Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Writing Star Wars Battlefront 2 w/Walt Williams- Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 136

Episode Date: September 18, 2017

Walt Williams joins us to discuss Metroid Samus Returns, Destiny 2, Project Octopath Traveller, and Star Wars Battlefront 2. (Released first to Patreon Supporters on 09.15.17) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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What's up guys? Welcome to the first ever. Episode 136 of the kind of funny games cast. As always, I'm Tim Geddes. Join by one of the coolest dudes in video games, Greg Miller. I'm worried that somebody saying I didn't blink enough and that's what did this to me. So now I'm just going to take long, healthy blink. that might look like I'm sleeping throughout the show,

but I'm really healing. But I think it's a quantity thing, not a quality. Oh, really? You don't need to take good blinks. You need to take a lot of blinks. I just, when, I don't think I was so into destiny that I wasn't blinking yesterday. I think you were.

And joining us for the first time, you know him as the writer of Speck Ops the Line, the upcoming Star Wars Battlefront 2, and significant zero. A book coming out Tuesday. Yes, Tuesday, September 19th. Boom. Kevin's mom's birthday.

Happy birthday, Kevin's mom. Happy, what better gift than that? Just for you. How are you? I'm good. I'm Walt Williams, just in case you didn't know. You got it all front loaded for who he was, but then never said his name. Oh, I didn't.

Wall Williams, friend of the show. Thank you. Thank you. It's great to be here. Yes, yes, yes. What is significant zero about, Walt? Significant zero is about. You got to get up on there.

Right up on it just like this. And I'm going to try to remember it. I'm going to hold it real tight while I talk. Significant Zero is about my time working the AAA game industry, kind of coming out of Backwoods, Louisiana, how I got from there to New York, and worked my way up through publishing development to eventually write games. Like you said, Speck Ops Aline, Star Wars Battlefront 2, and work on behind-the-scenes stuff like bioshock, civilization, borderlands, games like that,

and kind of pulling back the curtain on what it really takes to make a AAA game on all the different sides and kind of the human side of that. Because I feel like in video games, we're always so focused on the player. We're so rarely really getting the story behind the scenes of just the day-to-day stuff of why we choose to do what we do and make these games. And I wanted to get something out there so the people could really see what all these people are going through and why we do what we do. Because it's a tough industry. And we don't talk about it a lot. But that's ultimately we do it because we love it.

Like there's a passion. There's a fire in so many people I've worked with. And I wanted to get a story out there so that the people playing games could kind of see that. Nice. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I want to dive into this later.

Later, Tim. Don't worry. You run your show. I'll let you do. Where could people get the book? You can get the book on Amazon. You can get on Barnes & Noble. Booksamillion.com.

You can go to your local books. That's a place. Yes. You could also go to your local booksellers independent or otherwise. It will be there. It's on Kindle. It's on Audible. There's an audio book.

Who reads the audible book? Someone whose name I don't know off the top of my head, but it wasn't me. William Shatner. It's still really good, though. If only. If only. But yeah, it's any possible format you can want And it'll be out Tuesday, September 19th

And we can talk more about it later Oh, I like that a lot. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Kind of Funny Games cast Each and every week we get together Talk about video games, all things we love about them And all of that jazz. You can watch it early and live with us By going to Patreon.com slash kind of funny games

Or if you don't want to watch live, you can watch it at your leisure When it comes early to you on Fridays Or you can wait and get it on Monday Like all the peasants on Whom slash kind of funny games We love you, YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. We love you YouTube.com slash kind of funny games subscribers.

I'd be one of those peasants. You would be? You wouldn't support us for a dollar? I'd support, but I probably wouldn't get to watch it. Ah, that's a big thing that happens. I just want to support these guys.

The amount of people, some bang up fellows. A lot of the amount of people who can watch the MP3 or watch the video, this is ginormous. So many people support us on Patreon.com slash kind of funny games.

But the views on those early episodes never the same. It's not one to one. People are there because they like the product and we appreciate that. They want to see Andy get paid. We appreciate that. Mm-hmm.

And he needs to get paid. Greg. Yeah. What do you've been playing this week? Destiny. Destiny to you. Don't stop. Taking you over.

It's not. If you're an audio listener and we're wondering about the blinking thing. And even if you're a video, Kevin, do we have SkyCam? Yeah. Sky came would be the best way to look at my gross eye. Okay. Morning. Things are about to get.

If you're, if you're an audio listener, count yourself lucky. You don't have to see this. If you're a video listener, put down your oatmeal flakes. If what? Was the eye a sign of a coming stroke? Put down your own meal flakes, kids. And then, yeah, so you tell me, Kevin, all right, then I'm gonna look over there like that.

Do you see it? God. You see it? Does it look bad? It's even worse on film. Is it getting better? God. Is it getting better?

No. So I played Destiny to for nine hours straight yesterday. Took a day off work, Walt. I don't take many breaks. Yeah. And so what happened is destiny comes out. I'm excited. Right.

But I don't, beforehand, I'm like, am I going to be into it? I want to play it. I'm excited for it. We get it. I'm all in. I'm crazy about it. I'm nuts about it.

I want to play it nonstop. We get to the weekend, though. Jen's older sister, a lovely woman, comes in to stay with us to visit. Has seen her sister in a while because this whole, she's Canadian. I brought her in here. She came back.

I miss my family. I wish I could work. You know, just yack, yack, this wife of mine. I don't listen to her. But Gab comes to visit. Everyone's excited.

I'm excited. I like Gab. I want to hang out there. But I want to play some destiny to you. But I'm like, I'm fine, but wake up on Sunday to go do a lovely day of touristy, but fun activities in San Francisco, which go to the picnic of the presidia.

Eat wing wings, fried chicken, drink beers. I'm all, I love this event. Yes. However, wake up grumpy. I'm grumpy throughout the day. And Jen's finally like, what's going on? I'm like, I don't know. I am just mad.

I am mad all the time. I want to play destiny and I know that selfish thing to say. But she's like, you realize you haven't had a weekend off in like four or five weeks. I'm like, that's probably why it's all built up and exploded. And she's like, take Wednesday off. Just play the game. I'm like, thanks, babe.

And I did. And it was fucking amazing. And it was fantastic. nominal. And then I went out last night for drinks at a fancy place with Eric Castro, his wife, sin, his girlfriend. And then I woke up this morning and I walked into the bathroom. I looked in the mirror and I got this weird bloodshot. Not even bloodshot. It like I was, I said in the morning show. I knew a girl in high school who drank too much at a party and then vomited so violently. She burst all the blood vessels in her eye. She's had a red eye. See, that makes sense. Like final

destination. Yes. Of course. And I didn't do that. And it's not, it's not that, but it's somewhere between it's somewhere between a bloodshot eye and then the all red eye where I just have this line that is almost like with my eyelid where it looks like maybe did I hit myself in the face last night? You might have.

It's not Destiny's fault. I stand by this. It's not the video game's fault. I appreciate that. Whatever is happening with your face right now doesn't just come from looking at a screen even if it is nine hours. I think it's absolutely Destiny's fault.

100%. It's a message we need to get out there to the public that destiny is dangerous. Destiny can hurt you. I'm going to find Jack Thompson and we're going to get in a lot of soup going here. We're going to figure it. I think he's been disbarred in every state. But I'm going to figure it out.

And we're going to get to it and go for it. So destiny. Destiny too. Yeah. What a fantastic fucking game, Tim. You talked about it last week with Andy, I imagine.

I mean, I've talked, this is all we talk about now. Okay. It's that kind of game. All destiny all the time. Whenever Andrew is on the Games Daily show, that's what we're talking about.

When me and Andy are talking about something else work related, we're like, do you want to just fucking quit them and go play destiny all time? We're like, Yes, we do. And then last week's games cast was all Destiny 2. Have you played Destiny 2? I have never played Destiny 1 or 2.

I mean neither. It's all good. I have never even been in a room where Destiny is being played. Wow. You could not identify it if it would be a screenshot. I have possibly seen a picture at one point in time, but I wouldn't really be willing to bet on that. Please tell me about the Destiny.

In Destiny, there's space and you're in it, and you're getting stuff and there's Ingrams and you're on this loot treadmill and just getting better stuff. Okay, so I was with you until Ingrams. What's an Ingrams? Is that like a money thing? No, no, it's loot. Just old women, Ingram?

No, no. No, you kill stuff, you do missions, whatever, and every so often these Ingrams drop that are like little, like, think, they look like a little, like hexagons, I guess, or whatever. I don't know, I'm not that kind of. It's a shape. Yeah. Oh, you know what they look like here is what they look like. They look like gushers. They do look like gus.

Yeah. And they got different colors and there are different rarities and you pick them up and you get items out of it and you put on gear and get better guns and stuff like that. And you go do it over and over and over and over and over again. So it's just a treasure. chest based. 100%. Okay. I was trying to explain it on Games Daily this week.

The shape did not matter. On Games Daily this week we were talking about it. And it was this thing where destiny, even though you're not playing it, it's sweeping the industry, right? There it is. There's the gusher. Oh, that's a gusher. Yeah, no, that's absolutely a gusher.

Yeah, it's sweeping the industry. Everybody's talking about it. So a lot of kids are writing in and being like one of the ones who are just like, hey, I don't play Destiny. I'm not good at first person shooters. Should I try Destiny? And what I said that I stand by and stick with me. is it's like a first person MMO.

Okay. And it's not an MMO, it is, but it isn't, you know, but what I mean is in the MMO, right, like when you're running around and just clicking and killing things over and over and over again, the enemies aren't that tough. You die, there's usually not a big buff to you dying or a problem with you dying.

That's the same thing here. It's that kind of gameplay in first person. When you're running through and you kill all the ads and get better gear and you go on. It's Diablo in first person. You're running down and doing all these different things. So I was trying to sell this kid on playing it because it's not, I don't,

I like Call of Duty story. I don't ever play Call of Duty multiplayer. Like that's not what I want to do. And I don't play PVP in death space. So multiplayer is not a necessarily big part to enjoy it. You don't have to do. In end game stuff, for sure. In end game, yeah.

But like when you play through the first part, you could just play through it and do all the stuff. And it might be tough here and there. But if you keep on leveling up and doing all this stuff, it's amazing. And what Destiny 2 gets so right via destiny, or I guess in comparison to Destiny 1 is how much shit there is to do. Yeah. How good the story is. How good the writing is. Like failsafe is his character in the game, that's hilarious and awesome.

And when I'm doing her quest out there and it's Nolan North as, ghost making jokes to me or talking to me and then getting mad at fail safe and then banter. It's like this is fucking cool and you're earning cool rewards and getting good weapons and feel like you're making progress. And then there is the idea of like jumping in and playing. Like, you know, yesterday it was like I finally sat down. I'm like, I'm getting into it. And I hit up just on who wants to play? These are the hours I'll be playing. And I had this one guy with me for, I would say, of the nine hours, five of them. And like we cycle in a third person every so often. Somebody else has to go to bed or, you know, get up for work or depending on time

zones. And so it was this thing that now that it's end game, I am playing with people, and that's the way it's going to have to be and like to do raids and stuff. And like today, I keep trying, stand by. I'm trying to open up the kind of funny clan to everybody. Yeah. But for some reason, it keeps crashing when I try to do that through the website. So that sucks. But before my whole thing is when we started this, you know, I complained on the show that like, if you want to do a destiny clan, just go do a destiny clan, me and Andy are going to start her own, but we need to see because I didn't want to start something and then have kids join it and feel like they were going to get this great experience and then have it turn out that I burn out a weekend

or I don't want to play the game anymore or whatever. Now that I'm all in, I want to be playing this. I want to be raiding. I want to be doing this. I have questions. Lay it on me. So you know I'm not this kind of gamer usually. No, this raid business, right? The raid came out yesterday. As a time of recording. As a recording. It came on a Wednesday. We're recording on Thursday. So you need to be, I am completely unfamiliar with this style of game. You need to be at a certain level to be able to do the raid or just it's recommended. It's right now, well, there's definitely. There's definitely There's 260 is you have to be 260 power level to be able to do the raid.

If you went in at 260, what I've heard is you'll just get your fucking face kicked in. Okay. Like it's that thing. It's like two, Luke Smith tweeted that was between 260 and 280 was the recommended power level to do the raid or whatever. Have people beat the raid? Yes. Have a lot of people beat the raid?

No. It was a big deal yesterday. As Alfredo beat the raid. I have not seen Alfredo beat the raid or talk about beating the raid. But I wouldn't put it past him that he has. Okay. But because it, you know, he must have. Because I saw like Fran talked about doing it and stuff like that.

if Frank can fucking do it. Alfredo's doing it. But, you know, the rate is like, if you go in blind, it's supposed to be like, you know, eight hours or whatever. Have you trying to figure stuff on stuff. That seems excessive. Now, you can save and stop and leave and come back and stuff. Oh, you can.

But the hardcore kids are like, no, no, they're in this. And that was the big thing yesterday. Like, it was awesome. You know, as somebody who, Destiny 1 pops, I play through Destiny 1 to 20 or whatever. I guess it's end game stuff. And when I got into the end game stuff, it was, oh, fuck, I could see.

it. I'm like, this is just grinding. And in Destiny 1, there wasn't as much content. So it was like, not only is this just grinding, it's grinding boring ass shit. I'll see you guys later and I peace out and never really came back. And like, people got ahead of me and there was a million other problems. Um, so I wasn't there when the first raid drop and people actually cared about it. So now that I'm in it, I'm, I'm two, I'm two seventy three right now in terms of power. I'm gonna go home tonight, knock on wood if we get done early enough and try to play with Andrew a little bit and see if I can do it. Because it is the same thing too where you play and there's, you know, different segments of the raid and you get better gear.

in those segments anyway. So even if I go in there underpowered, if I can help for the first two or three sections, I'm gonna get better gear. Yeah, exactly. Yesterday there was a really cool thing. And this is probably happened before, but for me,

it's my first time seeing this and following Bungy, where there was these screenshots and video of Bungy in their giant conference room with these giant screens watching, they had segmented the screen up to watch a whole bunch of different like pro destiny groups try to go through and do the raid. And then there was a video of them all freaking out when one of the groups actually did it and beat it. It became the first people doing it.

It was like, that's such a cool community thing. And that's like the thing about it right now, you know, a week removed from last time talking about Destiny 2 on Gamescast, where I was very much like kept looking at the camera. Like, I don't know what they're talking about. I love this game. Because Andy and Andrea were both like not critical in a bad way, but they were, it was the normal situation where like, yes, it's destiny. We love it.

Here's our problems with it. And here's what we're upset about. And Andy's stepped that back a bit too. Of course, because he is a flip flopper. He is not a flip flopper. He's got the most pretentious hair. I hate you. Hey, I'm just saying what I read on Reddit.

All right. No, for me now here, it's this interesting thing of being a part of an online community, which is so rare for me. And maybe not so much this year with, you know, Friday of 13th or Marvel Heroes Omega, other games I've gotten into. But Marvel Heroes Omega is just me running around with seeing other people. I'm not playing with other people. Friday the 13th, it's just me doing private rooms with the kind of funny best friends. And so that doesn't, that's just hanging out with people. this being part of something that is so diverse

and having people write in to Games Daily where they're like, hey, I am from this subreddit that's just Sherpas and we'll take anybody through the raid but we won't teach them, like, we'll be there and answer questions but not do that, and like come join us. And like the way the destiny community,

now that like, you know, it's like anything else in gaming where I moved this rock and then like, oh my God, there's this whole thing happening here that I wasn't really part of before. And like I used to see Alfredo tweet about, we're trying to be the first in the world

to beat the raid and da-da-da-da for Destiny 1. but it's like, all right, good for you. Like, I didn't realize that was like a competitive thing that there was all these people trying to do. And it seems so positive in the way that they're not tearing each other down, all the destiny people who write in and want to help each other or last night when I was tweeting out like, hey, this is what I'm doing. Who wants to jump in?

The amount of people that jumped in and we're just like, no, cool, let's go. And, like, you know, I closed out my night last night playing with Ziger for a bit. And it was like, Ziger's done all these missions before. And he's just like, he's quiet. He's letting me figure it out and do all this different stuff. And it's like, it's such a fun chill. chill. Let's all get in there and play and just have conversations and talk about whatever.

And like, I know. I need to talk to Alex O'Neill about something, right? And he's, we've been trying to set up calls. And I'm like, we should probably just play destiny. You just get in here and we just do a private room. We'll go talk and shoot because it is that we, oh, this is the best part. Back to this thing of like how I don't play these games and I don't do this. And I never, I never rated in the original destiny.

The, uh, fuck. I got to the edge here and almost fucked it out. The night, nightfall rate. Not the night, the rate. The nightfall mission, which is a mission. and it's hard. You go out there, you get better reward stuff, right? It was a big deal when this popped and it was the first thing to do.

And it's the first like milestone of like, all right, cool, you're at 2.30. I think it is. You can go in and do this thing. I went in and did it yesterday with that kid I had played with and one of his friends. And when we went in there, we're playing and we went through the first two or three times and just got destroyed or whatever. But then we came in, we played a little bit longer, grounded out, came back in. And it was somewhere in the middle where I was like, this is fucking awesome. Because it was all of a sudden, a 180 from how we'd been playing.

the game before where it is running and shooting. This one was, all right, this is tough. Here's what's going to, we're like, before, we're sitting in there at the tower and he's like, Greg, what are you running is your secondary? All right, I'm running this arc gun. All right, well, do you have a void gun? Yeah. Oh, you put on your void. He's going to put on his arc. What special are you running? And it was all this like real setup for a battle. And then when we got in there, like, you know, it's down in the corner, it's popping up and it's telling you like, everybody's using arc now. Or like, you know, it's telling you what the enemies are running. And if you shoot them with that gun, you're going to do better damage. And so it was this thing where we

were running and this guy was calling it out like a team leader and everybody of like all right cool it just went to void Greg switch to your second I'm like I'm on it did it it was like when we make fun of the E3 demos when we make fun of the E3 demos where it's like all right I'm gonna oh this guy's really tough we better be in this totally thing I'm popping my super all right do this oh my god I'm in my head wait I got and it was like it really was that and as somebody who's never actually experienced that to be playing that and be like fuck this is just like the E3 demo and it isn't cheesy because it always comes off so cheesy in the demos. But to be in there in that moment, it really was like, fuck, we're living that demo.

And it's awesome. Like, I love this coordination. And like the satisfaction of getting there. And, you know, to have failed so many times at this mission because time is counting down. You have, I believe, 10 minutes to finish it. But as you go, there's these rings you can jump through that'll add 30 seconds. Right. And then there's this one really tough part from the beta.

People might remember of these grinder wheels swinging around. Like they're making a quarry or whatever. You have to dodge. But then you also, you're dodging those, but then trying to get through these circles whatever. So like when we cleared it on the time we beat it and we got down and we're like, holy shit we have like seven minutes. We got this. We got this. And like, la ha. And then we're just like fucking beating

the shit out. It was like, damn, this is awesome. Like, what a fucking experience. Okay, so as someone who hasn't played Destiny 1 or 2 at all. Yeah. I picked up about half of that. Yeah, I know. I know. I'm just, most of the time I was trying to figure out why professional Sherpas had a subreddit to

talk about Destiny. And I came back in right around this time you started talking about jumping through rings. So that sounded cool. I do like jumping through rings. Yeah, Joe, who does? So I think I might check it out. Absolutely. Yeah.

I keep seeing on Twitter people complaining about shaders. Shaders. Shaders been a big complaint. You have felt angry about that, I feel. What's the thing with the shaders? What's going on with that? The idea is this, and I'll summarize, because I know it's a horse that's been beaten to death. Then we brought it back to life and beat it again.

Is the idea that in Destiny 1, you'd unlock shaders, right? And then you would go, I love the shader. I want to put it on my equipment. And you put it on your equipment. And then you'd get a new shader. I want to put that on my equipment. You'd put it on. play for a few hours, whatever.

You know what? I want to go back to the other shader. Oh, I found another shader. I'm going to switch this, that, blah, blah, blah. This is great. This is great. You got them, you owned them. You could switch them at your leisure.

Destiny 2, they are consumable now. So what it is is that, all right, cool. I got this shader. I want to apply it to this chess piece, which sounds fine in principle. But then it's like, okay, Destiny 2 is all about getting new loot. So it's like, now I got a new chess piece. And you put that on, and it doesn't carry the shader anymore.

And that shader is now permanently painted on the other one. And if it was the one shader, like, I want my whole outfit to be black and gold, which I do. And so it's like, all right, cool. I have, I have four pieces that need it. I have two of the shaders. And so it's like, all right, I can't go buy them. Like, so you can't. They come and loot. What you do is you, so this is where it gets interesting why people got so mad is that you go to this one woman who's selling bright and grims that you can go in there and pay real money for. But the problem is it's a random drop of what shader you're going to get in there. You don't know exactly what you're going to get. Yeah. And so like she has daily deals or whatever where you can use dust to buy some, shaders, but it's not all shaders. And you don't, it does, it. It's just a bunch of hoops to jump through. And so the big argument is, well, it sucks. I wish I owned them forever. My main thing is as somebody who, you know, I like to, and I'm not well off by any means, but like I like to pay developers for games I really enjoy. And so I really enjoy destiny, right? So if it was like, fuck, all right, it's cool. I'm going to go to the store and just buy those shaders. Okay. You know what I mean?

Like, you've earned that. But it's this fact of it, I'll have the gear all pimped out the way I want. to, I put up a screenshot on Twitter and then it starts where this is better and that's better. And then I'm a hodgepodge of colors and I can't-skittles back. Exactly. I can't get exactly what I want without having to wait forever for it to go. But one, it's Luke Smith says, well, you know, shaders are meant to be there as rewards for certain missions and this, that and the other. So you can start to do it and plan where you're going to be. But that's a lot of work and it's not advertised that way. Do I want to go into defense?

It's just the, yeah. No, that makes sense. I mean, that would anger me too. Because like some days, it's like maybe I want to have a purple day. Exactly. And so maybe I want to have a black day. day and you want to have that one, especially if you're paying like real money for that. Yeah, yeah.

At least you would want to have the option to pay really money for exactly the color you want. And you can get them from the game dropping them that. And you do get a lot. I do have a ton of shaders, but it is like, I had this, uh, I think it was Dust and Dawn one, Tim. Fucking choice. It's this metallic, hot pink, hot blue. And so yeah, I put it on my chest piece. And then I was, I had, I put on the pants, but then I didn't have another one.

So my arms didn't have it. My cape didn't have it. So I'm like mixing a matching. and then I got better armor and I put that on it. And it's just like, it would be much cooler, I think to go,

be done with it. Yeah. But you can do it to your guns too. And, but this is the thing where everybody got so mad about it because Destiny 2 has done so much right.

Yeah. It's done so much right. It's such a great game. It's so much fun. It's funny. It's interesting. There's so much content. They've nailed so much of it

that then this like one annoyance. Because I saw somebody tweet today of like, yeah, sure the game. Yeah, sure that game I've played for 100 hours is awesome. But I'm fucking furious that I can't. You know,

In perspective, who the fuck cares? Like, I don't mind looking stupid, especially because it's first person for the first. It's not until I go to my menu that I really think about. Yeah. But there's also like, you know, there's now, they, it's not, it's bad, but it's not as bad in the way that you do get shaders pretty plentifully. When you get a piece of armor, you do like if it's legendary or exotic, you can infuse it with the new stuff so that you're keeping the look. So if I love that chess piece and I made it a certain color, I keep finding better things. I can infuse it to keep, get those stats,

but keep it looking the same. That's a nice. But then I'm spending legendary. Like, there's all these little things, but then what if I get the exotic? And da-da-da-da-da-da. It's a whole rigmarole. Rigimal roll.

But it's fucking worth it. Destiny 2 is awesome. It, the day totally worked. I'm no longer grumpy. I came in today. I ironed my shirts. I cleaned up the house this morning. I didn't.

I feel like you need that one, every so often. Reset. That selfish child day to be that. I'd come back to be a real adult in this world. But it's like, all I want to do is go home and play more. me the way it was leading into this. And I know that's now. Now it's in front of my eye. We have to

figure this out. Is there an optometrist in the comments to respond and tell me what I did? I have emailed the staff page of my optometrist. We'll see if they check that email. Walt, what are you been playing? So here's the thing. I've got a 17 month old baby. Oh, no. So I haven't been playing anything. I have played very, very, oh, thank you. She's super sweet. Yeah. She's taken all of my time. Her name is Parker. She's adorable. Hi, Parker. You're not watching, nor can you speak English, but hello. She's great, but my gaming has plummeted drastically since I had a child. You know, you replace it with other things like actual happiness, which is wonderful.

I can look at my daughter and soon it would be joy, but I don't get to play that much anymore. What I have played, in the past 17 months, I made it through Night in the Woods, which might be one of my favorite games in years. That hit me in all the right spots. Final Fantasy 15. Time, I want to give Night in the Woods more credit. Because this is a game that when it was coming up on release, the developers and a whole bunch of people were like, this is a Greg game.

This is like gone home-ish. You need to play this. You need to play this. And I missed it. And so I started it with Jen a few weeks ago, maybe months ago now, time loses all meaning, and played,

I forget if an hour and a half of it and enjoyed it and stepped away and I fucked up and didn't go back to right away. Yeah. But I need to go back to it. Okay, so that happened to me. I started playing it and got about an hour in and stopped. And then I didn't go back for maybe a month

or two. And then I was like, you know, something about it. Maybe someone tweeted about it, or I saw a piece of the art again, and the visual style is so enticing. It's so beautiful. And I just recently moved back to my original hometown, kind of middle America, southern small town thing, which is kind of the setup for Night in the Wood. So I was like, emotionally I'm connecting with this. Let's just do it. Let's jump back in. And over the course of a week, every night after I put my daughter down to bed, I would go upstairs, have a little drink, a drink for Daddy. And just sit down with my PS4. and try to play at least two to three hours.

Okay. And it became to a thing. Now, here's an interesting thing I liked about the game. Maybe you got this far where at the end of your day in the game, you go to bed. So once I really started getting into it, I was like, okay, I'm going to play one day in the game every day. And then when my character goes to bed, I'm going to go to bed, and I'm going to go to sleep because now I've been drinking a little bit more. So it is, it's hard to get too much into it without spoiling things because there's a lot of narrative intricacy to it. But it's a game that as someone who writes games,

it really affected me because it was clear that the people who made this game love every single character. Every single character is a door. There isn't anyone in this game that you feel like the writing or the story or the creators are making fun of. They don't exist just to be mocked. Everyone is fully three-dimensional and flawed and beautiful in their own way,

even if they might be a villain in the broader story. and no one really falls in the category too much but it just there's so much love and I use that word precisely you can feel it in the game and the writing is phenomenal and there's you know you're going to your old town mall

which is if you've ever been home and you've been to the mall that you grew up in and now it's like nothing but empty stores like you know that feel that sadness of like where is everything going into your hot topic trying to steal a wallet as somebody right who like moved away you know grew up in Chicago moved away from the suburbs and then to come back for whatever holiday or whatever, you know, funeral or whatever that's going to be.

To get there and see the people that I associate with my friends with high school and home and the way their lives have changed and that nothing is the same that I think of it, right? That whole place is a time capsule to me and I go there and it's like, oh, right, no, you've all been living lives and doing things and seeing each other. And like even from the little bit I played a bit of it of her coming back and going in and reuniting with her friends and trying to catch up with certain people. It's like, oh, right. Like, yeah.

This is hitting, I understand the thread. Yeah. So I think you should definitely go back and check it out. Once you, you know, hit that destiny fix thing, of course. Have you managed to play it all? I have not. No. You should check it. Is this your kind of game? You and I've never talked about games before, so I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure. I don't, is this someone with a cute little animal? Yeah, everyone's an animal. There's a goth alligator. Fun. Love. Um, as a Louisiana boy. Mm-hmm. A grumpy Louisiana boy. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, again, I don't want to say too much. Okay. Okay. But I think it's absolute.

It took me about 13 hours maybe total Which is kind of just beyond my sweet spot I like a game that's gonna be right now between about five and eight That's right where I'm yeah That's what I like but it was so good and pulled me in so much That I was at I was totally cool giving it about 15 hours or so Yeah and he loved it What I hold out hope for with Night in the Woods is what literally everyone on Gaff says about every game

But like switch yeah if it came to switch I feel like that would be such a great I'm on a plane let's get into this world and this narrative event adventure, blah. Whereas when I come home to the PlayStation, not that I need explosions and fucking HD visuals, but it's like there's so many bigger experiences, whether it be Destiny, whether it be some Friday 13th, something that's ongoing that I don't feel like, wait, where was I? What's happening? I feel like if I had it for a trip, it'd be great. So here's the thing. I don't own a switch. I was going to buy one. I was going to buy one. I was going to buy one, but I went over to her friend's house. There was the whole thing

it was hard to get it first. Like a day one exclusive for Zelda. If you got Zelda, you get a switch. I wasn't there a day one, so I didn't get one. Yeah. went over to her friend's house after a couple months I was really one everyone was just talking about how great Zelda was and I'm there seeing their new baby and really I'm like hey man what if we fire up the real pretty thing over there that little switch let me take a take it for a spin and he turns it on he's like oh man you're gonna love Zelda

it's so great you can literally climb anything in the game I'm like awesome and I walk straight over to a wall that you cannot climb oh okay well not not everything you can't climb now it's like oh so it's just a video game Not I'm done with you, Zelda. You broke the switch over your... And I was like, I'm not going to get a switch now. That is a mistake.

I... Here's what... You want to know what's actually convinced me to now go buy a switch? Yeah. Sonic. Really? Dude.

Seems... This is Sonic fan... Sonic Mania is like one of... Probably top three for my game of the year so far. It is... If you like Sonic games at all, it is the ultimate Sonic game. Really? It is such a love letter to what makes those games good.

And it takes away so much of what makes them bad. Not all of it, though, because that's part of the charm of what Sonic is. The music is just, it's unreal. It's so, there's just so love. There's so much love put into the game. That makes me very happy. You actually may have finally completely sold me on the show. I think I did it like four times already.

Really? Wow. I want to just keep going back because like I, there's no platinum trophy, but I want 100% it in the way that if there was, I would have got it. Okay. So as a Sonic fan, I have to ask. Yes. Eggman, Dr. Rabatnik.

Are you kidding me? Yeah, duh. Fucking this egg man. Although they call him Eggman and this. Licensing. Whatever. It's garbage. But you could also play Sonic on any other system.

Oh, it is? Yeah, it's just on Switch. No, Sonic was just on Switch. No, Sony. We almost had them.

We almost had them. You just let them off the Switch hook. It's, it's PS4, Xbox 1 PC, Switch. Wow. Yeah. I'd get it on Switch.

You just, you just save me like $250. No, man. You have to do it. I played, I played it on PS4 first and then, but I wanted to play it on Switch, but we didn't get close to later that I went back.

And it's just, it's at home on the switch. It feels right. Honestly, like, it sounds like now they're getting a lot of virtual console stuff coming onto the switch. No? Arcade, Nintendo Arcade or whatever they're calling. It's not virtual. No, not virtual console yet.

Okay. Eventually, look, I will eventually get a switch. My daughter is going to go to college in at least 16 and a half years. I will be able to get a switch somewhere in that window. It will happen. But when I do, I'm very excited to play signing many, and I'll even hold off. You know what? I got birthday coming on.

up. A little Christmas. You treat yourself. Exactly. You got it. Sonic Mini is worth it, though. It's a fantastic game. Nice. Any other games you've been able to play in the 17 months? I said Final Fantasy.

That's a weird one with your limited time to play games. You're like, I'll try this giant JRP. Final Fantasy. And when you read Significant Zero, you'll learn more about this. This book that's available Tuesday. That's right. September 19th. You can get it on bookit.com.

Final Fantasy is one of the games that, that's one of the first games I've ever fell in love with. And I've played out. every Final Fantasy that was not an MMO, no matter if what I had to track it down, a bootleg version or what? Sure. And so with Final, when Final Fantasy 15 came out, it was like, of course I want to play it. It's a, it's a numbered Final Fantasy. I'm just going to do it. A decade in the making. Yes. You got to do it. And, you know, I actually liked the whole boy band simulator aspect of it. Because here's what I loved about Final Fantasy Kid. I knew that

every single game was going to be different in some way. It was going to be a different experience, a different world, a different story for me to explore. There were going to be some of the same things, like the Mughals would be there, the Black Mages would be there, whatever. But ultimately, every game was brand new. And so I wasn't, when they first started showing the whole boy band thing, I was like, that's not exactly what I'm looking for in Final Fantasy, but I'm not going to get upset at it for doing what I want it to do, which is giving me something I'm not expecting. So I'm all in for that.

And that's about where if I love for it stopped. It has honestly one of my favorite setups. out of a final fantasy game in years, but clearly it went through so many cuts and so many troubles in development. As someone, you know, has been making games for over 12 years, like I understand how that can go. Did you beat it?

I did, I did all the way through. I'm glad that I did. But, and also, I'm kind of glad that it did have all those cuts because I was able to beat in 25 hours. So that's a lot less time than I thought I was going to have to commit to it. There were moments of genuine joy. But overall, I was a little disappointed. And it was just because clearly so much had been cut.

out. And I don't want to hate on the developer for that. That's not their fault. Sometimes things happen. Yeah. There's so much that happened though. And that's the sad part about it because I agree with you. It is one of the strongest openings to a final fantasy game, if not any game. It's so much fun. And I love the idea of car breaks down. The plot of it is you're on a road trip for essentially a bachelor party. Yes. And I'm like, that's great. Yeah. But then immediately they mess up the story. And I feel like as soon as it gets that phone call that it goes back to like, oh, man, it's going down back at home. That's where it all falls apart. And it's like the plot never really is fully explained.

And it kind of just little things happen here and there. And I don't feel like there was enough narrative for to justify all the gameplay. I did. Okay. Because I did. And I felt like that at least gave me enough to. It gave me context, but it didn't. I wanted, I mean, I obviously wanted the movie to help the game, not to be something

necessary for the game to make any sense at all. But then I agree with the words, the end of it. I loved that. I loved the end of the game. And I loved the story. pieces and how it all ended up. I'm like, this is great. What did you think about Prince Noctus suddenly turning into Connor Oberst for the last mission? That seemed very strange to me. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, man. It's just like, once you get to the end of video games,

it's always like, we got to do something to make it like different than the rest of the game. And I didn't love that. Kids love that. I don't know why games get that wrong all the time. There's so many video games, and it's better, I think, now than it used to be. But there's so many games where I put it down to somebody asked me, I'm like, I don't understand why developers choose that they want to leave you frustrated as the final note of their game. Like when you get to a boss fight that's using mechanics, they're totally weird, when you have to do something completely out of the ordinary to go, like, I didn't play this game to play this kind of thing.

And I've enjoyed the entire run. But now what I remember is trying 30 times to beat this boss and getting fucking frustrated and being cheap and this being terrible. We wanted you to feel, we wanted to feel special for you. That's what it comes down to is we're hoping that what we've designed is going to build enough off of the things that you've learned to where it'll present you a challenge because it's just different enough that you don't come into it instinctively, but it's also new enough that it's going to feel exciting and special.

And you're right, sometimes we totally brick it. We just completely go off the rails with that. But I mean, the intention is always to try and give you something memorable and different and special when that happened. And I feel like people have gotten better about it nowadays, where it is like, no, you're still with the same mechanics. No, we know the game was strong enough that we can give you an end boss fight that isn't super out of the ordinary and super weird. And like that catches you off guard and isn't fun.

And I mean, I think about like when you look at the uncharted ending boss battles, right, where it's like uncharted one ends and it's like this weird fist fight that you have not done at all this entire fight. It's like, why is this weird ass mechanic there? And then to beat, you know, lost legacy and be like, cool. I've done this before in this game. I understand how all this all builds together. And again, that entire journey is interesting, not that one boss fight they want to make it. But I understand too of like you've built me in a video games in general. You've built me up to be the ultimate character.

But here's my ultimate villain. How can he really match you in a way that isn't super? Well, I mean, I think it just, it comes back to the gameplay. And it's like, is it something where it's like you've earned your skills over the, the experience. And now this is the thing of like challenging you with that. And it couldn't be a slight twist, but it's when it's completely different that I don't like it.

Like Halo, I think is a great example. Halo 1 is a great example of, you know, you've been using the ward hog the entire time. But now at the end, it's like, it's a chase scene or like, Like things are exploding. You had to get out of there. But it's still gameplay that you've played the entire time. Whereas Devil May Cry 1 is probably the biggest insult to me of this, where you play through this whole game and it has a certain style.

And then the final boss is you're flying and becomes a schmup. I'm like, what? And there's like an on rail Star Fox 64 style thing. And I'm like, this is not fun. Even it's not the game. Even like, you know, Arkham Asylum where the boss battles were so sometimes basic where you just punch penguin or whatever, right? But that's how it should be Batman?

And then it would be like, well, how do I take down Killer Croc? do I do this? How to take them? Mr. Freeze. I know I'm mixing things around here. But like how you go out and you actually think about these bosses,

right? But then like Arkham Knight where it's like, all right, cool, do another tank battle. But this time there's 42 enemies. Like,

fuck you. And it's like, that's the thing where it's like when you play certain games. And it's like, all right, cool, I'm going. And like,

all right, cool, I'm running up to the boss. So now it's every enemy type you've ever faced in one hallway. And it's like, what the fuck? I don't want to do this. This is stupid.

So I know you platinum all your games. Not all of them, no place. A lot of them. You do. I like to platinum games. I'm not 100% guy. Sure. I've under,

I've 100% of every Arkham game. They are probably my favorite franchise out of the last few generations of games. Sure. And Arkham City, yeah, all the stuff of the tank, it broke my heart. I ended,

it was a logical, like, Arkham Knight. That's fine. I'm just helping you. I know that, you know, I don't want the comments coming after. No, no, thank you so much. It was a logical progression to the gameplay

to finally had the Batmobile, obviously. but the gameplay of that was hard but going back on what you're saying about these special endings yeah Arkham Knight does that in a way where like the last hour and a half of the game just like throws out everything you've understood

about how this game is going to be played just gives you this massive cinematic and then thrusts you into I'm not going to do too many spoilers here but into this whole different gameplay sequence that leads to the climax that made me forgive every single mistake not only this game had made

but in any other Arkham game Yeah, yeah. It filled me with so... It was the best ending to a video game, uh, including ones I've written that I have experienced in probably 10 years. Hmm. An example like that for me that I know not everyone agrees with.

I think we even disagree on is Metal Gear Solid 4, where the end, the final boss fight where it's you versus Osloa and you're, you're punching. And it's like, it's like kind of like a street fighter style game more than, uh, the CQC that you've been doing throughout the whole game. I thought that was earned.

I thought that that. It was different. Well, that was different because they were like bringing, every time you beat him right, it came back as like the different versions of him from metal fear. That was cool. It was different and weird,

but yeah, like you can do that and have it work. Like I think of like, you know, I think the best boss fight in all of the Arkham games, and I know I'm bringing in the Black Sheep is Deathstroke in, uh,

Batman Arkham Origins. No, like, I like that. That was like such a brilliant, fucking awesome fight. And it's like, but it isn't anything else you've done.

You have to figure it out and like, it's just, it's kind of a quick time of you event or whatever. but it's like, holy shit, that was awesome. That's what I want out of this. Whereas then it's like, he pops up in Arkham Night and I was like, oh, fuck, here we go. It's going to be great.

And he's like, he's in a tank. And he's like, he just got a tank. I'm like, motherfucker. How'd you fuck this up so bad? All right, let's go. I thought the same thing. Like, oh, man, I can't wait for this epic rematch. Oh, no, he's just in a tank, Alfred.

Thanks, all right. Other than Final Fantasy. So you got Night in the Woods, Final Fantasy. And then Pire. Oh, yes. Talk to me about Pire. Pire, the latest game by Super Giant Games. which is, the best way I can describe it is

Oregon Trail meets basketball, NBA Jam, meets an epic fantasy novel. And if you're having a hard time visualizing that, that makes sense. But oh, it's so good. Yeah, everybody who played Pire loved. I fell in love with it. I played, that also took me about 12 to 15 hours,

and I played that over the course of two nights. I said, I have no family. I got to do it. Honey, you're on your own. I will love you again in. two days. He always has been. Greg and I go way back. Greg and I, Greg used to be produced, one of the producers on spec ops, and that's her him and I met. was back at 2K. So we became friends back then, and he left me

to go work super giant games, and it took a couple years, and I forgave him. Oh, good, okay. As long as it's all watered to bridge now. He's just so kind and so wonderful and smart, and their games are obviously fantastic. But Pire just, there's, I, so I don't, these days I don't, I tend to not like games with a lot of reading. Yeah. But the writing and the world building, and every character and the art for all the characters was so vibrant and exciting for me. Like I just, and oh my God, the actual gameplay of the, the, your fantasy basketball thing. There's a, there's a name for it.

I think, I just don't remember what is the ritual. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Blitzball. We'll call it Blitzball. I like that. It was fast and it was tense to where I was always like emotionally and physically connected to it in a way that I usually am not going to be in a sports game. outside of like the original NBA jam, which is really the only one I've ever really fully gotten into.

Because even if you're not good and haven't practiced, you can still be pretty good at it. Whereas like you play all these new sports games and you're playing at someone who actually knows what they're doing. It's over. You're done. You just can't happen. So Pire, I don't know. Have you played yet? No. I played at events and I, Greg came in and did a last play with us

and it was totally one of those things of like, this is cool. It's a lot to wrap my head around in a preview. Yes. And so when it dropped, I forgot what I was playing. but it came out at a time when I was in the middle of something else. And so it was one of those, I'll put it on the back burner. And it was that thing where our audience, the best friends, the kids who did play it, rode in and were like, you guys are sleeping on this game.

It's fucking awesome. Andrea played it. She loved it. So it's gotten airtime around here, but no, I've never experienced it. Tim has never experienced it. Oh, it's so good. So just, I mean, conceptually, like, you're in this fantasy world where there's a city thing, place.

You don't start there. You start in this place called the underground or the lower level where you've been exiled to. and you have this like kind of traveling gypsy type caravan, and these people just find you in the desert, and you can read, and that's why you've been exiled, because everyone's supposed to be illiterate, and they need a reader to read this book where these rituals have come from, and you have to chart the stars and take your little caravan

to wherever the stars tell you to go, and there's going to be another team of people waiting there, and then you read this ritual, and this voice comes down from the heaven, this fire burst open in the middle, and the two teams, three people each, compete to get these little soul balls into the other teams fire to get a point and whoever wins gets to go on in the competition

and if you win enough, you get accepted to the final ritual and if you win one of your people gets to go back. It sounds awesome. And come out of exile. And there's this whole political subplot of maybe these people are trying to do it to get back to start a rebellion to bring down the political leadership in the capital

or the city that you came from. so that they can get rid of all of this exile stuff and just bring everyone back. And you're kind of balancing that maybe these people are using you. You don't know if they are because they can't send you back because then they won't have a reader and then they can't do it again. So you're like, how am I going to get back? Can I get back?

Am I just doing this for them? And then again, I don't want to spoil things because I can just tell you every. That's a great pitch of it because most people just get hung up on the basketball game. And I was like, okay, that sounds interesting. That sounds way more interesting. And the different races and stuff they've built, like there's a little dog people, one who's got like this nice little,

the mustache guy. I love the mustache guy. But then there's also like a like, UK punk dog with a mohawk. You've got tree people. You've got a little cute pork like flying things. All right. There's,

you're going to love it. I got to do it for game in the year, I think. I got to get in there. A lot of people are playing it. Tim, what have you been playing? So today,

this morning, I got to play Super Mario Odyssey, but I can. Can't talk about it. Oh, you tease. So I'm teasing that for next week. So you have to wait for that. Is there any other Nintendo games you've been playing?

There are two other Nintendo games that I have been playing. I'm going to start with Metroid, Samus Returns on that there, 3DS. Yeah. Getting great reviews. You're a Metroid guy. You like Metroid? Yes. Okay.

Cool. Good. We're in good company here. Metroid, one of my favorite franchises, for sure. Metroid 2, my least favorite good Metroid game. We're not talking about other end. We're not talking about Federation Force. We're talking about the core.

When I saw the baby Metro. Super Metroid. My favorite one, just for some context here, right? I will say that Metroid's Amist Returns is worth playing for sure. I was very upset it was on 3DS and not Switch because I want to play on Switch. Don't worry on. Don't worry. Oh, yeah.

They're not, they're not putting more games on. Morning a party. Metro Samis Returns is a great game. I think it's being a little overrated. Oh, really? on all the websites. It's getting a metacritic. I don't know, but I'm throwing out there.

85s, something like that. I'd go maybe a point and a half lower. Whoa, you're on flat seven. Flat seven. Flat seven. I am thrilled that I'm playing a 2D Metroid game in 2017. There was a chance that we would never got one again. So just the fact that we have it on my,

all right, cool. I got to be happy with this. There's a lot of good in the game. The counter that they added, the melee counter, super fun, super satisfying to do. Problem with that, it gets old after a while. Similar to the original Metroid 2, there is about 40

Metroids that are wild and you have to go around and capture them all. Yeah. And that's the whole point of the game. And it gets really repetitive because there's only like four phases they go through. So essentially you have the same boss fight 10 times, four times. Oh, no, I don't like that. And having used the counter over and over. It really, I feel like the game's at odds against itself because it wants you to be way more nimble than Metroed games typically are.

The controls are fantastic. There's a new laser target thing where you can hold the L button and target exactly when you see where it's going to go. It's great. And the animations are beautiful because it's not sprite based and because it's 3D for the first time with this type of Metroid game, the way Samus moves and like can turn, put her gun behind her back and stuff. It's like you feel like a badass in a way that I haven't ever felt before. I'm interested. I wanted to and I'm being told that I'm a badass. But now it looks like you're envisioning.

Yeah. It's like when you used to play, when you play any 8-bit game or 16-bit game and you kind of make the narrative around it, right? And envision the battle a bit different than what you're actually seen. But seeing the way Samis moves, it's like, it's really cool. And I will say that this is the first game since Mario 3D land that I had the 3D slider on. Oh, wow.

The entire time. Really? It is gorgeous. Okay. Seeing the depths of the caves and there's some some fun surprises of things in the background that end up coming to the foreground and stuff and it's like it's really cool and that's all great But where the games that ends with itself is or at odds with itself is the way she's nimble and the way she can now like grab onto Legges and stuff. It's awesome, but then the counter makes everything stop like you have such great momentum and you're moving you're moving you're moving every enemy you need to wait until they come at you to counter and it's like it's like it's like it's a great momentum. I'm moving you're moving moving.

And it's like, it reaches a point where I feel like the game kept stopping me from moving through how it would want it to play it, right? So that kind of frustrated me. It is still great Metroid. There's a, in classic Nintendo fashion, the last couple of years, there's a baby mode essentially where you can't really lose. And like, if you need to find where the breakable walls all are, all you need to do is hit A. It scans the place and it'll tell you where they are. You don't need to use it, though. And I like that.

I think it's, Nintendo's been good about having the option for people that need the extra help, but not requiring you to use it if you don't want to. But yeah, I just think that overall it's, it in some ways feels so much better than a lot of the other Metroid games felt to play. But I just feel like the map design was all right. The repetitiveness of the boss has really let me down.

And also just the repetitiveness of the enemy designs. But the, all the upgrades and abilities, like the original ones, and the new ones they added, they're super cool. And I just look at this, I'm just like, I can't wait to get up the next proper, yeah, 2D Metroid game.

All right. Um, I do recommend it. I, like, it's still, it's still a metric game. Like,

it's still great. Yeah, I mean, that still sounds like, Mercury's team knocked it out of the park. Oh, that's good. I would have never expected it from them.

Um, but yeah, it's in the soundtrack is killer. Uh, so it's. Knocked it out of the park, 7.0. Yeah. Well,

I know, I know. I know. The problem with it, Yeah. And so I feel like they did knock it out of the park for what it could be what it could have been Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, because they did out a lot of stuff that's cool and interesting, but it's it's You played this on your way to Hawaii, right? I did the whole trip and did you feel like when you're walking around Hawaii stuff too? No, but I mean like the flight there the did you get looks when you're you're there on your plane playing on the train you busts not your amoebo's tapping them putting them on there you got to have all these amoeba. I didn't use them. Wow. No, did not use a zero suit. Oh God. Yeah, fusion mode. Yeah. I didn't do anything.

that. But anyway, yeah, again, it was really cool playing a Metro game, like a new Metroid game because it's been a while. And Metroid Zero Mission is one of my, my favorites. And that was a remake of one. So it's cool that they were made to, we don't need to see a super Metroid remake. Like I really hope that the next thing we see is brand new is brand new like, like Fusion was. And I know not everyone loves Fusion, but I did. So I'm hoping we get more of that. And I hope that this game sells well so that Nintendo will be like, you know what, we should make more Metroid games, like 2D Metroid games. Yeah. So I'm absolutely going to buy this now because I did not know as a remake a Metroid 2, which I never got a chance to play.

But here's the thing, all those old Nintendo classics, I love the weird sequel that came after the first one. Metro 2. All of them. Like Mario 2, Zelda 2, Castlevania 2, how they're just like, why should we make the game that people liked? Let's just go crazy. Let's go crazy. So I'm actually really excited to play this now because it sounds so off from the first Metroid, which I loved that I can only love this more.

Now, this also, real fast, also goes to movies. I love Highlander two more. I love Jaws two more. Gremlin's two. Well, Gremlin's two is perfect. Of course I love that one more. So I don't know why. I just really love the weird sequel.

So I am very excited to play this. I mean, Metro 2 isn't that weird of a sequel in comparison to things like Mario, Zelda, whatever. I think the biggest problems of Metroid 2, the original were the sprite was way too big. And then there was just a lot of things like how the map laid out and stuff. But it was all technological stuff because it was on the Game Boy, you know? Um, but yeah, so this, this game definitely fixes a lot of that. And it's not a one for one remake.

Like they definitely did a good job of, um, making the level design and enemy layout. Interesting for a modern game, especially when they added all the, the counter and all that stuff. It's like it, I felt like the balance was good throughout. It just, I did get a little bit bored doing the same type of things and the, the stop and go action all the time. But yeah, there's that. And then the other thing that good Lord, I could not recommend hire project. Octopath Traveler. Oh, you did the demo.

My God. Yeah. So yesterday, as of recording this, the Nintendo Direct happened and one of the games they focused on was Project Optopath Traveler, working title, which surprises me that it's still a working title and that Nintendo is a demo out. There's a demo out with English voice acting.

It's a meaty demo. There is a lot there. I'm like, guys, figure this shit out, you know? That seems a little weird. But you not having a switch yet, this is going to be the game that is going to sell you. If you're a Final Fantasy guy, if you're an old school Final Fantasy guy, man, have you seen this game?

No, I've heard every, I was at a comic store right before I came here and they were talking about it. And talking about the same thing you just said, why are they using this placeholder title? Oh my God, it's horrible. I saw the title online with people talking about the other day and I was like, what, that seems fine. I mean, it seems like a video game title. Yeah. So, okay. Definitely seems like a Japanese.

This is my Tim Getty's soapbox moment. Here we go. Everybody's getting up. This game needs to be called Final Fantasy. Okay. Like, it would help it sell so much, and it's going to be a crime when it gets called something else and sells all right, when if it was just called Final Fantasy, I had in a couple muggles, out of a couple things or whatever, and you'll be fucking fine.

Playing this game reminds me of playing Final Fantasy 6 for the first time. And that is the highest compliment I can give a JRP. Oh, no, absolutely. You've just invoked. Yes. Is your switch here? Is it here? It's not here.

I don't have it here. It made me feel a nostalgia in a way that wasn't just that retro. Like, you know a couple of years ago, and it's probably a decade now, when all the retro games are coming out. And it's like, oh, everything looks like a 2D side scroll. And it's all 8 bit. Yeah. Something is 16 bit and whatever. Like you see things like shovel night.

And you're like, oh, man, like this is, this reminds me of how things used to be. We got so many of those now with a JRP's as well. We can just like, oh, cool, it's spite base. There's something about this where. where it's it sprites, but in a 3D, like, CG world where there's like lighting and it's like tilt shift photography.

And I'm like, this is what those games woulda look like now. And when you're playing through it, there's just so many little details that aren't just, oh, this is a kitschy fun thing that reminds me of before. It's like, no, this is what before would have been like now.

The music is super updated. It's not like the MIDI sound files or whatever. It's not 8 bit 16 but sounds it's like fully orchestrated beautiful music and I cannot compliment the music enough it's so good I download the whole rips off YouTube already on my iPod um there's when you see that the text bubbles that come up and of the characters going through there's voiceovers for them and it's just like it's just I remember playing Final Fantasy 6 as being like I wish it would talk to me and now it does and it adds so much to

it the characters are super cool the story's really interesting a little tropey the story Yeah. But I'm down for it. It's a, I only played one half of the demo because I'm not even going to play the other half of my, I'm going to wait until this thing comes out. Like, I am so sold on it. So I played Primrose, who's the, the dancer girl. And it's essentially like Moulon Rouge.

And I'm like, all right, cool, you already sold me there. The, you and I, like, a lot of the same things. The battle system is really interesting. I never really played the Bravely Default games or Bravely Default and Bravely Second or whatever it was. But from what I hear, it's, it's made by the same people. so it's very similar battle system. But it reminds me of Final Fantasy 10,

where it's not active time battle. It is turn-based where it also kind of reminds me like Pokemon, where you just, you are wait. It's your turn and their turn. You can see at the top of the screen, the order of attacks that people can do. And it is just super fun. The battle system's great where it's kind of a risk-reward thing

where you have this thing called break. And you have like every turn, you get one break point. Yeah. Might be saying the wrong thing. But whatever, for the sake of this conversation, we're going to call it break. Um, you get five breaks that every, every turn you get one point. And you can use that to amp up and multiply your attack.

Right. So you can use it every turn. You use one to make your attack times two. Or if you wait three turns, then you can use your max and you have three. And it's like the level three of either your attack or your spells or whatever. And, uh, in addition to that, each enemy has a counter on them where every time you hit them, Let's say it says three. If you hit them three times, they go into like a stun mode.

Yeah. So there's all this math you have to start doing where you look at it and you're like, you try to set people up so that your hits are at the right time where it stuns them. Then you can unleash the max three thing on them and it really fuck them up. And it's super satisfied. You really fucked them up. I loved it. And there's one boss fight you get to play in the demo.

And it was interesting. And they set up the story very well for me to hate the character that I'm facing off against. And I don't know. It's just like. Playing it reminded me of Feeling playing games that I never thought I would have again Right And I'm just like, good Lord, I want this now.

And the demo was now loadable. Demo is free. Free for everyone, man. It's, I can't believe it. You just got to get a switch. You got to get that switch. Well, yeah, so it's really funny. This is all sounds so amazing.

I'm now totally sold in this game. But prior to you telling me all this, I'd only seen the name on Twitter and I for some reason just assumed it was a sequel to Octodad. That is what I thought when I saw people talking about it. And this is still a great game.

Yeah, but this is so much better. It is so, it's so much better. I'm just glad to see it's paying off. Is Kevin still here? Kevin. Anyways,

I'm just glad to see it paying off because I remember when we did the, when they did the announcement stream, we all made fun of the title. But we were like, the game looks cool, but then we all lost our mind at the title.

Yeah. Brod joke, Dr. Froschroh. It's so stupid. Like I'm saying, they should just call it a final fantasy. And I know that it's not a final fantasy.

Maybe it couldn't be. Maybe it's like the thing with like the, Woods turned out to be like a stealth Blair witch sequel. Yeah, I mean, that'd be cool if they were like, hey, we're just doing it again. And it's what you're talking about, Final Fantasy. Like, yep, Final Fantasy can just be something.

It can be in one-off shoot. Can you YouTube Project Octopath Traveler? I want him to see the gameplay. And can you put it on? Yeah, do the thing with the square thing. The picture and picture. Yeah, do that thing with that square thing. So people can see it too.

Because the game is stunning. I've never seen any game with this type of visual style. The closest thing is that game that was announced at E3 this year. I think it's called Last Night. Yeah. Last night. The one with all the controversy and all that stuff. But like the visual style of the game looks amazing.

This is like that. But imagine Final Fantasy 6 looks like that. Like it's so cool. Here we go. Oh, wow. Okay. Yes. Yeah.

There's a good job. If you're an listener at home, we're watching, I believe this is the debut trailer or is this trailer from yesterday? This has to be a secret Final Fantasy game. This has to be a secret Final Fantasy game. You're absolutely right. It looks exactly like Final Fantasy Six. That'd be awesome.

just makes me want to have a Final Fantasy 6 remake. If they fucking announce this is Final Fantasy, people will lose their mind. The thing is they won't, though, because it's made by the Bravely Default People. And if anything, I think it would not be part of that series, but I think it might be something different. But, oh, man, I just, for the sake of this game.

Wow. Yeah, it's just incredible. And then skip forward a little bit to the battle system. Yeah. So. Thank you, Joey, Noel. It's just classic turn-based things. And just look how cool this looks.

Yeah. Anyway, I had so much fun with it. You're right. It is called break. Good job. Okay. Well, break. I'm about the wrong. I'm about to break.

It doesn't matter. Check the game out. If you have a switch, download this right now and tweet at me and let me know how much it changed your life. Oh, wow. It's going to change your life. It's going to change your life. I didn't know that. Yeah.

It's called that right now because there's eight different characters that each have their own little story. Eventually, they're going to converge. But the demo is so meaty. There's two. You get to play through the first 45 minutes of two different characters with completely different stories. and it reaches a point where you beat the boss and then the credits roll

and then you can just keep playing. I just noticed working title in parentheses. Oh yeah. No, they're committing to it. This is why I just call it that? I hope they don't call it that. I mean, this point though, that's what we all know it is, right?

Well, so last time Nintendo did something like this that I remember, it was that project steam or code name Steam. Oh. And then it ended up just being called Project Steam or something like that. It's like, well, great. So I don't know.

I hope they figured it should out. Now it's time for this week in gaming history. Two years ago on September 11th, 2015, Super Mario Maker came out on the Wii. What a fantastic game. What is that? This is another one of the, where is this on Switch?

Just put it on a Switch. I feel like that's an E3 next year announcement. I would bet on it. I play Mario Maker a lot on my 3DS. Yeah. And that's because I don't worry too much about all the uploading. whatever. I just play it.

It's good. It's damn good. But I want it on the switch. We want everything on the switch now. Eight years ago on September 12th, 2009, Pokemon Heart, Gold, and Soul, Silver came out on the DS in Japan. My favorite Pokemon games. Really? Those remakes, fantastic. Is it because Pikachu was in it? Pikachu was featured in it.

He was. He was. Pikachu was also featured in Pokemon Yellow version, special Pikachu edition that came out 19 years ago on September 12th, 1998. Man, that game was special, Greg. Let me tell you why. Lay it on me. Pokemon, red and blue. Fantastic games.

Everyone gets hooked. It's a phenomenon. I don't know if you're familiar. Pokemon, you catch them on. Have you heard of Pokemon? Yes, you catch them all.

That's right here. Or they kill your mom. In the game. Wow. That's intense. But then there was an anime that people watched. Everyone watched that too. And everyone's like,

well, man, I wish that the anime was, or the game was more like the anime. So they did it. They took all the anime characters, put them in the game. Pikachu walked around with you. It was a great time.

Pokemon Yellow. You should play, Greg. You can get it on the 3DS virtual. I'll wait for the switch version. All right. That's coming. 10 years ago on September 14th, 2007, Skate.

Oh, fuck. Yes. On the Xbox 360. Changing the game. Killing Tony Hawk forever. But Skate was so good. Skate was good. Did you play skate?

I hope to enjoy skate. I did not play enough skate. Okay. I held too much of a garage. Skate was one of those games that like overtook IG at the time where we all were so into skate. Hillary was so into skate and we would all go home and play skate and then come back and look at fun of clips.

And that was the thing. It was a game ahead of its time. I'm uploading clips to look at things and share and like, okay, like seeing the guys Skate culture tumble off and then laying on the park bench like be, you know, fucking laying with somebody that was great. Skate, you didn't play skate. Never played Skate. Why do you hate Skate? I don't know.

Did you ever play Tony Hawks Underground? The best Tony Hawk game. Never play. I don't think I've ever played a Tony Hawk game. Turns out that the rider guy who liked RPGs did, was not, was not drawn to the skateboarding game. Yeah. You know Bamargera was in him though. Viva Laban. It's true. You're in Greyjoy himself.

That is fantastic. No, no. He does look like him. Nine years ago on September 16, 2008, Star Wars, the Force Unleashed came out on PS3. PSP, we, and Xbox 360. What a game. Yeah?

Man, that was fun. That was fun. So much fun. Yeah. Sam Whitwer. And now you're working on a Star Wars game. That's right. I am.

Wow. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, it's a sequel to the Force Unleashed 2. Correct? No. No, it is not. The Force Unleashed is what we would now call a legend. It is not an authentic story. Star Wars story.

Sure. Your game is. My game is. It is what you would call canon, which is not a word that they like to throw around too much. They prefer to just call it authentic Star Wars story. Okay. And legends. But yes, our Star Wars Battlefront 2, the single-player campaign is going to be the second video game video game to ever be considered canon.

The first one being the mobile game, Star Wars Uprising, which is no longer out. But we don't need to talk about that technically. Because you got a game coming up. That's right. Yeah. We can talk about that later, you want to tell you? Yes. I want to quickly get through these.

Yeah, we'll get through these. Let me just do this because it's baited breath. And you just tell me. Don't do anything on you. You got to wait and see. Any reference to Wado in this game. Any. Any reference to Wado.

What's next on your list? I'm excited about this. All this water drinking with these Star Wars people. 15 years ago on September 15th, 2002, Animal Crossing came out in the GameCube. First Animal Crossing game ever released. Really? Yeah. It technically came out on the N64 in Japan.

Okay. But in America. Do you have good memories of this game? I do not, not an animal crossing guy. Stupid. No. Animal Crossing was awesome. It still is awesome.

But my GameCube memories was we, yeah, we live in this college house. Kyle bought this game. We're all like, what the fuck is this? But then we all made our own characters and lived in that same world. And it was like, you know, asynchronous multiplayer where I'd wake up and go to class. And then I'd come back and nobody's home. So I'd play some Animal Crossing. And Brian had posted like things making fun of my mom on the wall.

And like Kyle had planted trees in my yard. And I was like, fuck, you know, trying to clean everything up. You know, it was awesome to like, it was. It was the first time I think I ever had a shared world in a game with other people, like that I was living with. I guess it just shared world in general where I wasn't like, we're playing a multiplayer mode. It was this, we're all existing. Tomnook owns us all. We're just trying to get out of debt with this motherfucker. That sounds really cool, actually.

I never played the original one. Did you play any of them afterwards? No, I've never played any of those. No, that's fine. Just making sure. No, I wasn't doing it because like the 3DS one was interesting in the same way, right? Because that was another game that came out and swept IGN where it was like, we'd come in in the morning and open them up and see what other people had done. like I think it was Brian Eltono that built in his basement like had recreated the up at noon set and all this shit.

Yeah. That's fucking awesome. Like I can't wait for Animal Crossing Switch to have everybody again doing that thing playing. I'll be another one. E3. Probably. Uh, 15 years ago on September 16, 2002, Kingdom Hearts came out on PS2.

Now, Kingdom Hearts. I have played this one. Oh yeah. Finally. Yeah. Yeah. Final Fantasy in there. Final Fantasy and Disney throwed together, which I mean, it's so good and weird and makes no sense in a way that I really like.

Yeah. And you got a key that's a sword. How into the Kingdom Hearts are? Oh, I stopped right. I stopped like 30 minutes into two. 30 minutes into two. You're telling me you didn't get through that boring as hell, five-hour tutorial section where they'd see ice cream and shit.

I was so confused. God, Gingham Arts 2 is so good after that point. I know. That's whatever my friend who lent it to me, she let me, the first Kingdom Hearts, she's like, it's great, now you're going to play King Hearts too, but you got to keep going. And I got 30 minutes. It's like, I can't.

I'm sad. I just have, I got to do other things. But I am reading Alexa's book about it. Yeah. So I'm finally catching up on Kingdom Hearts too. Yeah, there's a lot going on. We had her come on the show and try to explain the whole story and it didn't go well. Yeah, it's still, even with a book in front of me and the internet right there next to me, I'm still trying to, there's a lot.

You need to find a Sherpa for that game to guide you through as to explain everything to. One of my best friends, James Burke, biggest Kingdom Hearts fan. No way. Oh, dude. Really? It's Disney. Still, Disney. Still.

Besides Alexa, obviously. But the thing with him that is just the most, this is the most James Burke thing ever. I hate him for it. He has platinum to kingdom hearts multiple times. Like on PS2, we 100% of it on the HD remix on PS3, he 100% of it. And then on PS4, he 100% of it. Give me some stats on his dream drop distance playtime. Be it multiple times.

He's beaten chain of memories. He's been recoded. He's beaten all of them, all of them, except for two. Except for the one that everyone says is the best one. He's stuck at the tour to-tornio. He's played it like five times. He's like, oh, I just never get through it. I just want to go back to the 100 acre woods and one.

I'm like, dude, play fucking two. Everyone find a way to give him shit for that. I hate him. Does he have a Twitter? No, he doesn't. What's his phone number? What's James Burke's phone number? Two more here.

Two more. These are important ones. 24 years ago on September 13th, 1993, Mortal Kombat one. Mortal Kombat came out. S&S and Genesis. You remember this, Tim? Oh, I do.

Yeah, I remember it. Kevin had all the, the CG, like VHS tapes. Okay. Not just the movies. There was like a weird CG like trailer commercial thing. Okay.

For it. We watched it a lot. Because Mortal Kombat was so cool. Yeah, it was super cool. It was fatal. He's do all these different things. It's awesome. Yeah.

Second best video game movie ever made. What's the first? Doom? Super Mario Bros. Oh, okay. God. And I will die on that though. You will.

You definitely will die. I love Super Mario Brothers. The movie. I mean, it's fucking. It's horrible, but like, good Lord, how much fun is that damn movie. It's so good.

Have you seen Dead or Alive the movie? No. I want to give a shout out to it because, I mean, again, horrible. But it was really like, we're going to commit to it being a video game. They had an excuse for why there's health bars when they fight and you can see the health bars. And I was like, I appreciate that. When's the beach volleyball show up in this? Oh, it's in it.

Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. No, they went through. They did it. I only have won defense of Super Mario Brother movie real fast. Because I know a lot of people do hate it.

But this is the thing that makes me consider it an actual work of genius. So in the Kube Kingdom, dinosaurs evolved instead of monkeys. So everyone over there is a dinosaur. dinosaur. And when you go to the Kupakene and they're all driving electric cars, you know why? No why? Because the dinosaurs evolved. There's no fossil fuel. And that is genius. That is a level of detail you do not expect from a Super Mario Brothers movie. And when I realized that halfway through my first viewing, everything opened up. Yeah. And I fell in love. Man, man. Just think about it. I'm saying, it's hard not to now. Yeah, speaking to Super Mario Brothers, 32 years ago on September 13,

1985, Super Mario Brothers came out on the NES. Change in gaming forever. I was hope you're going to say number two. Super Mario 2. That's the one. One is great. One is great. We finally got an NAS classic in my house and we went back and we've been playing the first one. And it's great. And you know what's great when you go back and play an old game for the first time in years? When you run up to that first

Gumba and you miss time the jump and you die and you realize your entire life is a lie. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. I'm going to throw this out there. Super Mario Bros. One. Most overrated Mario game of all time. IGN just did a ranking the top 10 Nintendo games of all time. Sure. And Super Mario Brothers 1 is the 2D game that made the list. I'm like, I'm sorry.

I understand it's the first. I understand how influential it is. I understand how important is. But that's like the people that say the Fast and Furious 1 is better than 5. You know what I'm talking about? You know what I'm talking about. But no, Super Mario World way better. Super Mario 3, way better.

Honestly, so wait, they only put one on there. I thought you said it was 8 bit. That's the 8 bit. Or do you say 2D? I have five apologies. Now I'm caught up. Thank you very much. I remove my question. And then Mario 64, the only 3D one on the list.

And it's like, guys, no, Galaxy and Galaxy 2. I get the 10 is hard. But Mario 1 is the most over-a- I love Mario 1. But, I mean, come on, guys. It's not even near the same league as three-year-world. I feel like I'm willing to agree with you on here. Like, it's over-rated usually has a bad connotation.

I don't think you're using it that way here. No. No, no, he's not doing to insult it. That didn't compare to these other two. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's just, yeah.

Mario 1 is a 10 out of 10. Yeah. It's just not as much of a 10 out of 10 as the others. You did it. You summed up well with a Metroid where it's your least favorite good one. Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. Because when you talk about it, I have my least favorite that makes it sound that you don't like it. But you just don't think it.

Yeah. I would definitely think world above it. Oh, yeah. World's the best. World's the best Mario Sunshine up your asshole. Summer sunshine. I love Mario Sunshine. I know you do.

That's what I'm saying. Stuff it up your asshole. I don't want to hear it. I'm gonna go pee. You guys can chat it for a second. Tell them. I ordered, I ordered a coffee.

I'll take some water. I ordered a coffee from Joey. I've never played Super Mario Sunshine. Good. You don't need to. Do I just need to know that it's... Dan Reichert, Tim Getty's.

I think Colin, right? Wasn't Colin? There's a bunch of people who are just blind and crazy and they think Super Mario Sunshine is a good game. It's not a good game. Oh, it's not a good game.

That was the one on the game. It's repetitive. I never played a game. You got a, I don't think I ever, fuck. I was, it came out in a window for me. Were you weren't gaming? Well, it's not that I wasn't gaming. I think it's that I was buying my own consoles finally.

Okay. And so you had a pick. Yeah, exactly. It was like post parents, pre-disposable income. Okay. So it was kind of in that window. Yeah. I look, I always take it for granted of the fact that I moved into a house where I had the

PS2, Kyle had the GameCube, and eventually park him with the original Xbox. Yeah. And then when Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes came. That's when I found they bought a used game cue so I could just sit in my room and play that nonsense. And then when I fell in with Cotor, I think is when I bought my own Xbox 2. I was like I got that. That's what I did too. Cotor totally won me over. My friend left his at my house one weekend and I was playing his coder left. And I was like I went out and I sold all my CD. This is so when you could sell CDs for like Storcared and sold all my CDs. All these old games that I had in movies and DVDs and got an Xbox so I could play Cotor. And it was so fabulous. Exactly. Yeah. I had that giant Xbox. I carried around for Cotor. Cotor Tour.

and Stubbs the zombie. Yes. Who didn't love Stubbs the zombie? You know, talking about that? It was fantastic. Yeah, I did remember that. But you never played a GameCube game. Or a Dreamcast game.

Both of those like systems that people like rave about are like fall into that category that I just never. Dreamcast, it's always just was ahead of its time. Yeah. That's what people say I. As a Sega fan boy growing up, I got so burned on the Saturn that I was like, I fucking curse you guys.

And when Dreamcast came out, it wasn't until I played crazy taxi at a target demo kiosk, I was like, maybe I should pick this up. My friend was like, don't. PlayStation 2's out in like 9-1 sort of. whatever it was. It was like, great point. Fuck these people into the ground. So you got burned by the Seca's Saturday, but what's your feeling on the Seca CD? Let's go into this. What? Stake CD, I didn't

own. Okay. My friend Connor had it, and we went over there and played a few things, and I just never saw it. What was the Castlevania on it? He had that, whatever. There was, I don't know. I remember two games, only Sonic CD and Third World War. Was it, was Nighttrap one of them? Yeah, I think, I think you're right. I think Night Trip was. And that also on the Phillips

CD. Probably, that sounds about right, yeah. But no, I looked at it, I was like, that's fine. But I mean, like, it was like, I remember Sega, my, like, I remember it was a selling point when I wanted to get the Genesis. Yeah. To my parents that, well, we could buy this adapter that would let me play my entire collection of master system games. Yeah. Like, what a great idea that was. Just plug it all in. I got to, I got both libraries right there. ahead of their time on that. Hapard of their time on that. Backwards Capitability. They made me pay for it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Now it's time to talk about you, Walt. My significant zero. Topic. Tell us about significant zero.

Well, Significant Zero, it's kind of a career memoir. It's about my time in the video game industry, which at this point is now going on 12 years. How did it start for you? It started for me, so it actually goes beyond, beyond, just getting an industry. I originally went to college to be a Southern Baptist chaplain in the United States Air Force.

You may not know this about me. I don't think I knew this about you. I was a religious military boy and signed away my life to go to college at Bailey University, the largest Southern Baptist University in the world. You really are from the south. In Waco, Texas, where nothing else has ever happened. And I got about two weeks into college and decided that maybe religion wasn't for me. There's a thing that happens when you go out to college and suddenly have no parental restrictions and access to alcohol and everyone's discovering themselves. and suddenly the things that religion tells you not to do, you really want to do.

And so Jesus and I were like, we're split. We broke up and that was a thing. But the military were like, you've already signed a contract. We own your body. So I had to go into the military. And that's just what was going to happen. So I left the religious track. I started focusing on writing and film, the things I was really interested in.

Because I figured when I go into the Air Force, no matter what I major in, they will just be like, you're a chef now. We need people to cook food. Go. There you go. these potatoes. Right. So while in college, I became part of a secret organization.

And yes, I'm mentioning that because I don't think you should join one if you can't brag about it. Stonecutters. Yes. And so I was writing, they published a satirical newspaper. And I was editor of it and I was writing all and stuff like that. Really got into writing. Right before I graduated, I got kicked out of the Air Force. What for?

Not being officer material at all honesty. Really not being someone that you would want to send. You're like Bill Murray from Strikes. I can't this guy, I was very similar to that. Okay, okay. So it was an honorable discharge. I was not just, you know, booted out.

But I was like, well, I don't have a job now. I will pursue my passion. So I called on my parents like, don't worry, everything's going to be fine. I'm going to be a writer. So I packed up my bags, moved to Austin, and immediately worked at a job at a mall

for six months so I can get money, and then moved up to New York where I was like, I'm going to be a writer. And nothing happened for two and a half months. I applied to Marvel. I applied to DC. I put on a suit and just walked my ass into Marvel's office with a resume. I'm here to see Stan Lee.

Turn, yes. They don't let, they keep him in a glass box. Oh, sure. They only bring him out for showings now. I did not know that. Well, you know, it's all, it's, you know, the air. They don't want him to wrinkle.

They don't want it to yellow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the guy just got me at the door and was like, no. No, they still haven't called me back. But I'm waiting. I'm hoping. Maybe my resume's gotten big enough. I can finally get the mail room.

job that I've been waiting for. Oh, they're up in now, Disney. Exactly. This is true. This is true. But so I met a guy at a bar in New York, in the middle of New York, a lone star bar, a Texas bar, because that's where Texans go. And I'm not a Texan, Louisiana.

Anyway, he lived with guys who worked on the paper that I worked on in college 10 years before I ever went there. And so that earned me enough for him to talk to me. And he was like, what do you do? I was like, I don't do shit. Right now? Not a damn thing. Nothing.

And he's like, well, I'm the hiring manager of this place called Take 2. We own Rockstar. They make GTA. I'm not going to hire you for them. But we have this other company. 2K. They're brand new. You haven't heard of them.

Send us your resume. Maybe there'll be something for you. Two weeks later, I come in for an interview for a game analyst position, which is kind of like a creative feedback. It's not QA. It's more like finding creative issues. Like maybe we could do this more or do this less. So idea QA. Yeah, it's an idea QA.

Do you play the game? Yeah, you play the game. So it's like basically modern Tom Hanks and big. Yeah, actually, that's a really good comparison. It's very, pretty much that. And so I get it. And so I get in and I'm like, I will do this job until my writing career takes off. And then they're like, no, we already have you.

And you can review scripts. And we pay you much less than we would have to pay anyone that we brought in to do that. So now you get to do that. And I was like, yes, please, let me do that. I will absolutely do that. And so they sent me to Chicago to live in a hotel. on the side of the highway and every day go over to high voltage software to talk to them about Family Guy colon the game exclamation point and help them write this thing.

Which was a great thing? Really? I remember this PS2 would have been around 2005, 6, right? Yes. Yeah, I loved Family Guy. So this game came out and I played it and my girlfriend at the time was obsessed with it and played it more than I did. Really? Yeah.

That's actually so sweet to hear because. everyone hated it when it came out. It was one of those things where it wasn't a great game, but it was like fun and it was family guy, and there were jokes in it and it was like, you know, there were like callbacks to the shows and shit. It was like, this is fun, this is cool to kill time. I got one joke in the game. I wrote an entire version of the script. We flew out to Los Angeles

to meet with the Family Guy writers, and they were like, this is the least family guy thing we've ever read. And I think they saw the heartbreak on my face and they're like, I mean, it's not terrible. What's the joke? What was the joke? Okay, so the joke is when Brian is getting arrested by the police with Carter Pudersmith.

It shows up to his house because he thinks he's impregnant Ceebries again. He reaches into his pocket. Brian's like, I didn't do it. Carter reaches into his pocket, pulls out a lot of cash, hands at the cop, says he's lying. Reaches in, grabs another hands to him, and he's not Caucasian. Cop runs in, starts beating him with a billy club. Had no idea that was going to be in the game. I played the final game.

It's in there. And I'm like, yes. I wrote one joke that was good enough to be stolen by the family guy writers. That's it. I am on my way. If I can just keep working. And, like, in all honesty, like, that gave me so much. much inspiration to just keep trying harder harder harder.

I was like, clearly I'm on the right path. If I can get one joke, that's one more joke more than most people get. So I can just keep working harder. Eventually I'll get two. Then I'll get a page. Then I'll get a mission. And then someday, they'll give me an entire game. And that game was spec ops.

Ten people played that game. But those ten people really liked that. More than that. We never shut up about that on podcast beyond. And we appreciated that. Yes, they did a lot of people. I mean, SpeckOps is one of those games. When people talk about stories and games, it's specops.

Like, that's what they bring up. So you did that. You wrote that. No, of course, of course. And like, we're all super proud of it. And I am at the point where I can be super proud of it. Because at first, I hated it. Any game I've worked on, I've usually hated by the time it comes out.

Because the thing is you put so much of your time and your life into it. And you have all the bad memories of production, the sleepless nights, the, you know, the fights with your significant others. All of that gets projected on the work. So you can still be like, I feel I did good work. but when I look at it, I just see the pain. And so with spec ops being a game that's really about the pain, it kind of just also increased that. Yeah, it would get harsh.

But now I can look back at it and go, yeah, no, we did do something really cool there. And people ask, you know, how did that game ever get made? And I still don't know them. I'm amazed that we ever got it through to that level. That was the thing. So, like, this wasn't something they tossed to you. This was your idea you tossed to them.

And they're like, we'll finally give you a bone. It was a mixture of both. Okay. They, we knew, so, uh, take two somehow ended up with the spec ops license. I don't exactly know how. But Rockstar was like, we're going to make a spec ops game. They spent, I think, maybe half a year, year and a half on it, and we're like,

nah, we got nothing. And so the license fell down to us. And it came to, my boss handed to me, and the other game analyst, a guy named Jim Yang, super cool guy. They were like, come up with some ideas for what, uh, specops game story could be. And of course, I just jumped straight in. I was like, let's get messy. Let's get,

weird. Yeah. Well, I was coming off of Bioshock, and Bioshock had done an amazing job of taking Iron Rans, philosophy, and kind of building a thematic world around that. Yeah, and I was like, let's rip off something that's really cool, too. What did you do on Bioshock for, just for the credits as people are following along? I was game analyst, lead game analyst, which means if you saw a screenshot or video, I probably took it.

Gotcha. And I did a lot of feedback on site, and I did all the, almost all the demos with Ken, Levine. I traveled around within the country. We was doing previews and demos and I would play while he would talk and be really, really smart. And I was just the quiet little kid in the corner. You're doing those slow cinematic pans showing Rapture. Well, like we even did the, um, a live E3 show where the demo broke like 10 minutes in and the enemy stopped showing. And we had a whole hour to fill because it's live. And I just had to like leave the demo area that they had built and pray to God the rest of the game had enemies in it.

And they did. Thank goodness. And the whole time I'm just looking at Ken off camera. Like, oh God, Ken, keep talking. But we like, there's a level of intelligence that the canon the entire team of Rational have that just like being around them and watching them do their thing,

I absorbed so much just from, you know, finally taking my dad's advice of sitting down, shutting up, and listening to people, that going into specops after that, like we really tried to take a lot of lessons we learned from Bioshock

and make a game that would be as equally thought-provoking. And so we started off thinking, you're looking to Call of Duty and the other military shooters, none of which I can remember right now, like Battlefield, and none of them had really bothered

to steal from the type of war stories that I'd always been fond of, which is like Apocalypse Now, or the Thin Red Line, things like, they always tended to focus more on. Something with weight. Yeah, like something that really weighed down on you. And so I was like, let's do that.

And at that point, Yeager Development, the wonderful team in Berlin, that had developed the game, they pitched us an idea that was set in Dubai with terrorists, and was kind of more straightforward, but we like, we like them,

we like this Dubai idea, let's get them and Walt working together on an idea. And I think just one day their art director, out of boredom in a meeting, drew a skyline in Dubai covered in sand, and we were like,

that looks cool. What's that about? It's like, I don't know. But it looks cool, yes? Like, yeah, okay, that's the thing. Dubai's covered in sand now. We will solve that later. And that's game writing in a nutshell.

Someone did a thing they thought was cool. They don't know how it fits with anything else, and they're like, writer, come here. Why did that, why does that happen? Well, you didn't, no, no, no. Why does it happen? And so you just have to, like, here's some words and duct tape, and boom, it looks like we did it on purpose. We never did.

But if you do it right, it looks like you did. And that's the great thing about spec ops is that, like, we over the course five years, this game is supposed to take two, it ended up taking five years. There's so many versions of the story, so many twists and turns to it. We didn't need, the final story didn't even come about until, like, the last year of production. Wow. The framework of the story was there, but then one day we were like,

what if Conrad's just dead and you're crazy? Wow, okay, that makes it suddenly very, very different. And then the whole twist of like them, if you haven't played the game, it's been out for five years, so sorry, spoiler. We told you a million times to play it. The twist that you might be dead the entire time and died in the helicopter crash at the beginning, that came about because we were doing the final recording of the game,

and my boss, who knew I didn't want to start the game of the flash forward, used that week to announce that we would start the game with a flashboard because he thought I couldn't fight him on it. And when I got the news I just flipped over a script page wrote down five lines that were Walker saying, wait, what's going on?

We've done this before that would only play during the second time you get to the helicopter scene and I just fed into my actors. We record it all right there and I emailed the guy who told me the news is like, hey, I'm just letting you know right now there is no flash forward. The helicopter scene at the beginning happens in real time, you die at the end of it,

the rest of the game is a post-death hallucination. I'm sending this to you because in a month and a half, everyone's going to say I made this shit up and I want proof right here and now, send. And a month and a half, sure enough, I had to bring that up in a meeting. Yeager's like, no, bitches. That's on purpose. You did.

And it was all just because my boss pissed me off during a recording session. That's, you know, these are the kind of things, the kind of stories that you'll find in significant zero. Out September 11th. pre-order now. September 11th.

September 19th. You kept saying 11. Yeah. Yeah. September 19th. I don't know. It's weird date people think about it. Remember all of time.

Oh, it's because Cookie with Greggie debuted on Patreon.com. That's true. That's why. Very important. Yeah. So yeah. That's awesome.

I mean, you're blowing my mind right now. First off, I love your energy. You were such a fucking cool dude. Second off, so writing a game, what does that mean? Because you're writing the narrative, the plot.

Like, happens. Are you also writing line for line who says what? Like the script of it? Yeah. So it's, you've got two types of game writing. You have the critical path, the story script. And that's what if you're just going straight through the game, your cutscenes, your main dialogue that's happening and saying, oh no, that is the boss. We must fight him now. Open fire. Those things. Like that's your critical path. And you're going to write that like a screenplay, just a normal screenplay, uh, cutting, uh, pointing out this cutscene, this gameplay, blah, blah. But then you got secondary lines, your combat lines, that's battle chatter, intel that you might pick up,

backstory stuff, your menu text, that's all these secondary lines, that's just a spreadsheet, where some designer has come in and put a lot of cells saying, you're throwing a grenade, you're throwing a flash grenade, you're throwing a sticky grenade, that guy has a shotgun, that guy has a sniper rifle, and you have to write five to ten lines for each of these things, and then do that for ten or however many characters, and you're trying to instill as much character and voice and personality in these things as you possibly can, which is hard because these lines are terrible and boring, and no one really hears them anyway, unless they are really lively and different. Because they're meant to be informational, but ultimately they all

get thrown together in a game to just create this kind of soundscape of stuff happening around you in combat. Because the thing is, when you're in combat, you know what you don't do? You don't tell the enemy that you're throwing a grenade at them. That's a bad idea. You don't shout that out. You just throw it. but those are these secondary lines and those are the worst but everyone has to do them I actually, I don't dislike doing them

because I try to have fun with them I'll do like four that are very straight laced for the game and then I'll do one that's just for me and the one that's for me can be anything like I remember I was writing lines for Mafia 2 and you're going through the store and you're looking at all the weapons and every time your cursor goes over weapon

the guy has to be like oh so you're looking for a time again huh like hey Al Capone used to use that Oh yeah, no, that Tommy Gun. That's a good model. And I was just like, well, yeah, look, it shoots a bullet's really fucking fast. What else do you need to know?

Like, that one's for me. Like, if it's just what I'm thinking in my head after writing four really boring lines, anything to make me not want to stab a pencil into my eye because that's how I start to feel. That's what I got. In my sleep, I must have done it. I was writing bad lines.

Never leave pencils by your bed, man. Like, I do it all the time. Anyway. So what about, like, The text in the game, like all the menus and all that stuff. You write that as well. I write that. Sometimes I don't.

It depends. People write movies. People write books. It's like, oh, hey, cool. There's a lot of words in those things, right? I understand that. Games seem like a whole other level where it's like a movie is two hours. It's like being a screenwriter and being a book writer, an author.

And also being the guy who has to like write the weird little not funny quotes in like a Denny's menu. Like, that's, all those three jobs come together. That's a video game writer. And sometimes you have power and control over what you're doing. Sometimes you have zero. And there are people just throwing things at you saying, say this exact thing, but better. So is there a team or is it just you? It depends.

Every, every game is different. I've worked on some games where I am the only writer. And to be fair, I like that because I don't have to fight other people's ideas. I can be a little bit of a steamroller when it comes to other people's ideas. Oh, you? Yes, I know. It's hard to believe, but I will destroy you. Oh, wow.

Okay. My apologies. But sometimes you have a team where you'll have a lead writer or narrative director or even the creative director. Like Ken Levine is the leader, is the lead writer in all of his games because Ken Levine was a writer first before he got into games. Hayden Blackman, also a writer. You know, a lot of creative directors are also writers. Amy Hennig, probably one of the most successful, popular known ones as well. So when you're working on that, you'll have a whole writer team and you'll split things up sometimes by character, sometimes by mission, and then the lead writer will go back in and take everyone's stuff and tweak it so that it fits together with a similar voice.

And I've done a couple of those, like on Star Wars Battlefront too. I am working with a co-writer. It's just the two of us, but it's me and Mitch Dyer, who you may know. He always said he was lead writer and you were junior assistant. Well, you see, that's because Mitch Dyer is a filthy liar. Okay, just making a Shriners soon. And that rhymes. Oh, it does, yeah.

Good call. That's delicious. So, Star Wars Battlefront 2? Yeah, what was that like? I got a lot of questions here. Yeah. The first one is you're writing a canon Star Wars story. Yes.

Like, you are creating the official story of what happened in between episode six at episode seven. Again, this is Wado? Yes. I'm just saying, like, I know it's not too late to put in it in here. We're going to talk about Wado. in a second. Don't worry, buddy. Here we go.

Oh, Lord. But I mean, obviously, so much pressure. Obviously, that's insane. But like, forget about all that. How cool is that? It's so cool, I almost turned it down. I'm not right. I can imagine.

That seems like a lot of pressure. So do they approach you and they're like, hey, we want to write Star Wars? Do you audition? No, they approached me. I got a call and said, would you be interested in writing Star Wars? And of course, the answer is yes.

Clearly yes. But they wanted me to start, weeks before my child was born. And if you have a child, you know the two weeks before a child was born could be the weaker child was born. And I would have to be on the other side of the country in a other side of continent, in a different country doing this. And I was like, I don't know if I can make that happen. And they understood. Like, they're like, that is a, for all the reasons to say no to Star Wars, that one is very valid. But give it, give it, just give it a thought.

And we'll see if maybe we can change some dates around and around and just give it and, you know, think about it. And that afternoon, we went and got an ultrasound. We were sit in the waiting room and I was just scrolling through Twitter and that was the day that John Boyega tweeted at EA hey where's my battlefront single player campaign nice and I read that and I showed it to my wife she's like you got to write Star Wars you can't say no because Finn wants you to do this you're doing this for him not us not the Williams's you're doing it for for Finn and I was like yeah I am and now John Boygan are our best friends who would have thought I love that I know we barbecue all the time uh please tell me the game opens and it's like

like, or the campaign opens for John Boyeke. So, yeah, I mean, it was, it is kind of, it is so cool that I act, the reason I felt comfortable turning it down is because I thought, you know what, almost writing Star Wars is still better than most people ever get. And that's something I can hold on to for the better than fucking up Star Wars. It is way better than fucking up Star Wars. I don't think we did. I think we've done, let's see, how can I say anything that is, I just think we did it right. Good. We did it.

Good. I trust you, man. I mean, yeah, it's you and Mitch Ryan, Star Wars. I was on board. I was on board. Then this Janina, this Janina gets involved. Janina is amazing. Yeah, well, she can't even stay for a full game over Gregi show.

She's a very busy person, though. We had started a campaign already to boycott Star Wars Battlefront 2 because she was only here. And what we said is, you can only stay for half a game over Greggy show Janina. will only buy this game when it's half price. I'm going to buy it for full of price. Me too. Besides Mario Odyssey, it is my most anticipated game

for the rest of the year. Because of the single player. I loved Battlefront one, but I was like, I want single player. And this is like, the fact that it is canon, the fact that it is during

an amazing era, not the wrong era. I am so, there's nothing wrong with that era. That era is great too. There's things about it that are good. There's things about it that are bad. There's a lot of those.

Wotto is the best. That's life, man. Yeah, Exactly. That's true. That is true. That is true. That is true.

So what's your Wado story? Okay. So I want, now my Wado story is simply a desire for a story. And Lucasfilm knows this desire. Good. As long as you made it known. I want to write a thousand page Wado novel inspired by the great Russian tragedies. We're talking war in peace.

We're talking Dostoevsky, all that stuff. Okay. Leading to his eventual death of old age and lonely. on the desert planet of tattoo. How a little baby Wato can grow and experience the harshness and the coldness of an uncaring galaxy to turn him into such a...

Slaver. Slaver. Money, grubbing. And really, and why does he even need slaves? He basically runs, what, a pawn shop? I mean, let's be honest. Like, why did he need two slaves for that? That's why we got cool Greg and Kevin. I don't know.

We could probably do this on our own, but we need him. It's not like he had a lot of customers in there. What's he any doing? He's just working a stall. And what does he meet the mom for? This is where you come in. You're going to explain what they do with these people. Exactly. And I need a thousand pages to do it.

Sure. Sure. It's going to be very slow and boring. But it's going to really touch the heart. Yeah, exactly. And it's all the, it's about the journey. Like with most video games, you just got to get through that first 15 hours, man. Then it's really good. Then it gets really good.

Then it gets good. So that I've wanted, I don't know why, but Wado for some reason, just strikes me as one of the least likable characters in the Star Wars. Wars galaxy in a way that really appeals to me. There's something going on there. I love that you've actually put thought into a lot of stories. This is a great thing about Star Wars.

Once you start writing Star Wars, you can't help it. Your mind begins to suddenly craft all these other stories. Because unlike anything else I've ever written, Star Wars genuinely feels like I am writing a story within something larger. And that's the crazy thing about it. If you think of it like a tapestry, it's something that this guy named George just started like knitting, you know, back in the 70s and got really far into it and then was like, ah, I'm going to do something else, you guys, and just started handing off needles to people.

And people are coming in and you're now knitting into that tapestry. And like for a little bit, I got to take over. And already, like, patterns that I put into their other people with their needles are like threading off into their own parts of the tapestry. And it's going to just keep going. And no other, with the exception of like, you know, comic books. Yeah. Like there's nothing else out there that really continues to. grow like that. And it's been such a cool, surreal experience to be a part of it. And to know

that Mitch and I were able to just come up with these little ideas, seeds of ideas and characters and things, and they're already growing out on their own. Because you have the great prequel novel, written by Christy Golden, Inferno Squad that came out in July that kind of sets up the whole story of Battlefront, too. But, I mean, you know, in Lucasfilm, it's not a spoiler to say, but Lucasfilm has said, you know, these are characters that we can continue, and are going to continue to tell stories around. Like, they are now an important part of this galaxy and universe. And that's just so cool.

And you hope that there isn't a five-year-old right now that in 30 years is going to be an executive at a company that purchases Lucasfilm from Disney. He goes, oh, the canon is out. It's not a canon. So how does the prep? I'll never forgive Ginny for skipping that second half of the gag. How does the prep look like for writing a Star Wars game?

Because with all of the now legends content there, like do you go back and look at any of that? Or do you just look at what's canon? I only looked at canon because Mitch had read all the legend stuff and I had only ever read Tales of the Bouty Hunters My grandmother gave it to me for Christmas one year and I read it And I liked it but like

When you go to the bookstore and you look at the Star Wars shelf That's a lot of books And it's intimidating Especially because they're not numbered You don't know where to start You don't know what's going on So many people have with comics We're walking like where do I start

What do I do? So I just went into the new canon stuff As soon as I knew it was going to happen I started watching all Clone Wars Which I hadn't seen and started watching rebels I picked up all the books and comics They were out And I've now read all of them.

Comics are so good. They're really good. I love what Marvel's doing with those. But yeah, and so I just started absorbing it. And this was the other cool thing about that is as you're doing that, inside you, the story doesn't, you're writing, it doesn't feel like you're writing in a vacuum anymore. It's like this isn't my Star Wars story.

This really, like this is happening at the same time as this comic where it's happening over here, or this book over here. And so you're beginning to take ideas and like loops and things that maybe weren't fully closed and like, hey, what if we could tie into this somehow? What if we do this? Like, I don't know if you know this, but thanks to Christy Golden's novel,

Janina's character, Iden Verzio, she's in a new hope. She's the first Thai fighter pilot that we see in the battle, Yavin, at the Death Star, which means technically, I've now retroactively created the Star Wars franchise, and that's amazing to me. God, that is so cool. Right? They owe me so many royalties.

Yeah. But it's, yeah, it's, you know, a lot, you would think. it would be intimidating. And at first when you're thinking about it is, but as soon as you talk to the Lucasfilm people, they're so welcoming, they're so open, they're such amazing collaborators. They have so many ideas,

and they want to work with you on things. And you'll take an idea, and they'll be like, we love it. You can't do that, and we can't tell you why. But you could maybe do these other three things. Because, I mean, they're balancing not just your story, every single story in production that's going across all the different mediums of Star Wars.

Wow. and they have in their mind all the stuff that's already out as well. And they have all the EU stuff in their mind. So they'll be like, you can do that, but it's kind of broaching on some of you thing. I think it's fine. I think we can do that. It's not going to feel repetitive.

And so, like, they're given and taken with you and all this stuff. And you feel like you really are working with Lucasfilm hand in hand. Because when you're walking into a relationship with a big company like that, with one of the biggest IPs of all time, you don't know what it's going to be like. You're kind of expecting to be shackled. Yeah, 100%. That's what I would think.

Yeah. And it's nothing like that at all. It's honestly been the best creative experience of my career. Wow. And I'm not even, I'm not saying that because it comes out in November. Like, I mean, it doesn't need me to say that. It's Star Wars. I could have fucked it up majorly.

I didn't. And it would still sell 20 million units because it's, it's Star Wars. So that also kind of takes a lot of the pressure off too. You're like, it's going to be fine. It's like, I probably won't sink this. If I do, wow, okay, then that's really bad. didn't again. So, yeah.

How does Mitch come into the fray? So Mitch and I are co-writers. Mitch is on-site at Motive. He's a full-time motive employee. I'm contract. Technically, you could say I'm lead writer. Mitch is junior writer just because it's his first game. But I consider as co-writers because Mitch has done so much of the heavy lifting of this game

and has been so involved with all of the meetings and all of the office politics. And he knows Star Wars. Oh my God does he know Star Wars. It's so wonderful to have my own walking Star Wars and cycle. I don't even have to look at Wikipedia. I just go, hey Mitch, what language does a Drabata speak? I need to know. Thank you.

That's great. Who can speak basic? Can you radio people when you're in hyperspace? I don't know these things, but Mitch Dyer does. And so he has been fantastic. And like the story, working with him, the story is better. he every idea I put out he's able to to

spin it through both like the lens of Mitch and the context of all the Star Wars stuff that he knows and just make it better through his enthusiasm and his talent and it's honestly it's this is why it's kind of this might be why it never felt overwhelming Mitch and I were friends before we worked together on this and so in a lot of ways it doesn't feel like I wrote stories

it feels like I hung out with my friend and we dicked around making up Star Wars stories that's what it feels like it didn't feel real until we saw our names in the back of Chrissy Golden's book and we were like, why are our names that touching Star Wars? That's not a thing that should happen. That's weird. We had our first meeting at a big summit down at EA about it and we were in this big auditorium with all these Star Wars people and we looked at each other. I feel like the cops are going to throw us out any moment. Like we should not be allowed to be in this room with these people. And you get over that really fast though because they just welcome you in. And it's crazy. You would think that Star Wars would be. one of the hardest things to write. And it really has turned out to be the easiest. And I love it. And so hopefully I'll get to keep doing it.

But even if I don't, I already did it. You did it. Yeah, right? It's done. No one can take it away from you. Well, and not only that, I mean, whoever buys Lucas Nars could take away. Yeah.

You're writing what, at least to me, is the most interesting hole that we have right now in the canon. Absolutely. Because we've had the, so obviously episode six happens and then there's 30 years. 30 years before seven. Yep. Then it's like the emperor dies in six. Spoiler alert.

Then it's like what happens there? Like what happens to the empire? It eventually becomes the first order. Yes. But how? Like what happens in that gap? We have Chuck Wendig's aftermath trilogy that picks up immediately and or going to the battle of jacu.

So it's like the first year after Jedi. And those were that trilogy of books that came out. And then there's a shattered empire, right? Shattered Empire, the comic that kind of... It's four issues and doesn't really go too far. Yeah. And that's like, right at the immediate moment,

but also that's covering all the rebels side. We're coming in from the empire side because we wanted to really explore this idea because when we watched the movies, we've only seen the empire from like the top level. The assholes who are in charge are corrupt and evil and they wear bath robes and shoot people with lasers and that's bad.

We wanted to see an empire story from the side of the people who grew up in it who would see the empire something good because maybe on their home planet is one of the stable ones where the empire has brought peace to a bad planet or they just simply bought the indoctrination like you do in a situation like that. But these are people who thought,

the empire is a good thing. Rebels are terrorists. We're trying to bring priests to the galaxy after the clone war. This is good. We want to help. And that's an, like for me as a writer, that's an interesting story to tell.

Because when you're inside a corrupt machine, you don't necessarily know that it is corrupt. And you don't know that it is using you in a corrupt way to do corrupt things. And maybe you do. And you're still a believer. You're still one of those, well, lesser to evils.

We, this is still best. better for the galaxy as a whole. So that's where the story that we're telling with Inferno Squad and Janita's character, Iden Verzio, and beginning to fill in that gap of what it's like when the empire loses its emperor, loses its death star for the second time, and is now facing a rebellion that's organizing around a new republic and completely taking hold of the galaxy once again. And it is the most interesting gap. And there's so, and with 30 years, clearly there's a lot of stuff to fill in it.

in there and I can basically stop talking about that right now. That's about as far as I can go. I know this must be public because I know it somehow. Well, there's one thing right there. No, but I mean, it takes, the story takes place over the 30 years, right? Like it goes from Death Star 2 to Star Killer Base. That's right. In 7.

Yes. That's crazy. I know. I'm so excited for this. Let me tell you, when I walked in the first meeting and they're like, okay, so it's going to span 30 years from here to here and it needs to follow one character. you can't freeze them in carbonite. There you go.

You've got a week. Come up with a story. Oh, okay, guys. Thanks, guys. See you later. Bye. Yeah, it was a bit, that was the most daunting thing.

Like, cover 30 years. Go. Bye. Yeah. Yeah. I got some questions from the audience. Let's do it. Let's go.

You can go to kind of funny. com slash gamescast to leave your topics, just like a bunch of these people did. Blessing Jr. So, oh, we already answered this. The hounder of racking is the pressure running. Sucks to be you, Blessing Jr. Sorry, but we said your name.

Blessing Jr. and another one here Jason want to know what limitations is working with such a big IP put on you in writing fuck you Jason you answer that as well

our correlate wants to know if there was a sequel to spec ops what would have looked like oh that's a question yeah that is a good one so here's the thing here we go

I didn't want there to be a sequel with spec ops which is why I killed all the characters that was a that was a conscious choice because I didn't want us to get near the end of production

and for someone in PR marketing to go what big city could they go to next and what crazy weather can it be? Can they go to Vegas and it's in a tsunami? No, absolutely. Everyone dies. Everyone dies. But

I still had to come up with ideas for sequels. And so I did have some. And then there was an unproduced narrative DLC that would have served as a sequel as well.

Interesting. So none of these went any further than the idea phase. Well, the DLC actually got written into a script. But so, as there were, I'll give you two of the sequels. One would have been we just never go back to anything like SpeckOps again. We ditch the SpeckOps title, we move forward with the line. And that comes like the through line of what these type of games would be about people being put in situations that are very extreme, that they are not prepared and the dark choices that they may have to face over the course of that.

and not necessarily make it a military shooter. But the idea was that we would stick with that and maybe our main character would be an older, retired soldier, possibly out of shape, overweight. I was, for some reason, I was really interested in playing as a fat out of shape guy. Can't run that far. I was really wanting to, like,

let's get really artistic with this. Let's go deep. Can't pick up guns easy. I already made them kill innocent civilians. Now let's make them play themselves. Sorry. I live that life every day. We both do.

There's too many stairs to come into this office. Why do we have so many stairs? There's a lot of stairs. It's true. So there was a sequel that went that way. And then there was a sequel of like what could possibly happen if you got the ending where Walker goes home. Where are we picking up with Walker? And he has, he's dropped down the military now.

He's like a one of those like Blackwater Merks. But he's not the character that you're playing as. He becomes like the secondary character. And you were like, also, just forgive me straight up for, this is not a great idea. But you're playing like a nun in like a third world country doing relief and there's like pirates and you're kidnapped and like he rescues you. And it becomes, it's like a duo thing instead of like a three man squad. Okay. But it's like the things that now this like a woman of God is having to face and do and choices making,

and she's got this like recovering devil, backing her up and supporting her more of a, kind of like enslaved a little bit. Yeah, okay, okay. And then the DLC was, if Adams survived at the, because he dies at the end of the game when that helicopter crashes on him, the idea was that he gets,

the explosion of the crashing helicopter, knocks him off of the building. It burns him, it scars him pretty bad, but he's still alive and he wakes up the next day, super pissed that he's alive, because he wanted to die. And now he's just like, well, fuck, what do I do? And he's like, I guess I just leave.

And so he steals a damn, a dead, damn 33rd soldier's uniform, puts it on, pretends he's one of the damn 33rd and just starts walking out. And on his way out, he comes across a young member of the 33rd who reminds him of Lugo. And he's like, you know what, fuck it. I came here to save people. If I get this one guy out, then maybe all this shit we did will actually be worth it. I'm going to get this guy out of the storm. I'm going to take him home so he can see his family again.

and that's it, I'm done, no more. And he does, and he gets him out. And then he gets on his walkie-talkie to call on the Evac thing. This guy, character, his name is Poza, figures out, oh, shit, you're Delta and draws a gun on him, and Adams is just like, you know, hit me right. He reports himself wounded, probably not going to make it to the Evac team. He's like, hit me right here below the heart, I'll bleed out before they get here. And he's like, why?

He's like, because I can't fucking do this anymore. And Posea shoots him, and he dies at the end. the end of it. And that would have been the Speckov sequel. It was super bleak. My now wife, who had not been with me over the five years of making that game, I had to leave her to go write that for two weeks. And I sent her the script one night to read when it was finished. And she calls me up in Germany. She goes, I understand now. I see why you are the way you are. I can't believe you've had to write something like this for five years. I was like, thank you so much. Because it was like coming off that game was hard. When you're in that headspace

for that long. And you're crunching crazy hours. And not only that, you're living, like I was crunching in a country that wasn't mine. I had none of my stuff, the small creature comforts that keep you together. That was all gone. I had my family in the hospital.

I had all this stuff going on, and I was just on the other side of the world. And it was just slowly losing my mind. When you put all that together, at the end, you're just, you're broken, you're done. Like, I literally ran away from my job, hoping they would fire me. I went home to California.

Went to my boss said, I need it. I'm going to take a three-week vacation. And he said, good, I think you need it. I went to my apartment. I packed up all my stuff, called a moving truck, shipped it to Dallas, got on a plane, flew there, rent an apartment the next day. Had it called him up, said, bring it to this address. Three weeks later, flew out to California, went to my boss's office. How was your vacation?

It was great. I live in Dallas now. You can fire me if you want to. That's a very valid thing to do. And the motherfucker did not do that. and so I finished because I was still employed but I was the thing

like I was so hooked into it I couldn't I couldn't walk away from it I did not have the strength I'd been saying for like two years if we have to delay again I'm gonna quit and it was a lie

I didn't think it was a lie when I said it but it turned out to be a lie you just you get so hooked into it and you put so much of yourself into it and this is why I feel terrible when I hear about games that's gone on for 10 years

because you know there's people on that team It's that sunk cost fallacy. Like, I've put so much. I gotta finish it at this point, right? Exactly. It's like when you watch a, when you play a game that you don't enjoy it, but you're so deep, you're like, I'm gonna finish this. Or a movie or a book or whatever.

You gotta see it through. And so, I mean, we're lucky. Oh my God, we're so lucky that spec ops ended up being worsening it through in some ways. Like, look, it didn't set the world on fire with sales. I would classify it as a cult hit because it certainly got critically acclaimed. And that was wonderful. We love that. everyone loved that.

And also, since it wasn't our personal money that paid to get it made, it was someone else's millions of dollars, the fact that it might have lost, I don't think it's lost money now, but when it first came out, people were like, oh, that's not selling what we had hoped.

But you get over that, and you move forward, and you're like, well, what's the next thing? And clearly none of them were going to be spec ops too. Thank God, because those were all not great ideas.

I feel like, I mean, yeah, again, who cares about the money, it's not your money kind of thing. But the critical acclaim in the fact that, that people were talking about what a great story is. I feel like that's one of the stories with spec ops. I mean, like the meta story is the fact that even if you never played spec ops the line, you've heard us talk about it, you've heard giant bomb talk about,

you've heard the industry as a whole, like that was the story that was really fucking cool. And you know about it and you know that you wrote it. Absolutely. That's the benefit of it, even if it didn't fucking sell a million units and get a sequel and make people go crazy. No, no, you're absolutely right. I mean, you're only, what you want is you want to make something. that's going to affect people. You want them to play your game, get the message that you had, and walk away with it, feeling the way that you wanted them to feel, and to know that they were

touched by it. They were affected by it. Ultimately, you don't care how many people did. At the time, I was in the publishing side, so I'm not, no matter how good I did, or how good the game did, I'm not in any royalty scheme. I'm not getting any money out of it. It's all entirely just my name and my work, and so I wanted to be as good as it possibly can be. And which is also kind of why I have a tendency to give into crunch a lot. Like, that's, I don't, and maybe this is, I don't know, maybe other people think this way, but I never take for granted that there's going to be another game. Like, this could be the last one,

anyone lets me right. So like, I got to put everything into it. Like, what if this is the last thing I ever get to say that people here? Like, I got to put it out there and whatever I have to do to make it the best I possibly can. I got to do that. Sure. And so it tends to lean into, yeah, I can lean into some unhealthy practices. I'm doing that. But you, it's funny, you mentioned that crunch thing.

That's right. And there's this, in this book, Significant Zero, you talk about crunch. I do. And how you like it a lot. I do. And I feel like that snippet got published on Polygon recently. It did. And you know what?

People loved it. They really got what I was going for. Like, they, the, the outpouring of love and support from the gaming community was just, it warmed my heart. It was such a vacuum moment for me of waking up, like, I went to the bathroom, brush my teeth, I'm looking at the phone, and it wasn't you had tweeted. Somebody else,

and maybe just popping on in general. And I was like, oh, and I clicked and I read, and I tweeted out. I'm like, man, that was awesome. What a great piece of writing.

And what a great. I always talk about it for what we do of just like commentating on the industry, but never making a game, not knowing what that's like. Yeah. To have a fresh perspective, have a fresh set of eyes on this

with a perspective I don't ever hear about crunch, right? I was like, oh, how great. And then it was like, let's look at the rest of the feet. I'm like, oh my God. Everyone's pissed. Yo, they were so upset.

Look, when I wrote it, I knew it would be contentious. Because you're right. It's not, we don't talk about crunch openly in that way a lot. And I was okay with that because I felt like it needed to be said. Because here's the thing. I like crunch. I shouldn't like crunch. It's absolutely unhealthy, and I like it because of my unhealthy tendencies.

But I know there are other people like me. And no one out there says when we talk about crunch, hey, I get it. I'm the same way. You're not broken. You're not weird. I know everyone around you is talking about how this is really fucking evil.

And you're like, but I kind of like it. That doesn't mean, like I wanted those people to read it and know that they weren't alone and that's okay. Sure. And those people,

I got a lot of private messages from people saying that. They're like, hey man, holy shit, thank you for it. Like I finally, for the first time,

in a long time, feel like someone understands this stuff. And so that made me feel really good. And then there were people who were like, I'm going to show your shit riding in my class so I can explain to them

why they never need to go into video games. And that made me feel good too, because it's nice to make a difference. I changed lives, I changed lives. So, but ultimately, like, I'm lucky. I live in Louisiana now. I don't have to get up and go to an office full

game people every day. I don't have to walk down the street and run into half my industry. So I was a little, I was physically separated from it, which helped. I would get a little bummed out, and I'd think, I don't fucking know these people. to see in these people a day. I don't care. They can hate me. That's fine.

Well, it's also just the normal thing of like, it was what we were mad about that day. Exactly. You know what I mean? And like, when you get to E3, people are going to talk to you about it, but they're not going to be like, hey, motherfucker. Yeah. You know, like, I didn't agree with that piece. And here's why. It was, it was very interesting to be the object of hate for a day.

Oh, yeah. I have to, I have, from like a purely academic national geographic standpoint, I was like, this is intriguing. Yeah. Like, because you're, you see how people mess it up when that happens. Because my first instinct is, I, like I've said earlier, I'm just going to fucking throw it all out? And I was like, no, what if I don't? Yeah. What if I just explain what I was trying to do and then stop? Just don't say anything

else. Yeah, yeah. Because that's all, I mean, honestly, that's what the piece needed. It got published without me seeing exactly what the context would be or the title. I didn't want to make that the story when, on the day that it came out. Because ultimately, I still wrote it. Those were my words. And even though you don't have the context of the rest of the book, I'm not going to try and throw someone else under the bus simply because that context isn't there. I've got to own it and we've got to try to steer the conversation towards at least what it was about.

And that ultimately happened. I tweeted out a bunch of stuff. They added to the article. And a lot of people saw it. And a lot of people saw it like, oh, this is very different than how I first read it. And that was nice to see. But at the end of the day, what I was trying to do was write a piece about crunch that showed our complex relationship with it

by talking about my complex relationship with it and just being honest about how. I really let it destroy my life a lot of the time. And it was a very rough five, six, seven years for me. I still have physical issues that I'm dealing with from, like, I'd have a disc in my neck replaced. Like my, I couldn't sit or stand for longer than five minutes. I was in constant searing pain.

I lost all feeling in both of my arms for like four months. It was, like when the first day that happens, you're like, oh, that's a heart attack. And then when you're not dead and it just keeps going, you're like, I have no idea what this is, but I could cut myself with a knife right now and feel nothing. And so you just, you kind of adjust to the shittiness. And that's kind of the biggest issue with crunch is that you make it your new normal. And so it can go longer and longer and you're doing more and more damage. You're not thinking about it. But the thing is we don't fully acknowledge how crunch works in the industry.

We simply say, you know, crunch is bad. And it is. We look at it from a systemic side and as a way of workers possibly being exploited, but we don't take into account all the people who, the studios that are making games that we love, that are absolute masterpieces and how those games totally trashed the lives and the minds of the people making them for an extended period of time. Because if they don't talk about the crunch, we don't know about the crunch. But it's out there and it's happening. You know, a game like Last of us that's so fantastic, that game didn't get made by people doing eight hours a day of five, days a week. It just isn't possible, but that's passion. And we're okay with passion, because

that's how we can look at crunch. You go, well, it benefits me in the long run. I really like what they did. It's passion. And they seem to okay with it. And if they're okay, I'm okay. And I don't, that feels weird. That feels a little hip, I don't want to say hypocritable, but that's kind of the best word I can come up with right now. And so I wanted us to kind of start thinking in that way. And that's where that part of the book was coming from. So yeah, I'm glad people liked it. I liked it, like I said. And I actually, I saw your tweet, and honestly, they meant the world to me. I really was happy to see that you had read it and liked it.

So in that day, that was a little... There's your silver lining. It was a silver lining. Your shit cloud of drama. Final question. Okay. This comes from my dude, Bear Courtney. What games this generation have stood out to you for their writing?

Oh, man. Okay, the last of us. And Red Dead Red Dead Redemption are... Red Dead Redemption might be my favorite game of all time. Wow. You and I have talked on Twitter a bit about Grand Theft Auto. It does nothing for me. Absolutely nothing.

I know you love them. I know you love them. I enjoy it. Yeah, I have a great time with Grand Thefto. But it's the, it's a fantasy I don't need because I have for the past, most of the past 10 years, lived in major metropolitan cities. Admittedly, I have never stolen a tank and driven it through the middle of one, but I have been stuck in traffic before. And if I wanted to, I could probably rent a Lamborghini if I just really needed to. But Red Dead Redemption, that, like, I cannot get it.

on a horse and ride it through a beautiful countryside and go skin a wildcat, that thing would kill me. But I can do that in the game and I love it. And also I'm from the South. So it kind of attaches into that whole kind of west. Back to the earth where we came from kind of thing. And the ending of Red Dead Redemption is, and I'm not even talking about the like the epilogue. I mean that fourth chapter where you finish up all your work. And it's like, cool, you wanted a family and a farm. Here you go. You get that now. That's the most, that's the balliest thing. I made people kill 47 innocent women and children with white phosphorus and letting you play as a rancher

for now. The balliest thing a video game company has ever done and I loved it. I loved it. Because that's what every video game misses is the payoff. They give you all these things you're supposed to care about. Oh, your wife and kids back home that you're never going to see or talk to.

Now you're a full dimensional character. No, you're not. Rockster understood that. They said, it's not a real dream. It's not a real goal. unless you get it at the end, and then we're going to take it from you. And in that moment, here's the thing.

This is why I love about games like that, and the ending of Last of Us did the same thing. It taught me something about myself. And this is why I like games with characters instead of just an avatar that's about, oh, you're the player, you're so strong. I don't know I'm not. I'm an asshole.

I don't need to play as me. I'm not fun. I have to live with me every day. I want to play as someone else. I want to see how I feel going through their experiences. And at the end of Red Dead Redemption, when I walk out of that barn, and those men were standing around

and they knew I knew what was going to happen and I knew what was going to happen the first thought that went through my head was fuck them they want to kill me they can kill me I fought my fight I changed who I am and I'm going to die that man

and I stood there waiting and no one drew and it took just long enough for no one to draw that I said to myself again fuck it I'll be the monster and I'm going to take down as many these motherfuckers as I can if I'm going to die. And I opened fire.

And I got like three or four before they gum me down. But in that moment, what I learned from that is that I'm the type of guy who can get kind of proud about wanting to change. But ultimately at the hit of the day. Same as well, damn. Yeah. It's a hard. That is real. It's a real lesson to learn about yourself.

I've got to get about 90% of the way there. But when it's time to, you know, the time to clear holster, I'm proud. probably going to do it. It was the same with The Last of Us. I know so many of my friends, did you both play it? Yeah, oh, yes. How did you feel about that final mission? Because I know a lot of my other friends felt very betrayed.

They really... What I always talk about is I finish it and immediately texted Neil. And I was like, I was the bad guy. I'm the bad guy. And he's like, you're not the bad guy. Joel's not the bad guy. This is open interpretation. I'm like, no, it's not.

He just fucked humanity. Like, no, no, no. And like, we argued about that. And like, that's the thing of like, Like so many people, well, and then it'd be like, as a father, I'm totally, I would have done the same thing. And like, it's fascinating the way people did that. But I gave him so much credit for having the balls of, I was talking about it. When I got there and, let me, come on, fuck it.

We didn't play the last one. When you walk into the hospital room, I walked in and he has the gun drawn and I waited for the choice. I was like, oh, where I'm going to get it. Are you going to, and it didn't happen. I got shot and I was killed. And they were like, you failed, do it again. And I was like, I have to do. Holy shit.

And like, games are always about choice and this and which is ending is. And not it. I was like, we have a story to tell. You have to do this here. And I was like, fuck. I love that. You see, for me, though, and I didn't have a child yet. Yeah. When I played it. I got into that mission. I was like, I get it. I totally get it. I would 100%. I am this selfish. I would 100% do this. Yeah. I would let the world burn so that I could keep having a life with this person that I've grown to care that much about. Yeah. And that's another, to be fair, all of the revelations games have given me about myself have not been.

good revelations. I've discovered I am a very, don't put me in a situation with a gun where I have to protect my loved ones, I guess, I don't know. But I loved that. A game made me see myself in a different way and relate to a character in a way that my other friends weren't relating to it. And it just, that's what I long for when I sit down to play a game. I want that kind of meaningful experience. And now what I want is us to be able to do that with the reverse side of the emotional spectrum. Because here's the thing, we're like goth kids who just discovered poetry in high school. We're like, oh, we're going to make you

feel sad. Like, that's our, that we can make you scared. That's what we can hit on. We have yet to figure out how we can make you feel hopeful. How we can make you put down a game and feel like, yeah, you know what? Fuck, I'm going to go on the real world. I can do anything because I made it through the end of this game. We have yet to flip that reverse.

I think it's partly because most of our games are about punching or shooting people until they die. And that's a hard thing to turn into a positive message at the end. But I think we're going to get there. We've taken that first necessary step with narrative, and it's going to start happening. Probably, I would say, the first one's already

being developed right now. I don't know which one it's going to be. Maybe it's Star Wars Battlefront, too. Who knows? But when we get to the cheesy, hokey ending, that she's like, oh, I was bad all along, but now I'll make the good decision. I'll die a good guy. I already know how to fucking games going to end. I know what you do to these dark side people. Let him be the empire for life.

Bad guys for life. Yeah, sure. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been the kind of funny games cast. Walt, thank you very much. Man, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me. I've wanted to be on this show and come meet you guys for so long. God, this

was great. And everyone, all of my Twitter's blowing up about how an amazing job you did on Beyond. So definitely check out Beyond as well. But yeah, thank you for coming through. Significant Zero. September 19th. September 19th, pre-water now. Or just buy it on day one. Whatever you want to do. Just make sure you get it. Maybe Wado's

in the next game. Who knows? Who knows? It might be, the secrets might be in the book. If you can make it a bestseller, I will put Wado in the next game. DLC. Until next time. I love you.