Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Grading the 2024 Ubisoft Forward - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

Tim, Bless, Mike, Andy, and Greg review the 2024 Ubisoft Forward featuring Star Wars Outlaws, Assassin's Creed Shadows, and XDefiant. Run of Show - - Start - Housekeeping - Grading the 2024 Ubisoft Forward - Ads - Breaking Down the Ubisoft Forward - Greg’s Star Wars Outlaws Preview - Back to UbiForward Breakdown - SuperChats - Assassin’s Creed Shadows Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Gamescast live for June 10th, 2024. Of course, I am your host, Tim Geddes. I'm joined by Blessing at Ayoia Jr. Good day, Tim. Snowbike, Mike. What up, Tim? Andy Cortez and Greg Miller. We just live reacted to the Ubisoft forward for 2024, and now we're about to give it our review and break down every single thing that we saw, as well as give you a couple previews because we did spend the weekend down in Los Angeles at Summer Game Fest Play Days. Greg Miller got to play Star Wars Outlaws. He got to see way more of Assassin's Creed Shadow.

So he's going to talk all about that on this episode. And for everyone else, if there's games that you want to hear about that you're like, you know what, they probably played that at Summer Game Fest Play Days. The next couple days, games cast is going to be breaking down a whole bunch of stuff. A lot of embargoes so we can't announce exactly what it is yet. But I will let you know right now. You're going to want to hang out with us. every day this week as we talk about what we play

because we played some pretty cool stuff. If you are a kind of funny member, you know what that means. You get the show ad free. You can watch live as we record it and you get a daily exclusive show. You can even be a super cool Patreon producer like Kieran Hovesapien, Carl Jacobs, Fargo Brady, or Delaney Twining. Today we are brought to you by Pongle, the developer of vampire survivors

and Better Help, but we'll get to that later. You can super chat in as we are talking about stuff. If you have thoughts on the UBesaw Forward, we just saw. If you want to give your review of what we just saw, if you have questions for Greg about either Assassin's Creed Shadows or Star Wars Outlaws, please get all of those in. But without further ado, I want to get right into it.

Greg Miller, let's start with you. On the kind of funny scale, what would you give this Ubisoft forward? I was so much in preview land. I hadn't stopped to think about the review, right? You want me to jump to someone else? No, I don't mind. I don't know because I think it's a weird one where this wasn't a good one. This is why, you know what I mean?

And it's, I think, did a disservice to put both outlawful. and Assassin's Creed here the way they did. So I'm going to say this was on our 10-point scale I'm going to say 5. Mediocre. I don't think as usual

Ubisoft can't get out of their own way on the way they present some information and I think they also, as usual, you know, they have good games, but I also think they also have some kind of, we have to do this every year. We have to do this. And I really don't think you do.

Andy Cortez I'm going to give this a 4 out of 10 but it's weird because I I've been higher on some of their properties this presentation that I have in

in a lot of other years where maybe they had more to show in the past several years but I wasn't super into everything where this it's like the two heavy hitters

Star Wars and Assassin's Creed really really like I was already sold on outlaws I'm even more sold now on it and I really enjoyed what Assassin's Creed had to show and everything else in the middle

just kind of felt like a lot of noise for the most part. So yeah, I would give this a 4 out of 10 but like I feel great after watching that Assassin's Creed showing so it's like I'm in a weird spot with it but overall those two games standouts and great presentations

and I feel like you're right you didn't those two things could have been showed at other places maybe not do a whole showcase for everything because you need to show all of your other properties like this ball game where you shooting stuff. I had no idea it was even a game. That's wild. Snowmike, Mike. Tim, I'm going to go with a six out of ten. Okay. I really like that. We're using the wording along with the number. It was an okay presentation. You know,

Ubisoft comes in and they have that theatrics to it all. They have the live orchestra before this. You got two good deep dives, right? We knew that's what they were coming with was the two big games. But yeah, like Andy and Greg said, in the middle there, we really lost the momentum. Unfortunately, even ex defiance, I thought would have had a little bit more of a blowout, right? Like, that is your hot game right now that Bless and Andy want to check out more of. I thought we would have doubled down a little bit of like, hey, let's show more ex-defiant. Let's give the people something really exciting because as we talk about with these games,

once they're hot, you've got to keep them hot and you don't want that to just cool down. So I am surprised at the biggest and baddest events of the year, you wouldn't really double down on that. But then you go down the list. I mean, it is just a lot of live service games, ongoing games that need to have updates, but it's tough to sell donks versus low riders and the crew motorsport that aren't us, right? Like, that's a tough one. And most importantly, they were missing that one big unknown, that one more thing. I know we always talk about it's like, don't announce stuff until you're ready,

but you're Ubisoft, you have all these properties. And we do know that some things are in the works. I do think you've got to come out and show just a splash screen. I know we're tired of the three green dots, but like you got to have something to punch us in the arm at the end and say, woo, that was awesome, you know? So six out of ten, okay. Bless.

Yeah, I think this one is a strange one. Like, it's almost one that I don't want to review or give a score to because I think, for me, again, the question always comes to what was the objective of the showcase? And the objective of this showcase, as they told us before even premiering this thing, is, hey, we want to talk about Assassin's Creed shadows. We want to talk about Star Wars outlaws. We want to talk about X-Difiant. and some more things. And to that extent, they did an excellent job talking about Assassin's

shadows. They did an excellent job talking about Star Wars Outlaws. And they did, I think they did a fine job talking about X Define. Exfine wasn't my favorite of the showcase. I'm with Mike that, I think, they could have gotten a bit harder in terms of selling that to us more. That is a big-ish game from Yousoft that just came out that I think needs a bit more push. So I wish I saw a little bit more exciting stuff from that. But then between all that, it is, you know, just updates on things that already exists. The only brand new game we got here, I believe, chat can correct me from wrong,

is ANO 117 Pax Romana. And I think for what their goal here was, I would give it an 8 out of 10. I think if we're comparing it to other showcases as far as new and exciting announcements, I would give it a 2 out of 10. It's a tough thing when it comes to a showcase where I'm like, I don't want to knock them

for marketing their biggest games of the year that are on the precipice of coming out, right? They don't want to distract from Assassin's Creed. They don't want to distract from Star Wars outlaws. I think this is honestly probably the right move, right? I think even to like the point of you don't have to do this every year. I think they had to do this for Assassin's Creed shadows and Star Wars Outlaws. And I think to Greg's point, maybe they could have just made it those two, right?

Did we need all these other things? Do we need to distract from those two games? But they do have these updates. These things do exist. I think they got to talk about them somewhere. And so I'm not mad at this. I guess I can average my two scores and give it a five out of ten or like a four. I'll give it a 4.5, 4.5 out of 10.

But like overall, I feel good coming out of this. To engage in the discussion with you, because I think it's an interesting thing, and this is all we do is Monday morning quarterback, these kind of decisions. I think Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin's Creed shadows are strong enough properties that this is one of those cases where you can just be like, yo, Wednesday morning, 9 a.m.,

it's that direct, it's the Ubisoft's forward, colon, that. It's 20 minutes about that. And then another day, you know, Thursday, do it for Assassin's Creed, and expand that. This one is one of those ones that I feel is so blatant of like, we know you're here for these two things. So we're going to put all this stuff in the middle and did this turn anybody's head in terms of like your mind's made up about Rocksmith, if you're paying attention.

Your mind's made up about Avatar, the crew. And it was such a specific game, right? And for honor and this. And it's like when you have stuff in the middle that feels like it was the pre-show content, right? Where I mean the pre-show I was excited to see about the division, right? but again, I'm a division guy. Like, I feel these ongoing communities,

you're going to be dialed into those unless it's going to be something like we saw yesterday where it's like, ball 76's got this huge part of the map and all these people are playing. Like, there's a reason to talk about it to the wide audience versus like when writers were public around. I was like, I didn't know they added skateboarding. And it's like maybe somebody who wants to play skate

sooner than later I should go try that, but I don't know if that did it for me. I'm going to take everything blessed said, I'm going to take it one step further and actually put my foot down. I'm giving this innate. I think that this was a great show. showcase for what Ubisoft was trying to do. They set the stage perfectly.

And I am firmly the person that just because you say, prepare to be disappointed and then you're disappointed, that doesn't get you a good score. But I've been saying this a long time. This year, Ubisoft has the goods. They have Star Wars. They have Assassin's Creed in Japan. We've been wanting this forever.

All we need to do is show those games and sell them even more than they already have. I think every single one of us is more sold on both of those games after this presentation. That's kind of fantastic. And Greg's right. They could have just done those things. as like their own event because they are big enough. But I was talking a lot of shit about the live stage thing because of how horrible last year's was.

This wasn't that bad at all. I think the pacing of this was great. That whole thing was an hour. Like I was never bored. I was very uninterested in a lot of the things they showed. But that's Ubisoft. And I feel like that's not going to change. And I think that this is their best showing of here's the updates

on all the thousands of updatable projects that we work on because that's the company we are. This is one of the first times. I feel like they made it even kind of, clear with that little end bit of, hey, there's this Ubisoft plus thing that you can get all these games day one using our service. Like, that's great. I think that this is how you kind of showcase your product when you are Ubisoft and you're different than everyone else in the industry. And yeah, would I have loved new announcements and exciting things? Absolutely. But I think that for

what their goal was with this, they not only did what they set out to do, but I think that it was well produced for the most part, a couple weird cuts and all that stuff. That's live production for you, baby, though. It's nowhere near as bad as it was last year. Or many years in the past where this exact conference would have been two and a half hours long, padded with weird celebrity moments and all this stuff. I'm always a sucker for orchestra of things and making the pomp of circumstance and making things feel bigger and more important.

They did that for the two biggest games that they have ever had in the history of Ubisoft. So good for them. I always think it's a little weird when we hear music that we're just not familiar with, though, like new themes for games that we haven't played. It's like, cool, but there's just no touchstone. for me. But then I look back at the God of War 2018 announcement that had the new God of War

theme we hadn't heard. And now I go back and watch that announcement. I'm like, oh, wow, that hit real hard. But it doesn't hit right now. So look at a Ubi. It's like, all right, this is, I can get why it could feel like a waste of time to people. But it's not like last year where it's like, hey, here's skull and bones doing a music performance for a game that we don't care about.

There's nothing really interesting here. This is setting the stage for the hype and epicness that is Star Wars Outlaws that showed great. And then Assassin's Creed Shadows that showed great at the end. And then in the middle, I know it's a personal thing, but that Prince of Persia stuff, every single thing they show it, I'm like, hell freaking, yes.

Can't believe we're getting Story DLC for Lost Crown, September. I'm so stoked on it. They clearly care about this game and this franchise, which I would have never expected years ago. Rogue Prince of Persia, getting updates on that, great. But yeah, Sands of Time, obviously I wished we saw more. I didn't expect to see it here

at all. One of my get-hyped predictions was we see Sands of Time, and it actually looks good. Them showing the little they showed is telling me, we got this, Tim. We got this. We fucked it up bad, but we're putting 2026 on this because we know we can't fuck this up. This is the

one. So it out 10. I also think there was a level of comfortability in the showcase as far as like Ubisoft doubling down on hey, we're Ubisoft, right? And that is kind of for better or for worse. Like I think going back to a bit of Greg's point talking about the update part of it, right? And it's like, well, you know, yesterday for the Xbox

thing, they had the fallout update. that was adding this new thing, right? And Starfield had shattered space and Diablo had the vessel of hatred and there are all these big updates that they're talking about for the games that already exists. I think we gotta be honest

when we look at Ubisoft, they are not Xbox, right? Like they are not Activision. They are not Blizzard. They are like, they have what they have. And this is the most Ubisoft showcase you can get as far as like, you know, the big things.

Star Wars, Assassin's Creed, I guess X-Difiant, right? If you want to add that in there. But then it is, all right, we just put up Skull and Bones. So let's talk about the Skull and Bones update. You know, we have, these Prince of Persian things that we've been doing, let's talk about that. We have,

uh, you know, Rock Smith is always active. We had Avatar that we just put out in December. Like, let's do the follow-ups on the things that have come out recently for Ubisoft. And then in real, in the real, we had like the, for honor, brahalla, monopoly, track mania, riders, up, like the regulars that you see from Ubisoft, right? Like, I felt like there was a, we know who we are. We know what we do. We are doubling down on what we got going on for this year. And I look at this and I'm like, all right, cool. Like this seems like a pretty comfortable year for Ubisoft. We'll see what they have in the future years. They hyped Prince of Persia. And I think that's

a good thing to reinstate some faith in that of, okay, this is going to be a bigger thing. And also, we can kind of see an end date here, or at least like a perceived window. We'll see if it makes it. But yeah, I think they're doing their job here as far as like, this is what Ubisoft is right now. And yeah, like,

take it or leave it. I think it's good. Just real quick, following up with what you're saying there, that little montage they did of the updates towards the end of it, there was just like the real, real quick hit. I mean, I feel Like that is the absolute best way to show these updates. Anybody that cares about those games and cares about the updates at all could easily see that screen and know what the update is

and when it's coming for the game they care about. And it was on the next thing. Like readability, I think is so important in these showcases and so often people fuck it up. I'm genuinely impressed at like how much content they were able to fit in there that we just don't give a fuck about, but some people do. And like, how do you get those people to pop off for the one thing that they do care about, you know,

while raising awareness that they work on a time of different projects that you might be interested in. We're going to spend a lot of time, talking about every single thing in more detail, but we're going to do that right after a word from our sponsors. Oh, maybe. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. This year is going by so quickly I'm literally getting married this month,

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We start off with little Star Wars orchestra section setting the tone. Then we get Star Wars outlaws starting with a little arcade game. Zooming out. It's like, oh, there's games within the game. Oh, my God. And then we got a whole bunch of Star Wars outlaws. Bless, what do you think? I mean, it looks incredible.

Like, I, this was, I think, the breakdown I was looking for. I know we've, in the last couple of days between Xbox and that GF, we got those small trailers. And I'm like, all, okay, go, go. Let me wait until Ubisoft, because Ubisoft is, going to bring it. And I think they brought it, right? Like Greg pointed out how chat kept comparing to Starfield. And even before chat did it, I was doing it in my mind of, yeah, this kind of giving me all the things that I felt were missing from Starfield. Now when we get there, is it going to be, is it going to be that? Is it going to, like, is that going to feel right? Is it going to feel

fun? Is it going to feel like bigger than a Ubisoft game or what it is? We'll see. But I do know that looking at it. I'm like, this is the world I want to live in. This is a world I want to explore. I want to fly around. I want to get into the dog fights in space. I think the encounter that they showed of her sneaking into the camp and taking out the two people and doing the thing. It all looks really fun and it all, even though it's very clearly a UiSoft open world, there's something about it that has character. And that thing is Star Wars, right? But there is like a backing up of just the visual design and the fonts and the wipes and the

language that really speaks and is working. So yeah, I thought this was a fantastic presentation. Andy, what did you think of this one? I loved it. I think like there was many times that I kept on thinking this is what I've been wanting to see from this game. I love the walkthrough showing us exactly what you're going to be getting into, what kind of activities, what kind of characters you might be running across.

They showed like that little glimpse of here's what a you get home from work. Here's what like a two-hour gameplay loop might be that you will experience on any given night. And kind of just giving us a little buffet of all these little treats. Here's the dogfighting in addition to all of the scoundreling that you'll be taking part in. visually I thought it looked awesome. It's just kind of what I wanted. You know, I'm excited to play this on keyboard mouse. This is a third person shooter.

I love clicking heads. And it's just, this is what I want. You showed me what I want. Great job. I can't wait. Mike. Yeah, great deep dive. This is exactly, just like these guys said, I'll echo it. This is what I wanted to see.

I'm very excited. As someone who didn't really get into the Jedi Fallen Order with respawn entertainment, I kind of wanted to step away from being a Jedi with the lightsaber and seeing something different. I'm a big sucker for the Ubisoft Open World, so I think this is going to get me. And yeah, hopefully this brings me back to the Star Wars universe. It's been quite some time since I really was excited about a Star Wars game.

This looks rad. I mean, like I feel like they showed this so damn well, like the variation in all the gameplay that we're seeing here. And I feel like for the classic Ubisoft thing of like, hey, let's kind of show a trailer and then have someone talk about it and then show a deeper breakdown of VEO stuff. I think it actually was worth all the time that they spent on it because everything looks good

and the more they talked about it, the more I'm like, oh, wow, they could actually pull this off. And, you know, a lot of potential hesitations in terms of like, can it be too bloated? Can it be too big? Whatever. I feel like what we're seeing today,

it's like, oh, wow, this has the chance to be a moment for Ubisoft. If they pull this off, big ifs, but if they pull this off, that is going to be, I think, a game changer going forward. But enough about just our thoughts on what we saw. Greg Miller, you got to play Star Wars outlaws.

Tell me all about it. I think the easiest summation is, obviously, when you go to an E3 or an SGF, there are the J.W conversations you have. You bump into an old friend. You bump into somebody you haven't seen it in six months since Game Wars or something. And they go, oh, how's your show? What's the best thing you've seen? I said to anybody who asked me at the end of the day,

well, I have the boring answer and then the interesting answer, right? The boring answer is that Star Wars Outlaws was phenomenal. It's my game of the show. It is the one I can't wait for. It caught me off guard in that realm because, of course, I went to the Ubisoft offsite to play this and watch a presentation about Assassin's Creed.

And I would have going in, excited about Star Wars, but I'm like, this Assassin's Creed is so up my alley, right? To get to sit down and play three missions in this 20 minutes apiece or they would have timed out of 20 minutes. It was a little short, I think, in each one of them. Three different missions than what you've seen today. They weren't these.

I was legitimately like, holy shit, blown away. This is, especially for Assassin's Creed, but here as well, like, you do need to go back and watch this in 4K. This game is gorgeous. That was the first thing that I found stunning about it. And then I think we've had so many questions about how to shooting feel. What about this? This didn't demo that was.

On sticks, I didn't have those issues. On sticks, I thought it felt very smooth, very natural. I think they did a good job of setting up K and how her blaster works and that you're this scoundrel as they obviously drove home today. They drove through in the message before we played. And again, after having played it, now legitimately at the top of my, holy shit, I can't wait to get my hands on this game. Like, my hope is that they stick with that.

Because these three missions all felt very much like what you've all been talking about and your thing here of just living in this world, just existing in this world, taking the mission, going and doing the thing. As Julian said, you are assembling a team here to go off on the ultimate heist and yada yada. However, the things I played were three different missions. One was called False Flag. This was a dog fighting mission, is how it was described. The next was the wreck, which would be a more exploration-based mission.

The next one was the relic, where I had to get a relic and bring it back for one of the factions. I jumped right to the wreck. It was a crashed high republic ship. It had been down a while. It's derelict, you know what I mean? And it was the, all right, let's go in there and do that. This had the atmosphere you'd want from that. When I say that, it had the climbing, and I think it set off really what I feel I want from this game,

and where we're going for, which is that open world, but it is uncharted. Like, you know, I'm going through the ship and I'm exploring and it's doing the tropes of, you know, you're walking in the, well, the thing gives out and you slide down and you jump and you use your rappel and you get over there. And then it's, oh, man, how do I get up there? You look around and, like, Kay's blaster can either be red for kill or blue for this stun shot or electrical interference, right? So it was that, you know, you shoot your blue side of it to power up this battery that

moves the elevator and you hop over there and you climb. and there's a bunch of those kind of things and going to terminals and getting information and trying to restart this and radioing back to the guy on your ship who's talking you through what your little mission McGuffin is there, right? But I love that exploration.

And then of course, obviously bad guys show up and you have to hide and you get into the firefight and then guess what? The whole thing's going to explode. So now it's one of those sprint out as a self-destruction is about to happen. And again, great visuals, great, I thought tension. Like it felt like I was playing Star Wars, right?

And again, the way I connect with Star Wars, right? And again, the way I connect with Star Wars is the games. And so far, that's been mainly the Jedi ones. But it's nice to have this different look at the universe and this different thing of her and her assembling the team. The demo ended running out and bumping into basically ND, the robot you heard her talking to at one point. Right. And him helping you, but you're not sure. But clearly he's going to become a companion on the ship and be part of the mission.

Loved it. Like, again, this is my first time jumping into this world. And it was how great the HUD looks, how awesome it is to have the text pop up there, to feel like you're wrapped up in that Star Wars universe, right? Mike, one of the things you comment on, and you know how much I love in a media game when we talk about Starfield all the time, the lock picking, right?

Like, they're doing their own thing. You saw it in the demo really quickly on one of them, right, where the first things they talk about are your data spike and your splicing tool. These will be the two different ways to, like, what you're doing at a computer terminal to hack it or a lock picking deal, right? The lock picking they showed,

and I think it looks boring as shit to watch, but the idea when you're playing it is, it's doing a rhythm and you have to then match the rhythm. So it's like a rhythm game of like Simon says. It's good doing the beat and then you have to do it in beat with it. You're so good at B-roll. So I don't think this looks interesting, but playing this,

especially dropping in and being like, great job to the demoist who did not help me. But I read the description. I'm like, okay. And then you like third try, get it. I'm like, oh, that's fun. I like that.

Same thing they didn't show it here. Their hacking of a system game, right, is basically wordle, where it pops back up and it's got all these different glyphs on cubes, right? And you, it's, at least the ones I did. I think this is not speaking incorrectly, but it's, you know, three blank spaces to fill in, right? So you put him in there and it'll light up green if it's in the right place. It'll light up yellow if it's the right letter, but not there and gray out of his. And you only have so many tries. The ones I did were super

basic, but like, I assume later on when it's actually a wordily kind of game, I'm like, oh, that's going to scratch the edge. And there's accessibility options where it's like, if you don't want the glyph, you can just do numbers and, you know, turn it on the whole bunch a different thing. It's right there. Like, when you get introduced to the game, it'll do this. And I think there's even a more advanced mode that it talked about, but I was like, let's not get crazy just yet. And sadly, as a huge nerd, I wasn't doing a ton

of that. So I was like, I want to do more of that, but it was to see stuff. What sort of customization? Hard to say. I did not have the full suite, nor with the time limit of 20 minutes each. I really didn't kid around with it. I did jump out. I know you can change your blasters color and stuff like that and there's skins for that.

I didn't have anything on lock, though. I think when actually what happened is I hit customization square and it was like not installed where there was nothing to do it is there so we'll see what you do with it. From there the next one I did I jumped into the relic. This is you know we have to go get this relic

so you're sneaking into an enemy base right. It starts you know I think the cool thing I would tell you that this one shows a bit of but really it'll be the dog fight one false flag is the fact that the game like I said feels like playing a movie and it

definitely feels like you're never leaving K side. I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's one shot the entire game, obviously whatever, but it is the idea of like, all right, here's this mission, you need to sneak in, you need to infiltrate, you need this. So you start outside and it's a snowy planet and she's got her big coat on or whatever, and you walk up to the gate and the guy's like,

get the fuck out of here, you know, you get blah, blah, blah. And so then it's like wandering around the sides, trying to figure out my way in and then, okay, hold, over here, climb up here. Oh, there's a little heating vent or whatever, go in there, start exploring through, you know, get out, pop out, boom. There's other people there, but they're not like, it's not weird that you're inside yet.

and then, you know, go all the way and get into this, like, trophy room, blah, blah. I was having trouble with the stealth. Again, 20 minutes. I didn't want to screw around in each one of these missions. So I was like, you know, the guy would walk and then I'd be like, all right, cool. Like, I'm not going to wait for his walk cycle. Clearly there's going to be, like, every other game, there's going to be plenty of time to get there. And I would try to crawl to him and know he would turn around and I'm in a giant gunfight in there.

But then I would find vents and stuff. I'm like, oh, there would have been cool ways to do this if I hadn't immediately triggered it and shot him. Again, I can't speak to even what difficulty I was playing on. I did find combat very easy. Like I wasn't having trouble getting everybody killed. Again, it's Star Wars. I don't think that's like crucial to it. I felt good to do it.

I enjoyed shooting. I enjoyed what I was doing blowing up canisters like they were showing you there. But you know, you get the relic. Crawl back out, fight your way up. Bob, blah, boom, right? And then you go off and, you know, you deliver it to it. You get to have this conversation with the queen. You also have to talk about your way in there and do a few different things.

But again, it was the journey of doing it. And then also the journey of getting there. where it wasn't like do it fast travel I'm there something you know we talk so much shit about understandably because it is an immersion breaking for Starfield right this one really wants you to be so far anchored in the boots of K and what you're doing and going off on it

but I make the choice right and it pops up and it's like oh well you know you've gained this with this crew but lost that with that crew because now they're mad for you helping oh real quick yeah please while you were deciding to not do fast travel were you getting distracted by anything off on the side and see that's what I'd like to go to next

I think I'm using this correctly and I'm fairly certain. I just want to make sure. So the one where they were like, okay, cool, false flag. It's going to be about dog fighting. I'm not the biggest dog fighting fan, period. I love catfights.

So I was like, okay, I don't know. I saved it for last. I had plenty of time. I went in to do it, right? And this is the one that I found most impressive in a proof of concept and I can really see what the other missions

were like starting me in from, right? For that one I just talked about, You start already on the planet, about to approach the thing. Like, okay, that's cool. The one that was the wreck where you meet ND, right? When you finally get away from the guys and meet the robot, he's like, I'm going to hold them off. You go.

You run and you jump on your speeder and then the demo ended, right? This one was, we start on the imperial ship. We're there. I forget what the reason was, but I didn't see that part. But we're already up there, right? And it's about sneaking, doing the thing, blasting the bad guys, taking out a bunch of stormtroopers, activating the thing to get your ship for you to get out, right? You go down, you get down there, you activate the cargo thing to move, and like you're holding off the guys, and then they're finally done.

And it's like, you sprint, you get on your ship. And this is where like, all right, you're on your ship. Like, take it out, take it out of port and go. Get in the dogfight, shoot all these different things, right? Then you come in and land, which they showed there, they show in this demo, right? And you're landing in Toshara, or the planet is Toshara. The city is Miragana. You land there, get out.

And again, I don't know. Nobody does, obviously, because we don't have the final game. If every planet's like this, if I'm doing the side stuff and it feels this good, even to pick it up, holy shit. Because this place was bustling. Like it was, you're walking through and it feels real of like, there are people over there gambling and watching something.

There are people over here talking about Saka, or whatever the card game is, Sabak, talking about that. It felt like, man, there's a lot of stuff going on here and side conversations. And again, a plethora of NPCs that have nothing. nothing really going on, but then it was walking and there's this gambler over there or whatever. And like, I walked towards him and I forget he must have an icon. Maybe I hit R3. Interact R3 on this game, which I thought was interesting. Like on doors and everything else, clicking in R3 to

interact to pick stuff up. Walked over to this dude though and she's like, oh, I'm from a casino planet. I know that look. And he's like, I lost everything, but it was one hard way. Mike, I'm going to interact to E, by the way. Get out of here. But then it's like the option pops up of like, you know, fuck off and do nothing, give him a little bit of money, give him a lot of money. I don't know.

Give him a ton of credits. And I'm like, go here, you know, have another round down me. And he's like, oh, thank you so much.

He's like, I swear I'm going to win so much. Come back. Come back and check in me later or whatever. And I was like, I was like, that's a cool teaser for if I'm coming back to this planet all the time or the space port,

or even if I'm not, if I just forget about it and come back way later. But then, you know, made my way over to wherever I was going and it's a bar and there's this dynamic, baby. It felt like a real place.

And so I'm really hopeful that yes, when it is, I asked the demo as to whether to go get somebody else. Is this like, are these side missions, are these main missions? These were golden path missions. So, you know,

they're going to have that high bar of quality. But I am fascinated to see what I pick up along the way and what that does to me as I go. We got a couple of super chats here for you. Kabob says, Greg, is Outlaws always an ultra-wide? Is there the letterboxing going on? I did not notice.

I couldn't tell you. I feel like everything we've seen it has been. I wonder if the demo was or if that's more just a presentational thing. I kind of imagine they'll stick with it because it does give it a unique kind of vibe and I think adds to that cinematic Star Wars nature to it all.

I doubt they will. I don't know. But then I was surprised at Hellblade too. I wonder if it's just a setting, right? Like it'd be such a weird choice to force the letter boxing the entire time. Make it feel like a film? Like I get that and I get what they're going for

but as a video game, it just feels weird to me that like, because the UI in here is kind of accounting for the letterbox? Yeah, exactly. Oh, it's weird. Greg, in what ways would you say this is a Ubisoft game? And are there ways that you're like, it's not? Well, it's hard to say. Again, like, I wish this would have been like I'm dropped into my ship.

And you're only three missions active and you can go go to them and figure that out. I don't know what that point-to-point feel is going to be, right? Of like, how much downtime do you have and where do you pick the thing and how do you go for it? So it's interesting, looking at what we saw today, right, I think as a Ubisoft game fan, you look at that, you're like, oh, I see all that. Yeah, marking the enemies, doing the thing, flying off there. But playing it, I don't know if you could have, if there would have been the hallmarks of Ubisoft.

You know what I mean? I don't know if there would have been that deal. I think, if anything, you could have dropped me into that first mission on the High Republic crash ship, right? And I would have been like, oh, you know what? This must be respawn. Like, I'm climbing up the Star Wars grading. I'm doing this thing there.

Obviously, she's not nearly as fast as cal or nimble as cal of the Jedi, right? But I didn't feel like this. Oh, clearly this is a UB game. I didn't get that. And I think that's something interesting for massive especially, right, coming off of the division, now doing this. This is a far different game. And I didn't see that in there either.

Where I'm like, eh, it's a far cry from the division. And I didn't see the division hallmarks in there either. Rajiv in the chat says that the creative director said you will be able to play in 169 or in this ultra wide. Great. I'd like to ask about the combat because, yeah, to me when we first saw it, she's shooting from the hip, and it just felt like an odd perspective to me

where maybe I won't feel good about that, but you said it did feel good when you were playing it. 100%. Yeah, what is that? Because it's just a different look to it all, I guess. Stylusistic, Han Solo. That's 100%. There's a bunch of times where she's shooting

and she has her hand up like Han Solo. So I think it's just a style choice. But you're watching the reticle. You're not watching her. And that charge shot? What was that like? It's good. You know, the special ability down there on RB,

as you can see on the screen right now, right? That's the one that will knock out anybody. But it needs a while to recharge. So the idea is that, you know, you're using the blue to shoot robots, using the red to shoot humans, right? Give them more charge, but that big charge can knock out of the people.

Again, as much as I messed up stealth the two times they did, because I'm like, I want to see what the melee chokeout is. I want to get close to on that. But then they turn around. I'm like, damn, you're turning faster than I thought you would.

Which is exciting in a way. Like, I hate, I love stealthing in a game like Assassin's Creed, but I also think that's always when you're like, oh, this is such a fucking video game. I'm laying in the weeds whistling at you. You come at me. Any final thoughts on Star Wars Outlaws?

I can't wait for more. I can't wait to get my hands on it. I hope there's a, I mean, it's close, right? August is not far away whatsoever. So if they're going to give more, I hope it's a, hey, come over and play for three hours. Just do what you want from the start of the game. And if not, I hope they show nothing else

and the game is as good as it seems today. Very exciting stuff. It looks fantastic. Moving on, we got Ex-Difiant. A couple new modes. you'll capture the flag, Mike. Yeah, a new faction coming in, G-SK, very similar to what it looked like in Rainbow Six Seed.

So that's what I'll call it for right now. I don't have the big press release. And then they did have Capture the Flag, which was nice. They said there was more coming. I was left wanting more as someone who's lukewarm on X-Define. I have fun with it, but it is not my go-to choice right now to spend my nights with. I wish there was something more. I am a little interested of why they didn't go a little bit hard.

harder on that, but it was fine. It was fine to me. You'd have to ask blessing of Andy if this got them going of like turn it back on. I mean, it was like a crazy showcase for it, right? But like, you know, I like seeing, I like hearing that they're adding in new maps every month and also like getting a little peek at the maps. Yeah, Captial Flag sounds really fun. Like I was like we're talking about during the thing. I feel like Captainsal Flag is almost like an old school FPSPVP mode now. You don't hear that as often. And so that sounds really fun. And yeah, I'm like, it's one of those ones where I think this almost felt like a, well, the game just came out and it's one of the things we're really trying to push. And so let's spend some time with it, even if we don't

have that much to say about it. But I think the stuff they showed on my, all right, cool. Like, this feels like just an update on where we're at. I'm sure we'll see more down the line. Yeah, I don't think if, I don't think you could have really showed anything more of this or needed to. Like, I think it was the adequate amount of like what they could have shown or also it would have felt like, okay, this game's already out. We don't need, you know, I don't need to hear about what's coming to the battle pass or anything like that. it doesn't like make me you know itch my arms

but I gotta get home and like play any of this content but you got to assume there's a lot of like hardcore ex-de-fine fans out there that are hot on this game that just kind of came out a month ago or whatever and they're super into it and they want more content. How are you, what's your release calendar going to be like? How often will we be seeing these content drops?

I thought it looked cool. I think it seems like they're doing a good job of already adding a brand new mode. That's pretty neat. feed this audience, right? You do have something owned right now. There are people there, so get some stuff for them. Yeah, it's just one of the marquee titles there, right?

You bring up the big three they had, and then more. It just felt like, hey, we could probably sit on this for a quick five and go a little bit more in depth on the new faction, really get people excited. And, yeah, just felt kind of came and went like a lot that we're going to talk about here in a middle. In a minute. Yep, skull and bones was next up. There's a bunch of new sea creatures coming. We've got a Megalodon.

We've got all this stuff. anyone jumping back? So excited for chorus of havoc. No, I'm good. Yeah. Yeah, I, you know, I just, I don't care. Like, I just can't care about this one.

Like, I wish all these games success. And if you're a player, that's great. But for me, it was like, Black Flag was so good. Yeah. And it was so, and then to do this and have it not be, but it is, but it jested forever, but this. But then see a thieves. I feel like I've satiated my, the amount of pirate hunger I have.

is resatiated. I'm impressed. I mean, I think this is a game that we all kind of teased of like, well, they're going to put this out and it's just going to die and they're going to leave them and walk away from this.

They're clearly committed to this and they're going to keep going. I would love to know the background knowledge of that, but like, yeah, this is a game. They have so many of these live service games and service games that are like, are just living and it looks like skull and bones is going to live.

I think this might have not been the right place it was, but Rocksmith was somewhere. That was after. It was after St. Okay. Well, then, let's just talk about Rocksmith right now because I don't think we have too much to say. Cool it still exists, getting the piano stuff

in there. Like, there is a dedicated audience for this game that is not that large, but it's being supported. There's something really cool with Rocksmith, so good for them. Yep, exactly. I was interested enough when they announced piano last year at the end of it, right, that they sent a keyboard one for me to try it out on.

And I was like, great. And then I still haven't had time to do it. However, Roger did. Roger wanted to, and Roger actually used it for a bit. If memory serves, he said it's cool, but not like the best way to learn piano. Cool. And then yeah, next step, we got the little Prince of Persia segment that obviously I loved. But real talk, I think they did a great job with this. I mean, celebrating Prince of Persia's 30th anniversary, that alone just didn't expect this much love. The pixel guys in the background, like going through all the different princes in that style gets me excited, just even that they think about this franchise in that way, because I know I do. Like, I love most the iterations of Prince of Persia. And the fact that Lost Crown is easily the best one so far. And we're getting some great looking DLC. Stoked on a lot. all of that. The Rogue Prince of Persia, like I said earlier,

like I haven't really had time to sit with it, but it looks great. I mean, come on. Evil twin working on that, like, that just sounds like a match made in heaven. And then just the end with the Sands of Time, I think they might have hyped it up a little bit too much of like the way she presented it of like the one more thing, but just seeing

that, it's like, I know it sounds silly to be excited over a candle being shown, but the fact that this candle doesn't look like it's in the art style of what we saw last time. That's the news. Like, that's the vibe of like, look, this is a reboot of the project. There's a reboot of the remake. And that's really all I needed to know is that I believe in this now.

Like, I, when they first announced it, I was excited just because they, back in 2020. It's great fun, by the way. It's awesome, right? But back in 2020, I think it was when they announced Prince of Persia Sands the Time. I was just losing my shit that they were even talking about Prince of Persia at all as a franchise. And they showed it. And it didn't look good. It looked bad.

But I was like, all right, well, at least it's, Prince. Now that lost crowns out, now that Prince is back, baby, I believe, and I think that they know that they need to get this right. What I needed for this to be a massive win for me, and I think it would be a massive win for Ubisoft is to say,

hey, this game that's gotten like a bunch of nine out of tens a ten out of tens, Prince of Persia lost crown, it's available now on Steam. You've got to get more people buying this game. You're so stuck on your own launcher, and you want that exclusivity. You want people to be in your environment, but that pushes people away, man. And what you need to do is put that shit on Steam on the weekend that you happen to put it on sale

or something like that because you're discounting the amount of adults with disposable income that are scrolling through Steam on any given weekend and go, oh, this thing's $22 bucks. Ah, I heard it was really good. Let me just click purchase on. Like, people will make purchases like that every once in a while and you are you're missing out on such a big audience and you're hurting yourself by not selling more of these copies do you think there's anything in the plan that it's just like well when it gets to 1.0 when it's a full release we'll put it to steam oh and i'm not talking about rogue prince of pros i'm talking about lost crown gotcha oh my god it's not on steam no oh my god it's ubsop launch a thing anyway shit yeah they got to start doing it like Xbox where yeah you go to the Xbox launch

app for the game past stuff yeah the games are there but it's also on steam because we know there's a massive audience that will just buy the games and we keep it moving. So you've got to figure that out. You're missing out on the largest player base on PC. I just don't understand the thinking there. Yet, like, I know you love your launcher.

You can still do things there. You could still, like, have people get their Ubisoft points and get a little funny costume because you logged on or whatever. But, like, is that worth it? Because you're going to continue laying people off while you're shooting yourself in the fucking foot, you know? Amen.

Any other Prince thoughts? I still want to get back to it. Like I said, when I did Tales of Kanzara, or Kanzara. Zao. I was like, after that, I went and did the intro to Prince to be like, I want to make sure I'm not off base.

I'm like, damn, this is a fucking great game. I got to get back to this. Oh, yeah. And God, they're giving us so much more. Then we got Avatar, Story Pack 1, the Skybreaker. You can't fucking wait. Dope's name, July 16th.

I mean, on one, on one hand, I'm surprised they're supporting this game with this type of stuff. On the other hand, it's Ubisoft. This is what they do. And they're going to do Ubisoft stuff. Put out the game and we're going to update it forever, it feels like. We're going to sell you a season packed, and we're going to make sure we give you three DLCs with it.

That's the Ubisoft formula. Every Ubisoft game, for the most part, it is a live service to some extent. And, like, they stand by it. And I think in some cases it works, and other cases it can get kind of weird. I think this is one of those cases where it's like, oh, man, it's kind of weird.

I could have seen the vision here if Avatar felt more, popular and I don't know what the sales numbers even look like nowadays for this game, but I feel like I just don't hear people talk about Avatar in this way. You figure they said in this one, right, it's part of the season past. So like, they're doing it no matter what. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. But yeah, I mean, good on them for supporting this game. We got the crew motor fest. Mike. Hey, new season, new year. Dunk. It's donks versus low riders. I mean, when we did the predictions, I gave you a list of like

14 games that they will be supporting. And this is one with a new update coming your way. You know, this is their racer. This is Ford's some horizon to them, right? This is what Ubisoft is going to do for, you know, I don't want to say the end of time, but this is their racing game. And, you know, maybe you're into it.

I'm no, I've never jumped in. I'm not into it. But, like, people are out there. And when you have a racing game, you add content to it because there's a lot of cars and races that could be. They have a new island out there with Hawaii in that. like, yeah, this is what it's going to be. I don't like this track mania erasure that you're doing.

This is their race name when track man Mike, where is trials, man? Where is his trial? You know what, Barrett? It's been five years. Please, at the end, I would like to have a small segment of things I'd like to talk about after this. Absolutely. That's it, Barrett is right. Then we get the only new game

announcement here. I know 117 packs for Romana. Coming at 2025. The winner soldier. 2025 for this one. Bless you, you were the first to call out what the game was. That's all I got for you.

I don't even know what this game, like, what Ano is. It's a big city builder. I've played it with Washburn before. Very in-depth. This is one of those city builders where it goes really granular on that if you want to get wild with it.

It reminds me of a Civ 7 situation where people love civilization. Are we those people? No, right? But there is a dedicated ANO audience out there that gets, excited about these games, that it will be big and continue on. So, yeah, you know, this is one of those where it's the unknowns.

It's not the unknowns we want at this desk, but it's an unknown to somebody that wanted that. So that's a big announcement, I'm sure. Then we got this little update montage for Honor year eight season two. You get the Marasama Blade, Brawl Hall. I got some update. The crew motorsport stuff. Monopoly.

It's back, Greg. Dude, it never left. I'm excited. I'm excited. Is that an update for the monopoly game that already existed? No, first off, there's like 9,000 Monopoly games. But I remember we played one during pandemic. That was a Ubisoft one on SWIF.

Oh yeah, Ubisoft's got that monopoly license and they're gonna use it for them. Don't worry about it. This is a new game. This is a new monopoly. Okay, so we got two new... Hasnag Monopoly is back. Did you not see the dice rolled into the water? I did see the graphics.

I was like, this looks way better than the one we played. Technically, Blast, they revealed this one of the pre-shows. I don't know if it counts. That's fair. Then we got... Unless you're about to go through the more of the reel. Yeah, yeah.

Then we got Trackmania, Rider Republic, new season, June 19th, and then Battle Corps, which is this Marvel game. But I will say, I think this reel did work on me. Like,

I want to jump into Ferran. It was a good reminder that Forer exists and that people like it and that it's still getting updates. But then also, yeah, Riders Republic, I was like, ah shit,

yeah, they did put skateboards in that. I kind of want to try that out. And so, like, for me, it got the job. And also remind me about Trackmania, but for me, this real got the job done. Any other thoughts of the real?

I mean, I wish BattleCore was a little more love, right? I kind of, it's not like it's my game and it's brand new, but it is something like for Andy, right? Like, if you weren't on the predictions episode when I was like, hey, they just announced the game that like released three days from now, like get ready for it. Like, it is odd that we weren't like, hey, this is a brand new game. Check it out.

It was very much like, oh, it's in the mix of live service games. If you know about it, you know about it. If you don't know, goodbye and just walked away. That's an odd move to me. That's another like roller champions sort of deal. Like, it really seems like being sent out to die. in a way. Like, man, I really thought I was being punked.

I had no idea that was a real game. The game just dropped on June 6th, so that's four days ago. Battle Corps is an arena, free-to-play competitive, platform shooter where gravity mastery is key to victory. I wrote, it's marbles, but like, we wouldn't have known that at all. We don't know anything about that game. Very odd move on that. No, but Marbles, like,

you don't control. Like, you just let the fucking marbles do their thing. Well, you're a marble, and you run. around on like, I'm talking about like a marble track game that you normally see. It's like that. Yeah, I mean, this looks like just like a third person shooter, but you're, you're like, what was that a go meca ball? Yeah, go meca ball. Like this looked really fucking fascinated in me.

I thought, I thought it had like a cool kind of vibe to it. I just had no idea it existed. Yeah, there's a bizarre category of Ubisoft games that are, yeah, roller, this game that we're talking about. And like, it's, and it almost feels like they don't want to make these games, but somehow they like got contracted or they started them and they're like, ah, fuck. Well, our whole vision is changing,

but these things are halfway done. Yeah, which country sponsored this game to be played? Yeah, because, like, I'm with Andy that I didn't know this game existed until we did our predictions and Mike was talking about it and I thought Mike was making it up. I was like, oh, Mike's mistaken. Mike's mistaken.

Yeah, I saw a game ball. I was like, there's no way at Ubisoft just put this thing out. But, yeah, like, why is it part of a real? Right? It feels like in previous years, they would have highlighted this like a roller champions, right? we have this new fun third person shooter that you're a marble on a cruel track and you're fighting each other they would have highlighted that this year it's very odd that they're to say it i think this is the way you show this game if you see this we don't need to know anything more than what we're seeing here it ends with fucking play it free go if you're interested you get to go play this game now like yeah but like blessing said ubysoft with their weird games this is normally a ubysoft title that would be shown for three to five minutes and you'd be like yeah i don't give a shit we don't fucking i don't they like they always promote this stuff but i think this is the right thing is the right thing

way to promote it though. I feel like any, this is why I'm giving this showcase a higher score is like they just kept everything tight like kept it to information for the most part. I guess I'm not even mad about the way it was being shot. I'm just like maybe I'm mad at myself. I didn't know it existed. Maybe I'm mad at Ubisoft too for like for

putting this out with very little fanfare. Like you're just mad at Mike in general. You got to feel really bummed out if you're part of the team that worked on this and be like what are we doing man? Like we you know we've been working on this for two years now or a and a half and like it's just like here's this here's this thing you know i don't know there's like just

no marketing i do wonder there's a specific marketing plan for ubsop that is for like games of this category that are the smaller we're aiming at kids we're just scrolling through the playstation store the x-box store because i remember like back in the day like when i first got my ps3 or even like when i first got a ps4 where it's like okay i don't have a big library library of games i'm just on the free-to-play section of playstation and i see if i see planet side too and i'm like oh i'll download this give this a shot I feel like maybe there's like an angle there where Ubisoft's like, cool, we don't want to give you five minutes in the Ubisoft for it. Because like it's us watching it, right?

It's like the adults in the room. We're trying to aim this for a specific for like the kiddie crowd. So let's put this on a store. Let's see if we can like give this good positioning on the switch or whatever. Yeah. And then it all ended with Assassin's Creed. But before we get into that, I want to get in a couple of super chats that y'all have left. Nina McKee just sends a super chat.

It doesn't even say anything. Thank you, Nina for your support. We appreciate that so much. Nick Cameron says, do you think it would have been better to show their games in the Summer Game Fest Showcase or other places than having their own showcase? Yeah, this was something I was going to talk about at the end, but we'll talk about a little bit now with what Greg said of like, there's this weird feel of like they have to do this. This felt like you didn't have to do that. I think you could have put either Star Wars or Assassin's Creed to help support Jeff. And that would have been just fine if we had 10 to 20 minutes of Assassin's Creed and Jeff's show.

I don't think that would have changed anything here and probably would have helped. Jeff out more if we didn't do this. But there's that feeling of like we have to do these. You want to pay Jeff two million dollars. That's for that's a catch. Jeff would not be paying for that. Yeah. I think Jeff would look at them and be like, I need the support this year when we talked about he did a great job highlighting Indies, which was awesome. But like the AAA big budget, everybody's going to be talking about at moments. He did not have this year, right? And so if one of those two showed up in that style, I think that would have totally helped Jeff out for sure. tumultuous layoffs and toxic workplace.

Speaking of which, here's a show you. Then we got Wartable Entertainment saying, reactions for outlaws have been mid by the big media sites today. I'm worried. I haven't seen any of these. I've got to read some previews later. And then AK.98 says,

do y'all think people would buy UB games on Steam even if it downloads Ubisoft Connect? What was that? We'd act like we didn't hear that. Okay. Great. we'll keep on. It sounded like a boom or someone stomping on the roof,

but I said one more time, Tim. Why release, wait, no. The new Supertouches just came in. Do y'all think people would buy Ubi games on Steam, even if it downloads Ubisoft Connect? Yeah, I just think they'd complain. Yeah, it'd be a complaint, but it's the fact that, like,

when we talk about availability and Steam is now the thing that you just always have open on your PC, it's going to Twitter and looking through Twitter. Yeah. Tim just giving us a look. Greg just said Slack. Yeah,

hence why I lost it there for a second. Sorry, I lost the plot. I know you're asking a question that I should have had more to say on or whatever. You should have been on that one. That's fun.

No, I apologize. Yeah. Breaking news, ladies and gentlemen from Twitter, that the comic story in this passed away. I don't know if you remember Ben,

but he was through the old studio a bunch of times to collaborate with us and did Greg's comic book club and I did stuff with him and I was on panels with him. His wife's reporting over on Twitter that he passed away two days ago in an unfortunate accident.

That's just a crazy one to have break in the middle of this and why I probably shouldn't open Twitter while I'm on a show, but I apologize for that one. That's shocking. Yeah, 100%. I did not know Ben well

by any stretch of the imagination, but always a great guy to work with and co-lab about and loved comics and loved talking comics and superhero video games. And, you know, I forget where we originally met. It must have been an RT thing or a let's play thing

or just maybe a skybound Comic-Con panel, but I was always so impressed with what he did, the way he performed, and of course the conversations he would lead on his channel where he would like recap comics. And like if you hadn't caught something, he could go there and he would tell you the story of whatever you were trying to do.

Wow. Shocking. Yeah. Oh, 100%. Sorry. Back to it though. Oh. Well, yeah.

Well, it's that thing. You push it aside and you do the job because that's what we do here, right? But the question of the original Super Chat. that Mike answered, right, was about would this have benefited being in Jeff show or? Oh, no, about Steam, about the, uh, well, the, the question Greg missed on. I was the question because I saw the news and I was trying to process. Sorry.

Do you think it would be better to show their games in summer game fest showcase or other places than my own thing again. So, Jung and I again, I apologize to you guys. I apologize to you the viewer. I understand. I don't, does, I don't think they need Jeff. I, you know what I mean? And that's the whole thing is what we talked about at the start of this show, right? where you're talking about two great presentations for these games, two great showcases for these great games that people are stoked about, right? And so even putting them here,

you know, what do I feel about the direct overall? Like, doesn't matter. Well, you know, it doesn't matter because the games are still great. I'm not leaving here. I'm like, that direct sucks so bad.

I hate Star Wars. Like, whatever. No, that's not the problem. It's more of the fact that I think the day would be better if you were doing what I think is pretty smart with Dragon Age tomorrow of being like,

hey, we're just doing our own thing. Come see us here. Where you pay no one anything? Well, I guess they were in SGF, right? So they probably paid. or Xbox. They were in Xbox. So there was some marketing deal there to promote that. But even, I guess the trailer yesterday didn't even promote the fact they were doing it.

It was Twitter that told me. So it's like you haven't. They must be working on the roof, right? Someone's working on the roof. Bear, can you check with Nick if someone's working on the roof? They're not as far as I know, which is it. I mean, they're moving so slowly too. It's just one man with a hammer going, boom, standing there for five minutes.

Apparently fireworks. Oh. In the middle of the day. There's no better time. They're testing. There's no better time. You got a test for it. Yeah, but it's a pre-alpha.

And then Matt Engman says, why released the Marble Game a few days ago when they could have shadow dropped it today? I mean, because I don't think it matters. I don't think that's a shadow drop of consequence. I think just, hey, it's out, play it free. It's like really all you need. Like, I don't think there's any more excitement for brand new game.

I think it being out at least meant that Mike knew what it was going in. I think it goes into what you're saying to him of like, does it even matter? It's like they gave a, A previous Ubisoft gave a whole lot more time to roller champions, which is probably a much smaller market than a third person shooter that could maybe, you know, make a little more waves and what I personally think was what roller champions is.

And we gave a lot of time to that over the years. It is odd that like you have something that's in a genre that a lot of people play and are looking for maybe you could make a splash there. So yeah, I do think it probably would have been better to shadow drop it here with five minutes of like, hey, here's something that we got going on instead of, you know, we forgot about it. Premier also reminds me me and Greg would talk about old PlayStation and new PlayStation where it's like there are

some things that just caught in the pipeline where PlayStation in 2020 would they release this game? And like if they you know, would they release this game now when they started development on it in like 2015 or whatever? I wonder if that's the case for Ubisoft here where they have this marble game, this marble PVP

game and they're just like, we've been working on it for three years and like you know we greenlit development before we made all these changes and you know switched around the editorial team and did all this shit. I wonder if for them, they're like, we don't even want to support this. We're just putting it out because we have it and we have a team that's working on it,

so we've spent enough money. We're trying to recoup some of this costs. So play it, buy a skin for your marble. I don't know what micro transactions are doing here. I can assume this model skins. Okay, so here we are then the grand finale. Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Let's start with Andy Cortez. What do you think? looks real cool, Tim. Real cool. Can we start with me real quick? Not my preview. Okay. Just the thing of like I said it about outlaws, but especially for us watching this feed,

you got to go back. You got to go back. Because look, my first note is gorgeous from like, I mean like, it was on a theater screen and it was like, holy shit. I came back and I was talking to you guys about it. I'm like, is this next gen or current gen only? Like, it's gorgeous. Like this game looks so fucking good.

And was it? I, we were in the room. We're unsure and I haven't verified. forget. Oh, okay. Yeah, so I want to go around the table real quick and just get some thoughts on what we saw before we get into Greg's preview where he got to see some more behind closed doors type stuff.

Yeah, it's exactly what I wanted to see similar to the Star Wars showcase. Like, I would not have expected to, after being so impressed by what we saw with Star Wars, then showcase ends in me like, wow, I was more impressed by what I saw with Assassin's Creed, especially with my history with Assassin's Creed. Currieg and only. Never being super into Assassin's Creed as a franchise and always kind of fall in. off because possible like story things that just kind of like uninterest me or whatever but um the the talk about the changing seasons and how that's going to dramatically change the whole

visuals of the world along with always having that day and night cycle they also mentioned with that i don't know if you all caught it but like they said with the changing seasons in winter you'll have something like you know ice freezing over on like the lakes and saying you can't dive underwater during winter so cool like other seasons i feel like i failed in like talking about that in our predictions because that was like the article that IGN came out with like a couple months ago. Like they talked about all this stuff. And that's what I was excited to see. It was like if they could actually pull that stuff off in like the showcase that they

had. And I feel like they showed off some real cool shit that I think they're going to pull off. Yeah, the movement, the combat, this changing of characters, deciding what character to go with in certain situations. And just seeing like her move set matched against Ioske's move set, this big brooding dude with like just that whatever bat is with all those spikes is going to be so destructive and then to see this sort of contrast to how her moveset is and how slick and fast everything's going to look. I really enjoyed the moment of being underwater and sticking out the little straw and getting

some air while you're underwater. All that stuff was just super super super impressive. I can't wait for it. I'm really, really shocked by how well it showed and the amount of things and variety that we saw in that showcase. Yeah, really excited. I mean, this is another great deep dive from this team. We knew these were the two big two that we were going to go really in depth on. And this is still a ways away, right? Star Wars is right around the corner.

I didn't think we'd go that deep on a game that's two months out. But it is cool to see a lot of Assassin's Creed here. And it looked great. I do have some questions about gameplay. As someone who plays the Assassin's Creed franchise for a lot of the locomotion and the parkour, I was worried about the male character, Yoske, and like, what is that going to look like? because we saw, yeah, and that's why I'm excited for Greg to talk, because we did see the stealth parkour at the end,

but we didn't see him get up on a fence line and just start running, right? It definitely felt more like, hey, I'm kind of just lugging around, and that's not what I'm coming to Assassin's Creed for. I think that's going to be a tough blend of, like, the balance, which we'll talk to Greg in just a moment, but that's what I need to know more of for me. I'm coming for this for a feudal Japan, cool story. Like, that's what I want.

Yeah, and that's kind of where I'm at, too. I think for me going into this one, I was more excited for the Yaske stuff just for like I think that's a really interesting character the idea of this dude's coming from Africa he's going to be Japan as a samurai and like this you know big big dude among like you know a bunch of people right and like for me I was more locked into this after watching this gameplay breakdown I'm actually way more invested on the gameplay level at least for nowe like seeing the stealth gameplay seeing her sneak in and have all these different tools seeing her like hide underwater and swim through and then use like the little thing to like get

air. There's so much here that seems so cool. That seems awesome. And it really speaks to the stealth game lover in me. Right. And like, yeah, it's doing so much for me. I think, you know, I think this is going to be the one like Andy keeps saying, right? Like I think this my mind, this one might prove Greg wrong in terms of bringing me into Assassin's Creed. At least I hope so. I'm lacking everything I'm seeing here. I don't have much to add. I just want to say I feel like they did such a great job showing off a call of duty black op six a couple days ago yesterday. Yesterday. And such a good job showing off of Assassin's Creed Shadows now that I'm just impressed that for games that we kind of are just like, oh, it's another one or whatever. Being able to showcase things and have us be like, oh, or like updates for the hardcore people of like the little details and changes and stuff.

I think that that's very, very hard to do. I definitely think they pull it off here. Like people are sold on this. But Greg, I need to ask if you're sold on this. You got to see more Assassin's Creed Shadows than even we got to see down at Summer Games Fest. What did you think? Incredibly impressed. And yes, I'm sold on it.

Yes, I'm in. This is what I wanted from an Assassin's Creed in Japan, right? I think, you know, to temper expectations or to my own excitement for it. Like I said, I came in ready to be blown away by this one and I left blown away by outlaws, right? This one's great, but I feel like the more I saw of it, the more I was like, oh, it's Assassin's Creed. And of course it's going to be Assassin's Creed, but I talk so much of like, I'd really like to see the style. I'd really like to see this. Them going to the all white screen kind of brush strokes cut red blood.

That's awesome. I want more of that. We're seeing text pop up on the side in a vertical column. And I was like, okay, do more of that. But I think even just glancing at this screen right now, it's like, okay, yeah, that's Assassin's Creed, right? They're not really, I'm not getting the vibe that it's going to be dramatically different in terms of what I'm looking and what I'm seeing and how it's going. That's fine. I'm great with that because what they have here is amazing.

You know, you said it, Tim, of like, this show. showed so well and was such a great showcase of it, right? The behind closed door stuff for it showed even more. And I wouldn't say even better, but I think it's proof that Ubisoft and the team know they've got this stuff. Because what it was is I saw everything you just saw, I saw behind closed doors, and then I saw the exact same mission two different ways.

And so what they did here is obviously what you're about to see as Barry continues to play off of the choices going, is now A going in at night and doing that, right? after that they were like, all right, let's go the Yaske way, right? and they were like, so you know, you choose him. He says something different. The dialogue's different. You start off and they were talking about it, and I wrote it down right, every fight is a thrilling duel as Yoske. That's the point of this, right? He's got posture attacks, all these different abilities from that. But it's the idea they said that he can't climb rooftops like her. I don't know if that means he can't climb rooftops like her. I don't know if that means he can't climb rooftops like her. I don't know. I don't know. Instead, it is like a samurai movie, right, of you are walking into town and everyone goes, oh, like, you're into the base and they go, oh, shit, it's him. Like in ghost when you call out to people and you're like, hey, let's fucking fight.

So you are taking the main path and dudes are like, oh, fuck, and they run up on you and you get into that sword fight with them and you fucking straight up ahead him or hit him with the giant stick and do, you know what I mean? You're beating the shit out of him, but it's brutal and it is anchored. and I think if I'm going to talk about something that surprised me with it, it was how fun he looks to play. I thought this, I am the assassin,

I am the Batman, I want to be up in the shadows and doing all that. Watching the demo even you saw with the oranges, and this is where I'm telling you, you got to go watch it in 4K, watching, you know, you smash the dude, the oranges spill out everywhere

and like things are exploding, the bamboo reeds are falling. Like, watching him fuck people up. I was like, damn, this is giving me that ghost vibe of like, there's going to be the night where I want to go do this. And something they pointed out is you see the choice here. They were very clear

in the top of the demo, right, of like, most of the game, you have the option of who you want to play. Yes, there will be character-specific missions, obviously, for the story, but they said most of it is who you want to be. So you really can go through their experiment with skill cheese and figure out what you want to do. I'm stoked about that. You know,

you joked about it or made the reference earlier of him running through walls. Like, that is 100% real. Where it is like, he, like, they show it in the clip or one of the montages, I think, of him smashing through the wall, but that is what you did in this mission where you went and you would just break

fucking down doors. You would smash through that. And then it was like to get to the final guy where it was like, you know, she snuck in and came in through the water and used the read. He just got to a point and went, ah, and just went,

but joj, like fucking Hulk. And then came out, the guy's like, what the fun? Like all the dudes came and they killed the dudes. And then the guy just sat there and begged for his life. Like he didn't try to fight you.

He didn't try to run. He was like, I'm fucked. And he got killed and assassinated in a different way. Our tallest dude is five foot 10, man. We can't fight this. guy. This guy, you know, looking like the abomination running through Harlem or whatever. Did you get to see any of the season stuff? No. So they showed that and they talked about as

much as you guys did, but no, no actual, hey, let's go through that. We saw a lot of rain, which I think is this version, this demo, right, had rain as well. Yeah. Rain was a big part of it and showing how that is. One of my questions for it, especially when they were with Now A, right? It was the idea of like playing with shadows and taking out the light. It distracts the guy in the demo you see here, but they made it sound like it would be harder to see you and this, that the other. And so you can fill in the gaps there, but I'm interested to see what that actually is a difference too of like, if I can take out everything if it's like Sam Fisher and moving on it.

But then again, they were like, cool, you've seen it. Yaskay way, right? Let's go and do Nauai. Am I saying that right? Noway. Let's do it now way, but let's do it in broad daylight. And let's do it not the stealth approach. Oh, okay.

And so this was similar to, I mean, they, you know, they jumped over walls and stuff, but it was her basically katana out the whole time and she holds it fucking super sick like she holds it like this with like so it's like when you know fucking snakes walking around with the gun and the knife she's holding it like that and she slice some motherfuckers up and then it was like let's engage people in the same way

and show the different fight styles right again Yaske Samurai sitting there he's gonna be pairing he's gonna be power attacking he's gonna be pushing you off she was all about the dodge dodge roll behind everybody get all and then it was she yeah you don't have it with it's because you're using this weapon right now

and I guess you never use the katana in this right but it was cool of you know over there on the R2 in true Assassin's Creed fashion, right? You have all these different moves you're going to have attached to it, right? One of the ones she had was this, like, look like a bunch of different slices. You're like, oh, she got sliced a guy up

and do whatever, whatever. What it is is that when she went up against armored enemies, you could use it and you go, and you would cut the armor. It's like, cut the armor at the fabric point so the armor would fall away. That's cool. I was like, that's fucking really cool, right?

Obviously, I think she'll be the one that I fight and do, I won't be doing that a lot. I would imagine. I want to be stealthy as shit. I still think I'll play the majority of the game her way, but I am at least coming in, I was like, oh man, I don't think I'm ever going to want to be Yaske, watching him like, I definitely want to try.

I definitely want to try that and see what that's like. Exciting. Yeah. This is really, really cool. Yeah, yeah. Love it. Let's see if we got any more super chats here. Greg, did they talk about before they went into the mission here,

they let you choose between Yaske or now. Is that every mission? Did they talk about that? Is that only certain missions? Like I said, they say you can play most of the game with whoever you want. So I would imagine that if it's going to get to a main story mission off of a main beat like that, you'll have. I think if they're going to come together and talk before something, I think you have it. And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Syndicate was like that, where there's like main missions where you could either choose Jacob or Evie, but then there were some main missions where it was like, no, you're playing as Evie for this one.

No, you're playing as Jacob for this one. Something, another question I have, and I didn't get, I was offered an interview, but bailed to go play other games. I can't talk about yet. I'm interested to see how they play with time of day and how they play with weather and seasons. Because it all sounds great, but like in that choice of who do you want to play with, like, she was like, it's all,

it's all, in the demo you all saw, it's almost nighttime, I'll take it. It went night. When they did it as day, I don't know how they would have chosen to do it as day versus that. And in the same way, I'm like, and granted, I know sitting and waiting

is not something new in video games, but I wonder it'll be, I want to go do it and I want to do it here. And then can it be that like, I want to try this in winter. Am I going to wait for six months? Do I sit there and sit at the campfire and go, what's going on?

It's a real time. Yeah, what are you doing with the season? It's a great question, Greg. Like, how is that timing? I assume it's based on like story progression maybe, whereas maybe you're six of the way through the game. See, I don't think it's going to be. No?

I think it's going, and this is literally talking out my ass. There's probably a, you'll be direct happening right now. Develop an interview, they'll change it. But I would think if you're promoting it that way and talking about, well, sometimes the ice will be frozen. I think it's going to be. be that it would have to be right you don't i'd want to see that mission they just showed like with her at stealth and see what it looks like in winter but maybe that maybe it'll only be side stuff maybe

yeah it doesn't yeah because they've done seasonal stuff in other games that was more story-based the way that they're talking about this makes it feel like it's going to be a bit more active than that uh we got a super chat here are we done with saddens creed yeah i'm done uh super chat from opponents prime saying i'd give the showcase a five out of ten uh they continue their identity crisis I don't know how you see your contemporaries and still have a show out of time. Hmm. I mean, I get the perspective.

I thought this is probably their better ones. I would say who are their contemporaries? Because, like, I don't look at Xbox or PlayStation or Nintendo as, like, the competitors for Ubisoft. I think Ubisoft's contemporaries just don't have showcases, right? Yeah, you stop doing EA play. Yeah, we don't see EA plays. We don't see Capcom showcases.

And when we do, they're whack. Right? Like, honestly, the fact that Ubisoft is doing showcases is more, I think, Not the surprise, but yeah, like that's out of the norm compared to the other other publishers. I'll compare to Ubisoft. Okay. We're done with that. Yeah.

You see the thing? Oh, yeah. I just now that it's like, it's confirmed, I thought it was just freaking people say it. This is GameStop tweeting out. Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater, November 17th, 2024. No. Yeah, but it's already, I'm assuming it's deleted, right? Because it's a screenshot.

It's not. It's not. I'm on GameStop's Twitter. Why would they put out on a Sunday? It's a Sunday. I'm looking at the Lord's Day. Our Lord and Savior. I was asking.

Our Lord and Savior, big boss. Maybe they just want to, you know, I think that's just the error. I can know what's the error? I mean, I'm with you. It doesn't come out on a Sunday. It's a scheduled tweet somebody forgot about, you know, from months ago.

Well, they got the new video with it too. Oh, shit, you're right. All right. Whatever. I'm sure we'll talk all about this on Kind of Funny Games Daily. Hopefully there's something. This game actually has some hidden in 2024. That's going to be wild.

Let us know in the comments below what you thought about the Ubisoft forward for 2024. What your thoughts are on Star Wars Outlaws on Assassin's Creed Shadows and everything in between. Like I've been saying, every day this week, we're going to have awesome kind of funny games cast right after kind of funny games daily. We're going to be breaking down all the games that we got to play at Summer Game Fest. And then Friday, what are we doing, Greg? Friday, ladies and gentlemen, the one, the only Rod Ferguson. from Diablo is showing up to talk Diablo in an interview with me, Zanth from the Diablo podcast,

and then play some Diablo with us afterwards. Sounds like a fun time, everybody. If you're a kind of funny member, you're going to be able to watch the kind of funny podcast in just a little bit, not too long, but until next time, love you all.

Goodbye.