Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Xbox Developer_Direct Live Reaction & Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Click this link https://www.boot.dev?promo=KINDAFUNNY and use my code KINDAFUNNY to get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev. Thank you Boot.Dev for Sponsoring! Listen to See You In Hell written by Gary Whitta at https://seeyouinhell.tv/ Come to our In Review Live Show in SF! January 28th!!!Get tickets at Kindafunny.com/SketchFest Thank you for the support! Run of Show - - Start - Topic of the Show: - Mike’s thoughts - Parris’ thoughts - Gary’s thoughts - Bless’ thoughts - Andy’s thoughts - Greg’s thoughts - Fable - Forza 6 - Ads - BEAST OF REINCARNATION - KILN Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Go to boot.dev and use code Kind of Funny to get 25% off your first year on the annual plan. If you want to get our shows ad free and our exclusive shows, go to patreon.com slash Kind of Funny. What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Thursday, January 22nd, 2026. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside Forbes 30 under 30,

a.k.k.a. New York Game Awards nominated, a K-a Xbox Poppy Blessing Eddie Oye Jr. Good day, Greg. Why are you calling me Xbox Poppy? Because there was an Xbox show we're doing right now. It's the next to that.

Yeah, okay, no problem. Of course, next to you, one of the former hosts of the kind of funny X-Cast, the best voice in the business, Paris Lilly. I'm going to Japan. Yeah, I'm sure.

I'm sure I'm going on there. I'm more excited to go to Albion, but we'll talk about that in a second. Next to him, the master of hype, Snowbike Mike. Hi, Greg. Good afternoon. Fun time. Fun time.

I can't wait for you in Paris to start posting those pictures from Japan when Microsoft sends you out there and fucking leaves me at home. Mike's other gaming dad, the Rogue One, at Gary Witta. Hello, sir. Thanks for having me today. Thanks for having me today. Thanks for coming up, Gary. I mean, obviously, it's good to be back with my Xbox.

For us here. Sure, sure. Everybody in person. This is huge. And of course, he's a Hispanic heartthrow up, Texas Street, Latino heat, clicking heads and ripping him to shreds. The globe chotin. Head shot and three-point shooting, rootin-and-tootin. Nitro rifle. from Twitch. Dot TV.

Andy Cortez. Go Spurs go. Go Spurs go. Are those Gary Spurs? The God, we can say both. Sure. Yeah.

I can also say Go Spos. Just different Spurs. If you are catching this later, maybe not live, because we are live on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Twitch. dot TV slash Kind of Funny Games.

We just watched and live reacted to the Xbox Developer Direct for January 22nd. Now it's time to dive into each one of these four games. Talk about what we liked, what we loved, what we didn't like,

and of course, rate the overall experience. If you are live, YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. You can super chat to be part of the show. Give me your thoughts on what you saw, what you liked, what you didn't like. What about dates?

Of course, if you are listening or watching later, we will be doing your hot takes about Xbox tomorrow. So Roger will be putting up social media posts everywhere. You can comment on those and say, hey, this is what I thought. We'll pull in the show tomorrow and have a great time. Maybe you go to Patreon, where I'll put up a free quip, though, and you could do it there.

You know what I mean? I'm quipping. Wow. Wow. Get a free membership. Come over. Be part of the kind of feudy surveys. Be part of the hot takes.

It's great. Also, thank you on patreon.com slash kind of funny. To our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobso Megabuster and Delaney the Psalm Twining. For now, let's begin with what is and forever will be.

Topic of the show. Wow. That's my first time seeing that. Yeah? Yeah. That's cool. Thank you. Thank you very much.

I'm glad you finally watched the show. He's never seen the show. He's a listener. If I'm not on it, it was similar when the ad was running. I was like, Gary, look at your head. He's like, oh, that's not that we would do it all week long. You said you would run it, but I, you know, I believe it when I see it.

I believe it. Thank you. We just saw the Xbox developer direct. We just saw Forza Horizon 6. We just saw Beast of Reincarnation. We just saw Kieln and we just saw Fable. Mike, I feel like you got to kick me off here, all right? Mr. Xbox.

Yeah, Greg, what a great way to start off the year. Xbox and the Xbox on the story. direct really delivered. The big three games that we knew about beforehand all looked great. And then of course, double fine. Being double fine, Xbox and Microsoft continuing to let Tim Schaefer and that team just create really whatever the hell they want.

From Keeper to this, they just let that team continue to have fun. And they put out fun games and fun products, which is great. But I mean, man, oh man, I mean, we'll kick it off with Fort. We'll keep it easy. I'll save the best for last. We're going to go game by game. I know, but I'll just quickly hit on it. All right. Forge to look great. Out in Japan.

and the dream location that we've all wanted, the studding vistas, the awesome cars, the sound and audio design, all the way to what I am very excited for, the five times the largest cityscape that they've ever had, right? That is what I want to get lost in in Tokyo. I am so pumped up for that.

Then over to Game Freak and Beast and Reincarnation looks great. I'm excited to play a fun action game. I'm excited to see what GameFreek does outside the Pokemon world, see what they got. Fable, playground games, you delivered. Everybody has been sitting on pins and needles waiting to know do they got it, can they deliver,

and you made Fable look great. And I can't wait to play that game. Great Xbox underscore direct. That's where I want to go on the kind of funny review scale, operating on our patented 20-point review scale, where would you put this Xbox Developer Direct? I mean, this is their best one. You know what I mean?

They had dates to everything, or at least timeframes of everything, everything this year that we all knew. I'll give it a nice nine. Give it an amazing. What do you think could have taken it to a 10 in your opinion? Having a firmer date for Fable. I like autumn.

I appreciate that, but always things slip. You get a little worried. I would have liked to seen Fable in the front half. I think Xbox has a lot of games. Usually the front half kind of gets ignored and we jam a lot into the second half. But there is a lot coming in the front half. More games that we'll have to talk about if you really look at the big picture.

But that GameFreek, of course, saying summer, when summer you're going to reannounce it some other time. But, yeah, some firmer dates would have been nicer. Harris, as a member of the Xcast, you should go next. Are we doing a game by game or you want me to run it all the way down? This is our overview of what you thought overall, and then I want your over your score as well. I thought this was a great dev direct, arguably the best one that they've had because it just really comes down to the games themselves. Wars Horizon 6 looks fantastic, beast of reincarnation, which I didn't know what to expect from it, but when we finally got to see it, I go, this is something I definitely want to play.

Table, I mean, it just almost goes without saying at this point, long awaited, but highly anticipated. I'm kind of with Mike. I wish they were a little firmer on the date, but Autumn is kind of what I expected up in that range. but I have to admit the double-fine game as much as, as cool as it looked in, it's a double-fine-ass game, it's what you want from that studio. I hope enough people give it a chance

and try it, because that'll be the biggest thing about it being a multiplayer game, having enough of your friends and having enough people wanting to jump in and play. Overall, I give it a 9 out of 10. 9 out of 10, okay. Gary, round out this X-Cast. Where are you reviewing this one?

What's your overall thought of the developer director? I thought it was, I thought it was very strong. You know, we always talk about, like, you know, are the other vibes on or are they off? The vibe check, I think is very, is very good. Those are, I mean, I would play all four of those games in what, you know, there's just a question like, what order. There wasn't anything there that was like, oh, that doesn't interest me at all, right?

It's all good. I think for me personally, Fables the headline, you know, I, historically, you know, I, historically I'm an Xbox guy. You know, I remember I played the original fable a lot, a lot, a lot. And actually went back and played the remastered version of it not long ago, just kind of like. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's still a great game. And it looks like they're keeping the spirit of it alive. The only thing that I didn't see them show a lot of,

which is a key part of fable, is the comedy. And I think, we know that's going to be there, right? That's going to be a big part of it. And that's something that's not necessarily easy to show in a trailer. But I think, you know, you're like rich twat. And so clearly that that voice is still there, right? There's going to be that acerbic, kind of very British humor type voice. And I think that's important.

It looks beautiful. It looks great. I think the red pills in the chat were happy to see you can play as a man. Right. What's your overall score? Well done to them. I don't like, I think that's reductive. I don't like putting numbers on things.

Forza, fantastic. It's pretty much exactly what I thought it was going to be, but that's a compliment. That's what I wanted it to be. I wanted the urban, I wanted the Tokyo drift vibes, right? I want to, I want to like, scream through Arke Harbor and all that kind of stuff.

It feels like, it looks beautiful. It's exactly, that's the most known quantity of all these things, right? We kind of know what it's going to be amazing. The forza formula. The thing that stood out is really exciting is the base building. I want to know to what extent

that is going to be something you can really get your teeth into. It's like, you know, it's like, it's not about doing awakening earlier. That's a game where I just, I very rarely went out into the board and did things.

I just, I like, I like, to kind of nest. You want to nest. Yeah. And like build your base and have it set up

just the way you want. So I'd be very interesting to see, like, it looked like, maybe they showed you that massive, like, open field that you could build into. It looks like you can build

like a really big complex. Yeah. Right? and I think that'll be fun to see to what extent can you hang around there what things can you do Beast of Reincarnation

probably Oh no, I think you wanted you wanted the overview Yeah, but you already given me you don't have a score but you like the thing You did the movie I like it, I like it

Blessing, what did you think? That was fantastic I think this was the best Xbox developer direct. I'm somebody who you know, I feel like when it comes to Xbox overall

I feel like I'm lower than the last few years compared to other people as far as like even last year I'll look at the games that we got and I'm kind of like Ariels finals, whatever, right? I love Keeper, but some of the other games didn't hit as hard for me.

This is the highest I felt looking forward to an Xbox year where we're talking about Fort's of Horizon, of course, going to Tokyo. All the stuff they showed me. It's, you know, an interesting place where I've loved Fort's of Horizon three. I play it religiously when it comes out. I'm fucking obsessed with Fort's a Horizon. And so when you show me a showcase that is,

hey, here's more of this thing that you love, part of it feels like going back to a Michelin-Star restaurant that I what's the new menu yeah and it's like all right here's how we update the menu and somehow somehow they excited me again like the the complex like you know the hearing how they've expanded like hey this this is how big the city scape is all that shit really work for me here the cherry blossoms i'm like all right cool yeah damn denny's just getting a hobbit menu like whoa yeah yeah that's five-star michelette dennies and 550 cars at launch yeah yeah plus they said And so yeah, to do the thing of taking forts on horizon and finding a way to excite me even more for this thing.

And I'm already like, hey, I'm showing up either way. Good on you. Fable. I mean, like, I have a mild take, medium take and a hot take on Fable. My hot take being that in the same way that like, actually I won't put it like that. The way I'll put it is that this is the first game so far this year that I feel like could go up against GTA 6 as far as critical conversation and game with year conversation. What they just showed, if they can deliver on that vision, that is a game of the year content. And the way that in 2013, the last of us was the game to be like, all right, hey, this is the game of your contender in contention with GTA 5.

Babel looks like the first game where I'm genuinely like, yo, if that delivers the way that they're presenting it, that could be an all-timer, right, of an RPG. That is giving me all the things that I want. We'll get to that later. Beast of Reincarnation looks great. I think my one caveat with it is that like it kind of gives me a bit of the things. that I already got in Stellar Blade. And it does look a bit more fresh, a bit more unique in certain ways than Stellar Blade.

But even still, I'm looking at it. And I'm like, man, this is going to be tough in the same year that I'm getting a Phantom Blade Zero. But some of the turnbase, I don't even know if turnbases is the right word, but like the pause menu stuff in the combat. It looks fun, looks interesting. And so I want to see more of that. My blessing.

You're getting Brad. I am getting Brad. I am getting Brad. And then Kill, I mean, like, I love. And this is something that we ask for all the time. as people who play video games. We always ask for new and fresh ideas. We ask for new IP.

We ask for games that are smaller. I don't feel like it had to be the biggest thing ever. Right, not everything needs to be a live service. Double Fine is delivering that to you time after time after time after time. You motherfuckers better play this fucking video game. The art house of Xbox's Studios. Yeah, yeah. Like they're doing all the things that we're asking for.

And so shout out, Kailan. I think the game looks good. What's your overall score? I'm with Gary. I'm not going to give it a score. Okay, fair enough. That's right. I like that.

Let it spread. Yeah, exactly. I'm still going to give a score. Okay. I'm just, I was throwing, I'm not, what am I going to do?

Let's see if Andy's a row. Andy, what do you think? I get an eight and a half. Yeah, Andy. I'm an employee, you know. Yeah,

I thought it was awesome. I thought it was awesome. I thought it was a lot of, lots of great games. I think that if, I think maybe Kieln was the most disappointing, even though it was a stacked lineup. so it wasn't disappointing because it was still very, very cool and creative and neat.

And also, I go in, when I'm watching Kilma, I know that this is their little game jam thing that they, you know, it's a side project. It isn't a main big thing that they are working on, but it's something that they want to show love to. And I think that's really, really neat. And it looks fun. It's adorable, very charming. And yeah, Beast of Reincarnation looked awesome. I'm very, very surprised by how much deeper they went with. what the story was and what they're getting into with kind of having a mix of sci-fi in there as well

sports of course looking fantastic and then yeah i i think fable i can't wait to play it on pc in 60 plus frames because i think that's going to be a 30 frame game at on xbox much like starfield was yeah 30 frames wasn't uh super smooth and hopefully they got time to kind of iron out some of those issues, but like, I think enough people have learned from the mistakes of cyberpunk to not over-promise what their world can do. Sure. Because when we first saw Cyberpunk, I was like, wow, we can just exist in this world. And like, you just couldn't.

That's not what the game really was, you know. But there just seems to be, like, they really put an emphasis on how deep these systems go with the social talking to people in the town and the job. systems and people and family and stuff. Yeah,

people recognizing all those traits and things like that. That's the stuff that I live for in games. I'm like, wow.

And that's always been like a core part of that. Yeah, the developers put in that much time to kind of make sure that

you are being recognized for your actions in the game. And I love that shit. Yeah, I hope it pays off. Obviously, we'll have way more

to say about Fable at the end. For me, I, this, what a direct. What a great job. What a way to step up. What a tone

setter for the year for the 25th anniversary of Xbox, which they're promoting to, you know, to end on Fable and have that, I think in the history of us reacting, recent history, the most Greg-ass game I've ever seen. Like, that's what I'm always talking about wanting out of my RPGs, choices, consequence, recognize what I'm doing, give me things that make my play-through incredibly different than Andy's, incredibly different than Gary's. So if they can deliver on that, that's front-runner for Game of the Year for me, even over GTA, which I'm also obviously incredibly excited for.

I mean, now you're, like, now you're just going. That's crazy. Why am I? I? I mean, GTA is always a technical powerhouse. It's always cool what they're doing in the world, but like narrative story, whatever. I mean, obviously personal taste. I mean, I just kind of feel like GTA six is in a category of one, isn't it? I mean, that's how Rockstar wants me to think about it.

And I agree that the amount of time and money they're investing it. I'm not, I mean, like, I'm not throwing shade of GTI. I also think they still have shown almost nothing of GTA six. I think there's a good chance. And when it comes out, it's like, oh, fuck. Sure. They really went there. I mean, I saw one of the same.

I mean, I saw one of the things that the chat called out that I still am in the same boda for Fable, right? Of like, so far they've only shown that one giant quest, literally the giant, right? So to have them be like, hey, here's how this also could end and do it. It's like, on the one hand, of course, tell me more about the thing you've already shown me. But on the other hand, it's like, but what else do you have up? Do you have that? Is that going to be? Should we just start the whole thing with Fable?

Like, should we just deep dive on Fable? For me, I want to talk about Fable. I would give this, I think, on the kind of funny score. I think, I mean, I think Fable was. I would say the fable overall presentation was 10 out of 10. I would bring it out a 9.5 because they didn't have a better date than autumn, which I hate. And so then overall, I would say 9. I think everything was great, amazing here.

I think I'm with you of like double fine. I look at that. Wow, so cool. I will never play that. That's not a game I'm excited to play in any way, shape, or form. And I hope that I'm the total minority and a majority people are going to. Do you think there's any chance it slips? I think there's a chance everything slips.

Yeah. But you're talking about what? Fable in particular. Because that's one that feels the most slippy. If you're like, for Xbox to be like, hey, everybody, this is the stuff coming out this year. And then Fable's the one you're promoting. I expected Fable to have a date. I expected Fable to be early.

I'm right on the second half of the year. You're right. Two points on that. Two points on that. What you're saying, the fact that with Forza, they weren't ready to commit to a PlayStation version, but Fable they were, I have a little more confidence that they're going to be able to hit the end of the year. But to the point, it can obviously slip. But I want to go back to what you were originally talking about there at the end of them,

showing the same thing, basically an extension of what we already seen. I'm okay with that because my biggest thing I wanted to see out of this, I wanted to see the open world itself, and I wanted to see combat in action. And it gave me that and extended upon things we've already seen. Clearly, they have plenty of time the rest of the year to continue to show us new things, as far as that goes. It's remarkable. So instead of this huge info dump in January, you can space it out as you lead up. Unless I missed something along the way for a game.

It's interesting that for a game that has been known about and in development, and they've remarked upon it for so long now, and they've shown it a few times, this is the first real proper look that I think we've had at it, right? Gameplay, combat, you know, social mechanics, all of that stuff. This is the first real

deep dive. And again, as someone who has played Fable since the original and knows it well, it feels like they're focusing on all the right things. So let's double back. We are jumping right into Fable. We're going game by game. We're starting at the end because we all want to get the cork out of it. blessing you want to go go.

Well, only to get into the GTA of it all, because I think that's such an interesting conversation. When I look back at the big rock star game, last two big rock star games being GTA 5 and Red Dead Red Dead Red Dead Red Dead Redemption 2, I feel like they've always had the adversaries, right? With GTA 5, it was last list. It was Red Dead Red Dead Red Dead Redemption 2, it was God of War. And I feel like this year, everything I'm seeing from this fable game is answering the questions

of what do I want out of a fantasy RPG to push it forward? Right? Like, I was streaming and talking about, I think, just upcoming video games or something like that, right? And one of the chatters, oh, no, I asked the question, what is your, what is your genre beef? What's a genre, what's a beef that you have with like whatever genre of a video game? And one of the chatters mentioned that in Western RPGs, I hate that combat always sucks. And I read that and I was like, you're right. Does it? Yes.

I mean, for me, I least, I don't- Free combat sucks? Yes. Initially you did. Yes. They improved it. I'm playing it right now, and it's fine. but it's definitely not the best.

What Western RPG has the best combat? Man, I liked Vailgard's combat a lot, and I know that's a hot take, and people hate Vailgard. Combat Rock. Andy, this is why you and me are best friends. And to be fair, the games that came in mind are the ones that I played, right? I'm thinking of a Vowd, I'm thinking of Skyrim. I'm thinking of, I guess, Witcher 3 was one of the ones that come to mind, right?

A lot of the first person wins. But I digress. Fables' combat here actually looks fucking fun. That looks awesome. That looks really good. The enemy animations look fantastic. Go into that when they're fighting in the woods, and they're showing all the different things,

First off, we're doing dual daggers, which speaks to my heart. We got the big sword. We're using magic. Now, I do have one tiny, it's not really a critique. I just need to see more. I want to see how the difficulty, the AI of the enemies themselves. Clearly, they're showing this off to, you know, because this is a dev direct. But I want to see actual real combat scenarios with difficulty on it because that would be,

I'm assuming there's going to be big bosses that you're going to have to fight and all that as well. Yeah. You saw one of them, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. how that'll shake out and play. Getting back to my point, though, you know, there's that combat. When you talk about the morality system,

I think one of the conversations that me and Greg have had before on KHD is that, like, you know, you look back to games that I've had morality systems where it is, you know, black and white, Fallout 3, you do good things, goes up, you do bad things, infamous, all this stuff. And that feels like dated design in some way

and a lot of ways, honestly, when they talk about, yeah, you're going to do things, right? And that's going to change your reputation very specifically of like, all right, this guy kicks chickens. But hey, maybe, not everybody in this town hates a chicken kicker. That, to me, sounds like, sounds fucking awesome.

And they talk, it seems like that goes real deep as far as the way they're talking about. Exactly. And I have, for me, you know, it's a living population, right, which ties into this morality thing. Sorry, first name, oh, and then it's going to expand it. First name, no last name said. I got chills when I heard living populations. Me too, and especially when you saw it, right, as they're talking about unique, there's more than a thousand of them.

They have their own lives. You can hire them to work in your business. You can put them, you know, rent. them beds, kick them out of beds, whatever, but then tie that into morality and see how each one reacts. And then right now, I'm parsing through as I also hosts, so stick with me. They have an interview with one of the playground people

up on the Xbox wire, right? So as you saw in the developer direct, our version of morality isn't a sliding scale. We've chosen to anchor this around the actions you do, and specifically the things you do in Albion that are witnessed and that's italicized by at least one of the person. So if the things you do are seen by

one or more people, you start to earn a reputation for that thing. Obviously, we always use the chicken right. I love this idea and like what they were showing in the direct of the pop-up of plus rich plus whatever and it's like oh not good not bad which is always sounds cool and then you're 20 hours into Mass Effect like oh I'm not suddenly going to choose the renegade option I've been doing Paragon so what there's no choice to the same when I say data yes the idea that at the beginning my playthier I'm going to choose to be good or bad and that's kind of just going to determine every choice I make from there out right I'm always going to choose the good

option here yeah you have all these different things that can happen and then going into NPC routines that they talk about as well. There's so much here that seems to make this game feel alive and exciting for me when I hear them talk about it. That seems fucking awesome. Well, I do hope the consequences aren't cut and dry as far as good and evil in the sense of like the giant as an example. They brought up you could kill him or you could do something else.

Maybe it doesn't matter what choice. You think killing him would be the bad choice, but then that actually turns out to be a good thing because everyone's thankful for that. Or if you let him go for some reason, that way. Or more. Interestingly, opinion is divided on. Yeah. Yeah.

If some people are not going to be happy that you killed her brother. It's definitely going to be the thing, right? You can see that. Okay, so you kill him, people would be pissed off. There's a rotting corpse outside of their thing. But there's going to be people happy he's gone.

Exactly. You don't kill him. There's going to be people pissed off. There's a giant lumbering around, stepping on their houses. Yeah. And you're going to be sad that one MPC you liked. Yeah.

Is now kind of pissed off if you or whatever. I think Avowed did a very good job with that with like, so like, oh, man, you weren't happy with that choice? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't see that comment. I really rocked to me. Blessing, God of War would like a word for something. The fact that people in the chat are saying,

God of War for Western RPG, learn things, all right? Read a book. That's what I say. Wow. Read a book. Educate yourself. So, Gary, doubling back to you as a fable head like myself, somebody who loved the old games.

This gets you going, this, you're all in? Oh, 100%. Of the four games that were shown today, if you said to me, you can go home and play a finished build of one of these right now, it'd be fable, and it wouldn't be close. And that's not to say anything bad about. the other games. That's the one that is my most of my personal taste.

100%. Anybody else want to, what else? When I thought, they brought up British humor. Gary, I've never thought a British person was funny. No? You like, thank goodness you're here. I know I love British humor. I'm just fucking right because Gary's here. No, I mean, it's, I mean, that's always been a big part of it. You know, British humor is very specific, you know,

and the nice thing about it is it has traveled quite, well, you know, a lot of people like Monty Python and that's a huge, you know, the office you know, it is British history, British comedy, I think, translates very well to the US audience. You know, they appreciate kind of the quirkiness of it. And I think that, but it's tough to, it's tough to do. You know, being funny is, is hard, as you know, Greg. And it's, why they name of the company, kind of. That was it overcommitted. That qualifier right

there in the title. And again, they didn't show a lot of that, but just the little things that they did show indicate that that is, again, like, they're not stupid. They know what the, what the core pillars are. Like, again, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's, open world, freedom of choice, consequences of choices, the sense of a living world where you're going to have families and kids and just like, you know, nest

and get into these little mini, you know, social dramas, you know, like, oh, God, I've been caught cheating with this person or whatever, buying houses and all this kind of stuff. Yeah, I'm kids running around. And humor. Like, those to me are kind of the pillars of it.

And I think that they address, to some extent or another, all of those things. GDNR. I was just going to say real quick, I think in the other presentations, where it was talking with that one, do with the long hair and talking with the guy from the IT crowd or whatever.

I think we saw enough glimpses of, like, we're getting a lot of really, like, funny, quirky British humor here. And I think it's also really hard to sell in a presentation that, but I think we got enough here to show me that,

oh, we're going to get a lot more during the game. It's just, I think it's a harder thing to like, let's try to play this joke off and hope that everybody laughs. Even what we're looking at with the pop-up above their head, the way they're putting the stuff here, chicken chaser.

I just love the style that we're seeing. Let alone the visuals and how gorgeous this world looks, but just this style this game already has of being that fairy tale. Like that's what these games are. They haven't gone for like a, and again, this is true Fabor. They haven't gone for like a hyper-realistic, witcher style, you know, there is some stylization to it. It does look like a children's fairy tale to some extent.

Yeah. Which, again, it's exactly what they're supposed to. Lots of bloom. G. Danner had this one, I think, in the fable conversation. Do you think that most of the MPC stuff is shallow? Marrying anyone is cool until they don't have real romance and story, et cetera. Hard to say, we're just going off of this. My thing is, I do think it will be shallow.

Obviously, a thousand people, they're saying the things. I'm sure people are going to say the same stuff. You know, we see them get mad at you when you walk by. I'm sure I'm going to hear I'm a knob a million times as I walk through based on some decision. Yeah, me used to that. Of course. That's just me walking around the streets of the same. go. But doubling over to the marriage romance, I'm still in the campus, somebody who is

wearing a Starfield jacket and loves Starfield, right? Marriage and RPGs usually sucks as well. It's usually very, we're back to the black and whiteness of it. So if we're getting a, as Fable and Gary, you can detest this from playing them before. If we're getting a more disposable isn't the right word, but like, yes, it is a thin marriage system because that's what it is. Like you're going to marry this person and get benefits from it that will augment your gameplay and have these kids that could, I assume, be good or bad in the future and do it. And then they find out, maybe you're true to them forever and it gives you the buff the entire time or you know, you have another family and they find out and that ruins.

Like, if it's, I mean, that's the thing is like, I think that's the trickiest thing to pull off. But in success, I think is the most fun. Because you can create all these like viral clips and, like, oh, look at this fucks up situation. I've created. I think it's kind of Mori Popovich type scenario where like, I've got a baby with my baby mama over here, but this is my real family, what they find out of each other. Now it's kicking off. That's fun.

I feel like it's not so much a story bit as a system bit. And I'm there for, if it knows it's a sim. Are you going five miles wide and a foot deep? Are you trying to go really deep into all these mechanics? Yeah, I view it more as like the Sims rather than like that deep-ass dating sim, right? All those things above their head looks so sims to me. Yeah, 100% out there. Michael, are you stoked?

Are you, you said you're in like, like. Yeah, I mean, I'm super stoked on this. You know, I think when we talked about the world design and we got to see some of those vistas and some of those different areas we'll go to. That also got me excited. I think we've talked about the systems and the town and the combat. But like, man, when they showed like the things. Fable world, right? And you think about like the places you'll go. They really knocked it out the park. And I expected that, right, with playground games and what they've done with Forts Horizon in the open world that

they've created there to use those systems and all the techniques that they've got really knocked it out the park. My mind goes to Greg as we start to move away from Fable is to what's the next showing then? We're back at Summer Game Fest. And then how big is this? It better have the date, right? But like, how deep are we going? Are we going to see a main villain? Right? Like what else are you going to show to get everybody excited besides just the date. So obviously there will be another showing. For me personally, that was what I wanted to say. I feel like if they showed nothing else, I'd be good.

That was the thing. That's a real substantial look at the game. And again, I'll come back to what the headline is for me. Again, as someone's been around for a long time and was there for the original Xbox launch and played the original Fable, I loved it, and played it again recently and he's familiar with all the Fable games. Just in generally, this passes the smell test. Like, does it look like Fable? Does it feel like Fable?

Does it feel like they're focusing on the right things? Does it feel like these people, these developers, understand what made fable good? Like, is fable in safe hands? It feels very much like, yes, right? 100%. I think the next big marketing beef for Summer Game Fest will be like, it'll be a three-minute trailer or five-minute trailer,

and it will be press getting their hands on the game. I think that's the more important thing. This will be just like it was. This will be the outer world's version of this past SGF. Here's a story trailer. Here is the guy. Here is the thing. And then, yeah, behind closed doors,

we all go play for 30 minutes and come back and talk about it. I like this question slash super chat from Al Wheeler, all right? Late birthday tax from Royal Leamington Spa. He wrote it Leamington. Yeah, but it's pronounced Lemington. Why do you write it with L-E-A? Looks like it's Edinburgh. Because gleam, you spell gleam that way.

Just like it's not Leicester. I don't know. Lemington Spa. Will playground games become Xbox's most important studio if Fable sticks the landing? I mean, they're already, I mean, they're already carrying two of their biggest franchises on their shoulders at one developer. That's a lot of, that's a heavy burden. I mean, like, those are the top two right now.

If not, they're in the top three to top five category no matter what. And playground games with after what Forza did as a game of the year standout last time. Yeah, they're pretty important. They're very important. Yeah, they made a game of the year. Yeah, but I mean, you can argue, well, and we'll talk about Forza, but they're going to have two game of the year. contenders this year. Yeah, yeah.

From one studio, so. No, because racing games never win game of the year. It won't win, but it'll be up. IGN. Yeah, yeah, IGN. Yeah, yeah, IGN. Yeah, yeah, IGN. Yeah, yeah, IGN.

They lost a lot credibility like, what, 11 years ago. I felt like, we've talked about fighting, fighting games and racing games always are considered like a disadvantage when it comes like overall game of the year. They just like, oh, yeah, we'll give you your category award, but you can never, like, go for the big prize. So, yeah, I, I, I, again, that was a, a, a, a, again, that was a, an I feel like it was Ryan McCaffrey, like finally winning a fight after. Maybe so.

I'm sure he's been saying that since fourths of three. But I could, you know, I could see this as a game of the year. I mean, you just never know. Like when, I'll give myself credit. I remember being excited about it from World War II. But when they first showed Expedition 33, I remember thinking this game might have something. But like no one, it doesn't like we were seriously thinking this game is going to end up being the most fucking awarded game of all time, right? And yet it was.

And so, I mean, you know, at this point, you can never say, like, you've really got to get your hands on it to know. but like, does Fable look like it has the potential to be at that level, like, in the best case scenario? Absolutely. I sure as hell hope so. Shark, super chats for our final fable. And there's a bunch in here. Maybe we'll get to the end just people's thoughts on it. Remember, of course, tomorrow's games cast is your Xbox hot takes.

Roger is putting up stuff all over the place. There'll be a free Patreon post. At patreon.com slash kind of funny where you can sound off. But Shark right now, super chats on Fable and says, so from this trailer, it seems like this could be a person's first fable without feeling left out from not playing the others. Yes, they've been vocal about that. on the wire they do have. I mean, it kind of has to be, right? Because the label has been dormant for a long time. We've always referred to this game as a new beginning because one of

the things we were convinced of was that we had to reboot, that we had to reboot the franchise. It's been a long time since the end of that original trilogy. Nearly two generations have passed in video game terms. And those original games are still available to play today looking even better than they are with backwards compatibility. There's some marketing speaking in the interview. So we've chosen not to be beholden to the timeline of the original games, the events, the characters, really just to allow ourselves the freedom to build our own Albion. and tell our own new story within it, which is 1,000% the right move,

and I am stoked about that. But Andy, where do you want to go from Fable? What do you want to talk about beyond Fable? I mean, I would love to stick with Forsa. Let's do it. I'd love to stick with playground games. Let's do it. Talk Forsa.

Another one of those games where I think those Forts Horizon 4 that I got really addicted to, I was like, I'm not a car gamer. Like, I don't ever play racing games ever. And so, but, getting really into four and then five being, you know, I think number five on my top 10 list that year. I think sports just has the stuff, man. They have the right, they have the right formula for a racing game for me to enjoy. I think everything, it's always like little 10 minute chunks of now I'm doing this challenge and there's a challenge over here. It's kind of like

racing breath of the wild. There's always like something over there that you want to go see what that is and you go there and it's a new challenge. It's a new thing to kind of show off or it's a new leaderboard you want to tackle. I think all of the base building stuff did even more for my excitement. You could have not had that in there and it still would have been wow, this is going to be a game of your contender. But to add base building, like,

I fucking love just losing myself hours and building and making things and that looks like it's going to be really awesome and just kind of a neat melding of two different mechanics. I thought the game, I had several thoughts just like Gary did watching.

I was like, I don't know what's footage or not. Like, there were so many, and I think it was all just, you know, actual gameplay, but I think the game looks so freaking stunning. And the having the city of Japan being this character, or having the country Japan being a character, but like those Tokyo roadways have me so stoked because I felt very similarly in, in Fort's Horizon four and five that like, ah, there's not a whole lot of city pathways that I want to be racing around.

And like, they're really kind of small and condensed. and you drive for 20 seconds and now you're gone out of the city to see that they are really, really, you know, focusing on making the city a character seems like, all right, that's the right call to make. It looks amazing. Yeah, it looks incredible.

And I'm not a car guy either. You know, I've come to Forza late via Ben. Ben being so excited. He loves playing Forza Horizon. And so now this is when I look at, I'm like, oh, man, I can't wait to play this and explore and unlock and, like, driving around and seeing the alt-miles.

That for sure. But, I mean, just driving around and finding cars. parked in driveways that are modded and look cool. I can't wait for that. Bless, are you jumping in? Oh, of course I'm jumping in. Yeah, no.

I didn't mean to insult you. I'm sorry. How fucking dare you? How dare you ask? Yeah. No, I'm super excited for this, right? I might have to lobby to get best, like, moment or sequence back into the Smiley's. Because, like, I feel like racing a mech or Gundam or whatever that is, is probably going to hit, like, crack cocaine.

Like, that shit's going to go crazy. You should do the Halo one. The Halo one is a race. Oh, I've done that one. The Pelican. That shit was. I'm like, well, that's the thing is in all these games, right? You're either racing an airplane or you're racing a train.

They always have those special sequences for you or those crossovers like with the Halo one, right? A Gundam is like the crazy. DLC as well was fun. It didn't look like a licensed Gundam. I think they're just going for overall large mech because it didn't have like the exact same like, oh, that's the whatever. Not that I know the most about Gunnamb, but I fucking love it as, you know, I follow way too many Gundam fan accounts just because I love looking at mex, you know? But I'm wondering if they got the license or not. Yeah, I mean, I mean, maybe we can freeze for, I mean, I'm not in any way a Gundam expert.

But, uh, those Barbados? Oh, shit. If we go back to that foot, I mean, you know, we, I, there's someone knowing up about it to say that's definitely from this or that. Like, okay, what does that tell you? Nourth in the chat, you got to go. Look at the YouTube like fucking up all the shit. Get those, get those fucking previews of them. All right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Barbitous, okay.

100%. So that means they have the license, right? Yeah, that's fucking crazy. That's awesome. But yeah, I mean, that seems fucking hype. And then, yeah, I'm, I love when they add things that are, that feel a bit more meaningful, right? And so, like, the wristband stuff, I'm actually kind of curious to see how that goes. Like, I love a good progression system.

I love a good way to kind of get you back, even more in the world. You think Godzilla's too much to ask for. Maybe it'll call you. Oh, my God. I think that's a BLC. That's a big. Yeah. That's got to be a DLC.

Yeah. I think that you'll keep something in the back pocket. Yeah. I want to track over the water with him walking next to... Oh, that's dope and shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. More waste and lot cars, I love, right? I like the barn finds, but I want even more stuff there.

I'm really looking forward to this. Anybody else? Yeah, I mean, for me, it's about the shared experience, right? I think these guys touched on a lot of things that I would highlight as well. But to piggyback off of blessed, right, these things that I'm looking for is like that shared experience. And I think you're going to see that with the garages now, being able to see your friends in a lineup of cars similar to DTA. You stole what I was going to say. I know you.

We've been doing this a long time. We know what we're going to talk about here. But yeah, like when you play Fort, it's all about showing Paris, my best friend, like this cool car I got or Gary, this new paint job that I put on, the Wart Hogg. And it's always a, all right, stay right here, one sec. Let me go into the menu.

Let me switch the car. Okay, let me pull it out. Let me load it in. Awesome. Now it's like, hey, let's share this experience together. I'll go to your garage. You come to my garage. Let's show you the 10 cars, the big lineup, right?

the idea of building a base. How deep is that really? Is that just place? You know, we'll see what kind of fun that is. But they've done a great job of like identifying that Forza, particularly Horizon, is a fun shared experience with your friends. And it's all about how do we keep you together? How do we showcase the things that you love?

And it is the cars. It is the fun moment. So, yeah, I loved everything they showed here. Cherry blossoms. Some initial D, some drifting. Yep. I like that. Yeah, we get that orange super like hunt.

Oh, my God. I mean, I can't really add too much to what both Bless and Mike just said, because I really think they're enhancing the social experience, which I think is the most important thing about this. The fact that you even start off as a tourist in there. So I think there's going to be a lot of, hey, let's discover Japan. Let's understand the culture, you know, the different regions, all these things that make up Japan.

The fact that we're getting, what do they say, Tokyo five times? Five times bigger than their largest. Yeah, yeah, they've done before. Gary even was saying it, we're watching it, the night racing and that is just going to be fantastic. I can't wait for that as well. And then you even touched on it, Greg, the fact that

there's going to be that discovery aspect of finding these cool cars just sitting off the beaten path. I think the meetup thing, even though they didn't say it's in there, I would love if you could race for pink slips. Yeah. If it's not in the game now, damn it, put it in there as DLC. I would

love that you have these meetups, you show off the cars that you have, and then Roger, put your Toyota, put your YARIS on the line. It's really cool of like the meetup, like you said, right? We saw this with Call of Duty recently of, hey, that guy's got an awesome gun. I want that. Oh, you could just steal the blueprint now.

Same thing here. We go to the meetups. Greg's got a dope car. Or you can just buy it right now. And then it's in my collection. I'm doing that. I don't have to worry about, oh, what's the name again, Greg? I lost it.

I couldn't hear you. I'll never find that again. They do a great job with that. They touched on more things to do in the open world, right? You know, for it. There's so much to do from smashing billboards. They're hitting massive jumps. What more do you add is super, super exciting to all of this?

Like, I'm pumped up. And then, of course, we don't even talk about the user-generated content, but that is where Forza really shine. They're giving you this sandbox and these tools to be able to, the base building that you're going to do the crazy shit that Andy's going to be making and you go to Andy's house. We were like, how the hell did you do that? Here is Halo Forge.

Here is Battlefield Portal. Here's Forza user-generated content that we've seen in four and five, right? of like there are people out there that make awesome races, fun ideas that are outside the box that even the team of playground can't think of. And then all of a sudden you're playing this with your friends and going, this is so dope. Man, I love when they add that. And Gary, I'm a pushback on what you said before about Game of the Year stuff because I truly think this game can be a game in the year contender this year.

I think I think it's good. I think it could well be good enough to be a game of the year contender. I'm speaking more towards the, there's a bit of an inherent bias. No, I mean, do I think it wins? No. but do I think it could get nominated and stay in the conversation throughout the year? Absolutely. It looks great.

Look, I've been waiting for them to go to Japan for a long time. I was really disappointed when Forza 5 was in Mexico. Not that Mexico wasn't course, but I really wanted Japan. And now we're getting, you know, we've been waiting for the shoe to drop for a while, right? And I think, like, in general, Forza Horizon, if you're, I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, but, like, if you're a car enthusiast, there isn't any other game that scratches that itch than this one, better than this one. Grant Turismo would like that award. Grand Cerismo is not a fun game.

Enthusiast. Grand Turismo is great if you want to feel like you're going really slow, even though the economy is a 200 miles now. They're so real. Mike Lockdye said blessing, and I want to see what that was about. But before then I want to bring in Rabbit of Canterbog who says, of course, Forest the Horizon looked great and Fable looks amazing. Dot, dot, dot.

Could this be a year where one developer has multiple game of the year? Yes, 100%. I said it while we're watching it. Yeah, why not? I think that, again, Japan, to me, makes a lot of sense, not because of the car culture and, you know, it's a really, really interesting bifurcation between those big rolling hills areas, Mount Fuji. I just, I didn't miss, I saw it for the second time. I must have missed it. Like, driving through that road that's dug out of the

snow. That looked really, really cool. That almost that that that tunnel. But of course, again, we talked about what I want is, I'm going to, most of my time is going to be drifting. I'm going to be in Akihabra, you know, at night, I want that kind of initial D, Tokyo Drift kind of kind of vibe. I think that's going to be really, really fun. They didn't, but you know that. They didn't, but you know that. But you You're going to do it, and the car's going to glow underneath and have all the vans. You have the market as, like, for mature and adults only. Like, if you're going to get too sexy.

I was waiting for a nighttime shot. I think the social aspects are super, super fun. I love the idea of the meetups, you know, the, you know, go and hang out. Oh, cool car. You know, is it for sale? And that kind of stuff, you can have fun with that. Again, the base building to me is the biggest unknown and where I would like to see more. Like, I don't think it's going to be the kind of thing where you can, like, physically,

I think it's going to be, like, snap to this location. It's going to be, like, a fully traversing. fully traversable. There's probably too much to ask. I think I had that at some point. Could I invite you over to my crib and show you my garage? Like is that part social? I don't know.

But like, I mean, look at that. They said it. They said it the thing it was. Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, I think that's going to be really cool. And again, I can see myself putting a lot of time into just nesting and like building the perfect base.

Like, Fort of Horizon 7, my number one request is a walkable garage. Yeah. It should be walkable because I think you, if correct you from wrong, and one of the forces, you get out of the car, you can walk all the way around at three. Oh. They showed it. They showed it. They showed the garage. But it was first person.

Can you do the venues for you? Can you do that in a fully contiguous way? Can I walk all the way around the campus? Or am I just like snapping from one location? No, I don't think they would let you build stuff without touring it. I don't even know yet what the campus will even have for you to really want to see, right? What are these buildings in the background that will be that will be that you have to see, right?

I'm just a home party. Like give me, give me, give me like a TV. Just give me a room with a big screen TV that I can put YouTube on. He just wants a GTA 5. I'll just stay at home while everyone. It was a long and it. I agree. That's what I want to do. The only thing I'll say, and I don't think this is going to change, and this is just me.

I've mentioned it before. Forza, and you mentioned it, the Forza Horizon games have so much to do, and they offer so many different ways to play. Oh, here's an event. Here's a thing. You can go on. You can do this. You can do the main quest, a side quest.

You're discovering something new every two seconds. That it almost, it feels overwhelming, at least in the early couple of because the game is interrupting, hey, Gary, hey Gary, hey Gary, because, you know, you put your name in. Hey, Gary, you can go do this. You can go do this. It's almost hard to, like, pick some. something to do because it's like it's an embarrassment of riches. Like there's there's so much to do that I personally kind of find it overwhelming. And I wish, I know

that you can do the things I just ask, I know like what I should do next and it will like curate it a little bit for you. But I do wish there was a little bit more of a curated experience because it's almost you can have too much choice can be a good thing. And when it's constantly saying, do this, do this, do this, do this. It's almost like it's going to ADHD way of playing. We're like, just let me focus on one thing, which of course you can do. But like the game really like barrages you with. And if you remember, the first couple of hours of four, Horizon 5. Hey Gary, hey Gary, hey Gary, hey Gary, hey Gary, don't forget you can do this. Nothing can do that. And it's like,

just shut the fuck up and let me play. It's almost too much. And I think that's going to continue. But it is this open world style of like, I've never liked this idea. I've got to drive to the starting line, like, and stuff like that. Just like, let me just snap to places. To something you can do that, but like, I don't know, the open world. You can do that in Grand Prix. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I think that it looks beautiful. Will I be playing it day one? Absolutely.

Probably on PC so I can get, you know, all the, get the frames. I played Fort's Verizon 5 on my super ultra-wide monitor at home because it supports that resolution on PC and it looks absolutely sick that's the way to play. Everybody just so we're all on the same page. The base is called the estate.

Nice. All right, that's what we'll call it. Shout out as well, we saw just a moment ago I forgot to bring it up when you're making user-generated content being able to make it with a friend at the same time, right? That is something we're moving. Again, the social aspect, getting it all. Moving closer and closer to park attack that we've played before with the boys, being able to build

your own theme park with update friends at the same time is awesome, right? I think there was a recent game. I forget what we were able to be able to build and then you could build after, but I had to be off, right? But being able to build together at the same time is really special and that is the future

of like keeping us engaged, keeping us together with the community is awesome. I love that. So you look at that estate, right, and it's massive and there's all these different buildings. What's in all of those? I get there's a garage, right? That makes sense.

And maybe there's like a little kind of residence area, but like what is going on in all of these other areas? My receptionist is over the building. That's the motor testing spot right there. That's the paint area right there. I want it to be like fucking Faze Clan house or something. I want like a streamer house. I got all my goodies.

I got on my fucking, there's my candy machine over there. I want to live like a ball. You're talking about the estate? Yeah. Yeah. That's what they want. I mean, look at how much, look at all of rules.

In practice. What's in all these different buildings? You're not going to anywhere. Yeah, you're not going to do. You think those are just cosmetic? Anything you want. A mountain. hideaway, a personalized track for friends.

The only real constraint is the items that the items cost in-game currency. When you build something, you pay a few credits to put down. Credits you earn in other activities across the game world, and you get the credits back if you delete something. Quote, it creates a sense of connection for us that you've worked to get these credits by taking

part in something, the developer says. Winning races, delivering tofu, exploring the world. There's all sorts of things you can do to generate in-game credits. The result is a little slice of Japan that isn't just built by you, but earned by. you. I bet you're gonna have goofy as shit you can put in there. Yeah, I want a lot of personalization. Customization. I think it'll be fun.

Okay. Blessing. What? Talk to me about beasts of incarnation. Reincarnation. Beasts of reincarnation. Beast of reincarnation. Yeah, game freak. They're doing it. They're freaking. They're freaking. They're finally making a game that looks like it's for modern platforms. Good for them. Yeah, no, this game looks really good. This game looks really good. I'm so curious about how it's going to feel when you get into combat. I think one of the big things I saw people in chat even going back and forth on was like, is this souls like? This doesn't seem really souls like. And then we see the combat pause and like and like all

this stuff. And I want to talk about that. Yeah. Because that is like, Souls games, not my usual cup of teas. You know, I'll play them, whatever, blah, blah, blah. But this didn't look like that. I don't think. So I want to put a pin in this. Put a pin in it. And remind everybody that we couldn't have these cool conversations. These cool streams. This is cool studio? Our cool friend. Like Paris Lily. Gary. Without your support on Patreon.com slash kind of funny, YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Apple and Spotify. You can go there to pick up your kind of funny membership. So you can get everything we do ad free. Get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller.

in a podcast series that's 15 to 20 minutes each and every day called Greg Way and of course get good karma for supporting an 11 person small business all about live talk shows but right now you're not using your benefits so here's word from our sponsors this episode is brought to you by boot dot dev if you're listening to this show there's a solid chance that you one like video games and two at some point in your life have been interested in learning software development boot dot dev combines those things because they know that the smartest way to learn is to never get more it takes your coding from beginner to expert, the fun way,

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Again, go to boot.com. And use code kind of funny to get 25% off your entire first year on the annual plan. From the co-writer of Rogue One comes see you in hell, a new Hollywood satire kind of like the studio, Except you never get away with this on television. Starring Shannon Woodward. You seriously need to see a shrink or something before you get arrested for dicky waving. Thomas Siddarsky. I don't have imposter syndrome.

You should? John Cryer. You think I don't know bullshit when I hear it? I represent Sean Hannity. And John Boyager. I was in Star Wars and Pacific Room. The second one. Whereup.

See You in Hell. Wherever you get your podcasts and at see you in hell. dot TV. Hey, you, join us in person for our live in review of Howard the Duck. That's right. Howard the Duck joins MCU in review Wednesday, January 28th at 7.30 p.m. at Cobbs Comedy Club for SF Sketch Fest. You can come watch me do all the podcasts within a podcast you love. And they'll be going do do do do do do do do do. Nick will be shopping for pants starting it. But everybody else will be there too for you to come hang out and see. All you have to do is go over to kind of funny.com slash Sketch Fest right now to get your tickets before they sell out.

Because come and watching a bunch of people talk about a very old Howard the Duck movie is really selling tickets fast. And we're back to talk Beast of Reincarnation, the game from Game Freak. I'd like to give you a few paragraphs from the Xbox Wire, a one person, one dog, action RPG. The gameplay blends two styles. The protagonist Emma fights using fast-paced katana action, while Koo supports her with powerful skills triggered via command-based system similar to a turn-based RPG.

In this game, you don't... I'm sorry, in this game, you don't have to rely on raw action skills alone to survive. By performing a parry against enemy attacks, like with Emma, you earn points that can be used to unleash Ques' abilities. You can open Q's command anytime, and Koo possesses a wide range of skills designed to handle a variety of combat situations. Whenever you're in a pinch, Koo is always there for you. While you are selecting Koo's skills from the menu, combat slows down and gives you the breathing room to assess the battlefield and strategize your comeback. We place a high priority on this sense of tempo. Rather than forcing players to rely solely on split-second reflexes in high-pressure situations, we wanted to create

moments where you can pause, think carefully, and fight with a tactical mindset of a command-based RPG. Furthermore, the game features three difficulty settings. In addition to the standard normal mode, we have included highly challenging hard mode as well as story mode. In story mode, the parry attacks or parry timing is more forgiving and the enemy damage is reduced. Even maddened more,

you can do the spirits and yada, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're speaking my language, plus. Yeah, I'm excited for this game in the way that this game seems like a combination of so many games that I like and so many types of games that I like, right? Like I see near in this, I see a stellar blade in this.

Weirdly enough with the turn-based stuff, right? Or with the command-based stuff. Like, I even see a little bit of even clear, obscure. You know, I like a game that's looking at so many. things pulling them together and aesthetically I like what they're doing with taking a lot of plant life and invoking life into it and creating

combat scenarios or you're fighting things or like these big fucking moving trees or whatever the mex in the background like there's so much here that excites me for some reason I'm still cautiously optimistic as opposed to purely optimistic. Sure, new IP new thing going on there. There's a lot they've got to nail before it all nets out and we're okay that's awesome but Andy

you're always lost in these Souls games these stellar blaze and these what did you think of this one? I think it looks fantastic since the first time they showed it this time around. I think it's got such a cool kind of matted look to it that doesn't look like most other, you know, this new game in Unreal Engine 5, which that's not an engine thing. That's an art direction thing. But I think this game just has a really kind of unique look of blending. We're still going to try to be realistic with lighting and with materials and global illumination and all that.

but it just got like a really cool kind of stylization to it. And yeah, I think we're going to probably, I hope we have a really cool, interesting story that's going to tug at the heartstrings at some moments. And I hope we get to meet cool, quirky, weird NPCs along the way that kind of guide us on our journey. But yeah, everything I've seen from the boss fights to what they're doing with the patterns

and the stuff you kind of have to like recognize in the way that these bosses are attacking, I live for that shit in action RPGs. It looks like it's going to be a freaking blast. and all the abilities that you could kind of do with the dog and like the freezing of time, that Final Fantasy kind of, you know, freezing the action like you wouldn't rebirth and remake. Like, that's one of my favorite combat systems of all time.

And so if they can kind of replicate that in a really neat way, I think they have a hit on their hands. Harris, you're going to jump into this one. Yeah, I'm definitely going to jump into it. This isn't necessarily, you know, at the top of my genre list of games that I play. but I like the fact that this has a scaling difficulty level. So if you just want to jump in and enjoy the world that they're creating, enjoy the story that they're telling in this,

you can do that. But if you want to ramp it up and really dive into that combat that they're going to have, yeah, I mean, it looks great. I love the visual style that they have here. Is it Koo? Yeah, yeah. I brought up to Tim, like, it reminds me of when your favorite directors working in a genre, that they never do like oh Christopher Nolan's doing that like oh I want to I would never really

never really you know uh gravity towards that genre but it's so it's so weird that like yeah this is game freak and they are working on something that is way more than they've done in the past and like you know how do how are they going to tackle this genre how how are they going to make it their own and kind of you know find their creative ways to iterate on it I think I think it could be really special and you know and there's literally just showed it right there they're going make you care about coup. Oh, yeah. They're going to have.

They're going to have it. You know that's going to have. At the end, they'll get separated. Yeah, maybe you have to go the opposite way and save Emma. Is that was in Ramos? Yeah, Emma, go out that way. And then Bras, Koo. I never forget Brad.

Brad is going to be a main part of this story. Don't worry about me. I'm also. Brad just killed. No reaction from an American dude. Kyle LeBuff, Super Chats, and says, same studio that produced Pokemon legend, Z.A. and Scarlet slash Violet.

Think about that for a minute from the tech perspective. And again, It's what Nintendo's paying them to produce, right? Right. I mean, it's the time they're giving them, and it's just the cycle of Pokemon. If you want to learn more about why Pokemon's the way it is, Chris Plant had a good podcast that came on, I think, last year about Pokemon, talking to an expert, and they kind of went into, like, you know, Game Freak, the Pokemon Company, creatures, the Nintendo, the relationship

between all of them and why it is the thing of, like, hey, we got to get a Pokemon out because that then informs merchandise and anime and X, Y, Z thing. And so it's not even that they don't have the money. it's more so that they just don't give them the time. You're really looking at what I think we always talk shit about with Madden, with football games in general. You've got a nine-month dev cycle. Get it out, then get the next thing out,

and then get the next thing out, and so it's always a glacial movement in terms of things getting better. Yeah, we were talking about yesterday at a thing we're at where it's... It's cool seeing... What are you doing? It's cool seeing Game Freak do something out of the genre, and similarly with Playground. Like, here's Playground, known for the car games,

And now they're working on, you know, this sort of open, massive open world action RPG. It's just really neat to see. And it's got to be super exciting for a lot of these developers. And we saw it playing here in this video with these developers from Game Free going, yeah, it's awesome to be able to work on something different. Like, and something that you can kind of get re-energized and not kind of just be in that cycle. Got to pump out another one of these, you know? Yeah.

I think I'm worried about story. I think that's where I'm like, for sure. That's the thing we got to see. Because Stellar Blade, that was the big thing for me where I was like, man, I really liked this gameplay. The story is dog shit. I don't care about anything going on in this world. And like already, from the things that are talking about,

the blight, you know, the world that they set up, I'm already more interested in what's going on here than even in Stellar Blade. But I feel like I just got to see, I got to hear a hook, right? I got to, we're talking about they're going to make you care about Ku and they're going to, you know, do whatever. I hope they make me care about Ku. Pokemon, like, as Goofy about Brad.

As goofy as Pokemon. As goofy as Pokemon. Pokemon stories can be, they make very, very memorable NPCs and moments and things that that are like, for better, for worse, really, really stand out. I think they can deliver a lot of that here. I think they have like storytelling power in an underrated way that makes you go like, that's how that Pokemon game ended? What, you know? Oh, yeah. And I think it was... Pokemon Scarlet had that for me. Dude, yeah, Pokemon Scarlet had like that one side path that was one of the best things that they've done ever.

I was like, whoa, this is kind of crazy to be getting this in a Pokemon game. But I think that they have the capability to make really memorable characters. I mean, God, again, this is more of a for better or for worse because some of them are just so goofy that you go like, whoa, what the hell are you doing in this game? But I hope to see some of that weird quirk in his hair.

Thousand percent. I think it's really interesting, Andy, what you said about how it looks visually distinct to you from all the other stuff that's out there. It really goes to show just how subjective if these things are, because my impression of it aesthetically was, to me it does look very samey to a lot of the stuff that's out there.

Fable has that picture book, that story book, that story book, talks about, it distinguishes itself that way. I look at this, and, like, if I squint, I could be just as easily be looking at Blacksmith Wukong or, you know, Stellar Blade or anything. This is becoming a very, very crowded genre, right? It's kind of running around RPG,

awesome combos, kind of hybrid term-based and real-time attack, sword and magic, yeah. And obviously, all of the, all of the Soulsborn games. It's a very, very crowded genre. And it's becoming harder and harder, I think,

to distinguish yourself. I think if this game's going to do that, I think, having the, I think, is a big deal. We always love having a companion. And obviously,

again, that's going to speak to story. And yeah, we'll come to care about the dog. And when they almost kill it, we'll go, oh, no, what are you doing?

And all that stuff is kind of, I think, taken for granted, I think where the dog is more interesting is as this additional gameplay mechanic, right? Well, you should bring him in. And what's,

it's cool, right? So where Expedition 33, one of the areas where it found a lot of success, was kind of the hybridization of that combat system, right? Where it was mostly turned base, but they had sprinkled in a little bit of real time when you had to time the parries, right? And that made it kind of bit more interesting than just like sitting back, pressing the button, wait for the animation to play out.

This almost feels a bit a little bit like the opposite of that, where it's primarily real time, but then there's a little bit of sprinkle in that turn base, where you can pause the action, slow it down. But you notice also, if you watch it there, but like when you activate whatever the, whatever coup's power is, there's also a timing specifically. You have to

nail the timing to get a perfect hit, almost like a clear obscure where you get, when you want that perfect parry to really be able to like pop off with your counterattack. And so I think there's potential for the combat system to be really interesting. Again, visually it looks, again, it looks great, right? Technically, it looks right. It just looks, it doesn't look

terribly different to Yotei or Assassin's shadows or Black Myth or a lot of other stuff that's out there. In the next year and a half, right? Like, we're always, I say half because I'm thinking of ties in isolation. I don't know when that game's coming out. But in the next year, we're talking about Neo3. We're talking about Phantom Blade Zero, right? We're talking about this.

And again, these games aren't all the same, but I think they're speaking to the same audience. See, if I can jump in, that's my one thing I think to throw in the pot here is that I think the games you just talked about. I know aren't Greg games. I don't want the stylish action combat, the combos, the I have to be so precise than my paris. When I watch this game and I could just be being sold a false bill of goods, it doesn't look like that. It looks like, yeah, it's going to be a rise of the Ronan. It's going to be a ghost of Yote. And not to that degree.

It's going to be an Assassin's Creed, whatever, because I am stealthing around. They were like, you can stealth around and attack them this way. You can use them this way. It didn't seem like that was a can thing as much as a choice for my Emma and how I play, which, again, when I look at the way you are fighting and you have health bars and all that jazz, it's making me go, oh, it's an action RPG and not a Soulslike, which is a Greg game, even though, I think at a glance, sure. I would say that even the games that I'm listing, though, aren't necessarily Soulslikes,

right? I don't know if I'll describe a Tides of Annihilation or a Phantom Blade Zero as Souls likes, but I do think they speak to that same audience and I think a lot of that audience just doesn't have the time or is tired. Yeah, it's where the genre's gone. I think a lot of developers saw the success of Souls games and said, oh, we want

to make something like that and you don't necessarily want to make a game as hardcore, so there's just been a lot of games that are action RPGs. It's, you know, we're swiping away, we're doing cool abilities, things look really, there's a lot of visual flourish on everything. I think when I was talking about this game,

having a very distinct look, I meant more than like that I play these games all the time for many, many an hour. And it just has a really nice like, in the way that I was talking about with Fable having this very kind of bloomy look, there's like kind of a very neat little matted, like I think the way the materials are acting with the world

is what I'm noticing more than anything. But also it doesn't look like it's what we've gotten from Team Ninja countless times with. This just looks like a remastered game in an old-ass engine that, like, just we just need to do away with that engine, you know what I mean? Right, you should try me Neil 3. I mean, you like Rise the Ronan. I do. I feel like Neil 3 is going to have more commonality with that one than these other action games.

Maybe I will. Maybe I will. This one is a pragmatia for me, one that is a game that I've seen many of times. But then you switch up the combat system. You have your companion? And I go, oh, I'm into that. Like, I might try this now because pragmata for me was that gun play where it's like, oh, it's just a third person action adventure shooter, right?

But oh, now you have this hacking mechanic where then you shoot at it, right? I love the Final Fantasy 7 comparison of like, hey, there's this like real time strategy mixed in with that action combat that you know and love from all these games. I'm like, you know what? Like that's selling me enough to be like, I would try this now over, hey, oh, it's just a, I think I've seen a thousand. I think that hybrid combat model where you're mostly slashing, but like, but you can drop into that bullet time and like give yourself a moment to think and then deploy

something. Yeah. Yeah. Did you ever play the remake or Final Fantasy remake and rebirth? Man, that's the like, that is that game. That's the same vibe. It's the same thing. It is like this.

You are, you're hacking and slashing, but then you pause to go, I want to do this ability, because I know it's going to weaken their shield and then I'll have homie do whatever ability. Like, oh my God. Hold on. Hold on. I'm sorry. Yeah, you know I have to do. Sith Hunters 965.

Gary claims he's not biased for every game mentioned every turn he will shit on PlayStation pathetic for such an old guy. Tell him, Gary. Tell him, Gary. Gary, tell him. Give him the wild. First of all, go fuck yourself.

I was playing and analyzing and reviewing video games and computer games before you were a fucking itching your daddy's pants. So go fuck yourself on that. You have no fucking idea what you're talking about. Educate yourself before you fucking start shitting on the keyboard and

embarrassing yourself. Secondly, Can anyone point to any point at all on this point where I've done anything to shit on PlayStation? Even one time. Never once. These people live in their own fucking reality. When we were watching Fable, you said this isn't as good as helldivers. I did hear you say that. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, I vividly remember saying that again. Just seriously, don't embarrass it because I will eventually fucking cook you. You don't know what you're talking about. What a stupid fucking... First of all, again, respect your elders and betters. Because I am older than you. I am also a lot better than you. I'm fucking smarter than you.

I know a lot more about games. I've been doing this. for a long fucking time. My opinion actually has weight. Your opinion is fucking meaningless. You're not. You're watching. I've been saying, Gary, Gary's not watching you.

I've been saying for a while now, both of you probably and publicly, I'm shifting over to PlayStation a little bit. I ask for PlayStation 5 codes now. Yeah. I'll be, I've never have time to come on the reviews, but you ask for the costs.

I like it because I'm hedging my bets, you know, because Xbox, you know, might be one foot in the grave. We don't know. You've got to, you've got to start, you know, spreading your bets out a little bit. You did say the PS5 Pro will be the definitive console. version for Forge's will be the best place to play

fucking Forza rather than a PC. What a fucking moron. Don't ever don't ever fucking mouth off, run your mouth in this chat again because you're a fucking twat. Jesus. Amen. Amen.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to. You know, every now and again, I've just got to go to know. How long is it going to take for Forza to come to PlayStation? They didn't say. They just said end of the year. They said this year. I didn't want to play a launch, though. You know? But I also want to play on my pro.

Cross-sive, cross-splay? Wait, is it cross-sive? I mean, it's playing. Well, right now, we're not going to play anywhere for us. That's not how PlayStation works. You've got a PC. You got a Steam deck. Where's this guy?

I know my PC is good as my best. Oh, he left the chat. Good. Fuck all. And then, of course, the fourth and final game, even though we're doing everything out of order was killed. The shadow, much shadowly mentioned, hey, this is what the fourth game will probably be.

It actually was from Double Fine. An online multiplayer pottery, partery. He got me too. Party Brawler. Going to be 4V4, Spring 2026, Xbox PC and PS. That means PlayStation Tim. Mike, again, I will go to you. You are the streaming guy.

You are the streaming of the multiplayer party briefing. What did you think of it? Love a good multiplayer game. Love a good fun party game. I think this is really cool. I think this is a fun, unique, weird, wacky, fun idea that. double fine gets to do right we talk about these games blessing says so well it's like we talk about all these developers wanting them to try different things do different things but then when we see them

we're like ow i don't want that just give me the normal stuff right it's like double fine continues to get weird with it and i love that xbox and microsoft somehow give tim shaffer all the leeway in the world to just make these games no matter how well they're received or sell it doesn't matter just make them and have fun with it right and there's a lot of great party games out there that you can play with your friends, that this looks just like that I've played before. And I get excited for those because it's going to be a fun night, two nights, weekend with my friends that will laugh and enjoy this, right? And I think the big one here is the creativity, the creation of making your own pottery

is the big deal, right? If this was just eight set pottery pots, you'd be like, ah, I'm good. Like, I'll get bored after a while. But the idea that we can spend countless hours creating our own fun creations and then bringing them out into the battlefield and laughing when Greg, brings out a dick pot and we laugh at it. And Gary paints his whatever crazy colors he wants. Like it's going to be really cool. And I think the creative suite is probably the most interesting of like wowing of this. But then also the gameplay looks fun. It's going to be a fun afternoon,

a good couple hours of playing with your friends laughing, doing whatever crazy, you know, quest this is to collect water, put it on the other team's kiln and then walking away with a victory or a loss will be fun. I'm excited for this. This will be a good. good night to two nights for me. Is that enough? It's never enough, Greg, if you want to get business mic with me, right? I do. Give me business mic. Business Mike looks at this and goes, damn it, Tim Schaefer, like, this isn't going to sell.

This isn't going to move the needle. Like, people are going to play this twice, and they're never going to want this. But then, like, in reality, it's like, yes, this is a great game to add on the game pass. This is a fun time for people to enjoy to show that your team over at Double Fine can create something weird, wacky, without going to. going, hey Mike, I'm blowing the budget. This needs seven years to create, right? I don't think Tim Schaefer and double partner idiots, though.

They don't make this and going, this is going to, we're making this to sell. Oh, yeah, but they go from a creative side, right? Yeah. They don't, I don't think, Tim Schaefer's, I don't think there's, I don't think. The business side is like, penny pinching wise, it's like, this is not worth their time. This was never worth development time creates. But I guess on the, on the business side of it, right? They're talking about how they made this out of amnesia.

Eminetia Fortnite, right? This was a side project. Oh, this is a cool idea. Yeah, sure, let's make this, let's put it out. No company makes this game thinking people is going to have, you know, 20,000 concurrence on week three. I don't think, I think they know that. I think this is one of those ones where they're like, hey, we did something here. Hey, this is pretty fun.

I look at it as like a Gotham City Impostors. I look at it as like a, we're putting out something that does not need to live, that does not need to thrive, that a small group people are going to enjoy and we get to keep doing double fine things. And I think that's how this is studio opera. And that's where I celebrate. And I love that, right? I love that they're able to do that, right? But like, this is going to, at retail, this is probably $20, right, for a PlayStation

copy of this, right? $20 to $40 is usually the window of these games, right? It's like, how much is that really going to sell, right? How much effort and time did this studio put into that when they could be making psychonauts three, right? That would probably be more of the priority or getting them being real and being like, it's time to make banjo. I think you're talking about any other studio that's not double fine, though.

Well, that's what I'm getting at it. It's like, yeah, the leeway that Phil and Xbox and Microsoft has given Tim and his team to create the fun stuff that we all love from the Keepers, which has no dialogue. It's just a three-hour walking experience. No one gets that, which is crazy. That's like, man, shout out to them. That's really great that we've been able to say that on the X-Cast for years now to be like, man, that's wild they do that. Or obsidian with pentament and grounded, right? Like, that's crazy that when we first have these conversations, it's like, oh, they're going to change.

this whole team up. They're going to make them make a banjo and that's the only thing they're going to do. They're going to lay off a thousand people. Double finds out here still existing and still making wacky and fun stuff. Because this is what double finds always been doing. Yeah. And shout out to Xbox for continuing to support that. You talk about business, Mike. You talk about this. We're always worried about closures X, Y, and Z. The fact that they brought them in and didn't make them just be a

called duty skin house or whatever the fuck it would be. You know what I mean? They're letting them make weird out shit that is not going to move the needle for sales, but it's going to be our... Yeah, I would have been really negative on this. if they said, and here's what our battle pass looks like in season two and our roadmap, it's like, no, it's just a little goofy game. I want to, Paris, I want you talking, my one final thing

for me is it looks, it reminds me so much of fat princess. I was getting a weird ass stuff you used to do in the early days of online gaming. No, actually my question is for you because I think you've been reading like the Xbox Wire, have they said anything about matchmaking in this? What would you be looking for? Because I'm, I would

expect, because going off of what Blessing is saying, I don't think this game was made to be this big, you know, 50,000 people are playing it at once type of game. So I almost think there isn't matchmaking in it because it's the thing. Oh, You're going to get together on a Friday night where your friends and play. I'm searching for matchmaking it.

I'm not finding anything. It's a Mike Nelson preview. It has some cool stuff in here. I'm told there's 24 total special attacks in the game, and they're all inspired by the functionality of their shapes. Something I had to consider when shaping my pots is that my water capacity and health are inverse to each other. The greater capacity, the less health I have. That's where that's where the strategy comes.

To the business conversation, right? I look at this, and while watching this entire segment, I couldn't stop thinking about medium molecule and how, man, this could be them. You know what I mean? Like, they put out a big project. They put out dreams, right? Something that was meant to be a,

hey, everybody, look how forward-looking this is. This is us still being creative, but also us trying to make this big thing and put it out. And we don't know what medium molecule is doing right now. I worry every day about that studio that we're going to wake up, and it is, all right, medium molecule just doesn't exist anymore. I feel the same way about double-fine. I mean, constant lower-level anxiety.

They keep letting them make weird shit. The difference is that double-fime puts games out. Zeke speaks, Super Chats, confirm matchmaking in an Xbox peer interview. Yeah. And I think if this was a problem

with Microsoft for Double Fine, I don't think we would see Kill him today. I don't think we would have seen it. No, and it's like, every time you see a new game from Double Fine, there's almost such a sense of like,

they're still going, you know, it's like, you're just glad. Look, I have a very special place in my heart for Double Fine and Tim is where you all should, right?

We're taking them to dinner. Oh, nice, good for you. How's the prime rib? Oh, good. I love it. You know, get the King Henry. Don't fuck around. The mashed potatoes.

Oh, so maybe you told me, these are the best mashed potatoes I've ever had. I've got to get back there. So, yes, fantastic. I love to say it. And I would make the argument that in the broader context of this showcase, look at the games around it. You need something like this, right? Yeah, of course. They're going to be wrong.

Fable, Forza and Beasts, what is it, Beast of Reincarnation? Yeah. All look fantastic, right? But they're all very, they're all in very established genres. Fable and Beast are essentially like not that different from one on their reasons like core mechanics and stuff is running around, running around fantasy odd. And Forza is Forza. This is the only, this is like the wacky uncle, right?

This is like the one, like the outlier. That's something that's a bit different. And you've got to have that in your lineup, right? Otherwise everything starts to feel the same. And again, I don't know to what extent double fine is operating at a profit or a loss or to how much, you know, Microsoft might see them as a, like, we don't make a lot of money here. But like we've got to, you know, we've got to keep going just because like, you know, yeah. In office space. very well-known to be cheap in San Francisco.

Yeah, and I think they, I think they've got, you know, very, like you said, when they, you notice they said, like, we do this when we step away from our core project. So this is, this is like one of their little offshoot things. And I love the fact that they have a model where they can, uh, presumably they've figured out a way to kind of devote a limited amount of resources to a game. So, like, they can take a risk, but not a risk that's going to sink the company if the game doesn't work. Because you're right, this probably isn't going to pop off, like to, to a huge degree.

These party brawlers never really do, right? Is there ever been like a mega example of that? Like party animals was fun. Gang beast was fun. These kind of games are fun. But like, I don't know if there's necessarily a high ceiling for that kind of game.

And it's strange, of all the four games that I can play, I can imagine pretty much what the experience are playing. The other three is going to be like, right? This one, I have no fucking idea what this game is going to feel like to play. And that's interesting to me. Like,

how does the design of a pot affect its functionality and gameplay? I have no idea. What exactly does the different game modes feel like? It feels almost a little bit of splatoony, you know, when you're like collecting the water and putting it into the camera. There's a lot of unknowns here, which I think is interesting. Again, I'm just like one of these people who I'm so glad that they're still making games like this at Double Find is still out there. Otherwise, everything would feel so much more samey.

We need developers and we need people like DoubleFind to kind of keep this kind of wacky ass shit alive. Because so few people are still doing it. I want to be on the stream for this. That's my thing. I want to try this game. I hope it grabs me like a fat princess did back in the day, but we'll see. Yeah,

I can't wait to create. It's going to be fun. If I'm going to talk about the game itself, I don't know if I'm going to play. As much as I support. Oh, I try, yeah, if you put me on a stream or something,

I'll for sure. Yeah, I don't think I'm going to get deep in the meta. And like, you know what I mean? But I think that's also the kind of game I think they're trying to make, which again speaks back to the now dated to a degree

Xbox game path ethos, right? Of like, let's give you cool shit to keep you around and play. This is a night. Let's give you something weird and wacky that you can hopefully have a friend who already has game pass or can convince to buy for a night for $10, like Mike's always talking about it. And by the way, I don't know, again, I'm not business Gary, but I think it's nice for Double Fine that these games can now ship onto PlayStation as well, right? Because they can sell more copies of these games that, you know, we want to keep double find alive.

And the more places they can sell games and the large audience they can reach with this stuff, the better. Yeah, of course, as we start whining on wrapping up, remember, everything coming to PlayStation, The one exception in quotes is Forza coming later to PlayStation, not day and date, but everything else was announced for all these dates, which actually brings up an interesting point. Snow, Bichael, Michael, Michael. 25th anniversary of Xbox this year.

Big deal. Grand Theft Auto looming in that November period. Wow. What a 25 years? Kill. Coming spring. Forza, May. Beast of reincarnation, summer, fable, autumn. World of Warcraft. Diablo. Spring.

Right? You add in, call of Duty. Starfield. Never give up. Never give up. But I was more driving to Gears E-Day, Halo campaign of all. It's a big year for Xbox

with a big juggernaut waiting in the wings. When do you think you get gears? When do you think you get Halo? That's why we always talk about this. They just jam-packed that second half of the year. We're always intimidated this January through March window. Slide something in there for me. Help me out, right?

But like they have those, right? you have Diablo, World of Warcraft, those all have like that spring dates right there. You also have like games like Fortune that's coming out in May, which may feel so far away, but it's right around the board. That's the problem. So like, yeah, I always get on this.

I'm like, hey, let's hit that first half, but they show this, what, end of January. It's pretty much February by this point now. And we're all going to be turning and burning into that. So it's tough to jam pack this. But you know 25 years is a big deal. We know we still have games looming. right. Clockwork Revolution is out there.

State of the K is somewhere out there. State of the K is out there somewhere. Not this year. There's more games next year. But this year is a big deal, right? 25 years of Xbox. Xbox having this new identity. Everything is an Xbox. We're also like, what are we doing with the next year? Hardware.

It's going to be exciting times to show. But Gears and Halo, Halo will hit the 25th anniversary and get steamrolled by GTA. It's just fine. It's only the campaign. It's 13 levels. It doesn't matter. Gears is the one that has to make room away from...

October. Yeah, Gears has to be before GTA. That's the one that matters, because I'm bringing gears to PlayStation, just like Halo is, but like, Halo is the old one. This is a new one. It's funny that no one else can really date a game

for the back half of 2026 until Rockstar make their move. Yeah, of course. But they've given a date, so that's all people can go by right now. But I got to push back on what you just said with Halo. I said it before. I'll say it again.

I don't, I think it would be a bad idea for it to come on the 25th anniversary. Not even in the Xbox of things. It is the first time that Master Chief is going to be on a PlayStation platform. If everyone's just playing Grand Theft Auto, guess what? No one's playing fucking Halo. So you put it out in August. You give it plenty of breathing room. Yeah.

You introduce them to Master Chief. And on the 25th anniversary. Yeah. Oh, you know what I would tell you. Phil Spencer walks out. Yeah. This is the camera. Spencer walks out and he goes, and now the future of Halo,

and you show off the next Halo with the multiplayer. That's what you do on the 25th anniversary. You show off multiplayer. You show off what's coming. Like, now that we've celebrated 25 years of Xbox, now let's take a look into the future of Xbox and you show the next Halo. Okay. See, that's my problem is like you can hype up Halo all you want,

but Halo or campaign evolved is missing a massive piece. Multiple. That's the multiplayer. Yeah, I'm honestly shocked. You're not going to have a multiplayer on PlayStation. Do you think they will add that component? Do you think they'll be like Halo multiplayer evolve? I am shocked that they're introducing Halo to PlayStation without multiplayer.

That honestly surprises me. So this is why I think you at least have to show what the next version of multiplayer is going to be in this calendar year. You do it on the 25th anniversary. And when I'm wrong, everyone will. Yeah. Well, I don't think any of you. you are wrong. What a great day today to hang out, huh? Thanks for coming through

Gary, Paris. Yeah, happy to be. It's good to be here on a day when the Xbox vibes are on. We've had a lot of, you know, wasn't that long ago they were canceling perfect dark zero and this and that and the vibes were all fucked up? This is a strong showing. It was. A very strong showing. Great distraction.

Thank you all for hanging out with us, of course, for this episode of The Kind of Funny Gamescast. If you're watching live, don't go anywhere. Our day is still just beginning. You are getting Kind of Funny Games Daily right after this with Roger in Paris. Paris, I hope you got some left in the tank

to talk about whatever Rogers assembled. I hear everything's horrible. Ubisoft. Then it'll be in review. Then it will be the video stream. No rest for the Wicked. I'm excited to see that

and see how co-op works. Of course, shout it to Jason Shrier when we were talking about all this. The chat was popping off about a BS. That's a blue sky, Tim. With a walking lighthouse simulator

and a pottery warrior brawler, it's sad to see that double fine has just become another trend. James are very funny. Of course, everybody, we couldn't do this out your support. pick up a kind of funny membership patreon.com.

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