump across a thing so that I could get out of this, this area. I don't believe I was supposed to be in. And I was like, this game is so fucking good that I'm,

I'm positive. I was supposed to die where I was. Right. And I didn't have to. And that felt free. And I think it ties into our topic for the week. Is that like the idea of gaming freedom is so alluring. Like the idea that like in D&D, the tabletop game, you can do literally anything you can come up with.

tabletop game, you can do literally anything you can come up with to be translated into a video game with all of the D&D rules sort of intact, where it's like, yeah, okay, you can, yeah, like I can hear the exhausted DM looking at my choices in the game that I'm playing and being like, okay, you do one damage. Look, this bugbear, it's going to take you 86 turns to kill it this way. And I'm like, let's fucking go. So yeah, I love it. I love Baldur's Gate. I also want to say,

you know, we like product on this show. Love product. We love product. Love product. After my paycheck came for the comic book that I wrote. Nice. I immediately turned it around and I bought the Disco Elysium jacket. Wow. That's cool. Let's fucking go. Where did you find it?

It's on the website. You can just buy it directly from them still? Yeah. I thought they were sold out. Well, let's see if they're currently sold out. Hold on. I'll look this up. I want to time this out so that when you show up wearing the jacket, I'm also wearing the jacket.

All right. Let's see. Actually, I'll get the alt one that says fuck the world on the back. All right. Let's see. The disco animal jacket is made to order now. Wow. Actually, I'll get the alt one that says fuck the world on the back. All right. Let's see. The disco animal jacket is made to order now. Wow.

So you can purchase the jacket that our protagonist, who I won't spoil their name, wears in the opening acts of this game. Oh, it's his jacket. I thought it was Kim's jacket. No, it's his jacket. Oh, that's cool. It's the fucking green jacket. That's sick as hell. So anyway, yeah. And it has like disco Elysium interior,

like textures on the inside of the jacket. And then also that sort of mysterious square, like raised portion of the jacket on the back. So yeah, I got the jacket. And it gives you plus one to drama. That's nice. I think it says what the stats are. Yeah, what were the stats on that?

It says plus one to composure, plus one to electrochemistry is the stats on the jacket. And it's, yeah, it's... I can't wait to wear that fucking shit all fall. That's fantastic. But I want you to, I want you to plug your comic book because you should remind people that it's what you worked on and when is that, when, how they can get it.

Am I allowed to plug a comic? You can plug a comic. Absolutely. Not covered by BJ. It looks like it's Harley Quinn number 31. There it is. Harley Quinn number 31. I do a Evangelion inspired short.

That's awesome. Yep. Yep. And maybe I'll be appearing in a future comic book as well. Wow. Okay. Look for that. Not me personally, but like the writing.

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What are you waiting for? Head to factormeals.com slash getplayed50 and use code getplayed50 to get 50% off. That's code getplayed50 at factormeals.com slash getplayed50 to get 50% off. our topic. It's another Dialogue Tree episode where we're talking about open world games. Hey, speaking of open world games, you got an open bag of dropper right there. Can I have another? Of course. Go nuts. You don't like it? I don't know if I'm going to eat more of them, but I'm glad I ate one. So, I

don't know where to begin this. I mean, hey, I guess this will be kind of like a free-flowing discussion as befitting the topic, but my thought was to just start it off by asking what makes a good open world game in your experience. I mean, Matt, you have a take. Do you have a do you have an idea of like open or even just open world games that you've liked in the past? Well, right. Right, like, I feel like a lot of, like, I was thinking about, like, when did I first interface with an open world game? Because that does sort of feel like that is, like, it feels like it's, like, a newer type of game, but it's, like, definitely not, right?

Like, a lot of the, like, I was thinking about when would I have played one, and a lot of them, I played a lot of them on the PlayStation 2. PlayStation 2 had quite a few yep um and i would even consider i mean it's definitely this is not an open world game but because there are like there aren't load screens but there are load points that are hidden in the game like in pokemon like the whole map is accessible like and like you can you need certain things to get through to different parts of the game but often the rest of the town or wherever you're trying to go is behind a rock or behind a like a tree that you have to cut down oh sure right yeah there's some gating in terms of that like that's like kind of the metroidvania approach it's like there's certain sectors of the the game map you can't reach until you have a certain item

or a certain experience level. But as far as my first open worlds, I'll count Jack 2. Jack 2 was like the Grand Theft Auto of the Jack and Daxter. You said Jack 2, and for whatever reason, I was thinking of Jackass No. 2.

Because I know, I was like, okay. Yeah, Jackass No. 2. Because I know, I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, Jackass No. 2 is definitely, they sort of do open the world up a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially when, you know, you got Steve-O and Pontius over at the Wild Boys. No, the character action game from the PlayStation 2, the Jack and Daxter second entry. And, you know, there's a Spider-Man 2 game coming out. Oh, yeah. And I've talked about this game quite a bit, but the Spider-Man 2 movie tie-in video game is an open world.

You know, it's open New York. They were the first ones to do this. You go to all five boroughs. Yeah. Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. That's right. And a certain king presides over there, if you will. I actually think you were only in Manhattan, but I could be wrong.

Yeah, I think you could only do Manhattan, only one of the boroughs. But the whole borough is there. There you go. And that's all you need. It's the best one. Fuck the other boroughs. Oh, boy, the Bronx is going to be livid. Bronx is burning here and there.

J-Lo, I don't give a fuck. Alright? What else you got? Doug Heffernan's over there in Queens. He's the king. He's losing his mind. They're not going to hear that for weeks. But yeah, like that, and then obviously like the Grand Theft Auto

trilogy of PlayStation 2 games are all open world. Oh yeah, no, yeah, 100%. Yeah, but then like, the Grand Theft Auto trilogy of PlayStation 2 games are all open world. Oh, yeah. No, yeah. 100%. Yeah. But then, like, I feel like those... Oh, and Simpsons Hit and Run was a big one as well. Where, like, the entire map, all of Springfield is in there, right?

But I feel like open world now is, like, a different thing where it's, like, it's a now, it's a type of game. Like, it's, like, there's not just... You don't just do what it like the story those are all pretty linear stories for what you're doing but now open world is like yeah they're like there's missions there's quests or whatever you can kind of just kind of do whatever you want it's kind of become you're right it's kind of become a genre designation as opposed to hey this is a this is an r RPG where you kind of have the freedom to roam or this is an action game where you gotta go anywhere.

Yeah, it's kind of like open world is kind of its own genre, its own expectations. Heather, how about you? I feel like the first open world game I played was so overwhelming that I was so confused. And so it's in 1996, my parents bought me Daggerfall. Oh yeah, I also played the Elder Scrolls 2. So it's in 1996. My parents bought me Daggerfall. Oh, yeah. I also played the Elder Scrolls 2.

Which I've just looked up. I played this on PC. Completion time on howlongtobeat.com for Daggerfall. Give me a guess on the hours it would take you to play and finish Elder Scrolls 2 Daggerfall. I never came close to finishing it, and it's very bloated, and because you're thinking it's a high number, I'm going to say 110 hours. Yeah, I would think it'd have to be somewhere in the hundreds.

I'll go the over, maybe. I'll say 130 hours. Oh, boy. You guys are close, but off. 292 hours. Is that the completionist or is that too? That's completion time, how long to beat. 292 hours. The walk time to get from one side of the map to the other is 69 hours. It's interesting because that game and Arena, which I also play, we talked about Elder Scrolls, I feel like in a recent episode.

But that game and Arena, which I also played, were both like they kind of felt like prototypes. They didn't really know what the fuck they were doing. They were just like, well, we'll just make a big empty world. And then with the second one, they're like, well, just make it even bigger. And like sprawl was sort of like the I don't know, this endless sprawl was kind of the innovation. I didn't know. Like, as a kid being given Daggerfall, I was like, I don't have any fucking idea what I'm supposed to be doing in this game. And also, we didn't have a high-end PC. So, like, it chugged. Yes. It fucking chugged.

Like, a monster would come up to me and it would be like five frames per second. I'd be like, I don't know what I'm doing. But that was my first exposure to a truly open world game. It was also a super buggy game. That just made me think of I had one interaction that game where I either stole something from a merchant or sold something to a merchant. And afterwards, there was like an integer error and I just had infinite gold. Afterwards, like there was like an integer error and I just had infinite gold. So that game, I don't know if you'd consider the early King's Quest games open world, but they could be because you could go anywhere on the map and you could do anything in any particular order. But you could only solve puzzles in certain orders.

solve puzzles in certain orders. I feel like, but I feel like the classic answer here is Grand Theft Auto 3 is when, on the console, when you're like, oh, I can go anywhere and do anything, and

I don't have to do this in any particular order. 100%. And I think that is the modern 3D console version of an open world game, And I think that is the modern, like, 3D, you know, console version of an open world game. And I think that is, like, the absolutely the, you know, the thing that kind of led to this big burgeoning of this genre. For me, I go back to an NES game, one of the most famous NES games, The Legend of Zelda. Like, that is just, like, the most, the first time I felt like, oh, I could just go around. And I remember being disoriented when I played that for the first time.

I got to go back and, like, read the instruction manual and try to understand what this game, what the goal of this game was. Because I'd only played games where I progressed through levels. And so, like, I got to, like, I got to a pond where there's a fairy and the fairy surrounded me with hearts and I was like, did I finish the level? Like I didn't understand what was happening, but the idea that you could just kind of move around and try different tasks in different order.

And like you were saying with Pokemon, it's also like gated in terms of what parts of the environment you could explore based on, you know, whether or not you have bombs or a raft or a ladder or what have you, get these items uh they're progressing through dungeons but you can do a lot of different things in different order and you can try to go to higher level areas uh before you're quote-unquote ready uh so that one and then that also because i was looking at a list of open world games that reminded me of another game that i also played and never really understood

as a kid called hide lied which apparently had was a predated Zelda and had some influence on Zelda. And it's just kind of it's a much cruder version of it. But it's the same sort of thing. It's got a little bit more in there and stuff. Yeah, exactly. It's a little more cross. It's kind of the jackass number two of NES games.

But it's it's got like a it's like the the combat system is more like an RPG combat system in my memory. But that also makes me think of PC RPGs of the era. And a big one for me was Might and Magic World of Zine, which was a game that was a really ambitious game. It was Might and Magic Clouds of Zine and Might and Magic Dark Side of Zine and the fourth and the fifth entries of the franchise. And then they introduced an expansion that let you join the two games together so you could go back and forth between the two worlds. It was basically like a flat world, much like our Earth. It was like a flat world.

And there was one side, which was the clouds of Zine side. And then there were portals that would take you to the dark side of Zine, which was the other side of the world. And you could play through the full game both games in either order jumping between them. It was like a really bold thing that they tried and technologically impressive thing they tried in the mid-90s. But that was the first time I was like, oh, I can go to the dark side of

Xen where all the enemies are a little bit tougher and you level a little faster and then when I go back to the clouds of Xen, the progression is trivial because I can kind of like speed through things because I'm over leveled that was the first time I kind of encountered that

and then Fallout like 1 and 2 were also like ones where it's like oh it opens up pretty early and obviously Fallout 3 and when Bethesda takes over kind of goes in that direction as well but yeah Grand Theft Auto 3 is a big one. I think that the fundamental defining principle of an open world game is, is it funny?

Not because, not is it written to be funny, but can funny stuff happen? Because otherwise it's not truly to me an open world because like stuff can't sort of just happen. Like Daggerfall is funny because like people like accidentally kill themselves. Yeah, it's completely broken. Grand Theft Auto 3 is funny because like you can see somebody run into traffic in a panic and they get hit. And none of that was like scripted in the game. I feel like there's a threshold that is crossed by a game when stuff starts to get funny because the world has these emergent principles in it. And that's part of what makes Baldur's Gate doesn't feel open worldlyworldy to me because it isn't funny.

Like, nothing funny is happening. Like, characters aren't doing their own thing. They're all, like, waiting for you to interact with them so that you can unlock the next story section or whatever. But from what I can... Like, but Red Dead Redemption, like, constantly people are, are like fucking falling off a cliff or like getting on a horse and the horse gets scared and runs them into a train. Like, right.

Like in in Starfield, from what I've seen of people playing it, there's funny stuff that happens because it's so free. And that's that's what do you guys think about that? No, I think that's a good theory. I think it's also like the appeal of the genre is that there's so many possibilities. There's so much player freedom that you can do things that the developers never would have anticipated. You can create those situations. Or even they are things that the developers intended, but because of the nature of exploration

and discovery, you feel like it's a thing that you like, like, oh, I just, I found that thing out, even though you were, you were being indirectly led towards that path. Tears of the kingdom and breath of the wild,

both funny games. 100%. Yes. Yeah. There's all sorts of shit. Like goblins, like go do shit and then they blow themselves up or, you know,

like stuff is happening. Yeah. You can reverse time and have a boulder roll back uphill and smush something or you can make an impossibly long bridge by just connecting every single board you find. Right. Yeah, there's all sorts of weird shit

that you can do. I think that's a good observation. For me, what makes a good open world game, I wrote a few things down, but for me, it's too many tasks. Like I like feeling overwhelmed at one of these games, which is the thing that Baldur's Gate three does. However you want to classify it really, really well. Like I like that feeling of being like,

holy shit, I've got too much to do. The feeling of discovery, which I mentioned of just like, you can just wander around, you can just go someplace and find something interesting. And I think a bad one of these games, you know, conversely feels like empty. It feels like like I can wander for a while. I can go to this this distant part of the map or I can go to this other world. And it just kind of feels like, all right, fucking whatever. There's nothing here. So Death Stranding. Well, no, I disagree. I like that. I like Death Stranding because I feel like that's shiny. You are you constantly are discovering weird shit. I think like you're wandering all over the place. It feels empty in a good way, because it feels empty in terms of desolate and barren and

scary and isolating, and then all of a sudden there's fucking BTs on top of you, or all of a sudden you find the wind farm, and you're like, what the fuck's going on here? I think Death Stranding is a great balance of that, and I, of course, obviously adore that game. I'm thinking about this right now.

I don't need the BTs. I know that we're done with the game and we hadn't talked about it in a long time, but my enjoyment of that game wasn't predicated on whether or not there were BTs or if I interacted with them at all. I could have had as much fun as I did without them. I think they're great

because I think it's great that you have to hold your breath and maintain BB. Yeah, it's interesting. And you kind of have to sneak your way through these areas. I don't know. I think it's great that you have to hold your breath and maintain BB. Yeah, it's interesting. And you kind of have to sneak your way through these areas. I don't know. I think it's awesome. And then also as it escalates, you start to get like a boss fight with two like lion creatures or whatever just in the middle of the muck. It's great.

Am I misremembering Death Stranding or did you have to pee? Yeah, you were encouraged to urinate early on. But like if you didn't pee for the whole game, would he die? No. Like a kidney stone? Yeah. I don't think so, but you are encouraged to pee, and I think early on, you have your first grenade,

I think, as a urine grenade. You get the urine grenade, number one, or it's a sweat grenade. You get it number zero, number one, and then number two, the shit grenade, and then eventually you get the blood grenade, and that's just better than everything. You don't have to use the piss grenades anymore. But yeah, you're definitely encouraged to piss. Yeah, because you take showers too, like you do kind of all of it together

kind of at a certain point. Yeah. I hope that in the second game you have to pee. Yeah. There's not a shit grenade, is there? Yeah. No, there is. There is. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because he uses the toilet. Yeah. There's also the, he definitely sits down and then they show the ad for Norman Reedus's motorcycle show. Game's fucking chaos.

But yeah, you can also like that's a thing where you can if the hands start to come up, you can piss on them and your urine will scare them away. You start to get grasped or if you had to. Yeah, I don't know if it's compulsory. I don't know, but you're definitely encouraged to do so. You might have to do it to get one of those grenades to progress through something in the early game. The other thing they say, anyway, too many tasks, feeling overwhelmed, discovery.

The other thing I think is appropriate density. Like, you know, I feel like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, although these are sprawling, like huge maps, I feel like they're appropriately dense. There are stretches of emptiness. Same thing with Death Stranding. There are stretches of emptiness.

But also a game like Yakuza 0, which is just one neighborhood of one city, is just packed in there. That also feels appropriately dense because it feels like how a city should feel. I guess I'd characterize it as the GTA approach versus the Skyrim approach. Like, are we going to take one small, and I know there's some GTA games that have bigger map areas. Put that aside. Like, are we going to take like one, try to make one city feel super alive and populated,

or are we going to try to create a whole world and just sort of like put just a dot just enough into that to make it feel like it's lived in? This conversation is making me want to play red dead redemption more than i okay yeah that's sort of my one of my number ones next month's we play you play redemption too we could do it and i've been playing it on um the switch and it's uh it's an incredible port yeah it is it's astounding that it that it's possible we cover it. Wait, no, I meant two. I meant two. Two? Look, two is way better.

And one is, but one, like, that's how good one is. And, like, that's how good two is, rather. One is a masterpiece. Are they ever going to make another game? I've been hearing rumors of Red Dead Redemption 3. No, but I mean, like, yeah, but, like. Oh, is Rockstar ever going to make another game. I've been hearing rumors of Red Dead Redemption 3. No, but I mean like, yeah, but like. Oh, is Rockstar making that game? Yeah, because like they make so much money from GTA Online.

They have a GTA 6 leak. Yeah, there's, GTA 6 is actively in development right now. And I wouldn't be surprised if it has like live service elements in the same way that Fortnite does. Have we had... Oh, God, I love Fortnite. Yeah. I got to play Fortnite again in a North American server with that North American ping, and it is sweet, sweet mana.

Is Fortnite an open world game? Hmm. Hmm. It's funny. It is very funny. I like... Well, you brought up red dead redemption yeah i like in in open world games when there's stuff that they like show you how to do and it's sort of like this is like here if you kind of want to do it but you like don't have to and it's like not part of like i never sat down and played poker. I never did that.

It's in there. You could play it for hours and hours if you want. And it's regular poker. I played because I never beat Red Dead Redemption 2. I don't remember why. I think something else came out. It's just like you're so fucking overwhelmed. And also, it was making me eat cowboy food all the time because...

Because it's some of the best food. Because it's some of the best food. Because it's some of the best food. And I was like, I got to eat something else. Yeah. You're eating salsa and tying up somebody. Oh, fuck. Fuck. We haven't talked about Valhalla.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which is like by far the most time that I've ever spent in an open world game. God, that fucking game. We almost lost you there. Yeah. I was gone. That game. God, that fucking game. We almost lost you there. Yeah, I was gone. That game, boy, I love Vikings. Anyway, yeah,

so I couldn't finish Red Dead Redemption 2 because I was eating too much cowboy food and it made me feel sick. Just thinking of eating beef ribs and baked beans on a weeknight. All the time, all the time. That's not a joke. Like that's what I was fucking doing. Yeah.

Because you'd like see them eating the food and you'd be like, I want cornbread and like beans and bacon. And then I eat it and I'd be like, fuck yeah, let's go play more Red Dead Redemption. Your doctor's like, you're very sick. You got to play some Persona 5. I played poker in Red Dead because I was like, oh, this must do something. Like it must unlock something and it doesn't. It's just like there to play it.

I love when that stuff's in there. Like even like in the Arkham games. Arkham Asylum isn't really like open world. No, but City is. City is like, I think, I don't talk about the Arkham games a lot. Arkham City, I think, is one of the perfect games. It is so fucking good. Those Rocksteady Batman games are really good.

Look, I'm, and this may just be that I have more affection for it, I really like Asylum. I just like the design of it being so confined, and I think probably because it was my introduction to that combat engine, I have just so much affection for that game um but yeah but you also hate driving in the and finding the riddler's uh clues or whatever that's an example of something that i'm just

never gonna do that i'm never gonna get all of peter parker's fucking backpacks in the spider man games either i'm just not doing that. Will Hines, our friend, has 100%ed, has platinumed the Spider-Man game like four times or something. And he's just always, he's doing all that stuff all the time. And I'm like, that's it's impressive to me. I just can't I can't do that at all.

I rarely 100% an open world game. I don't know if Dredge would be considered an open world game, but I did want to read that my mom caught 122 of the 138 fish by the time she beat Dredge. Holy shit. I didn't even know she was playing Dredge with us. Yeah, she was playing Dredge with us. She texted me this morning and was frustrated by the ending.

She hadn't listened to our episode yet because she likes to beat the game before she listens. But she caught 122 of the 138 fish. And I was like, Jesus Christ, that was not something that I was interested in. I mean, I'm interested in hearing that from my mom, but me personally while playing the game. That's wild. I think something about open world games that I think is important that maybe we haven't talked about that much is a traversal. Yep. I think good traversal goes so far in a,

in a game like this, like in, in red dead redemption, I feel like the horse riding a horse is a home run. It rocks. Is there a horse? Can you kill it? Does it upset people?

Ghost of Tsushima, also great horse. And also just like a great to just like get around the world because you also have grappling. You have that, you know, and that's super fun to move around. And look, got to shout out Elden Ring in just terms of like navigating, traversing the map. The movement is so great in that. Great horse. Everything is so great. Yeah, but great horse. Great way to use the horse

and just also just like, like how do I get up there? Like figuring that sort of shit out is so satisfying. Yeah, Elden Ring is good and it's good because it, just thinking about the game evokes a time in my life,

which also these large games, these open world games, you end up spending so much of your actual life playing them. Like an MMO is an open world game. And I played, God, like so much of Final Fantasy XI because I was like, oh, I buy one game. I'm broke. Yes. I'm just going to play this game all the fucking time. But it evokes a feeling of a time in your life.

And same with Elden Ring and same with Valhalla for me. Like, Grand Theft Auto 3 feels like post 9-11. Like, it feels, they all feel like times. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I do think about Elden Ring a lot still. And I do miss that daily grind. Elden Ring also is funny. Yeah.

Because, like, fucking a monster will get on an elevator and die, and you're like, that's funny. Yeah, or, like, you could just decide to kill all the merchants and, you know, keep their bells, and then you don't ever have to go see them again. It's not funny to me. It's funny to invade. Yeah, I mean, that stuff is funny.

Like, I don't know. Like, I don't know. Like, well, yeah, traversal. Like, I don't think the horse, horse doesn't always feel good. I don't love riding a horse in Tears of the Kingdom or Breath of the Wild. I don't think it feels good to me. But the horses in Red Dead and the horse in Ghost of Tsushima feel good. Torrent feels amazing.

Great horse. Elite horse. And, you know, maybe I'll have stuff to say about the horse in next week's game. Yeah. But is that an open world game? Yes. Yes, very much so. I honestly would,

we might, I think that's part of the reason we're talking about this topic. Yeah. Because it's like, that's like, I think so much, the progenitor of so much

of what happened. I mean, you can't really, well, we'll talk, I don't want to get into it. We'll talk about next week. Let's talk about Cyberpunk. I have Cyberpunk on my list. Okay, so Cyberpunk is one

I would say that like, I really, look, we all like Cyberpunk 2077. We all finished it. I enjoyed it. Platinumed it. I don't know if I love that as an open world game, just at least in the initial release. I know they've done a lot of patching. I think we should play Phantom Liberty as one of our WePlayYouPlays. I 100% want to play Phantom Liberty.

Yeah, I'm in. I think that's October. Yes! But I our We Play You plays. I 100% want to play Phantom Liberty. Yeah, I'm in. I think that's October. Yes! But I was going to say, like, we were... So that's next month? Because it comes out in, like, two weeks from now. Okay, so maybe we'll figure it out. Oh, I'm so excited.

I do want to play that. I do really like, like, the aesthetic of that world. Yeah. I do think it's a really fun world to live in. But as an open world game, I felt like when I'd stumble upon shit in that game, at least in the initial release, it would be things like, you know, a police action in progress and it would just be some combat encounter with some random threads. I said condom encounter.

I was going to try to run past it. I said it was some combat encounter with some random thugs. I mean, you had condom encounters in that game, too. You did. Yeah. Not the way I played. The fun toys. what were they? I can't remember the name of the prostitutes.

Anyway, so, like, but I would just go into, like, a random combat sort of thing, or just, like, some, like, it would just start some quest. I just never found that aspect of it satisfying. Yeah. Even though I found the actual narrative design

pretty good for the main story. It was not a very good open world no but it did and it also wasn't emergently funny no like because the npcs weren't like real what was funny was like how broken the physics engine yeah like it was funny when a car would fall from the sky well yeah that's the. I feel like I somehow played the worst version of it because none of the funny stuff happened to me. I only saw the funny stuff online. One of my glitches was that I died

and it would autosave as I was dying and it would restart me from the previous autosave. Oh, yeah. And I was just stuck in this loop where I was dying over and over again. Yeah. And also, traversal in that game is bad. And my biggest wish for it...

No, no. Yes, it is. No. Double jumping is good. You can get into areas that the game is not designed to have accessible. You can jump over fences and shit. No, the traversal in that game is fucking great.

We talked about the driving in that game. I didn't like the driving. The driving was bad. It was so good. The driving is bad. Again, a lot of the stuff has been patched.

I want them to patch a third person mode. That's my biggest wish for it because if I'm picking my clothes, I want to see those things. Right. Yeah. I want to see that thing swing

when I'm running. You know what I'm saying? I mean, you pick penis too. You might as well see that thing in action. Yeah. I want to see that thing swing when I'm running. You know what I'm saying? I mean, you pick penis too. You might as well see that thing in action. Yeah, yeah. Come on.

Why did I pick it if not to see it all the time? Off. But like, yeah, there's something about like, I just think about

the horse traversal a lot in games. Like in a lot of games have horses and, you know, there's some of our most beautiful creatures

we got here on planet earth horses are great ride the horse into town get off the horse execute the horse everybody opens fire on you that's not how it would go everybody would go inside yeah they're like oh this guy just killed his horse

out there I better leave but like playing Red Dead Redemption on the Switch and playing and riding around the horse and then also playing Tears of the Kingdom on the Switch and riding the horse, the horse in Red Dead Redemption is better. It is just a better... It's a better horse.

It's a better horse. I've heard rumor, by the way, that the Switch 2 was shown behind closed doors at Tokyo Game Show. I heard this as well. And that they had a upgraded version of Tears of the Kingdom playing.

That's exactly the kind of shit they'd pull. 4K, 60 frames per second. Making me buy this game a second time. This is the thing that I can't do that and I can't abide and I will do it. I'm so done with that game that I won't go back to it. I think I might not finish Tears of the Kingdom.

I think it did not sink its teeth into me. I'm more excited to play Phantom Liberty than I am to finish Tears of the Kingdom. I'm more excited to... You Liberty than I am to finish Tears of the Kingdom. I'm more excited to. You missed the window, I think. I think if you had to, if you had put more, like, if you had finished more of it in the window when it was like the thing that everybody was doing, everybody was talking about it, you would have finished it. But I'm going to finish God of War, which, you know, I started playing Ragnarok over the last few weeks because of Viking Madness. And I am going to finish that game. And this one, Ragnarok, has more of an open world.

Not really, because you do have to go through the realms and you walk through that sort of like, it doesn't have a load screen, which is cool, but it's a playable load screen, basically, that you're hiding behind. Side note, really, this is going to sound like the dumbest complaint I've ever had on the show and inconsistent with my character. Yeah. I don't like how often they say fuck in that game. In which game?

They say it maybe a little too much. I don't like it. It feels like it breaks the immersion for me. I don't feel like gods should be like, get the fuck over here. Well, you should wait until later on in the game when Kratos calls- Atreus?

Calls Atreus mid. Does he really? He's like, you're being sus right now. And he puts his two fingers on his veins and goes, sheesh. It's the Final Fantasy XVI slash Logan, the Wolverine movie problem, where it's just like, oh, we can kind of say fuck. So we're going to play that card too often. Yeah. Which is a shame because the funniest version of fuck is the PG-13 fuck.

Yeah. It's so funny. When a character says it in a movie that has no other fucks, it's really funny, especially when it's get in the fucking car. Yes. And there's not another version. It's like a, it's not a cheap, I guess it's kind of a cheap laugh, but it's a reliable cheap laugh

because it always is funny. But it's a meta laugh also because often it'll be used in a way where it's like we get our one fuck and it doesn't, we're using it in the dumbest way yes there's a great one with uh wolverine in x-men first class tells uh young uh xavier and young magneto to go fuck themselves it's great it's really funny it's also the anchorman one

i feel like the anchorman oh yeah go fuck yourself san diego man anchorman's so funny he was very funny i like it i like it too i love it i legitimately think it's so funny. It is very funny. I like it. I like it too. I love it. I legitimately think it's extremely funny. It makes me laugh. If I went home and watched it tonight, I'd be like, this is the best night of my life. I'm laughing so hard. You're damn kind. Throwing a burrito out the window.

Funny. It's a, yeah. Can I just say one thing I don't like, I don't love about open world games? Because A, I kind of have gotten exhausted by them like like I'll say a couple things that I feel like I've gotten that they're why these games I like they really have to do something to kind of pull me in um and sometimes that's something small like Ghost of Tsushima just having uh the birds and the foxes that you're following in the wind to guide guide you towards objectives like it's like

that was just new enough where like, I am interested in this. But I don't like a mini map that's fucking full of icons. That to me is just like, I'm so tired of that. I'm seeing it too often. Too many way points, too many question marks, too many exclamation points. And also I don't really love,

and I know it's so tough to figure out the right approach design-wise, but I don't really love level scaling. I don't really love where i know it's so tough to figure out the right approach design wise but i don't really love level scaling i don't really love where like wherever i go in the world i know this is oftentimes the bethesda approach wherever i go in the world the enemies will be the same level as my character bullshit yeah i don't love that fucking hate it yeah because as a person who really likes going to a place where i'm not supposed to be in a game it deletes the challenge like if I if I can manage to get somewhere that I'm not supposed to be and those characters are so much higher level than me let me enjoy that like yeah and and let me go back after I've beaten those guys and fucking clean house in a low level area see that's more the

thing that I like the second thing you say is more what I like is like, I like to feel OP in these games. I like to end up in the area where I'm like, I'll just fucking clean everyone's clock and just sort of waltz through here because that's part of what's fun about them. Yeah, like the most fun of cyberpunk is jumping over a fence,

hearing that brink as everybody gets upset and then like leaping from body to body executing people the way that you should if you were full of tech. Yeah. That was killing you. Yeah. I love it. In Pokemon Scarlet and

Violet, that is sort of like their first open world game and it's like worse for it. Like they're trying to just do too much and I don't know like open world game and it's like worse for it. Like, they're trying to just do too much and I don't know, like, those games don't have to look

like a certain way or anything like that. They can just make it how they've always been doing it. Honestly, I think they should go back to 2D. Like, they got,

like, they're doing too much in the 3D space and it's not working. Let's go back to what worked. It's a shame because Pokemon is such a no-brainer Like they got like they're doing too much in the 3D space and it's not working. Let's go back to what works. It's a shame because Pokemon is is such a no brainer for what it should be in your head. Like what what like the the the density of like if you actually translate the amount of encounters that you have with Pokemon in the 2D games into a 3D environment, it would be like walking through a zoo without cages.

Yes. Like, it should be fucking Pokemon everywhere. Yeah. And it should, like, the... An infestation of Pokemon. Yeah, the cities also are weirdly vacant. Like, if I go into a Pokemon city, it should look like detective pikachu's

pokemon city yes like fucking pokemon everywhere yeah and it seems like such a it just seems like so much money is on the tape like because i didn't buy whatever the last the last pokemon game was because i was like this looks like shit didn't they release two last year what was the other they did uh pokemon legends arceus as well, yeah. That actually was at the tail end of 2022. And then I think a few months later was Twilight Violet. Give Pokemon a From Software. Honestly, like, I'd like to see somebody who, like, would actually make it interesting give it a try.

I don't think the Pokemon company is very interested in making the game good. But this is the thing, and I know it's kind of like a weird sort of second party sort of middle ground, but Nintendo is so fanatical about quality control of its biggest franchises like Mario and Zelda. Not that they always succeed,

but the goal is always to have a super polished, super good looking version of aesthetically lives up to the expectations of the franchise. This is a good place. Gameplay wise for Mario and Zelda. And they have not done that with the with the Pokemon games. This is a good place to interject something that I think is going to be a not a hot take, but spicy. I don't like Elephant Mario.

How dare you? This is fucking bullshit. Don't like him? You don't like Elephant Mario. Well, guess what? It's Elephant Luigi. It's Elephant Peach. It's Elephant Daisy.

It's Elephant Toad. They're all the same kind of elephant. I find elephants off-putting. Wow. You're going to say that in front of God. You're going to say that. No, let me rephrase. Real elephants, majestic, perfect animals.

Some of the smartest ones we got. Incredible. Cartoon elephant, never want to see it. All right. You don't like Babar? Nope. No Babar. No Dumbo. No. I don Never want to see it. All right. You don't like Babar? Nope. No Babar. No Dumbo.

No. I don't want to see cartoon elephant. Wow. Real elephant. Canceled. Real elephant crossing the street, getting in front of the sugar cane truck. Fun. And then getting some sugar cane.

What about the elephant that puts a paintbrush in its trunk and draws it? Oh, that I don't like because it makes me sad because that animal's being abused. Yeah, I don't like that either. That animal paints the same picture

of an elephant every day and they're like, it knows what it looks like. That elephant has no fucking idea what it's doing. They stop the elephant before it starts writing

free me on the paper. Elephants have, you know, funerals. Yeah. Yeah. They're incredible.

Yeah. Don't want to see Mario as an elephant. Mario also becomes a ghost in this one. So like he dies kind of. And it's also a strand game, but we'll talk about that later.

Something else about, oh, well, okay. In open world games too, like in the realm of there's bullshit in this game that I'm just never going to do, in the most recent Pokemon entries,

and I guess dating back to probably the DS ones, they've added stuff like beauty pageants and making curry and sandwiches and stuff, and it's like, this is not... I don't need this. I'm never doing this. There's a minimal stat bonus you get for doing stuff like that, but it's like, this is not, I don't need this. I'm never doing this. There's like a minimal stat bonus you get for doing stuff like that.

But it's negligible because you don't need it to beat the game. It's just there. It's just part of it. And I feel like a lot of open world games have stuff like that, like in terms of like crafting or whatever. And like you sometimes need to craft.

Like in Tears of the Kingdom, you have to craft like weapons and other types of things that help you on your journey but you also like almost don't need to either yeah Yakuza 0 I think is like you can ignore so much of the side content but also the the abundance of the side content again going back to density I think is so much of what makes that game like such a magical experience of just like you never have to go to the batting cages or to go bet on women's wrestling or, you know, or go to the bowling alley or run a real estate or run a real.

Well, you do have to run a real estate business, but you don't have to go all the way to the end of the real estate quest line, which I did, which involves getting to a certain point of dominance in each neighborhood and then defeating the overlord of that neighborhood in a physical fight at which point they will join your real estate company to work for you that's the type of shit that i'm just like video games rule yeah it's really good well the difference between what you guys are describing is that one of these is fun and the other is not like cooking your fucking Pokemon food is not fun. No. Cooking in Final Fantasy XV is fun mostly because of the absurd level of graphical detail

of the dish that arrives when you've gotten your dish. Yeah. Because the reward of the cooking stuff in Final Fantasy XV is, why does this look this good? Why was this made? Like, that's fun. Yakuza 0 games,

fun. Cooking side quests in fucking Pokemon games, not fun. God, so much of Yakuza 0. It's just like, you go to a restaurant and you order something. It's daunting to think about playing another one of those games, but I want nothing more than to play another one

of those games. They're so funny. And you know, to Heather's point, everything in that game is funny. I think that's a different... Because I'm not saying that the jokes in Yakuza... It's extremely funny, but the stuff

that's happening is funny on purpose. Whereas an open world game has tons of stuff that's funny on, not on purpose. Right, it's emergent stuff that you'll see like clipped and it will be like on a subreddit or on Twitter or whatever, on X rather. And then you'll watch it and be like, it'll be a 15 second clip of something going horribly awry.

Yeah. Yeah, I think I get the distinction. I don't know. I think that in the way that Baldur's Gate is open worldly for me in that way is that you can load up a ton of bombs or boxes or whatever and bring them to an area where that is not the intended way to do an encounter. Yes. And then do the encounter that way.

But like the creatures aren't going to be like falling off shit or like doing stuff on their own. Well, I have retold the story I think you told on the podcast about pushing a goblin off a building and that triggering a cut scene. Yeah. And then you had the dialogue with him. And then it died. That to me is funny.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But then, I mean, maybe to, I don't know, maybe to wrap this open world discussion, all these open world games too, they're too fucking long. They're all too long. They're so long. They're all way too long. Too much.

No. Too much going on. Nope. Nope. Heather says no. Elephant bad. open world long good we're on different planets wow that's like because i mean i like i like a meaty game i i'm liking that i probably by the time i'm done with baldur's gate 3 put 100 or so hours in it but uh it's it's

too it's too much no it's too much it's all much. The most frustrating part of Assassin's Creed Valhalla was that it didn't continue to just be bigger and bigger. How many hours did you have in that ultimately? I don't know. I said it on the show. Yeah. It was in the hundreds. Yeah, it was. Yeah.

It was maybe sub 200, but above 100 hours for sure. I would say, I bet it was 130 or in that neighborhood. And the only reason I stopped playing it, it was because I ran out of towns to conquer. Like, I wish that they'd been like, surprise, we've added the entire map of Europe. And then I'd be like, yes! Didn't they add DLC when you left?

They added Paris, I think. Oh, soccer blue. And I was like, Europe. Didn't they add DLC when you left? They added Paris, I think. Sacre bleu. And I was like, I guess I, but also lately I've thought about dipping my toe back in. I kind of want to get in there a little bit again. I think we're, this is that I'm kind of coming to understand something right now, which is just like, in the same way that you can put hundreds of hours into an open world game. And to me and Matt as well, it seems like that seems kind of exhausting to try to get through everything. I can put the same amount of time into a roguelike just running endlessly. And I don't get tired of it. Whereas I think that might be the sort of thing where you'd kind of feel like that was pointless. But like FTL, like I put like 200 hours into that game and that's just running, doing the

same run over and over again and trying to optimize it. Yeah. I put so much time into Hades. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. Just like hours and hours and hours into Hades. I put in like one hour into Hades.

I was like, this is not for me. It's good. It's all combat. Yeah. It's all fighting. It is. But it was like something felt off about it to me. Too horny?

No, Baldur's Gate's horny. Not horny enough. By the way, turned a corner on my boy Asterion. Yeah. Hated that dude. Remember last time we checked in? Hated that dude. Then I found out his secret.

He's my best friend now. Yeah, he's my guy. I was a little harsh on Asterion last week, and I do want to walk it back. Because I had an interesting encounter with him. Heather's going for her third piece of drove. Well, Nick doesn't like it. And I want it to go to waste. I enjoyed it.

I can't imagine having another one right now. Yeah, no, yeah. I'll tap out of one. Yeah. But, yeah, I'm sort of back in on Asterion. But he's still not in my party, but I'm nicer to him. When am I going to play Baldur's Gate 3? We're going to do Phantom Liberty next month.

When are we going to play these games? Well, I mean, look. I'm playing Sea of Stars. You're playing Sea of Stars. That's sort of your main thing right now, it sounds like. I bounced off of Armored Core 6 to play this month's We Play, You Play. Yeah. But that's going to be a game that I don't feel pressure to beat because it's just, I

can pick that up for like a few minutes and be like, this is the most fun I've ever had. Yeah. Armored Core was the game I had to bounce off of in order to make room for Baldur's Gate and for Viking Madness. Yeah. But, and you know, I guess, look, video video games we'll figure it out at large too long too long everything's too no no if i if look no if there's a game that you like i think all games should be the option of hundreds of hours and it's only our love of that game.

Because the worst thing in the world is I don't want to beat a game. Like if Baldur's Gate was 10,000 hours if you wanted and you could dedicate that much time or you could be like, okay, I'm done. And I don't want to play any more of this. Well, that is like I often will just mainline the main story I'm not really always getting in there and doing side quests uh except for like the option like the the mandatory side quests they make you do to like let you know that there are side quests out there um I'm not usually doing anything like that I'll often just be mainlining the like the main story and that still will take

50 or so hours to get done but I'm rarely putting in 100. I think I got close to 200 I think when we did Elden Ring because I was just playing that and getting my ass kicked 10 hours a day

but you know, I think I do appreciate a short game, but I think, you know, sometimes with open world games, there's not enough to me, there's not enough story to justify the length of what's going on. But, you know,

that's me. Yeah, that to me, I think, is another way that one of these games can just feel kind of empty. It's like, okay, to what end am I doing any of this? Yeah. Yeah, that to me, I think, is another way that one of these games can just feel kind of empty. It's like, okay, to what end am I doing any of this? Yeah. All right, we got to do a segment. We're going along here. We got to do a segment, and I'm going to see if Nick and Heather can guess the game based on the reviews alone.

It's time for Blind Item Reviews. Wow. of these reviews is up to you to decide what the game is uh if you lock in a guest i feel like we tried to like i don't remember what we did okay i felt like at one point we tried to rebalance this game and i don't remember how or why but like if you get it in the negative round you get three points if you get it in mixed you get two and if you get it during positive you get one that seems that might be the rebound that might beancing. It might have originally been like four, two, and one or something. Maybe it was something like that. Yeah.

Here we go. Here's the first negative review. Just like all other sandboxes. Wait, but before you begin, do these have a theme? They do. It's open world games. Okay. Okay.

Got it. Got it. Got it. Here we go. Matt loves his themes. I love my themes. And I was going to, I didn't care.

I wasn't going to mention it. Yeah. But it's like, it's not going to help. It doesn't help. I don't know. It does narrow the scope a little bit. Sometimes the theme is like kind of emergent as we go.

And we're like, oh, they're all GameCube games. It was like open world. We're talking open world stuff. It felt like a good, just to get some of these ones out here. This is a negative review.

Okay. Just like all other sandbox games, it's fun for a few hours, and then the novelty wears off, and you're left with this crappy story. There is no challenge there. Because this isn't a game. It's a movie shoehorned into a simulator. Trust me, it's not as fun as it sounds. I'm going to guess first. I'll say that's a Grand Theft Auto 5.

That is incorrect. A movie shoehorned into a simulator. I'm going to guess Death Stranding. Also incorrect. Moving on to the mixed review. I have to admit to being prejudiced against sandbox games at times. I think Fallout 3 was done well, but the Grand Theft Auto and Crackdown games don't appeal to me. I doubt I would have tried this game except for the theme.

People praise the story and voice work in this game, but I don't see how the story compares to an epic saga like Bioshock, Halo, Uncharted, or Mass Effect. Okay, so we can definitely sort of infer some things from the other games that are cited in terms of era. This is feeling like an early 2010s game or late aughts game. Hmm. Is it just Skyrim? That is incorrect.

Hmm. Yeah, movie shoehorned into a simulator feels like a clue. I'm going to guess Assassin's Creed French Revolution. I forget what that one's called. That is incorrect. Moving on to the positive review. Nothing short of their finest work and an example to all other games out there. This masterpiece took a brave step introducing the West back to a different generation of people,

and it succeeded. Heather. Heather. Heather. Heather. Red Dead Redemption. That is correct. Heather gets one point.

Not a movie. Heather, we don't have that clearance. You can't do that. No, we don't have clearance for that. We're bleeding money now. We can't have that clearance. You can't do that. No, we don't have clearance for that. We're bleeding money now. We can't do that. Sorry, man. I got a scat.

No, you guys stop. You know we love jazz. Guys, I don't fucking care if you love jazz, okay? I'm sorry. Stop. The comments. Matt was actually mad. Matt was so mad they started scatting

and I guess they can't afford to do that. And then they're just sending me and Heather Miles Davis records. I think you guys will like this one. You heard of John Coltrane? You guys should watch La La Land. Okay, here's the next one. Negative review.

Let's take The Witcher 3, but make the terrain hard to traverse and get rid of interesting side quests. Yeah. And let's take Shadow of Mordor's combat, but get rid of all the melee features except for swing spam and make every enemy take 30 arrows or more to kill. Crafting's popular right now. Throw that in, but don't actually make it have any depth.

This game is an amalgamation of every single bland open world game to ever exist, but somehow even more boring. All right, so this is pretty contemporary. Use as a sword. I'm just going to guess it. I don't know if this is necessarily it because the crafting thing feels like a little bit of a mislead. But I'm going to say it is this Breath of the Wild. That is incorrect. Sword.

Using a sword. Ghost of Tsushima. That is incorrect. Moving on to the mixed review. Really enjoyed the first couple hours, but then it got a bit repetitive. Could have used a bit more weapon variation and a bit more attack options. Nice to look at world, but it's mostly empty, and I found I got trapped a lot to the point of having to restart.

Reminded me of Monster Hunter, but without the co-op. Reminded me of Monster Hunter, but without the co-op. And his sword. Is this Elden Ring? That's incorrect. A sword that reminds you of Monster Hunter. Hmm. Can you tell us the platform?

No. No. Why don't I just give you the answer, huh? Would you like that? I don't know. We're looking for some clues here. Scatman over here wants all the answers. A sword at Monster Hunter.

I don't know, man. Like, I got nothing for this one. I can move on to the positive review. Yeah, go to positives. Okay. Really enjoyed everything about this game, but it specifically had such an enjoyable combat and the best console graphics ever.

It takes everything good from open world action games like Tomb Raider, Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, Shadow of Mordor, and many others, and none of the bad. It's the pinnacle of this incredibly fun and popular genre. A true exclusive, and an absolute system seller. Okay, a true exclusive and a system seller.

Talking about the aesthetics, this makes me think that this is a big boy PlayStation game. I'm going to guess one, and I'm going to guess it might be the other one, but I'm going to guess it's Horizon. Care to continue that guess? Zero Dawn? That's right. Wow. It has a point.

It's tied up. I won a piece. Wow. We're doing great. I didn't say. It's tied up. I won a piece. Wow. We're doing great. I didn't say one piece, okay? I said won a piece. I knew Horizon Forbidden West was part two, and I knew there was a zero in Horizon, but I couldn't remember what the rest of it was. Horizon Zero Dawn.

Horizon Zero Dawn. Zero Dawn. Here's a negative review. Tedious comes to mind, as do exhausting, laborious, unsatisfying drawn out bloated broken unfinished excruciating and more this game has a thesaurus this game at times is beautiful well for a computer game and i mean at times some other times it looks awful the world you become immersed in soon dissipates when you come across clunking animatronics and badgers flying in the sky. Badgers flying in the sky.

So general. Badgers. Badgers flying in the sky. Badgers. So a computer game is used, which I guess it could be a multi-platform game they're playing on PC. But that also could be in the way that somebody describes video games as Nintendo. Oh, yeah.

So this could be written by somebody's grandpa. Yeah. Got it. Who doesn't like the game? My computer game. Don't like it. Don't like Atari's

computer game. The other day, my girlfriend was on the phone with her mom and she said, Matt's just playing the computer. I was like sitting on the couch. I was like, what? What?

My girlfriend was on the phone with her mom and she said, Matt's just playing the computer. I was like sitting on the couch. I was like, what are you? What? Badger flying through the sky. Badger's flying through the sky. What the fuck does that even mean? I'm going to say Cyberpunk just to get my turnover. That is incorrect.

We were just talking about something. It's so hard for me to think of games that we didn't discuss as the issue here. So I'm trying to open up to other open world games. I can move on to the mixed. I'll take a guess just in case it's Skyrim again. It is Skyrim. Wow. There we go.

So Nick has pulled ahead pretty far. With two points? With three points. There we go. So Nick has pulled ahead pretty far. With two points? With three points. Oh, right. So now he has four points and Heather has one. But it's still anyone's game. It's still anyone's game. It is anyone's game.

Here's a negative review. Can you read one of the more obvious reviews of Skyrim just so we can? Yeah, I'll read the positive review. Okay. Yeah, there are glitches, but that doesn't stop this game from being an absolute masterpiece. After only three hours of play, I realize it's probably the most engrossing game

I've ever played. It's amazing how much content is packed into one game. The game, extremely addicting. The sound is amazing. The fucking graphics are... They're absolutely phenomenal. Because that game's been out

for like 13 years or whatever, however long now, and it's been on so many platforms. You forget that it was a buggy mess upon release as Starfield kind of is. And now you can play it on the screen in your Tesla. Here's a negative review. I personally find the game to be overrated. True, the world is massive and vibrant, but the gargantuan amount of bugs almost rendered the game unplayable.

Missions cannot be unlocked. Gold medals are impossible because of glitches. The graphics, and I understand that it's technically a last-gen upgrade, but if they released it for current-gen consoles, then I'll judge it like a current-gen game, are absolutely terrible. Last-gen upgrade. Ah.

Forza. Forza Horizon. That gen upgrade. Ah. Forza. Forza Horizon. That is incorrect. Fuck! Boy, that would have been good because that is kind of an open world structure. Yeah.

Hmm. Gold medals, release for a last gen. Give us a mixed review. I give this a lower than high score because I simply don't see how it deserves a 10 in so many places. The game has a lot of content, looks great, characters are good, not great, and that's about all it's got going for it. For me, it almost felt boring.

This game has so much happening that it never really nails anything it's trying to do. Everything is playable, but nothing, for me, is all that fun. All right, so a lot of content, but kind of feeling generic. It's not Starfield, is it? That is incorrect. I'm gonna pass. Here's the positive review. While the story feels short and

less complex compared to others, it's a game that you enjoy from minute one to infinity. Thanks to all the possibilities of its open world, it's driving and be able to take control of multiple protagonists. Driving multiple protagonists. Heather.

Grand Theft Auto 5. That is correct. Oh, there you go. Heather has another point. So now we're two to four.

Are there gold medals? I guess there are gold medals in Grand Theft Auto 5. I'm trying to remember it. And actually, I

just told a big lie a second ago, and I want to apologize for my big lie. I said it was anyone's game. That was the last question. So Nick is our winner. Wow. Nick has won blind item reviews. I'll take it. Well done.

Hey, that's this week's Get Played. Our engineering is by Alex Gonzalez. Dinner, Alex G. And on social media. And also check out our paywalled show, Get Animated. Heather, we're, actually, where are we? What are we watching right now? We're watching FLCL.

That's right. Which is the early 2000s anime mega hit, once popularized on Adult Swim in the United States. It's FLCL, six episodes, three podcasts about those six episodes. The show has six episodes. We're doing three episodes about it. So come along. Check that out on Patreon dot com slash get played.

We can listen to that and all of our other get animated episodes. All our stuff is there. We can listen to that and all of our other Get Animated episodes. All our stuff is there. It's pronounced similar to foodie cootie, but F-L-C-L is how it's written out. And there you go. Hey, we're going to be talking about Shadow of the Colossus next week. So get ready to hop in on that and keep on slaying colossi if you're playing along with us. And guys, it was nice to come back here.

What a treat to be back here. What a treat to be in studio. What a treat. Watch you guys get played. Oh, shit. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.