The Ringer-Verse - ‘Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown,' Top Five Metroidvanias, and ‘The Last of Us Part II Remastered’ | Button Mash

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

Ben and Matt James react to the reveal of ‘Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’; share their spoiler-free reviews of 2024’s first great game, ‘Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’ (8:15); pick their all-time top five Metroidvania games (33:48); have a spoiler-free discussion of what’s new and worthwhile in ‘The Last of Us Part II Remastered’ (44:01); and then finish up in spoiler territory by breaking down the 'Last of Us' casting news and what it might mean for Season 2 of the HBO show (1:05:01). Host: Ben Lindbergh Guest: Matt James Producer: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did Don Draper really buy the world of Coke? Did Tony Soprano really die? Or just order more onion rings? The finales of our favorite shows can make us argue, make us cry, and make us crazy. From Spotify and the Ringer, I'm Andy Greenwald, and this is Stick the Landing, a new podcast where we'll be telling the story of modern TV backwards, one fade out at a time. Find Stick the Landing on Wednesdays on the prestige TV feed, on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For adults with Crohn's Disease, or also,

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Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those WeatherTech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need WeatherTech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. a weapon raised to serve Persia, this is the greatest honor. Remember Sargon. I am Sargon. I have come to challenge the white lion of Persepolis. Hello and welcome into the Ringerverse, your Nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindberg, your Buttonmash host and a senior editor at the Ringer. And with me today is this episode's second protagonist, a man

who put in probably 50 hours or so of gaming to prepare for this roughly one hour of podcasting, ringer deputy art lead, Matt James. Hello, Matt. Hello, very dedicated. Yeah, had a great week, to be honest. Yeah, the homework to actual recording ratio, it tends to be sort of skewed when you're talking about video games. But is it really work or is it play? Because we're talking about video games, after all, including a couple of good ones this week. I wanted to make a joke about The Last of Us, Part 2 and multiple protagonists, but you know what? I'm not going to because I care about our listeners. And this is not the spoiler section of the podcast. That will come later, a lot later, because we've got a packed pod for you today. We're going to talk about the first great game of 2024,

Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown. And then we're going to talk about the first great game of 2024 that originally came out in 2020, The Last of Us Part 2 remastered. Along the way, we'll give you our all-time top five Metroidvania games and our thoughts on some casting news for the last of us season two before we get through all of that Matt when we did our 2024 hype pod a couple weeks ago one game we didn't discuss was the new Indiana Jones game to be published by Bethesda I considered it but we hadn't heard anything about it in the three years since it had been announced so it was hard to tell what it would be like or when it would come out I was going to mention it maybe in our, is this vaporware or could it actually come out in 2024 section,

just because it had been really off the map for a while, but it is back on the map in a big way. Now we know all of those things, or at least we have a better idea, because at last week's Xbox Developer Direct, we got details and release windows for a few games we did mention on that pod, Hellblade 2 avowed visions of mana, but we also got gameplay from Indiana Jones and the great circle coming later this year from executive producer Todd Howard and more directly developer machine games. It's set between Raiders and The Last Crusade features Troy Baker as a Harrison Ford looking and sort of sounding indie. The most surprising part of the reveal is that this is a mostly first person game. It's an FPW. It's a first person whipper. That's where I'm calling it.

A lot of whipping in that trailer, as you would hope. What would hope? Yeah, you would think so. So if we were recording our hype pod now, would Indy be on your board or do you still need to see more? Indy would be on my board. That trailer looked really great. Yeah. You know, they seem to be really fans of the Indiana Jones franchise.

You can really feel that emanating from that trailer. Troy Baker sounds great as Harrison Ford. He's doing a really good job. You know, people were sort of wondering, was this going to be a third person game? Was this going to be a first person game? And my whole thing was I felt like they could do a good job of making either, really. But seeing it as a first person game, I'm excited. I'm more excited than I thought that I would be.

The Whip has obviously a lot of gameplay mechanics. It's traversal, it's combat. The story looks engaging. The primary villain looks pretty exciting. Yeah, the whole thing kind of came together. It was a great presentation. Yeah. That would definitely be on my hype meter for this year

if we had seen that before the last podcast. In the abstract, does first person make the most sense to me, conceptually for a game that combines combat, puzzles, platforming? Maybe not, but I'm not going to write off a game based solely on its perspective. For one thing, if this were third person, it would be competing in players' minds with games like Tomb Raider and Uncharted, which were inspired by Indiana Jones, so it's sort of unfair, but ironically have totally overshadowed Indiana Jones in gaming. Plus, sometimes a perspective shift works well. We talked about this with Avatar, Frontiers of Pandora, That game had combat and puzzles and platforming and an original story inspired by a film franchise, and it pulled off first person.

And the developer of this game, machine games, seems like the right dev to do this because the people making this game made the recent Wolfenstein games so they know about killing Nazis from a first person perspective. Some of the creators also worked on Star Breezes first person IP adaptations in the 2000s like Chronicles of Riddick and the darkness. so I'm sort of excited to see what they can do with this. Yeah, there's a lot of, you can have a lot of faith in machine games. Those Wolfenstein games were all really fantastic and did a great job of capturing, you know, the excitement of the most action-packed scenes of those games. So they seem like a great fit for this franchise. And I think that, you know, choosing first person over third person,

you're sort of saying, like, this isn't going to be the most platform-heavy version of Indiana Jones that you could get, which I'm fine with. I do find, like, the first-person immersion is something that we should really be looking forward to in this game. Yeah, the best indie games historically have probably been either direct adaptations of the movies, the sort of old model movie tie-in types that we talked about on that avatar pod. or point and click graphic adventures, right? Like fate of Atlantis, LucasArts style. The big 3D action adventure original story indie games, like Infernal Machine and Emperor's Tomb, did a decent job of capturing the spirit of the movies,

but weren't that well regarded as games. And those were 20, 25 years ago. So considering the pedigree of those games and the gap between games, plus the lackluster box office for Dial Destiny, a movie I really liked. I think Great Circle has a lot to prove about whether indie is viable in video games and maybe more broadly just what is the future of the franchise at large.

So, you know, no pressure. And, you know, they only really have to, as far as the narrative goes, they only really have to clear, you know, the Crystal Skull movie for it to be really considered a success, I feel like. So that bar is clearable, I think. Yeah. So will the Great Circle be unbroken? We'll find out.

And we'll probably podcast about it sometime in 2024. We'll also talk about another game featuring Troy Baker later on this episode. But first, let's talk about another game whose original trailer really surprised people, thanks in part to a perspective shift, Prince of Persia, the lost crown. Now, when you play Prince of Persia, you have a choice of exploration mode or guided mode. Exploration mode just sets you loose in the labyrinth of Mount Koff. without that much signposting about where to go or what to do, whereas guided mode holds your hand a little more. I'm going to make the case for playing Prince of Persia in exploration mode.

I expect that you will too. But here at the Ringiverse, we like to tell you what's in store. And that's why we're going to give you programming notes. I sort of made that a tie-in. As promised on last week's Midnight Boys, the boys will be back this week with the kids' cartoon Royal Rumble. I don't think they'll talk about Indiana Jones, but they might talk about. duck tails, which is sort of the same thing. Over on House of R, it's a Percy Jackson double

dip. Mal and Joe will be discussing episodes five and six today and episode seven on Friday. And as for Buttonmash, tentatively in two weeks, Jessica Clemens will be back and Charles Holmes will be here. As we discuss, Suicide Squad, Kill the Justice League. We'll see how that one's going to go. And the second season of Halo on Paramount Plus. And Matt, maybe you'll drop by for a bit of that episode for a surprise segment. Maybe I will then just yet. Maybe I will. Maybe you will.

And remember, if you have questions, comments, or suggestions, you can contact us at ringerburst gaming at gmail.com. Here's a suggestion for me. People play Prince of Persia, the Lost track. No story spoilers here because this just came out last week. We got codes. We had a head start. But big picture, I absolutely loved this game.

Yes. We will get into why it works so well and what aspects, if any, don't work as well. There weren't that many in my mind. But my goodness, what a great, great game this is. I put close to 30 hours into it before I finished, which is longer than I expected, given the kind of game it is. But much like the Persian soldier stuck on Mount Koff, I didn't even notice the time passing. Had this game come out in 2023, I think it would have easily made my year-end top 10. as stacked as last year was.

So that's how highly I thought of it. What about you? Well, I'm so glad to hear you say that because I did not want to come here and choose violence today. Yeah, this game's amazing. Yeah. I had been kind of looking, it had been on my radar. I was kind of looking forward to it.

And my God, this, you know, first of all, I'm a big Metroidvania guy. So feel this through the lens of that bias. But I know that you like Metroidvania's. I don't think they're particularly your bag. Is that typically correct? I wouldn't say it's my favorite. I have enjoyed many, as we will discuss soon. But you, an unbiased, an unbiased gamer, you felt like this is something special, too.

I'm not totally in the tank for any Metroid game. Okay. Good to hear. Yeah, this game, this is one of those games where when you stop playing it, you keep thinking about it until you can pick it up again. Yes. It is so joyful as a video game. And I guess I

I guess you know in some Metroidvania's right You're kind of they kind of will lean either towards combat Or towards platforming or towards puzzles right And I feel like this game Nails all three of those in equal measure Does it all Everything about this game is well made The combat system is simple but super deep

It evolves in a way that is really engaging it allows for a lot of freedom in the way that you handle enemies. The platforming feels really tight. The jumping, you never feel like the controls got in your way of landing something. And the platforming sections in the game are designed incredibly well

for you to really use all of those kind of tools in your bag. And the puzzles in this game, oh my God, like, I can't remember. remember the last time I played a Metroidvania actually had to like break out a piece of paper and a pen and and say, okay, I'm going to take this and I'm going to start here and figure it out piece by piece. And I was doing that in this game. Yeah. Some of the puzzles in this game are right up there with the best puzzles in what you would consider just a puzzle game.

And of course, those really detailed puzzles are sort of optional in this game. If you're not a puzzle person, you can nope out of that, like, right at the jump if you're like, no, it's not for me. So it really, and that's sort of true of all three of those things, the combat platforming and puzzles. If you want to get really deep in the weeds with any of those three, you absolutely can. If you don't, the game won't force you to really get in there and do those things. Yes, you can button mash the combat in this game if you want to. You can just sort of spam the basic attack over and over. But if you want to perfect it and do all the training, it is surprisingly pretty deep.

The combos are pretty impressive. And as for the puzzles, as we discussed on our cocoon pod, I will occasionally resort to looking up solutions to puzzles, particularly when there's podcast-related time pressure. But in this case, I didn't do it. I didn't want to look up anything because I was just enjoying it so much that I didn't. want it to end sooner. And it also became a point of pride. Like, yeah, I'm just going to find my way through this thing. Because I had so much fun exploring anyway, right? Even though I was sort of stuck from a story progression standpoint at times, I never actually felt stuck in terms of places to go and things to do, right? Like, there was always something to explore some place that I hadn't checked out

yet, some point on the map that still wasn't fully filled out. And if you go there, then you'd find some secret or you'd find some puzzle or maybe you'd stumble across where you actually were supposed to go next, right? So I sort of fumbled my way through it at times and yet never reached the point of frustration where I would look something up. Yeah, and there's a character in the game who you can go to for subtle hints that sort of point you in the right direction. But I think one of the real star features of this game as a Metroidvania is this sort of screenshoting feature that they put in this game that we should talk about. And this is a feature that when you use it, you think to yourself, how has it taken,

you know, multiple decades of this genre for us to finally get to this point where this is an integrated feature in a game. It makes so much sense. How did they not think of this before? So this screenshot feature, basically, in a Metroidvania, one of the sort of points of frustration in many Metroidvanias is that when you're doing exploration and you can't quite, you clear an area yet because maybe you don't have a certain ability. You're like, okay, I'll come back to it later.

And in most Metroid venues, maybe you could like bring up the map and toss an icon on the map and hope that you remember what that meant later. So in Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown, when you get to that point, you can actually hit, I think it's down on the D pad. Yep. And it'll take a screenshot of where you are at that moment, and it'll pin it on the map, and you can come back to the map at any point and look at that screenshot. So you don't have to waste time traversing all the way back to some thing you forgot about

to see if you can do it yet. You can just look at that screenshot you took and say, oh, no, I don't have that ability yet. It's not worth my time to go all the way over there. And that takes so much of the stress out of this Metroidvania game. I won't be able to live without it in future Metroidvania's. The developers will have to keep doing this. Yeah, it's so simple that you think, well, why haven't they been doing this in Metroidvania games? forever, right? But it really does change the way you play. Now, granted, as I went on,

I found myself using it less and less. There's actually a finite number of screenshots you can take in theory, right? Unless you erase some of the old ones, you can kind of collect the ability to take more screenshots. And I found those piling up as I got later in the game. I'm not humble bragging about how great my memory is. It's just I sort of liked exploring or I didn't mind going back, you know, I found that I used it a little less than I had early on when I was screenshoting everything because I was just thinking, oh, I might have to come back to this. Right, exactly. So it's sort of like training wheels, or at least I found it to be. But it is really nice not to have to traverse an entire map to see, oh, could I jump to that thing now?

Maybe now that I got a double jump or some other move that I didn't have before. I think that's one of the dings on this game potentially is that there's not that. much innovation or originality or it's it's clearly building on the foundations of some past games as all Metroidvania games do to some extent, right? But that is one clear case where this actually breaks new ground. It's innovative. And to back up just a bit, there hasn't been a full-fledged Indiana Jones game since 2009, not long after Crystal Skull came out. There hasn't been a full-fledged Prince of Persia game since 2010, which also happens to be the year that the Prince of Persia movie came out starring Persian icon Jake Gyllenhaal.

Not only did that movie not do well enough to justify a film franchise that was planned, but it may have helped put the game series on ice for more than a decade. So this is a fresh start for the franchise developed by Ubisoft Montpellier, apologies for my French, which is a studio inside Ubisoft with a bit of an indie spirit. It's best known for Rayman, Beyond Good and Evil, Valiant Hearts. And when the trailer for this game dropped at Ubisoft Forward last summer, there was a big backlash, not unlike maybe the mixed reactions to the perspective in indie, right, where it didn't look like the sense of time, Prince of Persia games, which were 3D action adventures. This is more of the 2000s, yeah. Right. This is more of a throwback to the older Prince of Persia games.

It's a 2.5D side-scrolling, platforming, Metroidvania, in which you don't play as the prince. you play as Sargon, a warrior with killmonger's hairstyle, which is pretty popular in games these days. So a lot of people are like, not my Prince of Persia, give me my Sands a Time remake. Maybe that troubled remake will actually come out someday, but this isn't just a stopgap, right? This is a pretty bold new direction or a new old direction for Prince of Persia that really just a breath of fresh air, right? I mean, just to have a Prince of Persia game at all, but to have one. This good. And I love when an established franchise changes something really significant, either switches genres, switches graphical styles, whatever it is, but retains whatever it was that appealed to you about that franchise in the first place or establishes that the old prince has new tricks. This is just done so well. It's kind of a masterclass in Metroidvania. It is. And it doesn't really matter if you've played any of the Prince of Persia games before. No.

This is what Prince of Persia is now. Yes. That's how good this game is. I think eventually we'll probably get a 3D Sans of Time-esque Prince of Persia again. Eventually, it has to happen. But I think that what they've done here, like I don't know what the sales numbers are going to look like or anything. I know the reviews are quite good. I would be shocked if this doesn't lead to a sequel that is very, very good.

very similar in terms of it being a Metroid mania because this is just such a banger. Yeah, such a banger. And one of the great things about it, too, is the little quality of life improvements within the genre. Like we mentioned the screenshot thing. One thing I also like is that if you die in a boss battle, you can immediately choose to restart it again. You don't have to do that thing in Metroidvania is where, oh, you died, you load at the save point. Now you got to make that same three minute traversal back to the boss to try. No, you can just restart it again like it didn't happen.

Or you have the option of going back to your last save point if you feel like you're not ready. Which, let's talk about the boss battles a little bit. I felt like they were pretty great. I felt like they were really, really inventive. the only kind of knock on it that I have is maybe they were a little bit on the easy side. I feel like I didn't have to, I don't think I died at any boss more than two or three times in the entire game. And I would beat bosses without fully sort of processing their move set. There would be sort of things that they would do where I didn't quite figure out how to dodge it or avoid it,

but I could still get through the boss battle anyway, which is not something that you can commonly say in Metroidvania's, I feel like. If you don't fully understand the dynamic of all of a boss's moveset and blasphemous two, you're not going to beat that boss. Whereas, you know, in Prince of Persia lost crown on the default difficulty, yeah, you don't, you know, if you get most of what's going on, you're probably going to be fine, especially if you play Metroidvania's in the way that you are kind of doing that exploration between bosses.

mostly uncovered everything that you can as you're progressing the story. Did you feel similarly Ben? Yeah, I was playing on the default difficulty level, warrior, so it could have been harder if I had wanted it to be. I found that it was variable. There were some points where I got stuck, either when it came to a boss fight or platforming or a puzzle or just knowing where to go. But again, yes, never reached that level of rage quitting, throwing my controller, being extremely frustrated. So I agree with you. I thought there were some sort of cheap attacks that some of the bosses had. Maybe it's just a skill issue on my part. But you're right. I never really got hung up on any one of them for a very long time. But it didn't feel like a cakewalk to me either. Yeah. Right. Like it's it's such a long game and so packed with contents that I wasn't really rooting to fight the same bus 10 times because there was going to be another bus before too long.

Exactly, exactly. The only thing I kind of, I have like a very few knocks on this game. Yeah. I basically have kind of two, and that's it for the entire game. One is, I feel like there could be a few more fast travel points. Agreed. And I, you know, Traverse is so much fun in this game. Ultimately, it's not that big a deal.

And again, with that screenshoting feature, you're not doing a lot of unnecessary travel anyway. So that's kind of a minor knock. You will be, you know, at times, you know, traversing places you've been already because there aren't quite enough fast travel points, I think. Yes. And the other thing I had was just very minor also, which is that the parry and Dodge buttons are kind of on R2 and L2. And depending on what system you're playing with, that can kind of. kind of be less than ideal, right? Parry and Dodge, those are actions that need the quickest of reactions, right?

You need fast timing on these things. And if you're playing on Xbox or PS5, those triggers have a lot of travel to them. So it's not really a precise click that's as fast as maybe you need it to be sometimes. So if you are going to play on PlayStation or Xbox, you might want to, you know, if you happen to have a controller that has like a adaptive triggers or you can rebind some things. You might want to do that. I assume on Switch, you know, that's not an issue because the analog, there are no analog triggers on R2 and L2.

Those are sort of binary on-off things you can click. So just, I would just watch out for that if you're PS5 or Xbox. It's available on all platforms. We both played on Xbox. So, yes, a slight issue maybe. Didn't really hamper my enjoyment. And I'd also say that it's incredibly customizable when it comes to the difficulty, not just changing the standard difficulty, but you can customize many aspects of how hard it is.

And I didn't do that much. I didn't mess with those settings that much, but you can't, right? Like lots of accessibility options. As I mentioned, if you don't want to wander around, you can put on the guided mode. And it will give you a little better indication of where to go. and what to do. But again, I just enjoyed wondering around, right? It's just, it's so much fun.

Like my sense of direction for finding things on maps the first time is not great, but I'm pretty good at retracing my steps if I've been to something that I can get back to that thing. And the nice thing here is that you can see where you haven't been. And as you noted, you can acquire maps that will show you the areas that you haven't actually gone to so that you can say, okay, I'll check out this area. next, right? And so I never felt frustrated, and it is just so much fun to navigate this world. There's no fall damage, which I always appreciate, so you can kind of take risks, right? And I just, I felt like a superhero when I was going through some of these platforming segments, jumping off

walls, jumping through gears that are trying to grind me into little bits of meats, you know, just when you pull off one of those things, it's exhilarating, right? And I saved a bunch of game clips. I'm like, Oh man, I'm going to want to remember that. Like, that was crazy. I can't believe I did that. Yes, exactly. My wife was watching me. I felt like a big man, you know, when I had to like ASA platforming segment the first time.

Wow, you're really good at that. Wow. Oh, yeah. Very impressive, husband. I played this for 30 hours already, and that's why I'm decent at it. But there's also just nothing like the feeling of progressing in a Metroidvania game. It's true. It's not an original thought.

That's why they keep making Metroidvania game. games, but it is so satisfying. There's just nothing more satisfying to me than when you get to the end of a Metroidvania, you've unlocked all the powers. You can finally traverse everything that you couldn't traverse before. Nothing is stopping you. No one is stopping you. That's right.

Because they make you work for it and you've been playing for hours and hours at that point, the skill progression is just so, so satisfying. I don't think there's a better feeling in video games than that. And also, this game lets you. really customize sort of the way that you grow powerful with all of the sort of amulets that you get or what is it, necklace pieces to fill out, you can really add certain abilities to your character that customize the gameplay experience in a pretty interesting way. So you can kind of lean heavy into the bow if you want, or you can, you know, add this thing that lets you,

have another strike on your combo or you can, you know, maybe you find like a secret thing that lets you slowly regenerate life. And, you know, there are all these sort of things and you have to kind of pick which ones speak to the most and find room for them. So that was also a really fun experience, sort of constantly upgrading your materials and finding new abilities and thinking to yourself, okay, well, if I add this one, that kind of changes the way I play. So maybe this one that I've been using the whole time, I'm going to ditch that and go in another direction. Yeah. It's almost like Super Mario Brothers Wonder, sort of. It's just a different kind of game. Maybe more successful than Super Mario Wonder.

Which is saying something. Yeah. I went back and kept playing and finding secrets after I beat the campaign and you can do that. And I always appreciate it's a little thing. But you know, when you beat a game and then it lets you continue and there's just a, a little indicator on your save file that says, yeah, you beat this, right? As opposed to the kind of game where you just get returned to the save point before the final boss and there's no indication. Yeah, right. And you're like, wait, I did beat this, right? Am I imagining that I beat this?

You know, I just, I like that little icon that says, yes, you did. You get the gold star, Ben. Exactly. Yeah. My only minor complaints, this is more of a Metroidvania thing than Prince of Persia specific, but I don't love how quickly enemies. respawn, you know, like you beat a bunch of bad guys and then you leave the room and then you come back into the room and you have to fight them all over again. It makes me a little less likely to fight them in the first place when I know that if I'm going to have to be back there, then they're just going to respawn. But, you know, you collect time crystals and you can upgrade stuff. And again, the fighting is fun. So it's not that much of a hassle. This is also just the tiniest little nitpick. But I found it tough to use potions in a fight. Right. So, So when you have to heal yourself, it's a button press that I found you can only use it when you're on the ground, right? And you're in the air a lot in Prince of Persia.

You want to stay in the air and keep your enemies in the air. You can't chugging in the air. You can't stand on two feet to drink that. Yes. And you can't use it while you're recovering from getting hit, for instance. So I'd be mashing the potion button. Sometimes I would use two by accident at the same time because I was trying so hard to. use the first one. Is that what you're telling me? I know. Pretty on brand for me. But that's

really it. The only other knock on this that I could have is just that clearly standing on the shoulders of giants here, which maybe is just inherent in the genre. It is named after two particular franchises, Metroid and Castlevania, that were the formative figures in the Metroidvania genre. But there was a lot in this that reminded me of other games. And, you know, even if it's an homage and imitation is the sincerest form of flatterer, you still have to execute that and do it well. And clearly they put their own spin on things. But from the sort of Hades-esque art and voice style where during cutscenes, you'll have a text come up and sort of a static image of the person you're talking to in a very Hades-esque way. But even more than that, I thought there's a lot of hollow night in Prince of Persia at the Lost Ground, right? I was playing with my wife. who's a huge Hollow Knight head. I like Holo Night, but she likes Hollow Knight. And every time I would go into a room or fight some enemy, she'd be like, you know, the

Simpsons did it meme. She'd basically be like, Hollow Knight did that. And then she'd pull up a YouTube clip and show me some enemy and Hollow Night who looked exactly like the Prince of Persia enemy. Right. So clearly they were playing some Holo Nights and taking notes, which if you're going to base your game on anything, might as well base it on maybe the best example of the, you know, that genre, but clearly a lot of Hollow Night DNA in this game, which may or may not be a

problem. As you said, it's a genre that's built on a pretty narrow set of, you know, things. So, yeah, you're going to find that in any Metroidvania. You're going to find direct inspiration from other Metroidvenos. Yeah. Well, I find this to be a really refreshing, pleasant, surprise, great way to start the year if you We're worried about any sort of slump after 2023. Nope.

We're coming in hot with another great game here in January. And it's 50 bucks. Yeah, right. And it's not a surprise drop the way that Hi-Fi Rush was to get us started last year. But it is something of a surprise. We knew that this game was coming. But again, divisive reactions to the trailer haven't had a Prince of Persia game in forever. It's a different take on the Prince of Persia formula until the previews started coming out and people were saying,

this might actually be good, I wasn't really looking forward to it. I didn't have that high hope for this game. And I just, I love it, you know? I just, I hope that it doesn't get overshadowed by other stuff that comes out in the next 11 months. So that when we're doing Game of the Year conversations at the end of 2024, we remember how much we enjoyed this game because it's going to deserve to be mentioned among the best. And what a change of fortunes for Ubisoft, too, because for a couple of years there, Ubisoft could barely ship a game on top of all the other company culture problems.

Now you've got the crew motor fest, Assassin's Creed Mirage and Nexus, the Avatar game, which we were also pleasantly surprised by The Lost Crown, skull and bones, finally coming next month, unless there's another last minute delay, Star Wars Outlaws later this year. So Ui's back, baby. Yeah. So before we move on, let's do our quick all-time top five. Metroidvania's. I'm not going to put the Lost Crown in my top five. Just I'm wary of recency bias, but I would consider it. Otherwise, that's how much I enjoyed it. Now, you've maybe played even more Metroidvania games than I have. And I think our lists will have some similar entries here, but which way are you going to go first? Yeah, you would think so, right? But,

and for people, I'm always mindful. People coming in from elsewhere on the Ring orverse feed may not be gamers themselves, but like, to listen along, which we appreciate. If you don't know what we mean by Metroidvania, this is a genre or subgenre, action adventure, platformer, again, modeled on Metroid and Castlevania, but backtracking is big, interconnected world maps you can explore where a lot of areas of the map

are inaccessible at first. And so you have to acquire some special item or some special power to get there and then you go back and it's very satisfied. as we said, I don't know whether there's anything else you consider a hallmark of the Metroidvania or whether any of our selections here will be controversial at all. Yeah, I think you sort of summarized the genre pretty nicely. Yeah, I'm interested to see your list because I think there's some things on it maybe that I might argue about,

but let's see. Yeah, well, that's the thing. It tends to hew to a similar aesthetic because of its roots in sort of the 16-Based. era and Metroid and Castlevania. It often tends to be the side scroller, you know, S&ES style look, but I don't think it has to be. I don't think we have to confine the Metroidvania to those narrow confines. So give me your top five and I'll tell you where I agree and where I differ. Okay. I'm going to give two honor roll mentions off the top that didn't make the top five. One is Prince of Persia, lost crown. Yep.

As an all time. And we're going to, you know, I'm going to have to sit on this for a few and see I feel about it because I too am worried about recency bias. But if it crept into my top five, I honestly wouldn't be surprised. This is just such a joy. So that's an honorable mention for me. My other honorable mention is Blasphemous 2 from last year, which was an absolutely great, great, great Metroidvania, one of the hardest Metroidvania's I've ever played. I'm talking like there's some boss fights in there that I died 20 plus times on.

Yeah. That game is hard, but it is fantastic. three different weapons that you have to kind of master just really tight gameplay, cool art style, really great game if you're up for a challenge. So number five on my list of all time, Metroidvania is I'm taking Castlevania Aria of Sorrow, which I believe is a Game Boy Advance game, if I'm not mistaken. There's sort of a Castlevania heyday on Game Boy Advance back in the day.

There's, I think, three of them that came out. this one probably being the best. It's a fantastic Castlevania game. Number four of my all time, I have Metroid Fusion. Yep. So Metroid Fusion, I chose that over Super Metroid. I think it holds up a little bit better than Super Metroid, which a lot of people might disagree with, but that's fine.

I think one of those two Metroid games generally considered to be the best Metroid 2D Metroid mania. Number three, I have, it's sort of a tie. It's Ori and the Blind Force or Ori and Willow the Wisp's one of those two, whether it's the original or the sequel. To me, they kind of stand on an even plane,

even though, you know, maybe the story's a little better in the first one, maybe the game plays a little better in the second. Really beautiful, beautiful games. Really well-made pieces of video game art. And then my... It's the ringer's deputy art lead.

You would know. Okay. And then my top two, it's tough for me to kind of suss out. And it hurts a little, but I'm going to put Symphony of the Night as number two. And not number one.

Just because I think number one, hollow night holds up a little bit better. Although you can't really overstate the importance of Symphony of the Night in, you know, rebirthing the Castlevania franchise

and being just an all-timer of a game that if it didn't come out, I don't know if the genre would have really popped off the way it has in the past 20 years. Yeah, that's the question. How much credit do you give for originality and for sort of

setting down the ground rules of this genre? Because maybe the first examples of it have been surpassed, but of course you still have to give kudos to the first that came along and set by set the example for everyone else. So like you, I mean, I think these lists almost have to have some of the games that you mentioned on them to be valid, not to be too doctrinaire or traditionalist about this, but how are you going to have a

Metroidvania list without some Metroid and some Vania? So I would probably put Super Metroid on there just for being a trailblazer and just sort of being. the archetype, right, that so many other games, including so many Metroid games have modeled themselves on. But I might also put Metroid Prime on my list. Now you could, you could quibble, right? Like is this. I'm quiblin. Are you? So are you saying this is two first person shootery? This this doesn't qualify as a Metroidvania. Yeah, I think it's a, I think it's a shooter. I think it's a great shooter. I think it's a Metroidvania like. And I know you're going to tell me, hey, it's got Metro in the title. It does. How could it not be? By definition. I think this has to be a

2D genre. Those are kind of like the walls of this for me. No, free your mind. Come on. Let's expand our definition of the Metroidvania. I think that we can go into a half dimension for Prince of Persia and also a full third dimension for Metroid Prime. I think the shooting is secondary. I think it always was by design. And really that kind of core Metroid gameplay, I mean, the backtracking and the going to places over and over again and the exploring, right? The emphasis was still on exploration and on power-ups and on being able to access areas that were previously inaccessible. So to me, I think it retains enough of that core Metroid gameplay to qualify. And I would give it extra points for the degree of difficulty of porting that formula over into 3D.

I mean, what a run that was for Nintendo, right, to have Super Mario 64 and Occurion of Time. and then Metroid Prime, which I know was developed by retro, right? But obviously Nintendo had input. So to be able to port all of those things, proof of concept, that these 2D formulas will also work incredibly well and produce some of the best games of all time in 3D. Those are just foundational games. I mean, and that's fresh in my mind.

I replayed Metroid Prime remastered last year. And, man, that game holds up. It really does. It does. You know, they modernize the control. a little bit for us, which was great. And yeah, everything about, I mean, look, basically, you're right. You can call it Metroidvania.

But I'm going to be a weird stickler on it and say, no, no, no, my Metroidvania's need to be 2D. So, yeah. That's your list. You do it. You do what you want with your list. Yeah, leave my list alone. Yeah.

And I think that it's named after Metroid and Casabania. I think those are still maybe the best examples of it or very. close to it, right? They cast a long shadow over everything that comes next. You could make a top five that was just all Metroid and Castlevania. So I think you have to have some the other night on there. I would put probably Super Metroid and Metroid Prime on maybe, although Metroid Fusion was wonderful as well as are many other Metroid games. I would put Ori probably Blind Forests on my list as well. And I have to put Holo Night too. So again, we have a lot of commonality. Yeah, you don't want to get divorced, so you have to pollinate them.

The one other place where I would stray and where you would probably tell me that this is not a Metrodvania, Arkham Asylum. I'm going to make the case that Arkham Asylum is a Metroidvania because, again, it is obviously 3D. It looks different, but it feels similar, right? It has that Metroidvania feel of just being in this big interconnected place, gradually exploring it, unlocking parts, backtracking, emphasis on combat and platforming. It has all of the traits that we associate with this genre, right? And I think that Arkham game in particular, to me, stands out as in spirit a Metroidvania game and a great one at that. That is a very interesting pick that I totally disagree with.

But that's fine. Right. But you can see, you can see how. how some of the best things about the genre seep into other genres of games, right? These are systems that are satisfying that pop up all over the gaming landscape in little bits here and there. You're a purist. It's okay. I'm a little more liberal with my Metroidvania definitions. So so many great examples. Apologies to anything we snubbed. I know the fans of Guacamile and Shadow Complex and Axiom Verge. There's a long list of great Metroidvania's out there.

But with the top five, you can only mention so many. And The Lost Crown, we'll see how it ages and how its legacy holds up. But, man, it deserves to be mentioned among the best ever. So go check it out if you have not yet. Every outfit starts with a choice. What am I wearing underneath? Something comfortable? And let's be honest.

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And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Now, the second part of this podcast, Part 2, let's transition to The Last of Us, Part 2. We are switching gears here.

Prince of Persia is a franchise that had a bad adaptation and a promised remake that hasn't come out that has now been revitalized by a brand new game, whereas The Last of Us is a franchise with a good adaptation, a remake that has come out, but no new game, seemingly some difficulty making a new game on Noddy Dog's part. So very different in a sense here, and I think this makes a pretty good pairing because of those contrasts. Now, we talked about this remaster bit in December after it was announced, and at the time we basically talked about how soon is too soon for a remaster. Have we hit peak remaster? Are there too many remasters, right? Now we have actually played this game. I played this game for the first time when it came out in the depths of

the pandemic, which was probably not the best time to play The Last of Us far too, right? Just in terms of mood and subject matter. I think that was an experience a lot of people had. I wrote for the ringer at the time about how I was watching a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction during the pandemic times. And in a way, I found it almost reassuring. Like, man, as bad as this is, I guess it could be worse. At least there aren't zombies. Yeah. Right.

Not me. I was trapped in Animal Crossing for 12 hours a day. A lot of people did that, too. I also did that. And I would recommend it. It's also nice to see, you know, in a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, people come together, you know, in the hardship of the ordeal that they're facing, which, arguably didn't happen so much in real life, but it was pretty to think that it would.

You are playing the remaster. This is your first introduction to The Last of Us part two. So you never played the master. You're just starting with the remaster. And so obviously that will affect how you think of this game. But look, it's $49.99. It's $10 to upgrade if you owned it and played it for PS4. And there are a bunch of extras, right?

So it's a little bit of a facelift. Obviously, going from PS4 to PS5, it's not a huge graphical or technological leap, but you're going to get the 4K textures. You're going to get the uninterrupted smooth frame rate. And you're also going to get some bonuses. You're going to get a few lost levels, which were probably lost for a reason, but it's still interesting, right? We don't get a whole lot of behind the scenes looks at games and what could have been. and you can play through these not quite finished sequences that were absent from the finished game. You get commentary from the developers.

Really, the highlight in terms of new content is no return, which is a new mode that is essentially a rogue-like, right? So we can talk about that, but what did you make of your first, The Last of Us, Part 2 experience? Yeah, so I never had a PS4 and I never had a PS3. I had been Xbox during those generations and Switch. So as soon as I got a PS5, one of the things that I did was I played the first Last of Us remastered. And then there were sort of rumblings like, oh, they're going to remaster the second one. So I figured I'd just kind of hold off for that as well. So I finally went through it.

And I know there's a lot of sort of divisiveness around this game and some of the decisions that the characters get into. and I'm not going to spoil anything here. For a little later at least, yes. I'm not going to spoil anything here for anybody. Don't worry. You haven't gotten to it yet. I did thoroughly enjoy this game, even though at the same time,

I find this to be such a stressful world and with at times such a cynical view that it can kind of feel like work for me, playing this game. Yes. It is not, it was, it was kind of whiplash going from playing Prince of Persia lost crown to Last of Us Part 2 remastered because Prince of Persia is just nonstop, just gaming joy. And this obviously is quite a different experience.

Joyous is hard to find. But occasionally it does pop up. And when it does, then it's all the better for how rare it is. Yeah. But still. And ultimately, you know, one of the things. that I enjoy most in gaming is a well-told story. And whether or not you like the way that the story unfolds in this game, which I personally do,

I think, you know, there's such a craftsmanship about the way this story is told that I am just in awe of it, really. Now, do I agree with the character's decisions throughout the entire thing? Maybe not. But there's certainly a decision in the first game that I didn't agree with either. But I think, you know, not agreeing with the character's decisions, I think sometimes that makes for a more compelling narrative experience. So I really, I did enjoy it. But I found it fascinating all of the bonus content that is sort of included in this remaster.

And I got to dive into a lot of that. I had time to dive into all of that after completing. this game. And I think they should call this a director's cut. Yeah. Not a remaster. Especially since you literally have the director talking about what they cut. Yes. So let's get into some of these extras that they included in this. I'll start with the deleted scenes, which I thought was really cool to see. Now, I don't know if you would, you know, I think for $10, the content that you're getting, if you're, you're a fan of the game, I think that's justified. I think the $10, it's $10. And there's some really

interesting things here. And I think the deleted scenes, there are three of them. And you get to kind of play them in unfinished states where while you're walking around, there are these little text bubbles that you can sort of click on in the world. That'll start a narration from, you know, the devs about, you know, this particular segment of this deleted scene and what they were thinking here and how they were building it. And I thought it was a pretty cool way to explore something that was cut from a game and to hear the devs talk about why they cut it. And usually sort of a pacing issue, I would say.

It was a fascinating experience. And I would love to see more games do that. What did you think of the deleted scenes, Ben? I understand why they weren't in the game. I'm not mad that they were deleted. But I agree that I would want more of this because often when we get this sort of, you know, peek behind the curtain, it comes from maybe game preservationists or it comes years after the game came out or it comes in the form of a leak, right?

Someone finds some not quite finished build and puts it online. It's rarely released an official form like this with care and consideration. And I would want more of this too because I'm fascinated by how games, get made. It's a miracle to me that they get made at all. And so to see these creative choices and to actually get to play through them, I found it pretty compelling. Now, is there some risk in that if you put something out and then people say, oh, this should have been in the game, right? Why didn't you finish this? I would have wanted to play more of this. I understand why that doesn't happen. And maybe some things that are cut just aren't really in playable form, right? And

it wouldn't be that great to go through it. But if you have something like that, like this. It's also nice for the devs who put a lot of time and effort into that, right, just to get to see some of those deleted scenes and wonder about what might have been. So I would love for this to be more of a staple of remakes, remasters, directors, cuts, whatever we want to call them. Yeah. And, you know, I also got to play a lot of the game with the commentary track on as well. So the commentary, you can kind of toggle on and off throughout your play-through. once you've completed the game. Or maybe even before.

I didn't put it on before I beat the game. What I did is I beat it, and then I revisited a lot of the sort of major sections of the game to listen to the commentary. And the commentary track has a bunch of people on it. It's got writer-director Neil Druckman, it's got writer Hallie Gross, and then four of the voice actors,

Joel, Ellie, Abby, and Dina's characters, chime in from time to time. And it's not a mind-blowing experience throughout the game, the commentary track. But I did find it really interesting at times to kind of hear how much they were invested in this process and what each sort of actor had on their mind during a scene and hearing them kind of talk.

about that and sometimes surprise each other with how they interpreted a moment versus how their scene partner was interpreting a moment. Yeah. And especially, you know, at the end of the game, I found the commentary at the end to be pretty emotional and pretty raw and honest as they were kind of talking about the reception that this game had when it came out and what they had to deal with from. the online community and from the backlash that there was and how trying that was for them in their personal lives. And it's really candid kind of touching section about, you know, these people who really cared about something and made something as best they could.

And just dealing with all this crap afterwards that was just really harsh. And it was, yeah, it was fascinating. It was fascinating to listen into. Yeah, like you, I admire and respect the Last of Us part two. It's hard for me to say I had fun playing it. There are times when you're not really supposed to be having fun, even if it's fun on a mechanical level, right? And that was probably compounded by what was happening in the world when I played it. And initially when this was announced, my reaction was, I don't need this, right?

Because it's only been a few years since part two came out. the leap from PS4 to PS5 is small. You could play this game already on PS5. I've kind of come around, though. For one thing, if you haven't played The Last of Us Part 2, as you hadn't, then you might as well release it in the best possible form, right, for the first-time players. You're always going to get first-time players, new generations, new gamers, right? New system.

There are going to be people who haven't checked out whatever the classics were considered to be. So why not? Give it a fresh coat of paint and let them. them have it. Also, though, yeah, it's a low price. You're getting plenty of extras here. What it comes out to me is, does this stand in the way of making something new, right? Because that's one of the critiques, you know, naughty dog, they just keep revisiting their old games. Where's the new IP? The Last of Us multiplayer spin off was canceled. Where's the Last of Us part three, right? And so, yes, I would worry that if you're just constantly focused on the past and revisiting old

games over and over and over again, and that's an impediment to producing something new and original. That would be unfortunate, I think, but I don't know that that's the case. And also, I think it's quite different when you're talking about a remaster versus a ground-up remake, right, just in terms of resources and the time it takes to make that, that's an entirely different equation. So I would imagine that not nearly as much work went into basically an enhanced port of this game here. So I'm all for it at this point, right? Again, I wouldn't want it to stand in the way of something new, but frankly, it'd be great if every game were able to do this, right? If every game was first party and had a publisher like Sony and a developer like Noddy Dog

and had the resources and the audience had the appetite that you could just continually keep releasing better and better, prettier and prettier versions of that game without fundamentally altering anything about what made the original work, that'd be great. It's certainly a lot better than not being able to play an old game unless you drag out your old hardware from the closet somewhere and play a 20-year-old game that you can't play in any other form. So yes, I wasn't so much in the market for playing this campaign over again so soon. I'm still processing. I'm still decompressing from my first play-through personally. But that's okay. That part is not for me. And the other parts do add enough that I'm there, right? So no return mode we should talk about.

probably the most essential addition. Yeah, this is an entirely new game mode. So I think that it... So it's a rogue-like mode, right? Which for those, you know, who listen to the pot, you probably know the idea of, like, you have a run that you're going to go through,

and if you die at any point, you've got to start from the beginning again. You've got to get through the whole thing without dying. That's generally what a rogue-like is, right? So the way this one in particular works, no-return mode, you have sort of five encounters, that you have to get through with a boss at the end of the encounters.

If you die, you have to start again. You have branching pathways you can choose from between each of the encounters. So you can kind of, they'll be, you'll have an option of picking, oh, do I go here next or do I do this kind of thing next? Because there are different sort of game modes. One is like assault where you have to just kill everybody. Another is hunted where you have to stay alive for a certain amount of time. Like they can unlock new game modes as you go on.

And in between each encounter, you return to the safe house and you have an opportunity to buy new things to upgrade, to craft new things before you pick your next encounter and go back in. So there's a lot of things to unlock. You unlock new characters to use that have different benefits to them and you unlock new areas. And mostly you're sort of using maps from the existing game entirely. You're using maps on the existing game that you're playing within. So I think that if you're someone who particularly likes the combat in The Last of Us, then you're going to enjoy this. Now, I find the combat in Last of Us to be good.

I think it's competent. I don't think it's bad at all. It doesn't, as a combat system, grab me in a way that I feel like I need to spend, you know, X amount of hours just on that. I think the big question is regarding I have with no return mode is just why. Right. Right. Why?

Right. And you're essentially playing a new game mode of The Last of Us without, for me, what makes the Last of Us so great, which is the story. You're just completely cutting the story out. And so as a whole, this sort of remaster, which is a director's cut, it feels a little. little incongruous, right? It feels a little like it's working against what the game is, right? You sort of have this 30-plus-hour game that explores the shattering effect of violence on people and communities, and they're like, no, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope the message sticks with you about how damaging violence is. Anyway, here's our new violence mode, where you kill everybody, right? It's like a

Resident Evil Survivor mode tacked into it. It is totally jarring, right? It's like, here is the danger of the cycle of violence. Now, here's a mode that is literally a cycle of violence. Yeah. Then there's no story, unless you can, there's no, like, plot, unless you, like, sometimes you'll kill someone and they'll be like, oh, my God, they killed Richard. Richard's fucking dead.

And then you're like, should I, in this mode, like, am I meant to think about who, Richard was and the effects of that while I'm sprinting to the loot crate next yeah right so it's a very weird feeling it feels a little cash grabby and it feels like it's kind of missing the entire point of the thing you know like I guess like as a Knicks fan and a Brooklyn Nets hater my analogy is like it feels like when the Brooklyn Nets take Boschiat's anti-capitalist art and sell it on a jersey for $120, right? Yeah. Like there's like it's missing the point and it's it's cash grabby.

Right. But that being said, I'm sure there are plenty of people who are going to love this because if you do like that combat, like it's well made. It's a well-made mode of more of that combat. So if that's your thing, great. For me, the whole time I just couldn't shake these feelings. And it just ultimately wasn't for me. I agree. Obviously, it's different from the Brooklyn Nets scenario in that this is done with the knowledge and approval of Noddy Dog, which in a way makes it even stranger, right?

That they risked perhaps undercutting the sentiment of the game. If you really like the combat mechanics and the stealth and everything else of the last. of us, then this is a good showcase for that. I'm with you, though, where that's not the main draw for me, right? It's, again, not an impediment to my enjoying the games, but it's not what I'm there for. It's not like Prince of Persia, where I'm just enjoying the kinetic joy of playing this video game more so than the story. The Lost Crown has a okay story. It's a decent story, but that's not the main draw there. And the combat for me isn't the main draw in The Last of Us. As you said, it's not It doesn't feel like, oh, finally, they were able to realize this artistic vision that they didn't have time for when the game, right?

That's not the feel. And that's why it's a roguelike, right? Because that's like the hot genre right now, I think. Yes. So I'm interested to hear it because you just played God of War Valhalla, which is a rogue-like addition to the God of War two game that came out. So how would you compare those two experiences? I would say that Valhalla is superior just because it really doesn't feel like a tacked on addition to sell something. In fact, it literally wasn't to sell something.

It was free. But this does feel a little bit like, hey, we have to tack on something so that people will get this or that we can cash in on the popularity of the HBO show. And again, that's fine. You know, there are plenty of people who will play this for the first time and love it. And that's great. But to me, it's not enough of an incentive to dive back in. I spent a little time with this, but I just didn't find it super sticky. For one thing, it's just intense, right? And so much like the less of us, the game, it's hard for me to say I was enjoying it. I was definitely gripped. I was arrested, but I was kind of on edge, really, as I was playing this. And, you know, depending on the character and the load out, there are different ways you can approach it, more stealthy, less stealthy. But ultimately, it does kind of come down to just bashing people with. stuff in close quarters, typically, at least, and it gets a little bit repetitive. And yeah,

there's no narrative. There's no story. There's no character development here. So it didn't really grab me. There are people who love Last of Us multiplayer. And obviously, there were plans for a multiplayer spin-off, right, a standalone game as a service. So I could see why people would say, all right, yeah, this is enough for me to pay 10 bucks or to check it out for a while when I'm enjoying this game. But it's not enough. for me to want to spend a ton of time with it. And I agree that it is just a little strange, you know, to divorce the violence of The Last of Us from the narrative of The Last of Us

because those things are usually typically so inextricably tied together. This episode is brought to by Nass Energy, introducing new Nass Energy Grand Prix Guava. For those that want to be fueled up and fired up with a hundred-bound-hour tropical tasting power, ignite your taste, start your engine, shift your flavor to high gear with new Nass Energy Grand Prix Guava. Hit the street, grab a can and get after it. We should probably stray into spoiler territory briefly here, just for the very end of this episode to talk about some casting news

and what that may portend for season two of the show. So if you have not played the game, you know nothing about what happens in The Last of Us Part 2 and you don't want to be spoiled for the HBO series. This would probably be a pretty good time to check out. And thanks for listening thus far. Now, in addition to the returning cast for season two, we have Caitlin Dever from Booksmart and Justified in Short Term 12 announced as Abby, along with Young Mizino from Beef,

as Jesse, Isabella Merced, who's also going to be in Madam Webb, Alien Romulus, and Superman Legacy. So get used to seeing her. She's going to be Dina in season two here. What do you make of the Caitlin Dever casting? I know you're not super familiar with her work, but obviously this has sparked a lot of conversation because Caitlin Dever was a popular fancast choice to play Ellie in season one and didn't discourage that advocacy on Herbie Paff.

She talked about how much she loved the game and she played it with her dad and she'd be honored, et cetera, less. So because of her physical resemblance to Ellie, because of her affection for the game, And because she was in Uncharted 4 as Cassie, for all of those reasons, people thought, oh, she'd make a perfect Ellie. And maybe she would have, but worked out well without her. And it turns out that she gets to be in the franchise anyway, as Ellie's adversary for most of the Last of Us part two, Abby.

Yeah. So I've seen a lot of sort of like the blowback on this online has been that physical of resemblance is not going to work. Yeah, as everyone pointed out, it's going to be bulking season for Caitlin Dever, right? She's got to get on the Hugh Jackman diet to play this part. Yeah, but listen, like, ultimately, is it super fundamentally important that the character of Abby be a hulking, ripped, giant specimen of a person? Like, it certainly plays into, it's definitely a part of the character, a significant. part of the character, just sort of her physically intimidating presence, her undeniable

the physicality. That's definitely a part of it. But ultimately, I think that, you know, I trust that they're going to cast a very talented person who can play the role, like, the role, like get into like the soul of what that role is. And, you know, they'll do what they can, I think, with her physicality. in her bulking or whatever. But, you know, I don't think if they had just cast a very physically intimidating

presence of a person, that that necessarily would have been the answer. I mean, we've seen The Last of Us adaptation change some things about some of the characters, some of the story. And in season one, I feel like almost every decision they made to make a departure from the game. was a successful one. So I think that they've earned the benefit of the doubt here on their casting decisions. Yeah. I have full faith that they're going to be picking the right people for this,

and they're going to be conveying the characters in a way that if it's not fully faithful to the games, maybe is even more compelling. And, you know, listen, like, if you're someone who didn't like The Last of Us 2 and you're online whining about the casting choices, like, Well, you know what? Maybe they're going to go in a direction that you will like now because they might change things. So, you know. And I think there is a pleasing symmetry to the idea of having the actor who was in a lot of people's minds, a perfect person to play Ellie, playing Abby. Because even though there is maybe more of a physical divergence in the game than there is in real life between Caitlin Dever and Bella Ramsey, it makes sense that you would have someone who has an inherent elliness to,

her at least on the inside playing Abby, right? Because ultimately these are sort of mirror image characters of each other. They're going through something similar. They're dealing with it in different ways and ultimately sort of similar ways, right? And so in that sense, I think it is perfectly appropriate to have things come full circle, the great circle, and have Caitlin Dever play not Ellie, in fact, but her mortal enemy for much of the sequel. I actually love that inversion of where we all thought this was going to go. Yeah. Now, we'll see how much of the Last of Us part two is actually in the next season.

Yes. I don't know if there's been any talk about, I feel like they have enough where they could split this into two seasons personally. That's what I was going to ask you, right? Because they've talked about, of course, it going beyond. And who knows, of course, when maybe we might get a Last of Us part three, perhaps someday, which would give them even more runway. But that's the thing. the structure of part two doesn't seem to lend itself as neatly to a TV season as the Last of Us,

the original did. And so I wonder what that means, what changes that will force. Do you try to adapt it fairly faithfully as they did in season one and just have the show everything from Ellie's perspective, show everything from Abby's perspective after that? Seems like it could be kind of confusing could be kind of repetitive for TV audiences in a way that maybe it wasn't for gamers. Obviously, it was jarring for gamers. It was something of a surprise for many gamers who didn't get spoiled by the leaks, but ultimately, I think, worked fairly well. Would that work as well on TV?

Or do you do some sort of cross-cutting structure where you're showing Ellie sometimes and then Abby, what's she doing at the same time, that Ellie is doing this, right? And you're hopping back and forth from episode to episode or within episodes. or do you just save Abby or most of Abby's narrative for season three, right? So a lot of different directions they could go. Yeah, and I'm curious to see how they choose to do it. I think for me, the narrative structure works best staying with Ellie throughout those three days in Seattle and letting Abby become the big bad in your brain fully.

then flipping it and getting to go along her journey and finding like, you know, well, maybe, you know, the more time I spend with Abby, Ellie seems like the, and you know, they're kind of, the whole point is sort of like. We're not so different to you and I. Yeah. The whole point is sort of like everyone's the bad guy. Everyone's the hero. Like everyone's doing horrible things.

Everyone's got people they love. Like that's sort of the whole thing is being able to. to see the humanity in someone who you view as just an other, a villain, a bad, right? It's finding the humanity in everyone. And I think the structure of the game really helps you experience that message when you say, there's the bad guy, and then you spend time being the bad guy, and you find more nuanced to things. And so I would kind of hope that the show does that, but if they end up not,

doing that and they end up cutting back and forth between them. I imagine that there are ways to do that where you can evoke kind of the same, you know, message. But yeah, it's going to be interesting to see which way they go. Yeah. And does it help that Abby in the game is on those Marvel vitamins? And immediately when you see her, you think, oh, this is a big bad because she's literally very big, right? So if you had any concerns about Caitlin Deaver's casting, you might say, oh, she doesn't look quite as intimidating at first. And so will she produce the impression that Abby does

in the game where maybe initially you're more receptive to seeing her as the big bad, again, because you're introduced to her as Ellie's, you know, through Ellie's eyes, but maybe also because of her appearance in the way that she presents herself. So will Caitlin Deaver have to replicate that? or as you said, maybe it's not so much about the physical appearance. Maybe it's about your manner. Actors act, right? That's what they're supposed to do. Maybe she'll just, you know, do what the character did in the game and just whenever

there's like an idle moment, you just kind of like grip her biceps and be like, these guns are so sore, you know? That'll go a long way towards conveying the character. Yeah, I'm excited for it either way. In fact, the fact that we don't know what the structure will be makes me maybe. be even more excited than I was for season one. And I was excited for season one. And now that there's the track record of them having this well-received, incredibly popular award-winning season one, I have faith that they know what they're doing. And obviously, the creators are involved here.

But now there are some sort of thorny creative decisions to wrestle with. And it's going to be a red wedding caliber event when people who haven't played the game watch the episode. where the thing happens. The thing happened. If you're still listening and you haven't, like. We warned everyone. We warned you. Yeah.

When Joel dies. Oh. Yeah. Because people love Pedro Pascal. They're not ready for Mando to die, you know? No, no, they're not. It's going to be quite an experience, like, watching with people who don't know what's about to happen. Yes.

Isaiah will put those spoiler time stamps in there, so we don't have to bleep your massive reveal there. Hey, it's a bit a few years. You know, if we're already remastering the game, then maybe it's been long enough that we can talk about that on a video game podcast with fair warning, which we gave. A lot of warnings. I'm very wary. I don't want to ruin anything. Maybe you were driving and you couldn't pull over. You just couldn't get a red.

I'm sorry. Okay, well, Sargon wants to know what's at the end of your blade. You want to know what's at the end of this episode, and it's the part where we say goodbye, as usual. Matt, as Pearl Jam and Joel and Ellie saying, if I ever were to lose you, I'd surely lose myself. Pleasure potting with you, as always. As always.

Thank you so much for having me, Ben. And I look forward to surprising everyone on the next episode. And now, if people keep playing this podcast, they can listen to it with Matt hosting instead of me. And at the end, we'll come back together, kick each other's asses and realize that maybe we're not so different in the end. Maybe we're not, Ben. Yeah. There, I finally got to make my-Metroyd is not a Metroidvania. Except for that. We differ on that. But I finally made my multiple protagonist joke that I wanted to make in the intro. You got it. You said you wouldn't, but you did. It's the tease, the far and advanced tease of the outro. Thanks to Isaiah Blakely for

producing and Arjuna Ramik Pile for his senior management. Stay tuned to Buttmash for Suicide Squad, Halo, and Final Fantasy in February. Email us at Ringiverse Gaming at gmail.com. What is the downside to eating a clock? It's time consuming. Podcast can be too, so thank you for spending some of your time with us in the Ringiverse. Somehow the Lord gave me a second chance at that moment, I would do it all over again.