The Ringer-Verse - ‘Alien: Isolation’ Turns 10, ‘Tomb Raider’ Returns, and ‘Metaphor: ReFantazio’ Gets GOTY Buzz | Button Mash

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

Ben and Justin Charity tiptoe through the halls of Sevastopol to discuss the 10-year anniversary of ‘Alien: Isolation’ and their experiences with the cult classic. Then they bring on Andy Kelly, author of ‘Perfect Organism: An Alien: Isolation Companion,’ to discuss the game’s legacy, horror credentials, innovative AI system, and impact on ‘Alien,’ as well as what they hope to see from the newly announced ‘Isolation’ sequel (15:49). After that, Ben and Charity talk about Netflix and Amazon’s big bets on a ‘Tomb Raider’ revival, the history of the franchise, and Ben’s impressions of the new Netflix series ‘Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft’ (56:58). Finally, Steve Ahlman and Matt James pop in to give their impressions of ‘Silent Hill 2’ and ‘Metaphor: ReFantazio’ (84:32). Host: Ben Lindbergh Guests: Justin Charity, Andy Kelly, Steve Ahlman, and Matt James Producers: Devon Renaldo and Eduardo Ocampo Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Everybody lies. But most of us don't like to talk about the lies we tell. Until now. From Spotify and the Ringer podcast network, I'm Brian Phillips. In my new podcast, Truthless, I'm talking to people about their best tales of deception. From changing an entire family history to building an award-winning Hollywood career on a lie. You can listen to Truthless on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts on October 15th. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters.

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Get back. I'm warning you. Tut, tut. This is all this. And welcome into the ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things. band-up. I am Ben Lindbergh, the warrant officer, excuse me, senior editor at the ringer, rudely awakened from hypersleep to make content for the company, including this episode of ButtonMash. I have placed a distress call to call in a crew of co-hosts and guests. So with me first today

is a senior staff writer for the Ringer and a perfect podcasting organism, Justin Charity. Hello, Charity. Why not ask me about Sevastopol safety protocols? I'm getting hysterical already, just thinking about our conversation about alien isolation. We have a lot on the docket today. We've got something old, something new, something borrowed. I guess we're missing something blue, but the something old, aside from the two of us, is alien isolation. The survival horror cult classic that turned 10 years old this week. Happy birthday, Alien isolation.

We'll be celebrating both its anniversary and surprisingly its sequel, which was an announced on Monday after we had already planned to do this podcast. So clearly we've got our finger on the pulse here. The something new is Silent Hill 2 and metaphor Refontasio two just-released titles. I'll be talking to Steve Allman and Matt James about at the end of the episode. And the something borrowed is the latest TV adaptation of video game IP Tomb Raider, The Legend of Lara Croft, the new Netflix series that restarts the franchise after several slow years. So we've got Alien Isolation, Silent Hill, an Atlas RPG, and Tomb Raider. I cannot think of a more charity core collection of topics. If I had not asked you to come on this

episode, I think you would have somehow sensed that it was happening and shown up uninvited. Absolutely. Well, I was happy to invite you. I'm happy you accepted. We will also be joined shortly by the author of a new book about Alien isolation. You know a video game is important when there's a book about it. That doesn't happen all the time. Andy Kelly has written a book about the game, and he argues that isolation is one of the greatest and most important video games ever made, bold claim, but he'll be on to defend it. Regular listeners know that despite being incredibly courageous in real life, where nothing faces me, in video games, I'm kind of a coward. And thus, I had not played alien isolation until now, until I was preparing for this

podcast. And I think this is a common sentiment among gaming cowards, but one of my great regrets is that I hadn't played alien isolation because it's just- I can't believe you played it now even. Neither could I. I- Can't believe you did this. This is wild. I've played it a ton. I've played this game a lot. I cannot believe you subjected. Of all the games over the years, I've watched you be like, I'm too scared. And then the one you, the one you commit to his alien isolation, that's wild. The granddaddy of them all. Yeah, it's just like ripping the band-aid off. If I can play this, I can play anything in theory.

I just, I had real regrets because I sensed that it was a really good game that I would like if you could somehow strip out the sheer horror, which you can't. That is kind of integral to the experience. But it was one of those games on my backlog, like, oh, gosh, I wish I had played. Someday I'll play this. And here we are with a 10th anniversary podcast. I'll never have a better opportunity than this. And I'll do anything for content.

So Jess made me play Outlast. That was pretty scary. But I kept hearing every time I would dabble in a scary game, someone would be like, well, alien isolation, though, that's the scariest. And so my accomplishments were belittled every time I would dip my toe into horror gaming. It was like, well, the real deep end of the pool is alien isolation. And I just dove in. So you go back with this game.

Did you play it when it first came out? No, I've been replaying it lately. Yeah, I played a few years after. years after, I think actually I started getting into it after I watched like a bunch, as always with me, I watched a decent amount of like speed running content about it. And I was like, this like gameplay loop looks good. And then I got, I had a period where I was just addicted to this game. And it's like most recently I was like playing it on nightmare, which is the, that's, it's sort of this, the super hard difficulty, right? That it wasn't in the original release. They patched it in.

And yeah, man, my relationship to horror games is kind of like more relationship to spicy food, right? It's just one of those things where over years you build a taste and a tolerance and then you just kind of like, you know, you find wherever your prior spice level was is too mild. And so you got to one up it a little bit. And that's me with difficulty and me with horror a little bit. And alien isolation, though, is just kind of like that timeless taste where it's like, that. Even if I'm not as scared of the xenomorph

as I was when I first played that game, it's just, he still has an effect on me. I still feel like I really messed up when I hear that

that squeal, you know, and he just comes charging around the corner. I hate it. I hate it. I can't. The sound is such a big part

of it. The sound, when the alien drops down from the vents. Or even the ping. The ping. When you hear that ping from the motion tracker,

it's like, oh, God. Okay. Yeah. It's nightmare fuel, but that's what people want out of their horror games. And that's what people want at this time of year. It's spooky season. People are looking to be terrified.

And if that's what you want, then check out alien isolation. So this is a game from Sega, from the developer Creative Assembly. It's based very much on the original 1979, Ridley Scott, Alien, and it follows Amanda Ripley, daughter of the Ripley, you know, played by Sigourney Weaver. and it's very faithful to the look and feel and sound of that original film in the franchise. And yes, it is just terrifying because of the xenomorph, which is just one of the best examples, really, of AI done well in video games, of a truly competent and terrifying adversary who just hunts you throughout the game,

cannot be killed, just constantly is on your heels, so you never, ever feel comfortable, really. any point while you're playing this game, which is not normally a selling point for me. But when I embraced that I was just going to go a whole hog with this, it is done extremely well. And the nice thing is that it feels new. If I had been playing this and you had told me that this came out this year, I really would not be phased by that. I would not feel like it looked or felt dated in any way.

I played it for Switch, which is, I think, the best-looking version of it. And that was a strange experience for me because I'm not accustomed to being scared when playing my Switch. My Switch is like my family-friendly, happy place, not normally the system that scares me. But it looks great. I wonder what you attribute that to. Is it just that, well, graphics haven't really advanced all that much over the past decade relative to the decade before that or the decade before that? And so the leap from PS3 to PS5, it's just not that dramatic. Or is it something about the game design or it being?

ahead of its time that makes it still feel current? I don't think it's the graphics thing, because I think it's definitely like, look, it's not a game with like modern ray tracing tech, right? Like, you definitely know you're playing a game from a couple of generations back, but I think part of why it nevertheless, I think, leaves, you know, it doesn't feel dated like you say,

because it's already kind of retro, right? Like you're trying to, you're trying to, you know, going for this, this 1979 aesthetic, right? And everything about the, like the art design supports that so much. And so I think on some levels consciously, you kind of accept the sort of, you know, the downgrade, I guess, supposed downgrading in graphics as being kind of just roughly consistent with the fact that the whole experience is kind of a retro experience. It's just super analog, you know, super, super late 70s. The whole thing is a little retro. Yeah, that's true.

Yes, I guess when it's consciously dated by being based on something that was decades old when the game came out, then it's a little less dated after the fact. And I didn't play it as I think it's meant to be played. I don't want to oversell my bravery here. You should probably play this in a dark room with headphones or surround sound or something. You should be isolated as you play it. I went as far from that as I could. I had the lights on. I had the windows open.

Square? What is the opposite of everything you just said? My dog was sitting on my lap. I just wanted company at all times, you know, just like the cat in alien. I needed some sort of animal companion who was warm and fuzzy and made me feel better. And, you know, you can pause it and you can stand up and you can walk away for a while. And there were times when I did that. And playing on nightmare is pretty masochistic behavior because I played on the default level and there were times when I lowered it down to easy just because I Because, you know, you get stuck and it's not a forgiving game. There's a lot of replaying certain segments. Like, you're not safe even when you're saving, you know? You can get killed. You can save with the a little bit. You're just like waiting for the little bars to clear. You're just like, I hate this system so much.

It's agonizing. And there's no auto save. It's all manually saving. And so you get killed after a sequence. You have to do it again. And it's not as if it's super predictable or easy. the next time you play it, because, of course, the alien could do something entirely different the next time that you're not anticipating,

which is good, but also just you never feel in command of your surroundings. This is not a game where, like, you get a game, and suddenly you feel like you're the master. No, not at all. You're always the prey, and you're being hunted and chased by something that is faster and stronger and better than you. So playing it now for the first time in a while, or as you've replayed it,

is it a different experience at all for you in that light than it was the first time you took the plunge? No, I think it's like one of those games that, if anything, it just feels good to learn like it's the back of your hand. You know what I mean? I think that's what it felt like. It felt like, okay,

it's actually been a minute since I picked this up. But then by the time I got to chapter three, it's like, I remember where everything is. You know, it's like, well, I feel like one of the most iconic experiences people have with that game. I guess it's chapter five, which is the hospital wing, where you kind of have to go and you're getting somebody's key card and then the alien drops from a vet. And you have to do this kind of relatively complex series of interactions that unlocks and go fetch this in a kind of confusing series of hallways.

And you're just like, the alien will not get off my ass. You're just like, and that it's such a stunning experience, I think, especially the first time around. because it's like you don't really know it's like you know the xenomorph is super intelligent and you know it is a hunter but you're trying to get a sense of like do i have to crouch walk through this whole game like i don't know you don't know what you're allowed to do right um and i think the more you play it the more you get a sense of like okay i know the alien actually isn't active here or i know actually that walking normally is totally fine and yet i you know even even now knowing what i about the game and knowing

Sevastopol as well as I do I still play it with this sense of trepidation I still move with this sense of like I like I respect to the xenomorph you know what I respect the xenomorph

I feel bad when I die that game you know I feel I feel my mortality rise up in my throat when I'm at the like the safe point like you say and you think you're you think you're good you hear the first ding And then you get to the second thing and you hear that squeal and you're like, God, damn. You know.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. There are a lot of times where I was just like, yeah, you win. I give up. Like, I'm going to just stop playing. You own this station now. Or like, whenever you walk into the trap, when he's hiding in the vent above you, and it's like you somehow don't notice the drool from the vent and you walk right into it.

And your camera snaps up and he pulls you into the vent. You're like, I should know better. And I don't. And I don't know why I don't. Yes, and we're going to talk about this with Andy a little bit, but it is the rare video game based on IP that feels every bit as essential as that original IP. It's not just kind of a hollow copy of that thing. There are certain times where it will retrace beats that are very identifiably from Alien.

And, of course, there's DLC that stars the characters and the actors from Alien, and then you can go on the Nistromo and retrace your steps and that's sort of very explicit kind of copying or returning you to that setting. But the game itself feels like it is in that same universe and it's trying to do that same sort of thing, but it just does it so effectively that it doesn't feel like a knockoff. It feels like it just belongs on the Pantheon with the best releases in that franchise. And I wish that we got that more. I think that on the whole, video game makers are getting better at adaptation

of movies and TV shows, et cetera, and there's some where I'm still hopeful that that will be the case, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, for instance. The legacy of Indiana Jones games is pretty spotty, pretty checkered past, and so we'll see whether they finally nail that. But alien isolation just feels like kind of the platonic ideal

of like, you know, we set out to sort of pay tribute to this thing, and we ended up making something that stands very much on its own and kind of provides its own spin on this series. Any other thoughts you want to share before we bring in Andy? No, let's get into it. I love this game to death. All right. Let's call in the expert. Well, we're joined now by the man who literally wrote the book on Alien isolation. By day,

he is a PR manager for the fine indie publisher Devolver Digital, which has brought us the likes of Hotline Miami, inscription, cult of the lamb, death door, and many more hits. Most recently, the Plucky Squire and next week's highly anticipated NAVA. But by night, he still roams the derelict Sevastopol station hunted by a xenomorph that can't be killed. He's been besotted with this game ever since he gave it a quite conservative, in retrospect, 9.3 in his review for PC gamer. And now, like executive officer Kane giving birth to a chess buster, he has given birth to a book called Perfect Organism, an Alien Isolation Companion, which makes him the perfect companion for us to talk to today. Andy, up to this point, we have never had a guest on Buttonmash who hasn't at some point been a member of the ringer staff. So I think this means you work for us now. Congrats.

Oh, cool. Thanks. I'll hand my notice and it devolver tomorrow morning. Yeah, you can break the bad news to them after this conversation, leave them in the lurch with NAVA coming out next week. So in the book, you lay out the long history of games based on the alien franchise. There have been a lot of them, both before. and since isolation, but there have not been many standouts. So why have great games based on this series been so scarce, and how did isolation

become the exception? I think it's as simple as all the other games based everything on James Cameron's movie instead of Ridley Scott's movie, and I think it's as simple as that. Everyone went down the easy route of pulse rifles

and multiple aliens running at you, and quipping marines and all that stuff that just fits slots neatly into a video game. Whereas Creative Assembly went, let's not do that. Let's be the first team not to do that and go back to the first movie and make a properly terrifying horror game.

And I think that's really the key to why it's the best one. So you do document the lengths to which Creative Assembly went to replicate the original aliens, aesthetic and it really is pretty impressive, the amount of research they did, how in depth they went when it came to just replicating everything. It was really a labor of love. And you could talk a little bit about that process. But I wonder also what you think it brought to the alien universe itself.

How if it all did it innovate or inject something original into the DNA of this franchise? Yeah. So it's really impressive. of how creative assembly, what can have granted access to this wealth of production material from the 79 movie, multiple terabytes of stuff that most people haven't seen.

Like a lot of it has made it into making of books and things like that, but there's still tons of continuity polarites, costumes, props, concept art. They got access to all this stuff and they back engineered it to create

Sevastopol. the space station, but sort of rooted in the aesthetic and design sensibilities of the movie, and that's why it feels like such a, it slots so neatly into the alien universe because they did the homework in a major way. But I think as well as passionately replicating stuff from the movie, I think it was one of the greatest kind of imprints on the alien universe, and something we hadn't seen before is the Seagin Corporation. who operate Sevastopol. And they're kind of painted as like the,

if Whelan Dutani have like this kind of hyper monopoly over every aspect of living in space in the alien universe, Seagson are like the small independent company or, you know, lower budget company trying to make a niche for themselves in this environment where Wayland-Dutani do everything and own everything. And so you get a glimpse of Seeks and like all their stuff's work. worse than Willen Utani.

Notably, the Working Joe Androids, whereas Whalen Utani, androids are indistinguishable profing humans, apart from when they start leaking milky blood. The working joys are like, they look like store mannequins. They've got rubbery faces, and they can't emote other than kind of reading pre-prescribed lines

and a kind of robotic voice. And so that's a cool glimpse of like, because the alien universe is like this hypercapitalist dystopia with corporations rule all. And it's cool to see one of the little guys who are not going to trouble Whelan Dutani, but there's lots of neat storytelling stuff where the increasingly desperate

Sikhs and executives are trying to grab a little bit of something and failing because their product sucks. I think that's a really interesting new thing that Creative Assembly added to the Alien Universe as well as replicating a lot of stuff from the movie. Yeah, I think it's important to add some original elements because I worry sometimes, and I'm not unique in this concern, that we're just sort of stuck as a culture, you know, that we're just perpetually paying homage to a certain era and building on those foundations or just returning to them over and over again. And certainly isolation is an homage to the original alien.

And I wonder sometimes whether that aesthetic, that's 70s to early 80s, alien Blade Runner, Star Wars, Episode 4 look of sort of the retrofuturist vision of science fiction, whether we'll just be tied to that forever, right? And Star Trek, I guess, is maybe one of the only exceptions to that, where Star Trek is sort of allowed to evolve in terms of its design for better or worse. Maybe that's because it came from TV without high production values to begin with. But it seems like we're just forever hearkening back to those originals. And so I wonder, can you continue to create something new, something fresh within that framework? And maybe isolation feels so fresh just because it hadn't really been done in a video game before. As you said, there just hadn't been games taking their cues from that particular movie in the franchise. but this is perhaps relevant to when we talk about the sequel a little later and what might be in store there.

Just, you know, is there something new to say in this franchise and other franchises? Or will we just forever be remembering the good old days? I think Career of Assembly struck the right balance of paying respectful homage to that film because we all want to, you know, as an alien fan specifically the first film, we all want to hang out in that universe, especially when it's so well realized. But yeah, I do think like the addition of the working Joe's and the Sikhs incorporation and showing a kind of a space station populated by like everyday people and not necessarily like space truckers or Marines or all the other groups of people we've seen.

A kind of slice of life in space is something that Sevastopol showed us that we hadn't seen necessarily in alien stuff before. So I think there's enough scope within that framework to like do something different, even if the surrounding aesthetic and vibe is very much, you know, 79 coded. Andy, could you talk a bit about where exactly alien isolation is kind of situated in the horror gaming landscape? Just because it's always been this fascinating game to me, right, where it's like you could describe it as survival horror. But that's kind of right and it's kind of not right. like on the one hand, it is a game that kind of, it gives you the guns, right?

It gives you the molotovs, but also they don't really work very well on the alien. And it's sort of like it's a game that's, I think is not really like a lot of other games. Certainly it has this long tail where I think especially Resident Evil has tried to kind of take elements of how xenomorph works in alien isolation. You see it kind of in like how Jack Baker and Mr. X works. It work in the remakes of the older Resident Evil games. But how, in your estimation, does alien isolation fit? And kind of what is its legacy, I think in general, with like horror video gaming? Yeah.

So, I mean, there are survival horror elements. So obviously, you know, you're always kind of on the edge of running out of supplies and the weapons, like you said, are useless, like, you know, holding the pistol. gives you a kind of hollow feeling of being empowered, but you know that you really can't do anything with it. And even a working Joe will shrug off a few headshots with it. So that gives the kind of survival edge to it. But I think what's interesting about it,

especially for a AAA game based on an established movie franchises, that has a bit of systemic depth as well. There's some, it's informed by like immersive Sims, which is something I found very interesting. So, you know, it's not DSX levels of reactivity. and your toolbox isn't as deep as J.C. Dentons or Cove or from Dishonards or whoever. And the AI is no one near as complex. But despite all of that, all those qualifiers like it is a game rooted in systems.

So there's ways to mess with the AI. There's ways to use distractions. There's ways to make the alien and the human enemies and the working Joe's interact in interesting ways, by deluring the alien two humans instead of dealing with them yourself, stuff like that. So I think it's partly survival horror, partly kind of immersive sim design philosophy in there somewhere. But I think it kind of just stands on its own because I don't think you mentioned legacy. Like in the book I wrote my kind of main point about its legacy is a kind of lack thereof. No one's really done in 10 years, no one's tried to do their version of the Zenomov.

I've asked so many people, game developers, why is that? Why has no one done their own version of it? And no one really knows. And I even spoke to a YouTube channel called AI in Games that did like a really great breakdown of how the alien works. I was on one of his videos recently that's coming out soon. And yeah, like he didn't really know either.

And I guess it's a case of like it's just really hard to do. It costs a lot of money. But whatever Creative Assembly did with the brain of that, creature, no one's come close and that's really impressive and also kind of disheartening because when that game came out, I was like, right, here we go, this is a horror renaissance in the genre. We're going to be, developers are going to be trying to one up each other and make like even more intelligent and unpredictable and dynamic and reactive enemies and like no one really did. And so it's kind of weird that stuff like that and its mix of genres, survival horror,

immersive sims and other stuff, makes it really feel like a true one-off. like a real singular. One of those games just did a thing and no one really matched it. Yeah, which is ironic because in the alien franchise, it's never a one-off. The Xenomorph always infiltrates the next base

or the next ship and you can never stop it. Personally, I'm okay with isolating isolation because it's so scary that I don't think I could take too many more games like this. Although there is an aspect to it that's almost walking simulator-esque where I wish the alien would leave me

alone so I could just explore Sevastopol, right? That's one of the most common requests is I wish they were just kind of like a free roam mode. And of course, there are mods where you can do that on PC perhaps, but just stop terrifying me. I want to check out all the world building in this incredible environment that you've built. And I think one of the other really interesting things is that if there is not that clear a lineage within video games, alien isolation might be unique in the degree to which it has impacted the IP it's based on, right? Because, of course, Alien Romulus, which came out earlier this year, comes out on video on demand next week. This is another release that harkens back to the original alien, but was explicitly inspired by isolation. And the

director of Romulus Fede Alvarez said alien isolation was kind of what made me see that alien could truly be terrifying and done well today. So he was playing this. So he was playing this. several years ago, a few years after it came out, and it basically put the bug in his head that I want to make this. This can still be done. And there are allusions to the game in that movie with the emergency phone kiosks, right, which are the save points in the game. You see those in the movie as well when all hell's about to break loose. So I don't know that there are that many examples of a game ascending to the level where it's essentially regarded as a full-fledged release in that franchise and now is serving as an inspiration for future film releases.

I mean, that sort of speaks to its impact within the original IP, if nowhere else. I mean, that's one of the clever things that Creative Assembly did is that a lot of movie licensed video games or tie-in video games kind of riff on, you know, will we tell a story or we'll try and give the player the exact same experience they had and the source material, whereas Great of Assembly, they took the bones of the film, but they made a new story with new law implications and new environments, new characters, and they wove it into the narrative

by making Amanda Ripley the hero. And it felt like a new, yeah, like you said, like a new entry in the Alien series. It was, and here's a spinoff or a tie-in or a supplemental piece of media to the films. It was like, this is a new alien story. And, you know, I don't know whether it's canon, whatever that means.

And whether the events of that game are considered part of the timeline now, whatever, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was because, I mean, Fox were involved in the creation of the game. Not as much as you might expect. Creative Assembly were left to their own devices, a surprising amount, according to developers. But I'd like to think that it is like, you know, that's the story of Amanda Ripley now. You know, the character has been established in the game. if she ever appears in her future film, then it'd be cool till if she referenced being on Sebastopol.

That's how kind of truer part of the series it feels to me. Like, they should really lean into that, I think. Andy, can you talk a bit about, because before you were talking about legacy, right? You were talking about the sort of conspicuous lack of legacy, I think maybe commercially. But then, you know, you're talking about the AI and Games video. I've also watched it.

And I also feel like when I'm on YouTube, Like I've watched a lot of content over the years, I want to say, both clips of people sort of showing the funny ways they died and then people doing kind of technical breakdowns of how the AI works. And I'd be curious to hear you talk a bit, especially knowing that there are people listening to this who haven't played the game, right? What is it about how the xenomorph works?

And then I think also sort of it's worth talking a bit about how the working Joe's and how the humans also work in the facehuggers to a lesser extent in the game. What is it about how the character interacts with all of these and how all of these systems interact with each other that kind of has... I don't know, I think that the xenomorph from that game has become this cult hero of horror gaming in a way.

And I want to get your sense of why that is. Yeah, I get it because it's got so much personality. I think that's the key. Like, there's not many antagonists or enemies, rather, in video games that have tons of personality. And I think the key to that is that inside the Xenemos brain, there is like a web of nodes. And when you start the game, like a few of those nodes are unlocked, giving it some basic behaviors. And what the game does very cleverly is that as you play, a mixture of as you progress with the story, additional nodes are unlocked in its brain,

but as well as that, as well as those developer-mandated increases in complexity, it will also react to you. So if you keep playing a certain way, if you keep hiding in lockers, the node in the alien's brain will be unlocked dynamically by the AI director to say, there's players hiding in lockers a bunch.

Let's turn on the thing where the alien looks in lockers more. And so there's a huge web of these nodes that unlock steadily as you play based on your performance and also certain parts in the storyline, they'll unlock more of its brain to make it more intense. And also the AI director who works in the background. If it feels like you're getting an easy ride and you've escaped the alien a lot, it'll up its aggressiveness and tenacity, whereas if it's really pressure and you, it'll turn it down and give you like a moment to like compose yourself. So like all of these elements as well as just you filling in the blanks.

when you hear it thrashing around in another room, you're feeling in the terrible blanks of like, is it coming towards me? What is it doing? All of that stuff collides and creates like a perfect storm of like the illusion of intelligence and feeling like you are going up against something

that isn't just your run-of-the-mill game AI creature following prescribed paths. So that, I mean, that's part of the genius of it. That's why it feels so. And that's why it still catches people out. Like I've played the game many times. I spoke to developers who said that even the people designing the creature still get caught out by it and scared by it.

I mean, that's a testament to how much is going on in that brain of it. But, I mean, that is the core of the game. That is really interesting from a player perspective in terms of a stealth game, a horror game, an immersive sim because there's so many ways to deal with it and distract it. But, I mean, also the working joys, like, they create a kind of bit of friction and a bit of different texture.

So they're still scary. And to me as scary in certain situations as the Zenomov because the way they move slow, which is one of the most genius things about them, like they march towards you. But I can have measured pace. Like they know, they don't like, it wouldn't be as scary if they ran at you.

They just go, oh, look at this nuisance. I better wander over there and crush the head. Like they walk with such like terrible measured purpose. I think that's really, it's a different speed from the alien, which makes for, adds to the gameplay variety, and you have to deal with them in different ways. And then the human enemies are another layer of friction, and they're like the least interesting to deal with because they're just kind of shoot on site. I think that's one of the flaws of the game is that the human enemies are very one-dimensional and we'll just shoot you. And there's no, like, sense of them being, you know, thinking people. They're just kind of props getting in your way.

And then, you know, the facehuggers as well, like they have very, very. rudimentary behavior compared to the xenomoff, but the way they are placed by creative assembly to jump out behind boxes and stuff is like really good. So like all these different antagonists with different behaviors they all just coalesces into

like a truly like troublingly scary game. I mean the Zenomov is amazing but by no means the beyond end all of like the horror in this game. I think the working Joe's have some really quite tent. They really create some really tense moments of stealth

when it's just you against them. I was going to say, I replayed it recently, and I was playing on nightmare, and I actually came away with the impression that actually the working shows, at least a nightmare, the scariest thing in the game just because of how tanky they are and how good they are at flanking.

Yeah, and even the humans, like I get what you're saying. On the one hand, yeah, the humans are kind of the dumbest enemy in the game, and also even the humans I have a fondness for, because the ways they find them to get themselves killed. Right? By the centenomorph by just making way too much noise when they're trying to shoot at you. It's a good comic relief, I at least feel like.

Yeah. Some of the things that are referred to as AI these days are not really AI in any real way and can kind of water down what you think of as the potential of AI. So if you're feeling down on the possibility of computers replacing us and being better than us someday, which would be fine with me if they never hunt us down and kill us for real, but go play alien isolation,

and suddenly your fears will be revived that we will be obsolete as a species someday. So I wonder what you think the downsides of the game are if you have to step outside your own shoes as a fan or even, I dare say, a stand of alien isolation and acknowledge some of the weaknesses. Because we described this game as a game as a cult classic. And it's not super obscure. It's not like the Velvet Underground. You know,

no one listened, but everyone who heard it started their own band. You know, everyone who played Alien Isolation wanted to write a book about Alien Isolation. But, you know, it sold a couple million copies in its first year or so of release, which was disappointing performance at the time. But, you know, for a AAA title, of course, that's still pretty big as most games go. And that was almost a decade ago. And this game continues to be available on modern platforms. So, one would expect that it has continued to sell. So it's hardly forgotten, but not everyone loved it as much as you did and as many critics did at the time.

There were some notorious, infamous low review scores that were given to isolation at the time. If you had to acknowledge the fairness of certain critiques, what would you say is the best argument for flaws in alien isolation? Yeah, I mean, I guess I am a standard. for it. I mean, someone called me a one-man hype machine for the game, which is like, I'm cool with that, like,

but I mean, there's plenty of, in the book I do criticize several things, like I said earlier, about human enemies being very rudimentary and uninteresting to encounter in a lot of situations. I think the story is quite weak

in terms of the through line of Amanda trying to find the black box recorder and finding the recording from Ellen Ripley and all that. That is fantastic. I love that. But the surrounding story feels very flimsy because I think the game underwent some really serious rewrites at some point during development and tons of the narrative was stripped out. I don't know why. I could never find out. But there's tons of stuff lost and the game's data files implying that there was much more going on story-wise.

As it stands, there's not many interesting narrative beats besides that main through line because a lot of it is just going around various alien-themed environment. and lots of repairing stuff and fixing fuse boxes and all that because, you know, so I think the narrative could have been stronger. But I don't necessarily think that's the fault of Creative Assembly. I think for some reason they had to really carve out

a lot of the storyline. I don't know why. Maybe they wanted to make it more story light and more. I mean, maybe having too many people around and too much character-driven world building would have taken away from the isolation aspect or whatever. But I think there's some parts of it that feel, as a way you get to the Solomon's Galleria

which is kind of like a shopping mall and space compared to the rest of the game that feels quite rushed that area there's not much interest there's not much depth of world building it feels quite as if maybe they ran out of time

but I mean after building the rest of that station taken it upon themselves to like design a whole space shopping mall would have been a big ask for any developer so I feel like it loses some environmental interest as you get to the gallery, but then, and also when you travel over to the Anisadora, the salvage ship, when you leave the station to go over there, you think, oh, cool, it's going to be like a whole

new environment and you get there and it's just recycled areas from Sevastopol, slightly pallet swapped. There's concept art of the inside of the Anisadora, really detailed, incredible concept of what this sequence could have been, but I guess for time or whatever, they just had to quickly cobble something together. so you don't really feel like you've gone somewhere else. You've just gone to another set of familiar-looking corridors. Yeah, I guess those are all my biggest complaints.

Yeah, you'll often hear what just goes on too long. And as you're saying, a lot was cut. And so you might say, well, if they hadn't cut those things, then it would be even longer. Maybe that would be worse. But then again, maybe the material that's there would be more compelling, whereas it does start to feel fairly formulaic and repetitive at a certain point. It's just, you know, you got to turn on this thing so that you can go turn on that thing

so that you can turn on a third thing so that you can hopefully get the hell out of there. But it's roughly a 20-hour-ish game. And it probably feels longer maybe because of some of the repetitiveness in the final third or so, but also just because it's so harrowing and draining that every play session feels about twice as long as it actually is, you know, in a good way, at least for much of the game. You'll notice that I didn't mention a length when I was addressing my criticisms because I'm a

in the camp that it's not too long. I think I I mean it's a long game but I think that it does enough to it does enough to mix things up like the sequence where you have to put all your weapons in the locker

and you have to go down and the mother core and so not only are you bereft of the tools that you've gotten so comfortable with, you then have to deal with the hazmat working jodes who are like 10 times tougher and like probably one of the most like formidable enemies in the whole game like they're really stressed what we deal with. And then there's, you know, like there's the great part when you eject the X-O Gemini Xcel Planet Solutions Lab, you eject it and the aliens on it and you can run around

with your shotgun for a bit and just enjoy making noise because you don't have to, you know, you're creeping through the whole game like scared to make any noise whatsoever. and you're given that brief moment of reprise for a couple of hours, we can run around shotgunning, working Joe's, and it's like that cathartic release. So I didn't mind the length. I think they did a good enough job of mixing things up, but I do think there are slightly one too many sequences

where it is just turn that valve in this room, run to that other room, turn that valve. But I mean, I guess there's some narrative justification by that because Amanda's an engineer. So it's the same as actually dead space, that the exact same thing, where Isaac Clark is an engineer and all the objectives in Dead Space

so repair this, fix that, fix that elevator and stuff. So it's kind of a survival horror cliche, sci-fi horror cliche, but... Yes, I guess if it's one of your favorite games of all time, it's not surprising that you're fine with there being a lot of it, that you don't wish that there were even less of the game. I also, to speak on the pro-length side,

I will say that, and I think you kind of touched on this, Ben, it's a game that because you're terrified, feels longer than it is. And it's also, I think, for instance, the first time, like a first time player, the first time they get to the hospital wing, you're going to spend like two hours there because you're just hiding. You're just like sitting under a gurney and just like, when do I get to move? And it's like actually, like when you get familiar with the game, like that's the perspective

of replaying it. It's like, oh, once you know where you're going and know what you're doing and also have kind of built up your, you know, you're less sensitive to the alien. to the xenomorph as a player, you have a bit more of a sense of flow. You get into more of a flow state with that game. But man, the first time you're playing it, you were just going to,

you're going to crouch walk at negative one miles an hour. Yes, I just had that experience. Ken confirmed. Andy, you mentioned how it really has this model of let's not directly adapt the source material. Let's not just rehash the events of a movie. there were plenty of Alien or Aliens games that did that. And we've talked about that, that larger isolation of the movie adaptation video game or the movie-based

video game. And it's not that isolation was the first or the Trailblazer. I mean, you could look back at something like The Chronicles of Riddick escape from Butcher Bay, right? There are a lot of games that follow that formula. Isolation does it particularly well. But that makes me wonder about the other way around what movie or TV franchise you think might be in need of or ripe for the alien isolation treatment, that is a game that goes back to the basics of that franchise

and embodies and builds on the best aspects of that IP, perhaps for the first time in a video game or the first time in a long time. Is there something else that you'd like to see get the isolation treatment? Yeah, I think I wrote an article about this for PC Gamer, like shortly after isolation came out, because my head was, like, racing with, like, ideas for, like, other games that could get isolationed.

And so one was, I would love to see Creative Assembly or someone do a game based on John Carpenter's The Thing. And there's already been a game based on the thing, which is decent. And it's been re-released soon, actually, because Nightdive Studios are remastering it. But I love the idea of like a first-person horror game set on that Antarctic base, the Blizzard set, And again, the feeling of isolation of going through that base and being stocked by, you know, fleshy abominations. I mean, that sounds pretty cool. But I guess it wouldn't fully match up with the style of game of isolation because there's a lot more going on now with, like, the thing mimicking other people and stuff.

But I think an easier way to just take the bones of isolation and make another game is to do a Jurassic Park game. So the Jurassic Park movies kind of similar way to the Alien series, they're trying to up the stakes constantly in Jurassic World it's like what if we made a dinosaur bigger than a T-Rex and then the sequel is like what if a whole island was going to blow up and we have to save all the dinosaurs

it's like escalation of like you know scale everything must be bigger what in the lost world the sequel was like what if dinosaurs were in New York or wherever it's set Chicago and so like I like the idea of like going back to the roots of that which is

you're on an island there's a bunch of dinosaurs And I specifically think of the scene in the kitchen where there's two, is it two velociraptors or one is chasing the two kids. And that could be a game, like an intelligent. Imagine a velociraptor with the same mind map node system as the xenomorph can react to you and learn from your mistakes and exploit them. That would be amazing. Even if it was just one, you know, a story set in like an in-gen lab that we've never heard of. And there's one velociraptra in it.

The first one they ever created. and it's just you and that trying to survive. I mean, that would be awesome. So I think Jurassic Park would really fit into that style, especially if it went back to the core of the series and focused just on a smaller story. Yeah, those are good picks. John Carpenter, big gamer, of course, huge Dead Space fan.

I guess he kind of made an alien isolation-type movie with Darkstar, but I'm sure he would enjoy isolation if he hasn't played it. So I wonder whether that delayed impact on subsequent games. I wonder whether we're just starting to see it if maybe a generation that grew up getting the crap scared out of them by alien isolation will then want to replicate that feeling in the games that they're making now. Just looking ahead, there is a quiet place game coming out next week, a quiet place the road ahead based on that film franchise, which looks very alien isolation-y to me.

I don't know how successfully it will follow the formula, but it even has the, you know, you make noise in the real world and it gets picked up by your microphone elements that isolation had. So there's that. There's also an upcoming alien VR game, Alien Rogue Incursion, which is coming this December. And that might be a bridge too far for me to play an alien isolation like in VR, which you have, you wrote in your book about testing isolation in VR mode and just. how incredibly terrifying it is. And I just don't know that I can handle that.

But this game also seems to be based on Alien and it's going for that same feel. So I wonder whether we will start to see some copycats and homages to isolation itself. But of course, the big news this week is that we are getting a sequel to isolation. So you wrote in your book, What Amanda Ripley really deserves is a direct sequel to isolation, but that seems increasingly unlikely. You wrote too soon. Maybe we can give you credit here as the hype man for isolation. Maybe it was your book that finally pushed Sega and Creative Assembly over the edge.

Like, huh, people are writing books about this thing 10 years down the roads. This must be worthy of a sequel. But how surprised were you when this announcement was made on Monday? The 10th anniversary had you given up hope. How happy are you that there will be a follow-up? Yeah, I mean, that was a surprise. I'd like to think, you know, it was my book, but Alien Romulus, making 300 million. dollars probably held.

I mean, they are very early in development, because I noticed the other day that they're hiring an art director, that's like a real fundamental part of the team. So the fact that they must be in really early pre-production, but I'd really love to know when that decision was made and if it's been on the cars for a while. I mean, because Creative Assembly, after alien isolation were taken to work on hyenas,

that ill-fated service show that never come out. And it's good to see that like the, energy of that team has been redirected to alien isolation too, which you should have been eight years ago or nine years ago, but at least we've got it now. Yeah, I mean, the fact that it's the original director, Alastair Hope, has give me a lot of faith because if there was no original team member or members involved, I would have been a little bit dubious because a lot of the key figures in the making of the original game are at other studios now.

Alastair Hope's one of the few of the top-level team that stayed at Creative Assembly. So I'd love to know that maybe they were bringing them back as consultants. So I wanted to have the same feel of the original. I think it will. I think it will. But my worry is that that was lightning in a bottle of that original team. That game feels like I said earlier, like a real one-off. So I wonder if they can capture that again.

But there's plenty of tons of room for improvement for a sequel. There's a million ways they could improve it and expand it. And it'd be great to see Amanda Ripley coming back and doing more stuff. But, yeah, I mean, I'm excited about it, but I really don't know what to think about it at this stage. It's probably very far away, but it's cool that it's happening. But I should never have written the book that a sequel wasn't going to happen. I should have just waited like a few weeks, but oh, well. Well, what's on your wish list then?

Because as you note, there have been follow-ups, at least, that have continued Amanda's story. alien blackout, the mobile game, aliens resistance, the comic, which perhaps have not done justice to that character, in your opinion. The interesting thing is that the game itself hasn't aged, right? It's not dated

at all, so it's not as if, oh, let's do alien isolation, but bring it up to speed with all the bells and whistles and current gen consoles. It might not necessarily look that different. So what is on your list of hopes and dreams? Yeah, so

I mean, you mentioned Chronicles of Riddick Escape from Butcher Bay earlier, which is one of my favorite games and one of the best movie adaptations because it took it and did something of its own with it. But one of the cool things about that was the whole prison sequence where you could go around the prison

and interact with people and do little side quests and talk to people. I'd love to see isolation game where there's human survivors aren't just models that just pace around muttering to themselves. and don't actually get, I'd like to be able to speak to people and have some kind of interaction,

maybe trading suppliers with survivors or some kind of like human element to it. Because, you know, alien movies always have great ensemble casts. Like, you know, there's a lot of interesting characters. I mean, that level of interesting varies wildly between movies. But like I'd like to see more of like a human, Amanda, interacting with people other than just being shot at by them or watching them sit with a head and her hands, you know, as level decorated. I'd like to see it kind of read the same gameplay and style transplanted to like a colony like Hadley's Hope. So maybe the surface of the planet outside is like harsh or, you know, I don't want to be running around a planet surface.

But I like the idea of like a colony. It still has that sense of isolation because you're stuck in this colony and maybe the weather outside is terrible or something. But like occasionally venturing outside and not knowing what's lurking in the shadows and stuff like that. That'd be an interesting way to make if it went different, not to set it on a spaceship or another space station, but to put it on the surface of a planet. Because I always loved that buildup in aliens where they first discover Hadley's Hope

and it's all abandoned and quiet, and it's really evocative and eerie. I'd like to see that kind of in an isolation-type game. Yeah, it's like the more you describe that outlook, the more I think of it as alien isolation, potentially leaning a little bit more into that, immersive sim direction, which is like both a thing that appeals to me. Like I like the idea of that.

And also, I do, like, there is something about just with the original game, how kind of honest and simple and silent and in a lot of ways, like, uncluttered it is to me. And it's like, yeah, I kind of go back and forth on whether the simplicity is actually something essential to why I like alien isolation so much versus. how much it would be cool to see, I think, a lot of the stuff you're talking about, a lot of the expansion of features maybe in characterization. Yeah, I think keeping the isolation thing is really important. Like, if there were more interactions with people, I'd like them to be metered out, like, quite sparingly.

So, like, there'll be a lot of you going around on your own being stopped by the alien. But occasionally you'll, like, find, because in the original game, you go to the Marshall's Bureau, the colonial marshal's HQ on Sevastopol. There's some people milling around and you speak to the chief marshal and stuff like that. But then it's back to, you know,

alone on the station. So I think it would be cool to find little pockets of humanity but quite sparingly used because you've got to keep that feeling of like being, I mean, the game's called alien isolation.

It's got to just be you on your own, the majority of the time, but just would be good to have a little bit more depth of interaction other than just these kind of very like shallow

human encounters from the original. My ideal sequel would be alien, lots of company helping me out at all times. Nothing trying to terrify. An alien is friendly. Yes, we're not just hanging out. Mean buds. Yeah.

Hire me, Creative Assembly. I've got great ideas. Okay. Well, Andy, congrats on your success. Your crusade for a sequel has paid off. You didn't even suspect how much sway you had. I hope your new informal honorary position. on the ringer staff doesn't interfere with your duties at Devolver,

and also probably your application to be the new art director of Alien Isolation, The sequel. And Perfect Organism and Alien Isolation Companion is available now in digital form via Unbound. And your usual booksellers, hard copies are coming to the U.S. next month, November 19th, go get one. Andy, thanks very much. Thanks for having me. And in just a moment, Charity and I will be back to talk to Tum Radio.

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The world is in danger. from a terrorist called Charles Devereaux. The pastor's son? He is collecting stones of power that could bring about the end of the world. Why is everything so dramatic with you? I ask myself that all the time. All right, let's talk Tomb Raider for a few minutes here.

So Tomb Raider 1 to 3 remastered came out this year. Tomb Raider 4 to 6 remastered comes out next year. But aside from retreads, like those and the Lara Croft collection, Tomb Raider has Lane Fallow, has been almost idle since 2018, when Shadow of the Tomb Raider concluded the reboot trilogy,

and then the Alicia Vicander movie reboot came out, but didn't do quite well enough for a sequel. And we know no rich IP can ever be left unmind for long. And so it's time for the Tomb Raider comeback. Now, there was news earlier this year about Amazon investing heavily in Tomb Raider, right? So we've got the Phoebe Waller Bridge involvement. There's a live action TV show on the way.

There may be a movie coming. There is also a game being worked on. And all of that may be in some sort of Amazon interconnected, shared Tomb Raider verse. Along comes a new Netflix animated series, Tomb Raider the Legend of Lara Croft. So Netflix and Prime Video, which have both heavily invested in video game adaptations, are kind of taking each other on when it comes to Tomb Raider,

because these are sort of separate incarnations of the franchise. So the first season of The Legend of Laura Croft dropped this week with eight episodes, mostly 20-something minutes apiece. It stars Haley Atwell, who goes from Captain Carter to Captain Croft. It's animated by Powerhouse, which has worked on a number of Netflix series, including both of the Castlevania shows, Blood of Zeus, Masters of the Universe. It's produced by game makers Crystal Dynamics,

along with legendary television and DJ2 Entertainment, which has had a hand in many game adaptations. And of course, this is the latest in a long line of Netflix's animated series based on video game IP, the Castlevania series, Arcane, Cyberpunk, Cuphead, Dota, Resident Evil, Dragonstogma, Minecraft, Sonic. The list goes on. So I've seen the whole season.

you have not seen it yet. I'll tell you a little bit about what I make of it. But what's your general appetite for Tomb Raider, your history with the franchise, your enthusiasm for this latest reboot, this re-reboot. I both, okay, so I love Tomb Raider. I've loved Tomb Raider since the PSX era.

In fact, I feel a little defensive of Tomb Raider in my old age. I feel these, these. It aged perfectly well. I don't know what you're talking about. Well, you know what it is. No, but you know what it is. It's uncharted.

You want to know, it's like uncharted came for Tomb Raider, and you have this generation of people who they think that uncharted invented sliced bread. And no, I'm sorry, Toon Raider did. Nathan Drake is not my indeed. Yeah, I'm sorry. Nathan Drake, like, he's not like us. He not like us. You know what I'm saying?

Like, I just don't, I don't rock with Uncharted. I rock with Tomb Raider. I feel like a Tomb Raider, partisan, actually. And as for the reboot, for the trilogy, right? Like, I think first one, good game. Rise of the Tomb Raider to me is the best of them. Like, the second one, Rise of Tomb Raider is, like, I put money on that game. That game is fantastic.

Shadow, I like the least of the three. I think it's a little dull compared to the second one. But yeah, like Rise of the Tombator one of the best Tomb Raider games overall, I'd say. But I haven't played in Tomb Raiders since, like I said, they were on CDs on the original PlayStation.

Right. Get at me. Yeah. And you were playing the remasters, right? Or you were interested in them at least? Well, I played a bit, and I talked to... I talked to someone, I forget who from Crystal dynamics about them.

As part of a different piece, though, I think when I was writing about remakes and remasters and sort of video game nostalgia. Yeah. And are you ready for more Tomb Raider in your life? Are you feeling like, okay, Tomb Raider is tapped out.

It needed to go away for a while. Do you think there's still stories to tell in this universe? Here, okay, I'll tell you what I think, the problem with these ad... I'll tell you what I think on a let's say philosophical level, maybe with adaptations.

So you just said a story to tell. I do not play Tomb Raider for the story. I think that's crazy. I think that is a crazy. Okay. And so, like, we talk about, like, the contrast with Uncharted. Like, I get people who play Uncharted for this story because I feel like those games are a bit more,

like they're trying to be, you know, a big blockbustery spectacle. But I also think Noddy Dog is trying to get you to care about Nathan Drake and the people around Nathan Drake. So that framing, I get for something like Uncharted, Tomb Raider to me is like a gameplay loop. And it's sort of, even Laura as a character,

Laura's iconic, right? But I don't think anyone thinks of Laura as some dynamic deep character. To me, when I think about what I want from like a future of Tomb Raider, I want to see a rejuvenation of that kind of like explore that style of exploration. That,

that style of environmental puzzle solving, right? Which, again, I think the previous trilogy of games did actually pretty well. I think more about, like, the games. That's where I want to see a kind of like Tomb Raider Renaissance, right? It's hard for me to get excited for narrative adaptation and other media of Tomb Raider. because it's just like not what it's so far removed from what the actual appeal of Tomb Raider is, which is like the gameplay and the exploration and the video gamey stuff about Tomb Raider. Okay.

I'm glad you said that because that was the feeling that I was having as I was watching The Legend of Lara Croft. Now, I'm not someone who's super into Lara lore and I was unprepared for the extent to which, yeah, I mean, someone must be because they may. the show, but the Legend of Our Cup, I was not prepared for just how dependent on the reboot trilogy it is. So it essentially picks up where Shadow left off, which I mean, maybe that's good news for you. But this very much builds on those events, alludes to those events. I didn't play all of those games. And so I felt a little bit out of my depth. And if you're just someone who's like, I'll check out a Tomb Raider series, but I didn't play the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy, then you will feel like you're kind of playing catch-up a little bit here.

And the interesting thing is that this series is intended to unify the Tomb Raider timelines to kind of be the missing link between the original series and the reboot trilogy before we then, I guess, get even messier with the new reboot that is presumably happening at Amazon. But this is supposed to be kind of the connective tissue between those two different timelines and incarnations of Lara. And so you have Jonah, who's kind of the core sidekick of Lara in the reboot trilogy, right? And he's also returning in the series and plays a big part in it. Then you also have Zip, who's kind of Lara's tech consultant, who was introduced in Tomb Raider Chronicles, the game from 2000, and I think hasn't appeared in a Tomb Raider anything since Tomb Raider underworld back in 2008. So it's kind of

tying together these different eras of Tomb Raider. And I'm sure that that will be cool for a lot of people, but it was just entirely lost on me. I'm not like, finally, they knitted together the two Tomb Raider timelines. You know, when it comes to a lot of these things, even the Legend of Zelda, which is probably my favorite franchise, when it comes to the lore and trying to parse out the hero of time versus some other hero and like which high rule are we in right now,

that has never been particularly important to me. So in that sense, yes, it does seem like sort of a strange target for adaptation. If we go by some of the recent successes where it's like, let's take a video game property that is narratively strong and then we'll just port that over to a non-interactive medium. Well, here you're taking the Tomb Raider story and the Tomb Raider character the first time Lara has had an animated incarnation. And it's really leaning on a lot of the gameplay in a show that you can't. play. This is not a

Netflix interactive adventure. So that I think is kind of a hurdle. And I wonder how the Amazon incarnations will try to leap over that. Because look, I trust in Phoebe Waller Bridge and I'll give a shot

to basically anything she's involved in. So I assume, you know, even though this is part of her overall deal, she must have affinity for the character and thinks that there are interesting stories to tell. And of course, she worked on the last indie movie, which is underrated, in my opinion. So I'm kind of more excited for that, I guess, than I am for this.

And now we've got dueling Laras, which sort of sets up even more potential for confusion if you even care about the distinction between them. So I don't know whether you're like, yes, I need to see the Lara from the reboot trilogy continue her adventures. It sounds like you're more like, give me a new game if the game is good. Well, it's not even that. It's just, look, I think there's always that tension, right, of like, what should, just the fundamental question of what should a video game adaptation even be trying to do with its source material, right? And how is it going to overcome stripping away agency, right, which is what a player has and substituting it for something else in the film going experience or the TV viewing experience or the literary experience, whatever, right?

when you adapt it to another medium, how much does, you know, a director have an obligation to capture the appeal of the gameplay and something that just doesn't have gameplay? Like, these are things that are just kind of about the art of adapting this stuff in the first place. We've been, you know, debating it forever. I just, I don't know.

Like, if you take something like, I guess, Resident Evil is like a contrast. I'd draw where it's like Resident Evil is something, you know, it's a series of games where the writing is not the strongest thing in the world, but also, yeah, those characters sort of leave an impression. And those games are kind of soap opera, and it makes sense in a way that, like,

somebody might say, okay, this is kind of ridiculous and campy and, you know, be hoary. And you could adapt this. You can sort of, like, I mean, in a way, like, Resident Evil is so transparently inspired by movies, right? And it's, it makes sense that somebody could locate in the characters and in the hairbrain plots of

Resident Evil games, something that is worth adapting into a movie. I think the difference with Tomb Raider is just that like, even when you said that word continuity, it's just like I have never in my life cared about the continuity of Tomb Raider. It just doesn't, it's just

it doesn't compute. It just does not compute that like yeah, trying to rebuild or preserve or play with the continuity of Tomb Raider in a different format. It's just like that, you know, your princess is in another castle dog.

But that's not to say, I am, you know, Phoebe Wallerbridge. Like, yeah, that's definitely someone I could see doing something interesting with Tomb Raider. But I almost think about it as like, you do kind of, in the spirit of the conversation we just had with Andy Kelly about alien, right? Where it's like, he offered this parallel

of Jurassic Park where the problem with Jurassic Park movies is you have the first movie and the second movie and the third movie and the fourth movie all feel like Jurassic Park sequels have to be about some sort of escalation. And to me, it's like Tomb Raider, somebody needs to just find a back-to-basics way to approach that IP. Like what is a back-to-basics, like strip Tomb Raider down to its like essentials and work with that? Because, like, I just feel like in a way, people have kind of, the continuity for one is messy.

Right. Like, they're different eras of the Tomb Raider games that, you know, people have different sort of, I think, preconceived notions of what Lara Croft even represents at this point. Sure, outside of video games, I would be interested in a super rebooty back-to-basics thing that felt like it was trying to rediscover the fundamental appeal of Tomb Raim. rather than trying to like, you know, I don't, I don't even know what a lot of these other things are trying to do, honestly. Yeah. So the new show, let me ask you this as someone who's more familiar with the lore. Lara as a character, as opposed to just an avatar, a way to interact with this world. How much depth has there been there?

How much have we delved into her psyche? Because that is a big emphasis of this game, where you've had a... A couple incarnations of Lara. I mean, you've had to look, so many different character models of Lara. You could probably write a thesis. I'm sure someone has about the changing appearance of Lara Croft and what that says about the industry and the culture. The new Lara is kind of a blend of other versions of Lara.

Definitely a jacked version of Lara Croft. Hashtag arm goals with this particular Laracraft. But also very damaged, you know, a lot of demons, lots of daddy issues, lots of things that she's trying to resolve and trying to let down her guard and soften her exterior and, you know, learn to love and let people in. And a lot of that, I think, is fairly successful and add some depth to just, we've got to go to this exotic location and explore this particular tomb, right? There's some evolution, some growth in Lara as a character. How much of that would you say, you have to be?

experienced as a player of past Tomb Raider titles. It's funny because there are definitely seeds of it, even in the older games, like, when you think of, like, when you, you know, Laura's made to run around like, like, the mansion, you know, and stuff like that. And you're sort of meant to think about, like, her background, right? And I, man, I remember in the, what is it, 2013, I guess is the year for the first of the trilogy games. There was like a huge discourse in that game I remember about that game about how like that

that game puts her through the ringer right? Like she just gets like brutalized in that game. Yeah. She's just like this show too. She is just bruised and broken and yet unbowed. Yeah. And it's like she should be dead many times over in the series. She has an arc in that trilogy and I don't know that that trilogy kind of treats her very like

what's the word I would use? I guess it's like very sentimental. about Lara Croft? Like, she, but actually, it's still kind of generic, right? Like,

she's still kind of female protagonist in video game. But they try to, like, they're obviously not doing the cheesecake crap that the, you know, that the PSX era, I felt like was doing with her.

Yes. So she feels more real in that way, but she's also kind of, I just, I think by the end of the trilogy, I just felt like she was kind of bland. So I get wanting to give her more of a person but I do think it's tough, right?

I think it's tough trying to give her, especially because I don't know. I always feel a little bit my eyes glazing over whenever they try to get into the Larcroft backstory. And I don't know. It's something about it. It's like, hmm, you just need rewrites for some of this stuff. Like I think it's just a lot of paper-thin character detail that

either needs just a really strong writer to make it compelling finally, right? Or needs a, maybe like a ground-up rethink even of what her background is. But I don't know how you do that without pissing off gamers who are going to go, not my law.

That's not a discourse you want either. Yeah, well, maybe that's what Fibu Ritch brings to this. My other question for you is where you would situate Tomb Raider on the supernatural spectrum, because this is always something that comes up in Indiana Jones, in Uncharted. It's like, are we dealing with something supernatural here or aren't we? Indiana Jones is always kind of denying the supernatural, even as he's being confronted

by it. Some of the earlier Uncharted games would have more supernatural foes, the descendants, etc., and then Uncharted for the later games kind of leaned more into, we're just exploring and, you know, robbing ancient cultures and so. sites that probably we should not be stealing this stuff from and slaughtering many people along the way. But it wasn't necessarily that there were ghosties, right? Whereas this series leans quite heavily, I would say, into the supernatural aspects. Like there's no doubt about, you know, there are special magical powers and gods and all of that is suffusing this series for better or worse.

So I wonder how you would kind of classify Tomb Raider historically when it comes to are we dealing with something that cannot be explained in the natural world, or are we mostly dealing with stuff that could go either way, or we're just leaping over pits with spikes in them? You see, that's actually a thing about Old Tombator. That balance is something I really liked about Old Tombator, right? Which is like, for most of those games, you are running around caves getting attacked by leopards.

And insofar as there is a kind of mythological, you know, metaphysical element, it's being hinted at by the environments you're in, right? The fact that you're running around these places that are carved out by ancient civilizations with these religious traditions. It's stuff that's hinted at. And you sort of are gradually and kind of sparsely, I think, led into. you know, your final boss fight being with something out of metaphor, refantazio, right? And to me, it's like that slide from the mundane to the sort of grotesque and mythological, like, I think you have to balance it well. I think going full tilt with the mythological stuff up front is maybe not quite what I

would necessarily prescribe. But I do think it's an important part of Tomb Raider. I think the sort of surfacing of some old, ancient, monstrous energy, juju, right? I think that's actually a really cool aspect of Tomb Raider. Yes, there's a lot of, like, transgressing on traditional grounds. And, like, Lara at one point gets at a shooting match with a dinosaur. And I guess you're supposed to be rooting for Lara, but I'm like, don't shoot the dinosaur. Like, this is a great scientific importance.

It's a better nonviolent. What's the pacifist? on this. Yes. Speaking of Jurassic Park, like, leave the poor dinosaur alone.

We've rediscovered this living exotic creature. We should study it, not shoot it, with our handguns. But I would give it a mixed review,

which is what it has mostly received thus far. I think it looks good, especially in the very dynamic action scenes. Again, it looks a lot like Castlevania and other Netflix shows.

I know you've loved Castlevania, as have I. And so that sort of aesthetic you will get here again. And it feels familiar. It doesn't really feel like they're doing something new at this point, either narratively or visually, but it's still, there's kind of like a Netflix look for this sort of series at this point. And it's still pretty functional. And then, yeah, there's a lot of character building that's kind of hit or miss. There's a lot of just Saturday and morning cartoon type action, just jet setting, going from place to place. I would say it's

extremely video gamey. Like, there are a lot of sequences in the series that feel like they're just ripped from a video game and aren't quite as entertaining to watch as they are to play, you know, just to watch Lara solve puzzles by turning statues or whatever. Like, you know, if your brain is being exercised as you're doing that in a game, okay, if you're just kind of watching her figure out how to open some locked underground layer, then that's not quite as entertaining. And it's very much a Macuffin kind of, you know,

there are these peril stones of different colors, and she's got to go place to place collecting them. They're basically infinity stones, and if, you know, the bad guy gets them all, then the world will end. I mean, it's that just sort of serviceable plot, I guess, that they hang the rest of this series on. But it goes down quick and pretty smooth,

and, you know, it's a more or less entertaining watch. It just doesn't really rise to the level of some of the best adaptations in this mold. There's clearly a tease for a second season and another character who wasn't featured in this, but presumably would be if they make more of these. And who knows if they will try to build on this and build the Netflix franchise of Tomb Raider in here. So I'd give it a qualified recommendation. Yeah, check it out if you're just looking for something idly to put on. But I wouldn't say it stacks up to the...

best of the recent video game adaptations that we've seen here. And it's kind of lacking that, you know, special something that series like Castlevania and Arcane and Edge Runners have. It's not necessarily aiming for that, I guess, but it's much more kind of, you know, it's an action romp more than anything else with a little light character depth. So if you are hungry for more Tomb Raider content after all of these years without any, then you've got some. And it seems like we're going to have much more in the years to come, whether you want it or not.

Before I let you go, I know you have dipped into metaphor, Refantazio, you've been playing the demo, your initial very early impressions of a game that I'm sure you will devote a ton of time to. Incredible. Like, I actually, man, I, on a couple of episodes of this pod, I guess expressed some late trepidation about this game in a sense of like, I don't know. Especially because it's fantasy. Okay, the two strikes for me were one, metaphori Fantasio, horrible name. Who named this game? Stop it.

Stop it. Get some help. Just the worst video game. Oh, my God. Yeah, that title just kills me every time. They should have just called it metaphor. I don't want to talk about it. The second thing is that it's fantasy.

I don't like fantasy in any incarnation. Yeah, I just, I'm not a fan, right? And so, but it's Atlas. At the end of the day, it's Atlas, turn-based, all this sort of, and there are innovations on the turn-based combat in this that, you know, distinguish it from Mainline SMT and persona. But it's still got that, it's got that signature snappiness, and it's got a lot of the kind of hallmarks of Atlas turn-based combat. And then on top of that, it has just good style. Like, I don't know. It is fantasy and it's, it's anime fantasy, right?

Which I feel like is its own separate kind of set of conventions, anime fantasy. But it's just got really good style. I think it, you know, I saw people on threads or something, drawing contrast and comparisons between like persona and metaphor. I think someone was talking about persona five. And one thing I have to say is that like, look, when you start persona five, It's 90 minutes before you actually get to really do anything for SOTA 5. I like this game has like a really snappy intro.

It feels like you really just get to it. I like these characters. I like the music. I just like everything about it. They really kind of made a splash with the game that I also just didn't expect to feel this big and this substantial. It's just really nice to see like in a round. original IP thing, like an original IP single player thing, kind of catch fire like this thing seems to be.

Yeah. And it deserves it because it feels really, it feels really good so far. The monster designs in this, we have to talk about like some of the boss designs are just beautiful. I look forward to talking to you about this more when you inevitably return for our game of the year discussion and insists that it be number one. and resist all attempts for us to not include at least three Atlas games on our top 10 of the year. That's where it's going to be. Somehow five Atlas games are going to be the top 10.

All right. Well, we have covered alien isolation. We've covered Tomb Raider reboot and rivalry. Again, I think The Legend of Larcalfe, it's just a little uneven, just, you know, doesn't quite know what it wants to be. Is it silly? Is it a comedy? Is it an action adventure? Is it an exploration of the depths of Lara Croft's soul?

Check it out, but don't go in expecting another fallout or Last of Us style success. Always a pleasure to have you on Charity. Look forward to talking to you soon. Thanks, Ben. And I will be back in just a moment to talk a bit more metaphor and also some Silent Hill, too, with Steve Alman and Matt James. Well, Charity and I wanted to talk to Mrader and Alien today, but I didn't want to neglect two big games that came out this week, Silent Hill 2, the PC and PS5 remake of the classic Konami survival horror game from 2001, and metaphor refontasio, the new RPG for PC, PlayStation,

and Xbox, which is the first new IP in more than a decade from Persona and Shin-Megami Tense Maker Atlas, and which is currently tied with Eldon Ring, Shadow of the Nerdtree, and Astrobot for the top metacritic rating of the year. Fortunately, we have two intrepid players in the ButtonMash orbit who have sampled these games and are ready to give us their reviews in progress. Why wait for Ringiverse recommends when we can do a quick check in here? So with me now to report on Silent Hill 2 is Ringer Senior Audio Producer Midnight Boy and Junior Mint, Silent Steve Alman. Silent Hill, Steve. Yeah, don't be.

Don't be too, silent, because we need you to talk. This is a podcast after all. I'll make some good yap sessions. Also joining us to weigh in on metaphor Refontasio is Ringer Deputy Art Lead Matt, Mataphor, James. Hello, Matt. Refontatio. We all kind of compared notes before we started recording just to see how we were going to,

just to strategize, how are we going to prepare and pronounce the title of this game? And you added some extra flourish, so that's fine. Yeah, I took three years of Italian in high school, so might as well let that out. Glad it's coming in handy. You can all agree on metaphor. Yes, that, that I think we're on the same page. So, Steve, let's start with you. I don't know if either of you remembers the GameCube classic Eternal Darkness, Sanities Requiem,

but that game, great game. That game had a sanity meter that would decrease as your character was subjected to terrifying encounters. And after playing alien isolation, my sanity meter is extremely low. So I don't think I can handle more horror right now. However, it's October. People are looking for scary stuff. And along comes Silent Hill, which Andy Kelly's book compares to alien isolation because both are so smart about using silence to enhance the suspense and horror. Unlike the Alone in the Dark reimagining from earlier this year, this remake has been widely well received.

Has it been well received? Oh, my goodness. That pun was not worth of you, Ben. I'm so proud of you, Ben. Do you like the game? Is the game good? That's what I'm trying to get out here. Game is good, Ben.

Game is quite good. It's so good that I think the internet was so determined that this was going to be bad that they still reinforce that on Wikipedia pages that had to be locked down. No, this was a pleasantly surprised. I didn't know what my expectations were from a developer named Team Blueber, but I think they blew those out of the water. Glover? Those out of the water?

Yeah. Come on. Work with me here. Ben, you got a book coming out. My goodness. No, I was pleasantly surprised, only because it's been a minute since we've seen the Konami banner grace our feeds for something new and exciting,

let alone a remake to one of their most acclaimed games. And having like a small, tacit knowledge of the franchise and the lore behind the most acclaimed entry in the series arguably. I would say that this is a

raucously impressive feat that they have. You mentioned that this game was famous and known for using silence and ambient space to induce scares and horror.

And that remains true here, but I have to really play up the actual soundcape of this game, because gameplay is rather simple, if not like, kind of crude by comparison. You're not going to be getting a Resident Evil 4 tight gunplay or incredible puzzle action. It's going to be very much here for vibes and immaculate setting. And these were developers that came out with layers of fear and a couple of other great walking simulators. And I'm wildly impressed by this. I don't know if anybody else is

going to be as welcomed or excited to be in this as a new world. But for anybody that's a diehard of this series, I think they're going to be very impressed and very satisfied. Did you play the original back in 2001? I did not. This was one of the first ones that I, this is more or less my first, like, full-throated playthrough of Silent Hill 2. I'm well aware of the lore in the story and, you know, wife guy of the year.

James Sunderland out here trying to do his best. But no, this is my first time playing it, and it's pretty great. I can't lie. It's not going to get Game of the Year. This isn't going to be a refontasio scenario on Matt James's side. But I'm thoroughly impressed at how well this game looks. I guess it's tough for you to answer the question of just how much has been modernized, how faithful is this, how much is brought up to speed and up to date.

I was pleased to see that it still seems super foggy. because sometimes those foggy PS1, PS2 era games, which were foggy for performance reasons more so than atmosphere, sometimes you spruce them up with next-gen hardware and they look too clean

and they're not as terrifying anymore. But it looks like they've stuck with that same silent health aesthetic and they've been pretty faithful to that. Though there are, I guess, some quality of life improvements. I know that the camera is different

because there used to be a more fixed camera, more static camera, and now it's more of a moving over-the-shoulder perspective, which the director of the original game came out and praised and said that he approved of, and hey, all things change. And it's the only thing he liked. Yeah, maybe so. So how scared am I going to be if I eventually take the plunge into Silent Hill? I mean, compared to alien.

I feel like now that I've done alien isolation, I can do anything, and that everything is just kind of on a scale of zero to alien isolation. I'm actually very very curious as to what you might find scary in games themselves, Ben. Because have you played anything like either a dead space or an RE4 or something that's a tad more action-oriented where you're encountering scary enemies or something like that? Well, I did play the aforementioned Eternal Darkness, Sandy's Requiem. Okay. My sanity meter is still extremely low from that experience more than 20 years ago. And I played outlast because Jess made me.

So, yeah, it's not even the enemies that scare me so much. I guess it's more of the atmosphere. And so, yeah. Then I'll absolutely say that this is quite spooky, because if you're looking at something that's purely from a gameplay perspective or a moment-to-moment physical encounter with enemies or something like that, you're actually not going to be that impressed with how scary or, like, imbueing these enemies are upon you or, like, demanding. This is more about.

wandering around a near deserted town with a sort of surreal Alice in Wonderland level of interaction between people that are also trapped in this town that really kind of talk into this sort of like David Lynchian dream speak type of encounters. And that is the most unsettling part of these games from my opinion. And I think that that's been also modernized quite well, because I've been talking to a lot of people that are diehard fans of this series, and knowing that a lot of the charm that came from these early Silent Hill games was kind of the crude translation from the original Japanese text and material kind of came out a little rough around the edges.

Now that this has been modernized and recontextualized with a lot more Western sensibilities as well, I'd still say that that charm is there while also keeping a lot of the dour and rough themes that are in this second outing. And I was very, very impressed. Yeah, that sounds like my nightmare, which I guess is what you want from a horror game. You want it to be nightmarish. But also, that's why I generally don't want horror games. I guess I had a hard time with Alan Wake, too, and what you're describing sounds pretty

Alan Wakey. Yeah. It's definitely worse. It's hilarious. It's hard. Because I'm someone who doesn't like to play scary games. I only play them when their review scores are like very good. So I hopped into this one too.

And there are long segments of just unrelenting tension in this without like a ton of innovation. And it takes a while for the story to really get going. So I think if you're someone who's kind of like on the fence and generally doesn't like to play scary games, you might want to sit this one out in a way that like. dig like some rusted over dirty-ass town walking. Absolutely. Which can be your thing because it kind of is mine now. Like Alan Wake,

Alan Wake 2, for instance, is like, I could, I would still recommend that to people who generally don't like scary games. Whereas Silent Hill 2, I think you just, I think you just sit it out if that's who you are because there's not enough engaging or interesting about this if you're somebody who doesn't mess with that genre to, to make it. worth sitting through all of those hours of just tension and stress. Well, this is why I'm happy to have a team here at Buttonmash. It's like a tactical shooter or something.

It's like I can press up on the D-pad to send Steve to play Silent Hill to and report back on that so that I don't have to enter the breach myself. And I guess this won't be the last potentially acclaimed and certainly highly anticipated Konami remake coming this year, theoretically, because Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater is also on the way. I guess we'll also see whether the Silent Hill movie franchise can be rebooted in the upcoming third Silent Hill film Return to Silent Hill, which is also based on Silent Hill 2. So everything's coming up, Silent Hill 2 these days. Okay. Matt, I guess someone could spend this entire year just hopping from one Atlas RPG to another. You mean just in charity? Are you talking about Charity specifically? Not to single anyone out, but you start with Persota 3 reload and then you go straight to Shinboggi Tense, five vengeance. And then by the time you wrap that up, guess what?

The latest and possibly greatest of all Atlas releases of 2024 has arrived. Refontasio, I won't attempt to pronounce it the way you did. You've played the 11-hour demo for metaphor. Only in an Atlas game could you have an 11-hour demo and only scratch the surface. You're probably, what, 15% of the way through the game? But, you know, many games would be over by that point. So you've certainly seen enough to tell us what this. game is like. So inevitably, people will want to know how this compares to persona and

Shinemakami Tensei, etc. And other video games that they actually care about. Those games have thriving fan bases that do not consist solely of Justin Charity. But tell us a little bit about what you've seen so far. So the demo's out. It's free. It is roughly 11 hours. And what it is is pretty much the start of the game. So at the end of the demo, you're going to be able to continue your progress. That's good because if you had to restart after 11 hours. You just did. I would take a pass on that.

And just like, okay, ready to start again. No, so it's pretty much the beginning of the game. And I am really loving it. I am really excited for the full game to come out a few hours after taping this. We'll see if I finish Silent Hill too anytime soon because I'm going to hop right over to refontasio and just be stuck in that world for allegedly 80 hours. So I have played through all a Persona 5 Royal. So I have some Atlas RPG experience.

This one, I think, is going to be more broadly appealing to people. The quick note I have for what the draw of this game is, is the world and the characters in the story. I think those are the most compelling aspects of this by far. Now, the art style is really cool, really cool, unique, stylized as hell. The combat system is generally a turn-based combat system, but there's also a little bit of real-time kind of slashing before you get into battles, and you can kind of avoid weaker enemies.

And for a turn-based combat, it's very fast, very snappy. But ultimately, I think the thing here is that they've built a really compelling world and they have something to say in this game. It is darker in tone and more realistic than your typical RPG of Atlas's Fair where you're a teenager somewhere.

Trying to go to school and save the world. That's a lot. This is a world where people are being hung in the streets because of racism. It is very serious. That is a different tone. Yeah. It's very serious. And just in my 11 hours of playing, it really seems to have a lot to say.

And a lot to say that is, unfortunately, very relevant in today's world. So I'm very excited to dig deeper into what this game is. As someone who values storytelling. I have a quick question, and it's not to minimize any of those very relevant themes, but say I'm a person that has dipped several 200-hour-plus toes into the likes of Persona 3 and Persona 5 Royal,

and I found certain gripes about how I could play through that or things being too long. What has been the sort of like streamlined experience from, say, a persona five to this? Like, what did they take away? What did they add? What did they make easier? Because this is still looking like I'm looking down the barrel of 100 plus hours of a game here. What does that make it easier? There are a lot of quality of life improvements for someone like you, Steve, for instance.

If there's a quest that's in a certain location, you can just like fast travel right to that. The sort of they have those social bonds with characters. Yeah, social links, I believe they were in the prior games. Yeah, they're much more streamlined. You're not going to end up like going, eating the same meal with a character like three times just to like level something up. All of the social links are way less tedious and supposedly easier to, to finish in this game. So Atlas seems to be very aware of all of the things that people have found tedious about their

previous games, and you can tell that they've really done a lot to rectify those issues. So, yeah, I think you're going to be pretty happy about the ways that they've improved those things. Okay, interesting. Now, this is probably where Charity would say that I'm having a skill issue with you know, get good and just actually, you know, eat the same chicken meal with Chi A five times in a row in order to get her social link card.

But I'm genuinely curious as to like the amount of time that you, have you even yet to finish the demo versus what we've come out? Okay, so like when that demo ends, typically that's, you're just starting to crack the surface of your main gameplay loop. Does it still take that long to really get into the cycle of like, Okay, it's kind of still tutorializing me through this system or working through this map and we've still got to breadcrumb the actual story that we're working on. And all of these systems kind of like mesh together at hour like 20 and then it becomes the game that you play for 200 plus hours.

Yeah, I think I think out of the 11 hours, I think it kind of finishes tutorializing somewhere around hour eight or nine. That's okay, yeah. But I think that's because what's most important to this game is setting the table for the story. Right. I think they're focusing on that and then trying to tutorialize how the game works without bogging down the story. And I will say that this game starts a little bit slow. So you will have to get probably about six hours in before you really can say that you get the vibe of it.

And also there's this weird set. Like the first time you control the character, it drops you in a desert, hasn't told you the combat system. There's all these enemies around that you actually really shouldn't engage with. You should just run 200 feet and then continue the game. I don't know why they drop you in a desert. It's the wildest. I've played the opening to this demo,

like four times. It's like in attempts to get myself going. And it's really, it's really odd. Yeah. It's a weird start, but it definitely pushed through. It's a very strange start. Yeah. By the time I get to the 11 hour mark in many games, I'm ready to wrap it up.

It's like, okay, I'm spent. So just putting that time investment in for a demo, maybe a tough sell, but one that I'm intrigued by. I'm not an Atlas person, but I am most tempted to play. this particular title. I think there could be some breakout mainstream potential to this in the way the people who were wary of playing a from software game, for instance, once Eldon Ring just got incredible rave reviews and it was accessible in certain ways. It was open world and that kind of broke containment with From Software and suddenly everyone was playing that. I wonder whether we

get something similar with metaphor, despite the fact that it is called metaphor Reventazio, which I think you might too, because, you know, this has a very anime look to it and has a lot of beautifully animated anime cutscenes. And I know that can kind of turn people off sometimes. You know, a lot of times that kind of descends into some hard-to-follow story about killing God. This seems very grounded in reality and people and politics. And I think it's going to be more broadly accessible to people. to people than your typical JRP. As long as you can get out of that desert at the very beginning.

All right. Get out of there. Well, out of that desert. Gentlemen, I wish you well in your continuing adventures with these two games. I imagine you'll both be playing the other one as soon as you're finished with the one you're playing now. I guess, Matt, you have already started Silent Hill. Perhaps we will return to these titles later in the month, but at the very least, I'm sure we will cover them again when we get to Goody season. Thanks for the check-in.

Talk to you both soon. Thanks, Ben. Well, we are never in a content desert here at Buttonmesh. There are always more games coming out than we have time to talk about, but we made as much time as we could today. Thanks to charity, Andy, Steve and Matt. Thanks to you for listening and playing along. Coming up on the feed next week, Mint Edition, will be doing a check-in on some stuff they've missed, including comics.

Kerm will be there, as always, to provide his comics expertise. The Midnight Boys, Pibiu, will continue their coverage of Penguin and Agatha all along, as will Mal and Joe over on the House of Art. feed. The week after that, I'll be in L.A. Hang in with the Ringaverse family in person. Maybe we'll get up to no good. There will, of course, be Venom the Last Dance podcasts to record. And ButtonMash will be back. There are a bunch

of big games coming out. We will want to talk about the like a dragon yakuza series coming to Prime Video at the end of the month. And it'll be Ringiverse Recommend season as we trick or treat you to some of our recommendations. You can, of course, submit your recommendations for October via email at ringerversrecomends at gmail.com, and you can contact

ButtonMash at Ringervverse Gaming at Gmail.com. You know where to find us on the socials at Ringerverse on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc. YouTube.com slash at Ringerverse. If you want to look while you listen, thanks to Eduardo Ocampo filling in for Devin Renaldo for producing today's episode and to Arjuna Remgapal for his input and oversight. We hope you have a lovely long weekend, play some good games,

and we'll welcome you back to the Ringerverse next week. Lara Croft, always in a hurry to get somewhere else. Thank you for your help. It was good to be on the same team. again. What's the difference between butter and butter made from real California dairy? It's the real California farm families behind it. Real people, real care, real intention. Why? Because real matters. So whether you're pouring milk, melting cheese, or just grabbing one more spoonful of yogurt, keep it real, look for the seal. Real California milk by Real California

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