Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Hellblade II Dev on Xbox Future, Senua's Saga Launch - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

Ninja Theory Studio Head Dom Matthews joins Greg and Parris to talk about Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II with less than a week until launch! Let’s talk about the seven years between games, how this one took shape, and what Ninja Theory’s reaction to the Xbox closures last week was. Run of Show - - Start - Housekeeping - An Interview w/ Dom Matthews from Ninja Theory - How is Audio Improved? - What Can We Expect from Gameplay? - Handling Psychosis in a Story - Working with Unreal Engine 5 - Announcing Hellblade 2 Along the Series X - PC Specs - How are You Feeling as a Studio? - Difference Between Making 1 & 2 - Ads - Why Fallout 76 is Fun Now Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody. Welcome to the kind of funny games cast for Wednesday, May 15th, 2024. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside the best voice in the business. We're in a great looking shirt, if I do say so myself, Paris Lily. Are you doing, Greg? I'm great. We're in the Xcast. We're flying the Xcast colors. You know how it is around here.

It's always good to hang out with you, Paris. And I've been able to do it so much more now with these daily games casts. It makes me happy. It makes me happy, too. I mean, you know, change is always difficult. Sure. But now that we're in the change, I get it. I totally get it.

I love it. And I'm on a lot more, so I can't complain. And today, of course, a very special episode of the Gamescast. We are joined by none other than Dom Matthews, the studio head at Ninja Theory. Hello, Dom. Hey, hi. I didn't get the memo about the T-shirt, by the way. Now, well, you know, this is a collector's items now.

You can't even buy the X-Cash shirt anymore. We got them right off this store. Dom, how are you doing? Yeah, I'm really good. Thank you. Really good. Thank you. Shout out to you for having... It looks like we're watching the Xbox developer direct. Like, this is the same camera and shot and everything we've seen you talk. Every time you've talked from Ninja Theory, dynamite setup.

Yeah, I do. I do all of my calls like this. It's the any way I do it. People have these zooms. Everyone else got their AirPods in. You're just sitting there like in the most professional setup of all time. I love it. Dom, I want to get right into it with you because we only have you now for like 25 minutes. So let me real quick just say thank you to our Patreon. Delaney Twine and Kieran Hovesapien and Carl Jacobs. Of course, we're brought to you by the kind of funny membership, but I'll tell you about that later.

Dom, congratulations, I mean, for two reasons, I think. Obviously, we are less than a week from the next installment of Hellblade when we get Senuous Saga Hellblade 2. But also, congratulations on nearly 14 years at Ninja Theory. That is, in dog years, like, that doesn't happen anymore in video games. So congratulations, twofold. Yeah, thank you

There's actually a lot of people here that have been here longer than me actually. I think our longest serving member of the team is 22 years so I'm kind of one of the more junior I was going to say to this hold it over your head all the time

I'm like, you might be studio head but I know really what it's like here Dom talk to me in Paris you are less than one week just mere days from Hellblade 2 being released on the world what is the feeling right now at Ninja Theory? I really good actually

like we're super proud of the game that we've made. There's a good buzz in the team. You know, it's a lot of hard work that goes into making a game and there's a real push into the end to get things finished. And in the world of digital distribution now, you know, work goes right up until quite close to when you launch, but people are done with the game now, feeling really proud.

So there's a good buzz around the place. And we're all just kind of anticipating next Tuesday when we launch and we can enjoy that game that day together. When you say, you know, digital distribution on this thing, is like, is it actually done? Are we already working on a 1.0 patch? Are we doing like day one things? Are you actually taking a breath and enjoying that you cross the finish line?

We are done done. Wow. There might be things that we might want to look at once the game is released, but we are done done and we're really proud of it. Like we're super happy with it. You know, we spent a long time working on this game. Yeah. ...making it as great as possible for the fans.

And yeah, really pleased with how it's turned out. If you're not paying close enough attention, ladies and gentlemen, Hellblade, send you a sacrifice. released August 8th, 2017. That's seven years. That's been a long time to work on this game. Was it right in to Hellblade 2? Was there, did you do kick around other ideas

and then come back to it eventually? Let alone, let's not gloss over. Game comes out in 2017. You're bought by Xbox in 2018. And then, of course, Reveal in 2019 at the Game Awards alongside the Xbox. Like, it's been seven years, but you haven't been quiet, Dom.

Yeah, and we haven't been working on the game. you know, fully for seven years. We released a Bleeding Edge in 2020. So we didn't get straight back, straight into Hellblade 2 after Hellblade Center was sacrificed. There was a lot of stuff going on. So, yeah, it's been seven years since the last game, but we've been working on this for less time than that, for sure.

And when we announced it in 2019, we had that trailer, but, you know, that was really that we had of the game. Everything's been developed beyond that point. So no pressure. Yeah, it's funny that you bring up the 2019 reveal for a cinema of Saga, because that was, I'd never played Hellblade before that. And that was my, oh, wait, they're coming out with a sequel. Maybe I should go check this out.

And then, you know, shortly after that, there was this thing called a global pandemic. So I had plenty of time on my hands. But I remember saying, hey, I'm going to start playing Hellblade. And everybody was reaching out. You got to wear headphones. You need to wear headphones to experience this. So I was like, okay. And I was just treated to this audio showcase that I was just simply not expecting.

So as we go into Senda was Saga, I always screwed up and keep saying sacrifice with Saga. But Saga, what can we expect from the audio? Is it more of the same? Great question. You made some improvements as we go into Saga. I'm very curious. Yeah, it's definitely an experience you want to have wearing headphones again. Like, that's a, it's a, my number one tip.

Today is wear headphones for Hellblade too. Yeah, we've really lent into the things that we did in, in Hellblade Senew's sacrifice, that spatial audio experience that we developed through the use of binaural audio. So we record all of the voices that Senoia hears through this special microphone that's shaped like an actual head, so that it hears the sound like we as humans hear it, so that when you listen back to it on headphones,

you hear those voices in the world around you. And we've done a lot with spatial audio, with new technology that allows us to have those sounds functioned in the world around you in the way that they do in real life. So bouncing around and being absorbed by different materials, those kind of things. And there's a lot more detail there. We have tens of thousands of audio assets in the game from

from huge amounts of foley in there, hundreds of different steps, all those kind of things. So audio is a big part of the journey, big part of the experience. And I think if you enjoyed the audio in Hellblade 1, then Hellblade 2 will be a treat for you for sure. Yeah, I absolutely just, the voice is just everything you did with the audio was fantastic.

But that actually, excuse me, leads me into my next question. Because Greg and I kind of did a re-review of sacrifice last week. And the one thing that we pretty much agreed on was the combat that, you know, I thought it was okay. It was good enough in sacrifice. But as we go into saga, what can we expect from a combat standpoint? Are we going to see vast improvements there? Or because, you know, over the past few years, people have been wanting to see more information about the game. And combat has been the number one question.

So what can we expect from combat? The big thing with combat in Hell Bay 2 is that right at the beginning of the project, we wanted to focus on how can we make each of the combat encounters, each of the battles, feel like part of the overall story and part of the narrative. So every time you face an enemy, it's part of her journey, part of the narrative. The other big change, I think, is that in pursuit of making it feel as immersive and as visceral and as brutal as possible, everything, every movement in the game is based in performance capture. So on Hellblade 1, our combat in that game, we took two days to shoot all of the performance capture for that combat. In Hellblade 2, we spent 69 days capturing all of the combat movements and animation. game. So really what we've changed and we've built the combat from the ground up for Hellplay 2

is that everything in the game, the combat and really everything in terms of what we're doing with gameplay and audio and visuals is in service of Sennawa's story. Is that the same for puzzles? Obviously that was a big part of the first game walking around matching glyphs trying to figure out how to get from one point to the other, figure out where the other thing is. Is it the same idea that you took that because it worked and you guys liked it and have expanded upon it? Yeah, again, it's how can we use interesting gameplay mechanics to move the story forward to give the player a particular feeling? So, yeah, we have combat, obviously I've talked about. We have our puzzles in the game as well.

But all of those puzzles really start in Senew's experiences of psychosis and how she experiences the world differently. So we've spent time talking to people with lived experience of psychosis, experts with neuroscience. to understand what it can be like to live day to day with psychosis. And that's really helped to feed into things like the puzzles in the game and how they engaging, compelling in their own right, but they're part of that journey that Senna was on that's led by her experiences of mental health. Paris, I know you wanted to talk about this in the psychosis and stuff.

And obviously, Dom, that was what I think was such the breakout narrative in 2017 when this game dropped is that you and the team were tackling this in such a serious way. I assume you've only doubled down on that coming into Hellblade 2, correct? I know there's this panel, but it just went up not too long ago on YouTube with you and Cambridge talking about it, right? Yeah, we've got some incredible partners on the mental health side, Professor Paul Fletcher from the University of Cambridge, who I first reached out to 10 years ago now for Hellblade 1.

and a group from a local recovery college who have lived experience of psychosis. And we're certainly not complacent about what we learned on Hellblade 1 in terms of representing these types of experiences. And like you say, we've doubled down. We've worked with them very closely, sat with them throughout development, tried things out, had them listen to the voices, see the visual representations of visions. It's been really great to go through that journey. Next Tuesday, when we get together as a team on our launch day in our studio, It's going to be really cool to have Paul and other people come together and celebrate that with us because I think they feel just as proud of the project as we do.

You know, I want to jump a little bit to the technical side of the game. You briefly touched on some of the performance capture that you've done, which has looked phenomenal. And I think we've thought since 2019 that Hell Blake 2 is just going to be a visual showcase. What has it been like working with Unreal 5? Because you are one of the early games that are. coming out here on Unreal 5. So what has that process been like over the past few years? Yeah, really great.

Unreal 5's great engine. We've worked with Unreal for a long time and with our friends at Epic. It's been really good. What Unreal does is allows creative people to be creative and that's the coolest thing. So when we're using with technology like Nanite now in our environment art, it just allows our artists

to do so much more. And our focus on Help Lake 2 has been on how can we take ground truth reference from the real world and translate that into the game. So Unreal Engine allows us to do things like take real world locations in Iceland to take satellite data and photogrammetry data and to bring that into the game world so that our world feels very believable. Same with characters, same with costumes. So we've built actual real world costumes for our characters by costume designers and then being able to scan those and translate those into the game as well. So what Unreal Engine 5 can do now is really fantastic.

But it gives our team, there's quite a small team really. We have about 80 people working on the game. But it allows them to do so much more. And like you say, our aim is to make an immersive experience. And it's a game that looks great and sounds great, but really all of that is in service of the immersion. and the Unreal Engine is definitely a huge part of that. Let me talk on that thread for a second.

You talk about being a small studio, you know, 80 people. What is it like when Xbox, your new boss for a year, is like, hey, guess what? We're going to debut the Series X at Game Awards, and you and Sen you are going to be the centerpiece of it. Is that, like, is there a moment of, oh, shit? Are you super excited and you're just on the ride? Yeah, like we really wanted to do that, actually.

We kind of pushed to do that because we were excited about the creative idea that we had around that. So it's great. You know, the thing I think about every day when I wake up in the morning is like, how can we make a great game and how can I help the really wonderful people here get their game played by as many people as possible? So moments like that, yeah, they're scary. But it's kind of like a mini game in itself in terms of the development of those things. So yeah, scary, but you have to take those opportunities, right? Because it's a platform on a stage that, you know, other people don't have the luxury of having their game on.

For sure, yeah, a thousand percent. I remember if you're watching live right now, ladies and gentlemen, you can super chat to be part of the show. Ask your own questions to Dom, just like Nigel Martin 35 did, who says, the base heavy scare atmospheric music period is it returning yeah i mean we've done a lot with with the atmosphere in the game you know the what we do is music our audio director is david garcia garcia is incredible so i think it's a really fantastic soundtrack and yeah pro tip wear headphones it sounds even better push these headphones i love it uh you know i always am interested to hear about the idea and the formation of,

all right, this is going to be the next project for any studio. For a ninja theory coming off the success of Hellblade and like you said, working on Bleeding Edge in there and everything else, was it a foregone conclusion that there would be a Hellblade too? Was it you all get together and be like, we have more stories to tell? Like obviously Hellblade 1 ends in such a dynamite fashion, right, of looking at the camera and be like, follow her.

She has more to say. Like, that's awesome. But like, was the plan? Yeah, we're going to go straight off to this. or was there like maybe we should leave that and that's just what it is? We knew then that if we had the opportunity to continue Sennawa's story,

then we would love to. But I think whenever you make a game like Hellblade Senna was sacrifice, you're so focused on that first game. You want to leave the opportunity open to do more, but we didn't know whether we would get that chance. You know, we were an independent studio. We didn't know if that opportunity would come along

and, you know, luckily it did and we could continue her journey. Understandable. Okay, fair enough. You like that. Paris? So I have to jump back. I was going to say, I see you.

Your lips are moving. What are you got to say, Paris? I guess I'm the technical guy in this interview. So, you know, over the past few weeks, you've started to release some of the details. We've seen some of the specs that are going to be on console. I believe you're locking it down to 30 frames per second. There's going to be a letterbox mode, things like that.

But I am more interested in on the PC side. talked about photo mode. We've seen some of the specs, but is there anything in particular? Yeah, thank you, Greg. Get out of here with these PC questions. On PC that they should be expecting for LBlade, too, because obviously you're not going to be, you know, you're going to be able to go beyond 30 frames per second. I'm assuming there's ultra-wide mode, things of that nature.

Is there anything specific on the PC side that players should know? No, I don't think so. I think it's a visual showcase. Like, I feel really proud of that. And I think photo mode is really interesting. Like, the photo mode we have in the game is really cool. It's fully, fully featured. I was taking some screenshots at the weekend,

and it's so easy to sink, like, hours and hours into that thing. So, yeah, like, we, like, Helplaid 1 was, we had a lot of fans on PC. So, you know, we've worked hard again to make sure that the PC version of the game, gives people a really great experience across a range of different setups. And you mentioned ultra-wide as well. We've been looking at that in the studio, and it looks so good on an ultra-wide monitor. I've got another super chat here.

This one comes from Cooper, who's asking for somebody who asks it in the regular chat. Does this support Dolby Atmos? We're talking a lot about headphones. We're talking a lot about sound. Is that something you guys double down on? Yeah, yeah, supports Dolby Atmos, yeah. Perfect. There you go, Cooper.

That's how easy this. Don, we are already running out of time with you. So I want to ask two questions. Not specifically Hellblade related, but kind of Hellblade related, and then also Xbox related. And I'm sure you can guess where some of them are going. The first and foremost being, I've seen to go through the chat a couple of different times, and it's something we've talked about on these shows because we are proponents of games.

We are proponent of Hellblade. You talked about it yourself of what a big deal it was to get that opportunity on the Game Award stage, to get that in front of as many people. And it's something you think about of how can you get so many people to play this game. What has your response been to us on these shows, the audience out there saying where is the marketing for Hellblade 2? I mean, my response to that is that I'm just super focused on Tuesday. Like the last couple of weeks of me have been just the push into getting the game done, get the game completed, make sure that it's going to be as good as it can be.

Make sure the team are feeling good about that. And then we go into Tuesday. So honestly, like, My focus has just been heads down. Let's get this done. And, you know, I've always believed that games can be art and you can take creative risks. And if you make something that's compelling, people are going to want to play it and people are going to want to enjoy it. So, you know, I maintain that belief. For sure.

And I think that's been one of the conversations we've had as we've tried to Monday morning quarterback the situation of, oh, why aren't there more commercials? Why isn't running during an NBA game? It is the belief of hopefully. is that the game speaks for itself. Like again, the original Hellblade, this breakout success was led by the fact not of commercials and trailers, right, Paris.

It was by the fact this is something special. If I could jump in, because before I forget this, and I know we're running out of time, because game length, you've come out and talked about the game length is going to be similar to the first Hellblade.

Was there any consideration at all as you were crafting this game? Like, hey, we need to make it longer. Do we need to extend it? give more of this story or like let's just tell the story that we're trying to tell wherever we land as far as length is just where we land. Yeah, and that that's really it. Like I don't I don't really remember sitting down and saying we need to make this

longer. You know, the way we approach it is what's the story that we want to tell, what journey that we want to take players on, and then the length of that is the length that it should be. And I think that's one of the really cool things about games now is that you've got games that are amazing games that are two hours long, you've got amazing games that are a thousand hours long, right? And so I think games can be all different shapes and sizes.

And that's really awesome for the industry. And our game happens to be, you know, the length it is. And, you know, we focus on making a really compelling journey. And the length that that is, is the length that is. And then my second, unfun question that I'm sure you're expecting, is the elephant in the room that it's been a rough week for Xbox, right? Three studio closures, one studio absorbed into another. When this happened and people were talking about tango,

talking about Hi-Fi Rush, a lot of conversation, us included, then turned to Ninja Theory and Hellblade 2. What was your reaction to the closure? Is ninja theory? Is that a conversation happening around? Is there a concern with the developers? Our team are feeling really good about the game. I feel super proud of it. Like making games is really, really hard. And it takes a lot out of people. It's a really hard thing. And I think it's a really brave thing as well. know, to, just like you guys, right, you're putting yourselves out there and you're putting your, your art and your creative out there. And we're doing the same thing. And, you know, my job, like I say, is to make the very, very best games that we can. You know, we have a pretty small team here. We're a close team. And we're just excited about getting our work out there to fans. You know,

fans of Hellblade, fans of games like Hellblade. So, you know, that's really the focus. So the vibe here is good. Like, we feel confident and proud of the game that we're. we've made. Well, of course, we want have to wait long. May 21st is next week. We can't wait to dig in. Nico has a super chat and says, how has Xbox to help Ninja Theory on the journey to Hellblade 2

and taking it to the next level? Has that been something you've thought about noticed? You mentioned earlier, right? Hellblade 1, independent studio, trying to make it work, not even sure you'd get another shot at it. Helplade 2, the centerpiece debut of the Xbox Series X. Like, there's a little bit more

gusto there. Yeah, the team at Xbox have been great. And Phil and Matt, you know, when we joined Xbox Game Studios, they said to us, we want to power you to go and do the things that you want to do. And they've been really great on that promise. You know, we get the support from a number of really great teams to Xbox to go and do our thing. So, you know, I'm super grateful of that. And, you know, it's really helped us to, yeah, focus on the things that we really care.

about and and that's what I really hope is going to come through in help day two next week. I can't wait. Paris, any final questions? No, no final questions other than to say I am also highly anticipating this game to come out next week. And it was such a pleasant surprise for me, like I told you, I didn't play it right away to jump into it, you know, back in 2020 and just realized that you created something special with it. And then to now see we're at this point that we're getting the sequel to this. Because the one thing I did say to Greg when we were doing the re-review, I am fascinated to see where the story goes next.

That is probably the biggest thing for me to see, again, Sinawa Saga, where is the Saka taking us next with Sinawa and her journey, you know, just diving through all the aspects of psychosis, mental health, everything that the story's provided us so far. So really looking forward to it. Thanks. I really appreciate it. Like, I really appreciate the support.

And we've made this game really thinking very much about the help. Sennelah's sacrifice fans. Like this is a responsibility for us. Like people made a connection with Hellblade and with Senora in particular. We feel that responsibility to, you know, make a sequel to that game that's worthy to Hell Blade Center with Sacrifice.

And at the forefront of our minds has been, those people really love that first game, how do we make them really love Hellblade 2 as well? So hopefully when you get to play it and it sounds like that's gonna be soon, then you'll enjoy as much as you did the first game. Thank you so much. Congratulations.

May 21st, everybody, you can get your hands on Senuous saga, Hellblade 2. Your final super chat question came from Patrick, who said,

so what needs to happen to get an enslaved Odyssey of the West sequel? That is not on us. Okay, okay. You will focus on Hellblade 2. Of course, like we said,

out next week. Dom, thank you for your time. Thank you. Thanks for the support. I appreciate it. No problem. Thank you.

Now I'm going to pay some bills real quick. Remember, the show isn't over. Dom's going to take off, ladiesy gentlemen. Paris and I are going to hang out. But before then, let me remind you that this is the Kind of Funny Games cast. Each and every weekday we get together to talk about the biggest reviews, previews, interviews, and every other topic in video games live on YouTube, Twitch and podcast services around the globe.

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Thank you, and as always, it's been my pleasure to serve you. Piecey shit. We're back. We're back from Ants. Sorry. Oh, hey, we're back, everybody. Hey. Sorry, I was dealing with some tech stuff on my end.

OBS was kind of mid-crashing, so I got distracted. I hope people heard what I just said. That'd be great. You're bitching about how you're logged in on too many Xboxes. Hold on. On top of that, I'm just dealing with, well, I got an email alert of like, hey, someone's trying to spoof your email address to get blessing to do something.

And then I'm checking it on that. So I'm just warning everybody. Whatever. That's fine. We're done. Hi, Paris. Hi. Great job with the interview.

Great. They did hear me. That was awesome. I'm glad you heard that. if someone clips it. Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, that doesn't happen on PlayStation. I mean, here's the thing.

Doesn't happen on PlayStation. All they heard, Greg, and this is a great clip out, is just Paris saying stupid PC shit. Yeah! We got them! We got them! That was great. I fucking love it. You had to admit it to.

You had to admit it to. Paris, how are you? I'm good. I'm good. I'm still getting over this cold. That sounds like the only thing. Like, I love talking to Dom. That was great interview.

Be able to talk to him. And it's like, I'm like half choking to try not to cough as I'm talking at the same time. But, you know, other than I'm good. Good. Excited. Excited for what's coming up in the next few weeks. Can you believe we're so close to SGF? Yeah.

It's insane. I am completely booked. Like, book to the point where I'm telling people I don't have enough time to come see your game, which is insane. Kind of infuriating and kind of insulting that so many people like yesterday and today are like, we want to book you for SGF. And I'm like, hey, where are we four weeks ago? Because it's slammed right now. Like, the schedule is locked in.

Like, I don't know why. Then I'm doing the thing where I'm emailing other people being like, I'm sorry, but I got to see if I can move this to there to do this to me. I feel like an asshole. Yep. That's the game. That's the game. Speaking of the game, Paris Lily, what you've been playing?

I have been playing a combination of Hades 2. Of course. Of course. That third boss is a. ever. Oh my god. But I did start fallout four. So I never because I never got into fallout four when it first came out. It just never grabbed me. I talked about it before our next gas. So when they did the I was like, I'm going to wait to the update. Then I heard the update was having problems. So I was like, all right, I'll wait till they fixed the problems. And they just

fixed it. So I did the update last night and I jumped in and I played for just a couple hours. I'm super early in. Are you out? You're out of the vault then. You're out of Yeah, yeah, I'm out involved. I'm running around Boston, the whole thing. I mean, it's fine. It still hasn't grabbed me yet, and I know Barrett said I need to get to a certain point. Well, hold on, hold on. Stop, stop, stop, stop.

So I'm, have you played Fallout for it before or is this your first time? You might as well say this is my first time. Wow. I barely played it when it originally came out. Okay. Had you, why, is because it didn't grab me at the time, but like, were you a fallout person before then? Had you done three in New Vegas? Yeah.

I love three. I love New Vegas. This four just, you know what it was coming off of New Vegas? I, and I know this is scuttle button on the internet, but I just felt that New Vegas was superior to what Ford was trying to do. Yeah. Like I wasn't into all the base building stuff and all that. Of course, yeah, me too.

So I just kind of put it down and moved on and started playing other things. Ironically enough, clearly just shows what got everybody back into playing recently, but I'm, I really digging 76. That's probably the thing I've played a lot of. My fucking man, that is my story as well. Of course, we're about to finish this game's cast and I will go play the new Starfield update with Mike. You know how much I love Starfield.

Yeah. As a base level game, uh, I am in a way kind of bummed out that this update's dropping right now because I have found myself obsessed with fall at 76. I think like so many people, of course, came out of the show,

wanted some fallout, and I downloaded New Vegas to my Steam deck, because I've never actually finished it. Then, of course, the Fallout 4 patch drop. I jumped back into that, started playing with that. And then it was that I liked 4 fine. That was always my thing with 4. It was fine. And so starting it up, I didn't like the character I made.

I'm just, I get back out and I'm like, eh, I don't know. And so it was, I want to play on PlayStation something more modern. And I was like, I've heard 76 has come a long way. Right. Like, if 76, you know, my history goes that I had done the beta back in the day with it that then launched into the real progress, I forget how many hours I played, you know, double digits, but we'll just say 10, maybe less. Then went away like everybody else. When they dropped the NPC update, me and Bless came back for one weekend. We had fun with it, but it wasn't enough to keep us in there and we went off on our own again. And then coming back to this, this time around and jumping back in, I've been shocked. that 76 is finally a fallout game. And I don't mean that to sound insulting. We've already beaten 76 in the street enough that everybody knows its problems.

But for me to start it back up, and I've been going, I think, for two weeks now, a week and a half with it, where I started it back up, jumped into the Greg Miller character I had made, who I think was level 15, maybe 12, I'd put some time into. And it was dropping back in and being like,

all right, well, what's going on? And, like, wandering around, meeting characters. Oh, wait, this is a cool quest. Oh, wait, this is a cool quest. Oh, blah, blah, blah. And then these past couple nights with it have been the, fuck, this is Fallout.

Where it is, I started it up with the intention of, I'm going to do the main quest. I'm going to go after this vault full of goal. I'm going to do this thing. And then what happens? It's the fucking quote from the show, sidetracked by bullshit. I see something cool.

Oh, that's cool. Oh, this robot wants me to join the tadpoles to become a possum, like those like Boy Scouts thing. I'm like, that sounds like a lot of fun. Sure. Oh, okay. I've made the podcast. power armor and I have all this stuff,

but I just need screws and what is it, the black titanium to increase my carrying capacity. So I'm running around, killing mole, man, it's like, fuck. And there's NPCs, there's interesting conversations, there's all this stuff. I'm currently level 35.

My PlayStation clock says 55 hours in. Of course, that does include what I've played before or whatever, but I would still say that's at 40 plus hours I've put in in the past week and a half, two weeks or whatever. Yeah. So a couple things on that. I'm level 40-ish, whatever I am right now, I've been playing.

And I've been playing specifically on Xbox, which kind of brings me to everything that you said, I think is very, very spot on. Like, ironically enough, I didn't play 76 when it first came out. So me jumping in now is like, I can't even imagine what this game was like without NPCs or any of this stuff, like all the improvements made over the years. But my sticking point with it. is the fact that you're on PS5, I'm on Xbox,

we can't play together. I know, I know. And I know Pete Hein said stuff in the past and I haven't heard anything recently. Oh, you should have watched my interview with Todd Howard where he brought it up himself of just like,

wait, what did he say? He was like, basically it's not happening. He basically, it's like, that's a technical hurdle that we just didn't build this game for

that it's like pretty much. Right. I'm paraphrasing. Never say never. But it is, I'm with you of like, Mike saw me playing into the office. And he's like,

oh, it's jumping together, Slappy. and of course he played on an Xbox. And so it was just like, oh, well, no. But it's also a weird one of like, I play this game and I'm just not drawn to play with other people.

I still play this and I'm like, why did this have to be multiplayer? Like, I get it. And I know that I've done a couple events, which were fine, but I haven't gotten to something where I'm like, I should be running with it. Yeah, it'd be fun.

I join the groups when I get in there so that I get the shared XP and everything. But I'm like, I'm not running those missions with people. Fault still is it, even though we're all, you know, vault 76 people who are out there trying to, repopulate West Virginia, I'm still not like,

oh, I need to play with other people. Yeah, I'm 50-50 on that. I agree with you. Like, I never purpose like, hey,

let me get a group together tonight and we're all going to jump into 76. I go in by myself and I'll just randomly meet people while I'm in there. Like I had one side mission I was doing and it was early on

when I first got power arm and I ran across this thing. Like everybody had power armor and were taken down all these things. I was like, yeah, this is effem dope, right? You know, we're doing. This is the E3 demonstration that one time. Yeah, exactly.

And, you know, I already told the story on Xcast, but I had somebody that had jumped in and all of a sudden I'm hearing over to Mike, help, help, help. And I'm like, where's this noise coming from? And it was someone that genuinely had no idea how to play the game. And he tagged along with me for like a good hour or so.

That's awesome. I'm like, look, I don't know what the hell I'm doing either. But here, here's what I'm doing, I'm trying to do kind of thing. almost every time that I jump in, someone is giving me something. Like people are very generous in that 76 community, which I think is awesome that is there. But man, I just wish everybody could play together. Because from when I understand, the PC community, Greg, sorry, PC community, but the PC

community, like, that's probably the biggest population of people that are still playing right now. And they've done some just crazy stuff with the camps and all these things. over the years. But even just playing on Xbox, I've seen some very impressive things. I guess, hell, what, Phil Spencer got nuked on last week or something, right? Yeah, yeah. He's doing the mission so he can retaliate.

So it's like a little fun stuff like that that I'm glad there is a co-op aspect in the game. Yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff happening in there. And I've been shocked isn't the right word, but I'm surprised I like it as much as I like it. Because it is that thing where I did a Gregway last week about it, where it was like, last

night I had a thing, and it was very much the seams we're showing of like, okay, it's, you know, fetch quest, rinse and repeat, yada, yada, yada. But then it was like the next day I had, and I also was tired and maybe cranky that night, the next day I had a character I liked a lot, you know, I have an ally in my camp, who's an astronaut who was in cryogenic freeze. It's like, this is fucking awesome. Like, I love you.

What do you want me to go do? And, you know, you run into a robot. You run into a person that has an actual cool quest line, an actual cool thing going on. I still, you know, it's funny. It, when I get obsessed with a game, I go and then look for, content and podcast. It's how I found like the Diablo podcast, which I encourage you to listen to from Purediablo.com.

But it's the idea that like, I was like, oh, it's weird to be back in this game and then kind of, what did I think of it? And I went and listened to the games cast where it's me, Jared Petty, and Tim talking about my first hours with the beta and there I'm talking about like, I'm very early, but there's not a lot of people but like, you know, the overseer logs

are so well acted and the voice acting is really, and I'm like, damn, that still resonates now. Like, I'm stoked when I go off and I find an overseer log and I get to hear her going through what she's going through or doing whatever, or anybody's log for that matter. And like, piecing it together why this robot is named after this guy's love, what happened to their love and their relationship. And I'm like, playing it so many times being like, damn, this is Bethesda. Like this, and when it launched, that was the big problem. This doesn't feel like fallout. This doesn't feel like a Bethesda game.

And here we are so many years later. And it's like, damn, this feels like a never-ending fallout game. Like, and even when I'm, I start doing quest, I'm like, oh, this is a cool quest. And it's like completed the daily. I'm like, damn, this is a daily quest. Like, this isn't even a main mission, a side mission or whatever. This is something that was just rad to do. Yeah, it's, I'm happy that this game exists. I mean, like I said, it obviously took them a lot of years to get it to this point,

but I do feel the game right now is in a really good place. Because it was funny over the past few years at various Xbox showcases or whatever. They would always talk about the next thing that was coming to 76. I'm like, why are they? Didn't we didn't even play this? Like, why are they, you know, talking about this? Now I get it. But that leads me to a question I've always wanted to ask you directly.

Oh, and I want to answer that question, but I also want people to write it with their superchats if they have opinions on fall at 76, tips for new players, why people should get involved, why they shouldn't super chat on YouTube. Paris back to you. Yes. So the question I have for you is. So obviously the show came out, phenomena.

It was what 80. They've said 80 million people have watched the show. Something like that. It's clearly reignited interest in the game. do you think it was a mistake to not have a new fallout something ready to go along with the show? Yes and no. Where I think, yes, obviously a fallout brand new yada yada yada yada, $70 game, game pass, you know, would have been awesome and moved a million units and blah, blah, blah, blah.

I also think that as much as the bottom line would want that, as much as, you know, it'd be cool to have a new fallout and blah, blah, blah. It's the idea that this plan actually worked, whether they fell into it, ass backwards or not. The numbers went fucking insane. And they sold a lot of Fallout 4, a lot of Fallout 4, a lot of Fallout New Vegas,

and a lot, I mean, immeasurable a lot of people. Well, not immemasure, you can actually measure it. But so many people have come back to Fallout 76 and are now saying, this game is great, this game is good, I'm having fun.

Like, in such an interesting way, they've had their for 76 or are having their no man sky moment or their cyberpunk moment. But I would say for both cyberpunk and no man sky, people were paying attention on the journey to that moment. Whereas with fall at 76, it's been nobody plays that. Oh, they put MPCs in, great. It still sucks.

And it's just been quiet. You get alongside Elder Scrolls online and a Bethesda showcase, you get some stuff about it. But you don't really pay attention. You're not really thinking it's cool, yada, yada, yada. Now the fact that these numbers have exploded. and the fact that I've seen them, I just saw through my Twitter feed or Instagram feed the other day,

them promoting the new update that's coming in the summer, right? Like, they have this momentum for this game. And I think with people like me and people like you saying on shows and talking about it, like, hey, no, this is actually a lot of fun and it is cool and da-da-da-da.

And you get in there and there are micro-transactions, and there are things to go by if you want to go buy the cool armor. Like, I think flat out black and white, yeah, it would have been awesome to have a fallout game. for it. Now, flat out black and white, will be awesome for season

two to have a fallout game. Would be awesome for season three to have a fallout game. Like, fallout is also a fucking fallout. Like, I'm not really worried about that moving the needle and needing a TV show bump. I don't know how much of the plan was here. I know obviously the next gen update got delayed. I think when you

look at the circumstances and how they got to where they are, they played it the best they could, and I have to imagine that it's way more successful than they thought it would be. And again, the goodwill for Fallout 7th right now, he's kind of insane. Yeah,

yeah, it definitely is. Now, going back to that Todd, I feel like I'm interviewing you, but going back to the Todd Howard interview, he did hint at there were a couple things. Right.

Yeah, that was, that was a breakout headline everywhere of the two fallout projects he did not name. What's your speculation on that? I have mine. I think it's fallout five for sure, right?

And then I would think it's probably fallout three remastered, remake, whatever that actually is going to be. You? I'm with you on the fallout three remake. I don't think it's fallout five. I think it's another New Vegas. Really?

From Bethesda or from like Obsidian or somebody else or whatever? Guess we'll see. Yeah. I don't know. But I think I do think Fallout 5 is a little bit a ways away. But I think they probably have something in the interim, which could build off of what they did with New Vegas. That's my guess.

Okay. Okay. I see, I think Bethesda will do a fallout. out five. I think they'll keep that. My hope is that with Xbox being at the helm now, being like, all right, cool, we need to do a New Vegas 2. We need to do a Fallout colon, whatever, fallout Chicago. You know what I mean? I think, I think Bethesda game studios

for as few and far between they get to make fallout games, they'll keep the numbers. And I think that they'll, I do think that they will open it up to other people can go do whatever they want to do. My hope, though, like, you know, with the rumors of a Fallout 3 remaster remake, I forget what it was. Like, Fall 3 is such a great game. You know what I mean? And again, there's this argument of maybe your first fallout's always going to be the best fallout to you or whatever. But like, I would be so stoked to replay Fallout 3 with modern graphics, quality of life improvements, et cetera, et cetera. Because again, for the pedestal I put that game on, it is the

hours and hours of roaming the fucking DC wasteland that I think about, not the story beats. Like I would be surprised with most of those quests again rather than that. And again, that's what I'm finding so interesting about 76 and warming up to it and finding myself wanting to play over and over more and more is just the idea that like it is that I'm still shooting a lot more than I ever shot in fallout I have you know I'm using an automatic shotgun and I have something like 1400 rounds you know what I mean so just and it's like this isn't this is a different style of fallout than what a traditional fallout is for me at least but I'm still getting that what is that over there and okay I go up and I

you know, look out off of the watch towers, right? The fire wash towers. And it lights up my mat for new things. I'm like, oh, that looks interesting. Let's go there. And I, you know, I find fucking Halloween town over here. And this guy who wants his pumpkins. And then hours later, I, you know, I randomly joined some kids group to get the XP. They're like level. The levels I'm seeing on people. We talk about the world forgetting about, I played with somebody last night who was level. I shit you not. Four, one thousand four hundred and fifty six.

Like, these people never stop playing Fallout and God bless you. But I go to that guy's shop right in his game and he's got like the David S. Pumpkin's suit, the Halloween suit that like me and Bless War during King, I fucking gave him all my caps. I'm like, yes, please, I'll take that. You know what I mean? Now I'm running around that and my pink armor doing all the stuff. I'm like, this is so much fun. And it is the fact that it's the Bethesda stuff mixed in with survival stuff.

But again, even the survival stuff that annoyed me so much at the beginning of the game, right, of like, oh, well, when you run out of water, when you, when you are hungry, like this will dot, like, they got rid of that. Similar to what they're doing with Starfield today, right? Where it's like, no, you can be hungry and you can be thirsty. It doesn't matter. It won't actually affect anything, but there's a benefit to not being. Like, thank you.

Like, I'm not annoyed by it. I actually feel like it's enhancing the experience. Like Paul 76 has come so far and I'm so all in on it right now. I really don't want to switch to Starfield, even though I do. Like, I love Starfield, but I do feel like I'm going to do, you know, you and I are going to talk about the Starfield update tomorrow. We're playing basically 24 hours from here on now and then talking about it tomorrow.

It's like I'm totally down and dedicated to giving it today and tonight, but it's like, I am going to be sitting there. I'm like, oh, man, I can't wait to get back to running the wasteland and doing all this different stuff. No, I definitely hear you on that. Now, again, since you and I talk and we don't always get to do this a lot, I have to steer this and stay in Xbox land. With obviously the studio closures and everything that happened last week

and all the chatter, do you think, again, with a fallout, the popularity of a fallout, is this the reprioritization of Bethesda? Like, let's lean into a known IP like we have what fallout and start getting more of these games out. Do you think that was part of that decision? You mean getting rid of, so cutting, lack of a better term, but in what I think you're saying, cutting the fat off of Bethesda and Xenamax and just, yes, a thousand percent. A thousand percent, I think it was of just like, yes, these are great games and these are great developers, but it's not something, for lack of a better term, in Activision that we can annualize,

that we can make into bigger IP, that we can do this. Like, you know, High Fire Rush stood out so much from Xbox, right? Because it seemed like a traditional game that you would get from an independent studio that there was an added to Game Pass. And so I think it is one of those, well, why have that studio, that kind of game on the payroll, when on the other side we could just get it on the back half, put it on GamePass, and be fine, right? like Little Kitty Big City, right? Is this phenomenon right now.

100,000 units in however many hours. And it's like, that is also on Game Pass. Like that clearly people feel like that's an Xbox game because you can go get it there and play it that way. And so I think that's the idea. And yeah, I think it is that like, cool. Now that we paid all this money for Bethesda, we're going to double down on the Bethesda IPs people really care about. Which obviously, of course, are going to be, well, Starfield, yeah, but I mean, Elder Scrolls.

God, I knew there was an estimate that was throwing me off. Fallout. And then you assume Indiana. Jones will be the first of many Indiana Jones that if it takes off and does what it wants and becomes the Xbox uncharted. But then you look at it. Indiana Jones and the cool circle. Shut up. Indiana Jones and the

silly circle. You shut up, get out of here. Let us enjoy it. Fuck it's dumb name. It's got a whip. It's not a great name, but it'll crawl on you. But then yeah, what does that mean for Doom? Do you ever get another Wolfenstein or is that something they are sunseting and putting away? Like, there's a lot of that going on right now. I hope not. I hope not. You know, it has been

interesting now that we've had about a good week or So to kind of marinate on the news and trying to understand the business aspects of it. I provide zero excuses. I'm not for this at all. I want to be crystal clear on closing the studios. But like I truly appreciated you asking Dom the question that you did about Ninja Theory because we need these games. Yeah. And you would hope that even the big publishers like a Microsoft or a PlayStation continue to support the small.

Because what do you say? 80 people made Hell Blade 2 support these smaller studios that are making these type of games. These aren't going to be the games that are making you hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. They're not called the duties. We get that. But I would hate that we get to a point where now Xbox Game Studios, sure, we're going to make the big budget IP games because they make us a ton of money. And we'll just, we'll import for lack of a better term, the smaller games to supplement game paths instead of doing them. in-house with the studios that you have now with the double fine with the Ninja Theory, etc. Sounds about right.

It's going to be very interesting to see. Just, I mean, the video game industry is always interesting to watch. But, you know, as you're talking about this Xbox, we're talking about the shadow. We're talking about what just happened? We're talking about, like, what is the reaction to Hellblade next week? I cannot wait to see, right? Both critically and then from the audience.

Is it going to be something that moves a million units, game pass, all that jazz? Is it going to be something that doesn't live up to expectations? is going to crush expectations. Then, of course, you're two weeks, three and a half, maybe two and a half weeks away from the Xbox presentation. How do you do an SGF, E3, quote, presentation, right, that doesn't glance past this or does, but doesn't,

but how do you put Phil out in front? Like, where is that going to be? Like, is Phil at SGF? Is he on these shows, as usual? Is he on the giant bomb couch? And if so, what's that? Then you go all the way out from that to keep going of, what does it look like?

What is the rest of the year go? Are the dominoes finally falling? What is it? can't wait. It's exciting and terrifying, but we're all on the ride together. And ladies and gentlemen, we'll be covering it here

on that Kind of Funny Gamescast each and every weekday. That's right. The Kind of Funny Gamescast is of course daily now, ladies gentlemen, and if you like what we see, if you like what you see,

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It's awesome to see you connecting with them, coming back day after day, sharing them, telling us you like it, what you want from them. It's been an awesome couple weeks here as we've done this. And of course, Paris, I'm so excited to work with you more, just like we will tomorrow when you come back to the Gamescast to join me and the Master of Hype Snowbike Mike to talk about this Starfield Update, which just so happens. I'm going to go stream with Mike right now.

Paris, I assume you're going to go get to work on it right away as well. Yeah, I actually was playing before we started this. So I've already started diving in. I'm very excited. I'm very excited. I'm talking about it tomorrow. Well, Paris, it's been a pleasure to see you as always. And ladies and gentlemen, it of course has been a pleasure to serve you.

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