The Ringer-Verse - RPG Party: ‘Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’ and ‘The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered’ | Button Mash

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

Our cup runneth over with role-playing games, so Ben and Matt James party up to tag-team two new titans of the genre. After opening banter about Nintendo Switch 2 preorders and ‘Grand Theft Auto VI��� timing, they profess their love (in spoiler-free fashion) for the new hit RPG ‘Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’ and explain why the debut game gives them hope for the industry. Then they share their impressions of the recently released RPG behemoth ‘The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered’ and discuss the difference between remasters and remakes and the proper approach to modernizing old games. Intro (0:00)Nintendo Switch 2 preorders and ‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ updates (3:25)First thoughts on ‘Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’ (13:39)‘The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered’ impressions (53:50)Outro (1:18:18) Host: Ben LindberghGuest: Matt JamesProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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millions of business owners already trust Spectrum business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Service is not available in all areas. Hello and welcome Outlander into the Ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things fandom. I'm Benvenberg, senior editor of the Ringer and Buttonmash host, here to make a podcast like the Painteress makes another Nevron. With me today is a plucky expedited. Ringer Deputy Art Director, Matt James, who definitely isn't doomed today, unlike most of the expeditioners. Hello, Matt. Hello, Ben.

Lots of great stuff to talk about today. So much. And in a world where everyone dies by age 33, we'd both be long gone. Long gone. We may be washed, but we're still kicking, as is the ringerverse feed, which is packed right now, what with the Last of Us and Andorren sinners and Thunderbolts, asterisk. And my weekly pods with Daniel about The Last of Us as a game adaptation. Don't leave a lot of room to talk about new games. But we had to double up on button mesh this week because last week, the world of video games doubled up on classic RPGs, a decades old classic and an instant classic.

On Tuesday, an Oblivion gate spawned and spat out a remaster of the Elder Scrolls for Oblivion, surprise released, sort of, for Xbox series X. S, PlayStation 5, and Windows. And then on Thursday, one of the most highly anticipated original RPGs of the year, Clare Obscure Expedition 33 came out on the same system. So anywhere from 50 to 200 or more hours of combined RPG gaming goodness, dropping in a span of two days. As we speak, these are the two top-selling games on Steam. And there were at one point this weekend,

well over 300,000 people concurrently playing these games on Steam alone. And Matt, I know you weren't playing on Steam because both of these games are on Game Pass, but otherwise was your weekend as RPG filled as mine and many other people's. What a dream been. What a time to be like. Yeah. I know you're a little sick, but you are not sick of RPGs. No.

Give me more. And I won't be anytime soon. Yeah. It's incredible. Claire obscure is not a hundred and, 20 plus hour RPG. Mercifully. Thankfully. Yeah. But we'll get into that, I'm sure.

Yes, we will. And before we do our dueling RPG talk, two things. I talked to Steve and Jomey about this, but for anyone who hasn't heard Friday's Mint Edition and who's been consumed with worry about whether I was able to pre-order a Nintendo Switch 2, thank you for your concern. Don't worry, I was.

Matt, you also scored a Switch 2 on an exciting night slash early morning, on the ringers video game Slack channel. You were sort of the MC, you were pointing us to YouTube channels, telling us when various pre-order pages were live and dead. You were like the puppet master, just pulling our strings,

and we were just jumping from Target to Best Buy to wherever else, just trying to snag a switch, which we did successfully. So thank you. Yes, both of us. It was my birthday, and it was my birthday luck

that secured all of us Switch 2s. I am very excited. I ended up getting mine through Walmart. which had this surprisingly reasonable system where you showed up and they put you in a queue and then you could just buy one instead of refreshing a broken website 100,000 times like Target and Best Buy.

Yeah. It brought me back, though, because when has pre-ordering a system or attempting to not been a jinky mess? I mean, I know that Nintendo had several years to plan for this and hopefully the supply lines aren't as screwed up as they were, though everything else about tariffs and economics is. But even if you have all that time to plan, you can't build up that much of a

stockpile because you can't start manufacturing that far ahead of release or you'll just be building in obsolescence. And so even if you had time to plan, and I know they did plan and they say, oh, 15 million sales in the first year and we're going to try to do our best, the best is never good enough when it comes to something that's as in demand as a switch to. So I expected it to be a complete cluster and it kind of was and will be, but we got what we wanted at least. It seems like most people did eventually too. And you know what? You don't want it to be easy, right? You want a little bit of thrill. Yeah. You want a little bit of the difficulty level, the difficult lease letter has to be like a little bit above the bottom. Get good at pre-ordering.

Yeah. Get good. Yeah. What good is it if you just easily put something in your cart and check out. Do you have to feel like you earned it somehow? What's the fun in that? Yeah. We did. And as I said, if you're in the Best Buy line, stay in line, and I did for hours. And much to my surprise, it actually worked. So we hope that it worked for everyone who's listening, who wanted one, or that it will at some point between now and release. And this is good news for Buttonmash, because even if Nintendo doesn't hook us up, we should still be able to bring you our impressions of Switch 2 and Mario Kart World Tour shortly after launch. And may the odds be ever in your favor between now and June 5th, stay on top of those restocks. You can be the personal concierge for buttonmash listeners. Maybe we could sell that as a premium service somehow. Hey, Costco's got some coming up. Apparently on launch day, they're just going to release a bunch.

Okay. Also, check out that Nintendo website. If you're someone who's had an active Nintendo Switch online account for a one plus year, and you've spent at least 50 hours gaming, they're going to send out invites themselves to buy console. So whatever, you probably have one already. You probably already have a free order if you're listening to this. Congratulations. No spond con, no free advertising here.

We're just name-checking a bunch of retailers who have not paid us to do that, but what are you going to do? One other bit of news, we got a release date for Ghost of Yote, the successor to Ghost of Tsushima. It's coming out October 2nd, which is exciting for folks who are looking forward to Ghost of Yote, us included. But it's also exciting for anyone who's trying to read the tea leaves and project when Grand Theft Auto 6 could come out, which also includes us. but also every publisher that's planning to release a video game in late 2025. Now we know that GTA6 is supposedly slated for fall. We know that Borderlands 4, which is published by another subsidiary of the same company that owns Rockstar, Take 2, is coming September 23rd. And that seemed to send a signal that late September, early October could be safe.

So Ghost of Yote is positioning itself in that window. We also know that Call of Duty, the only sales juggernaut that's big enough for even the makers of GTA6 to want to avoid, typically comes out in November. So October's been the popular pick and probably late October and potentially October 28th, if we want to be really specific and try to throw a dart at the board here, which is exactly six months from today. So my question for you is, with each day that passes without GTA6 news, do you get more or less confident in that timing? That is, when you go to bed each night, is your last thought before falling asleep, o'h, another day without a GTA6 delay,

maybe this thing will actually come out, or is it, uh-oh, another day without a GTA-6 trailer, this thing is definitely going to get delayed? It doesn't really affect my instinct at all. I mean, sure, Gt86 is not a typical game release, But at the same time, we don't usually get updates on release dates at like every release windows every couple weeks or so. I feel like the general populace is sort of expecting the GTA people to keep checking in with the populace at every. Like if you're not going to drop a release date, for some reason we're owed like, what's the vibe?

Are we on time? Are we not on time? Like, there are no vibe checks in game releases. They'll drop a date when they're confident. I mean, for me, like, Ghost of Yote is my GTA-6, I would say. Like, you can drop those two games on the same day, and I wouldn't touch GTA-6 for weeks, to be honest. Because Ghost of Sushima is one of my favorite games the past decade.

So I'm going to be all over that when that comes out at Yote. But it's cool. It'll come out. It'll probably come out exactly October 28th. I think that makes a lot of sense. And if it doesn't, then it doesn't. and you can keep playing GTA online or whatever GTA and you're playing.

I don't think there's like, I don't know, the Ghost of Yote audience is not like a full circle overlap of the GTA6 audience. The GTA6 audience is just everyone who plays video games, more or less. There's definitely a bigger overlap between the Call It Duty people and the GTA six people. Yes, that's right.

Yes, if you play Ghosts, Gosev Yote, you probably play GTA 6, but if you play GTA 6, maybe you don't play Goseviote. Maybe you just play a GTA game every decade or two. But, yeah, I mean, it's a PlayStation, so obviously there will be a lot of overlap there. So I'm, I think I've talked myself into no news being good news. I'm not saying I'm supremely confident that it's coming out this year, but I just, I don't think the marketing machine needs that much time to do its thing for GSTI. T.A.6. Look at Oblivion. It got shadowed drops last week and was just instantly huge and a hit.

And GTA, everyone knows it's coming. It was more official than Oblivion was. We got a trailer. We are roughly at the time when based on past GTA games, you would expect a second trailer or some harder news. So if something doesn't come soon-ish, then I might start to question things. But I just don't think you need that long a lead-up. Everyone knows it's coming. coming. It's going to be massive. They could put it out tomorrow. And I don't know that it would make that much of a ding in the adoption. Granted, like, this is a mainstream phenomenon. It's kind of a cross-cultural phenomenon. And so you want to promote that for normies and people who are not super plugged into video game news. But even so, word of mouth is going to get to them, you know, even if you don't have the billboards up.

Right. You don't need to, it's not going to take a month to put ads on the sides of buses all over the country. Yeah. I think there's a general trend that I think publishers and developers have been jumping on lately is that minimizing that time between really showing off a game and its release has been kind of beneficial. You keep that hype alive rather than releasing some stuff and then we have to delay it and now the hype is kind of dying down a little. Right.

So yeah, I think you're spot on. I think we'll wind it up real fast. It'll hit hard with the marketing campaign in a short window, and it'll become the best-selling game of all time. Yes. Very quickly. Unless Mario Kart world. They can't make enough switch of tooth for that.

Probably not. No, but yeah, there is a fatigue factor that sets in if you're just inundated in news. And also, you just keep raising expectations. I don't know how much higher you could raise them for TTA6 realistically. But still, I guess in GTA6's case, there's kind of. of a constant drumbeat regardless, just because the rumor mill never ceases, even when there is no news, which there almost never is. That doesn't stop anyone from pretending that there is or there might be. So that never completely stops. But yeah, wait until you have something definite

to announce. And I think the closer we get without a delay, just my feeling is if you're really going to pull the plug or move it to next year, you'd want to do that not at the last second. Obviously, you have to wait to see how things are shaping up. And often, game. come together more or less at the last minute. But even so, there's just a lot of infrastructure that has to happen here and a lot of earning statements that will be affected, et cetera. So I think it's good news, but I'm still only, I don't know, 50-50-ish. So we'll talk more about GTA another day when we get an indication one way or another.

For now, let's focus on two great games we can play today. And we'll start with the new hotness before we return to Cyradale and size up what changed. On the last regular button mash episode, you came on at the end of the pod to say that the then newly released Blueprints was your game of the year so far. Yes, sir. Well, now we have a tie atop the 2025 Metacritic score leaderboard, a new leader at OpenCritic, Clare Obscure, Expedition 33, and I'll say it right now, this is my game of the year. So you're a puzzle hater, Ben. I'm not a puzzle hater. I'm less of a puzzle lover.

I just, but I honestly, until I complete Claire Obscure Expedition 33, which I am close to doing but have not done yet. I cannot definitively say that Blueprints is still my number one game of the year. Yes. I also have not quite completed Clear obscure, but I'm jumping the gun. I don't care. I'm saying right now, unless they completely fumble, and we won't spoil anything that we have seen.

No, no, no. that some people haven't started or you've just started. And there are some things that you wouldn't want spoils. You really don't want that much. Yeah. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that there would be spoilers potentially. But, yeah, I am quite confident saying unless they just completely fumble in the last stretch of the game, that this is my goatee leader in the clubhouse.

And there's a lot of year left. And there are a lot of games that I have not played yet. But your move, Ghost of Yote and GTA6 and all the other. Tenders later this year because it'll be tough to top this game in my mind. So I was going to ask if Blueprints is still standing strong at number one for you or whether it's been bumped already, which let's say this. If there is no noticeable downturn, if there's not a bad ending to Clear Obscure, if it just keeps up the pace that you've seen so far, is that enough to take the top spot?

I don't know, Ben. It's a dead heat. It's really, it's really close. And one of the big draws to me for Clare Obscure is the story and the world in the setting. But the story as well is a huge part of why I love this game. So I really need to see how that ties up before I can really weigh whether I think this is a better game than Blueprints. But man, it's close. It's real close right now.

And I've played these two games back to back as well. I know. It's been space them out, only. little the goate contenders. That's just, you're really living well right now, but tough act of follow for anything else. And I haven't put as much time into blueprints. I'm sort of experiencing it secondhand because my wife is playing it,

and it is totally up her alley. I think it's a game that I will like, but she will love and just be obsessed with as she already is. And so I'm sort of playing it vicariously, watching her play it, whereas Claire Obscure, I am not relinquishing the controller. if anyone tries to take it from me. And, you know, I'm usually pretty measured in my praise and my criticism.

I'm sitting... It's true. You're like a little bit of a hater. At times, but not full on. I'm somewhere comfortably between this is trash and this is the greatest game ever. But every now and then, I'm more effusive because a game comes along that's close to perfection that fills me with joy. Astrobot was probably the last one.

And Claire Obscure is nothing like Astrobat, but it gives me the same sense that the creators completely delivered on what they set out to do. And it's fun and it's original and it's inventive and it's polished. And I'm just, I'm deeply in love with this game. It's giving me a feeling that I associate with my childhood RPG playing. Yeah. In the late 90s, early 2000s, like my first Final Fantasy experience,

or games like Golden Sun or Pantor Jagoon Saga or Grandia II or, yes, I will invoke even my beloved skies of Arcadia. I'm not saying it's exactly like those games. It's not exactly like any game, which is why I like it. But I'm just talking about the feeling it evokes of just being captivated by transported to this dangerous but beautiful and wondrous world. and coming to care about its characters and just being completely invested and immersed in this. I just, I love this. And I guess I'm not alone, judging by the review scores.

And also it sounds like you're having a similar response. Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot, like why it makes me feel the way it makes me feel, which is pretty much exactly how you just described it. And part of me feels that this game feels like a remake of a game that never existed. It feels like a remake of a 90s RPG because the structure of it is identical to an old-school RPG, right?

You have little zones on an overworld map that you're going through each zone, like fairly linearly. There's some exploration within each zone, and there are some boss fights, and then you're out to the overworld map where you're wandering around and eventually unlocking new,

abilities to go to new places on the overworld map. That structure feels like it did when we were playing RPGs in the 90s. However, the combat system in this game is so trailblazing and modern and deep and in touch with all of the innovations of gaming in the past decade plus. So the marriage of those two things is such an incredible feeling. And all of that is bolstered even more by the incredible story, the incredible voice acting, the incredible music. The score of this game is unforgettable. So good. It is unforgettable. I've downloaded the whole thing. And this is now, I can't really listen to music while I'm writing or doing a lot of my work. But sometimes if I'm editing or researching or something, a game soundtrack is good because the lyrics distract me. And this, it might be too good for me to listen to it. as background music because it's that catchy. But I just, I wanted to own it.

I wanted to have like a local copy of, it's that good. It is. Because the composer, Lorientistar, spent five years working on this. And it's, I don't know, 150 plus tracks and do like different themes for characters and settings. And they are all amazing.

My wife has spent a lot of time watching me play this game. And normally when I play RPGs, on the living room TV. It's a bit of a grown session for her because there's always a character like repeating one audio clip like 50 times and they're playing the same like song from the start like every 10 seconds and it's just like audio-wise.

It's not fun for someone in the room. But she's like bopping her head around and like she's like this game, all of the music in this game is great and it never grates on a casual listener in the room at all. which is high praise for an RPG. Yeah, it's all different genres. It's suitably majestic and blood pumping.

Like the boss bite music is fantastic. But even just the repeating music that plays as you're wandering around and exploring. It's just it's all incredibly catchy and varied to go along with the environments. So there's a real sense of being in a different place and wandering around the overworld. And you're going to just geographically, it's very different. kind of in a Final Fantasy rebirth sort of way or like a Breath of the Wild. There's just all different kinds of, you know, Horizon Zero Dawn, just lots of geographically varied areas.

But then also the music goes with that. It's just like there's no weak link in this game, really. Absolutely not. Almost everything is strong. All of the voice act, like at the end of the year at the game awards, good, good luck for people doing voice acting in video games who weren't in this game. The entire category is going to be Claire, obscure voice actors. Seriously.

So you play as Gustav, and Gustav is voiced by Charlie Cox, fresh off of Daredevil. And then Andy Circus is in this game, doing his usual Andy Circus job of things. Ben Starr, breakout Clive performer from Final Fantasy 16. He's here. There's really no weak link in the voice cast either. And the writing is pretty strong and it's elevated by the performances. And just to bring people up to speed, if you've missed out on the hype here, the premise of this game is that there's this isolated island called Lumiere, where every year there's kind of a culling. And the oldest cohort of people in Lumiere die.

They're just evaporated by the painter's, this mysterious being who paint. this new number on a far-away monolith on the mainland that you can see in the distance, and it's a countdown. So it started from a high number. It's down to 33. That's where the expedition 33 comes from. And the people in Lumiere, who are that age, just disappear. They just evaporate. And everyone younger, they're the only survivors. And because this number keeps counting down, the surviving populace is younger and younger, and they're facing extinction at this point because it's kind of the last generation of up-and-comers who can actually mount some sort of challenge.

And so every year, usually the people who are on the point of expiring, they mount an expedition. So there's an annual expedition to the mainland to try to take down the painters and figure out why she is doing this and stop her. And thus far, that has proved fruitless. And no one has been able to make it. And so you are Expedition 33. And you're on this latest expedition.

that you hope isn't doomed. And I think one of the great things about this game in this setting, and Maddie Myers wrote about this for Polygon, is that so little of it is actually spelled out for you. There's not a lot of exposition. You're not really encountering a ton of NPCs who are just doing lore dumps, unlike Bethesda games, unlike oblivion. No shots, but we all know.

That's what happens. And, you know, you stumble across books or whatever that you can pour over that give you the history of this world, or people will just do lore dumps on you when you talk to them. That's not really happening in this game. And you know less than the characters, but also there's a lot that they don't know either. One thing Gustav says early on is things we don't understand, they just make us feel small and powerless.

And that's true, but I think it makes the world feel large and powerful because there's so much mystery. and you just want to keep going to figure out how did this world get like this? There was an event called the fracture and the land is literally broken, but it's also France, sort of. And gravity seems to be failing.

It's like almost a dark tower situation where the world is kind of coming apart at the seams and you're just sort of instantly sucked in. You know, like you play as Gustav and his ex is on the chopping block. She's about to evaporate and disappear, and all of that is just sort of implied. You get a sense of their history, but it's not really described to you.

I just love the way that the story is related thus far. Absolutely. Yeah, it's show and don't tell to a great degree. And what a game to show in. Everything in this looks so beautiful. All of the settings and locations are just gorgeous, and you want to see what's around every corner, because there are so many surprises.

and so many things that you're going to look at and be like, okay, well, I wonder what that means in the context of this. Yeah, it's a lot of you discovering and not your Lord dumps as we've been enjoying still in oblivion. Yes. Yes, that's setting up to dump on oblivion. I'm just saying, there's a contrast here, which makes us appreciate Claire Obscure even more. You know what I like? I like when your goal is visible, because,

From the start, you know you're trying to get to this monolith where the 33 is shining. And you get closer and closer to it. And that's sort of your North Star. And you can see it from the beginning of the game and up to the point where I am. And it just gets bigger and closer. And I love that you can see that in the distance and not to get to Todd Howard and Bethesda about, you see that mountain? You can climb there. I don't mean that exactly because it's not as if you can just walk straight to it.

There are various obstacles in your way in Clare obscure. But just the fact that it's always looming in the distance, reminding you that the clock is ticking on your characters and also where you're going, like this sort of Mount Doom location that you're aiming for. It's just it really grounds you in this world. It's just very atmospheric. You can just sort of see it in the background all shadowy and mysterious wherever you are. It's a bit of a north star. And it looms inescapably in the background, just like, you know, the impending death. looms inescapably in the background of all of the people in Lumiere.

Yeah. And I was worried that this game would not be a breakout hit because, A, coming out two days after the Oblivion remaster is tough timing for an RPG. Plus, it's a turn-based RPG with a weird title, which is not unusual for RPGs, but still, this isn't a series. It's brand-new, fresh IP that you've got to convince people to buy into. It's extremely French. And it's made by a first-time developer.

But all these things conspiring against it just haven't overcome the hype, which I'm happy about. But it sold a million copies in its first three days. And honestly, it makes me feel good about gaming, that this exists and that it's actually resonating with people. A, that you can put out an original property and people will find it if the quality is good enough and the reviews are strong. And it also just goes against the grain of current trends. Like, you know, turn-based RPG. We've seen Final Fantasy sort of walk away from that to some extent and cast doubt on the idea that the young players of today

would have the patience for that and everything sort of hybrid and action RPG. And this is sort of hybrid too, but not really in that way. It is really unashamedly turn-based. There's quick time events. There's kind of an action component. but you got to wait your turn. So it's sort of a throwback in that sense. And I just, I love the fact that this is really working.

Like, it's one thing for Oblivion to be a big hit because that's sort of what you're saying, that Claire Obscure feels like a remake or a remaster of something that was popular decades ago. But it's not that. It doesn't have that built-in audience and name recognition. And yet, it's still finding its way to people. And that is really heartening to me. Yeah, free on Game Pass helps, a price tag of $50. I think is obscene value.

It's just, you know, a few years ago, you couldn't have imagined that we'd get to this place where we are now where, you know, last year, one of the games of the year, just behind Astrobot, most people's minds, was metaphor refentasio, which was a turn-based RPG. And here we are a year later. And we're, again, early in the year.

But I'm pretty confident that at the end of the year, Claireups here is still going to be in the talking, in the discussion for game of the year. And here we have another turn-based RPG. And I think we're kind of seeing a sea change. I think developers and publishers are seeing proof that turn-based RPGs not only can work, but can thrive in this modern gaming environment. And you just have to make a turn-based system that is interesting and compelling and deep enough and a little bit more reactive than turn-based RPGs used to be.

How do you feel, Ben, as someone who's not typically a get-good, souls-like player, about Claire Obscures parry system? Yeah. Because there are many sort of active time-based button presses involved in this turn-based combat. I'm curious how you're finding that as someone who doesn't typically play games that demand that kind of reaction time. Are you leaning into that and trying to get good at that? Or are you relying on other systems to sort of bolster you?

Because you can customize it to play more towards being good at parrying and benefiting off that. Or if you're not as confident, you can, let's say, bolster your defensive stats and do something like that. So where are you landing in this? And how are you finding it? Yeah. I'm not sure there's such a thing as a battle system that's totally intuitive and easy to grasp

immediately, but also rich and deep enough not to be boring over the course of dozens of hours. There's always going to be some period of just feeling frazzled and disoriented and not understanding how everything works together. But I think this is about as close as you can come. The menus are very clear. All the tool tips, all the explainers. It's not like excessive tutorials and handholding, but I found it to present the information very clearly to the point where I sort of understood at least what they were getting at. Now, I had to mess around. I don't want to say how many hours in I was before I figured out the Lumina system, which is essentially so you can equip all of these abilities. They're called Pictos, and they give you special skills,

but then once you use those skills for a certain number of battles, you can collect. You can collect those abilities as passive abilities that you can just equip without actually having to equip the Pictos itself. Again, the magic system here, it's not really explained. Like, how are these people using magic? Why? I don't know. It's just part of the mystery. I'm willing to go along with it. But I think I'm getting the hang of it more and more as I go. But even immediately, I thought, okay, this is pretty accessible. And yeah, it's difficult at times, the peri timing. but there is some forgiveness built in. I haven't changed the difficulty level.

I'm just playing on the standard, but there are different play styles you can adopt, as you said, and there's sort of an easier parry, which is just the dodge. So it's the same thing, but basically a bigger error bar. So you just kind of get more time to do a dodge instead of a parry. And the downside of that is that you don't get to do a counterattack,

but it is a little easier. And so I found that it first, First, I dodged primarily until I got the hang of it. And now the deeper I go, I'm challenging myself more. And also, I guess the fights get challenging to the point where it is actually quite helpful if you can get that sweet, sweet counterattack. So I have gotten better at and also tried harder to be good at the pairing. Yeah, I have a baseball analogy for you.

Okay, yeah, perfect. Love it. So I think you do dodge when you're facing a new enemy. you don't know the move set, you're going to do the dodges first before you're going to try to parry. You're going to step into the batters box and you're going to take a pitch, you're going to looking, right? You're going to get a sense of that speed and where it is exactly before you actually try to make contact. Yes, to go full baseball nerd. It's like the times through the order effect when you see the pitcher for the second or third time that day, you pick up on their

delivery and their repertoire and you can time everything and you know their release point. And that picture cannot adapt to you. The timing will remain constant. It's true. But yeah, there's a certain amount of trial and error. Like the first time you fight a new boss or something, you know you're probably going to get killed or at least you're not going to do it efficiently. But then you take those attacks a few times and suddenly you know, okay, here's the pattern or here's what he. I have to jump now when he does this or I have to parry or dodge or whatever.

And you learn. And there's a sense of empowerment and that you are actually getting good. And so I don't mind dying once if I can quickly then adapt the next time through. Yeah, you know that if you get your ass kicked, you know that like, all right, once I get this timing down, though, this is only going to get easier from here. Right. I have reason to believe that every time I go into this battle, I have a slightly better chance of overcoming it. And the battles, the parry and Dodge system leads to some interesting game balancing things. that are pretty unique to this game

where, like, if you really are getting good at paring and dodging, you can win some battles that you really shouldn't win. Like, I took a turn in the game recently where they were like, okay, you can do the main story or here's the side objective if you want to do the side objective. So I went to do the side objective, and I'm realizing, like, these enemies are strong. I ended up doing this boss fight that took me,

I think it must have taken me 25 minutes. It took me way too long because it wasn't doing very much damage, but I also was getting good at the parry and the dodge timing and all of this. So I was staying in the fight, slowly knocking away this damage, and at the end of the fight, I got a new pictos. And at the time, all of my pigtos were kind of like around level 9, 10, whatever, something like that. I beat this character, and the pictos I got was level 21. and it was like a huge, huge boost to one of my characters.

And so, like, you can just dip your toes in stuff that, like, you have no business doing yet in this game. Yeah. And it kind of intentionally throws stuff that's out of your league at you. Yep. Which I think you realize they throw this at you, like, in the very beginning of the game, they put an enemy that is several levels out of your reach, really. And you can, as I did stubbornly, go back to it repeatedly until you get the timing down and spend the time to beat this character

that you could otherwise probably beat in five minutes if you just waited a few hours later into the game. You can absolutely climb that tall hill and get to the top and get a reward that you really shouldn't have yet. Yeah, as you wonder around. Occasionally, it will tell you danger. You're attempting to attack an enemy that is probably too powerful for you right now.

Or sometimes not. Scattered around the world, there are these mimes that look kind of like the doll from the red light, green light game and squid game, and they're sort of terrifying after you fight them once because the first mime I thought just completely kick my ass. And it doesn't look that threatening. And then I was like, okay, I learned my lesson.

I'm going to level a while before I come back to fight this mime. But yeah, usually it's kind of telegraphed to you. So it's not like there's such a day. difficulty spike that you're sailing along and then suddenly you're like, what the hell just happened? But it will tell you you're in for something more challenging here usually. But then again, it will challenge you sometimes and you can actually rise to that challenge. It's at least theoretically possible that the floor won't be wiped with you. Because if your timing is perfect, then you won't get hit.

Because that's the great thing is that you can avoid every attack in the game, right? Yeah. So like, all you have to do is just perfect timing, just have it down pat. and it almost doesn't matter what your level is, you could conceivably beat it. I'm sure we're eventually going to see like no-hit speed runs of this game on YouTube is going to be insane.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's forgiving in other ways. So even though it's turn-based, there are plenty of concessions to modernity. So there are no random encounters. Every monster you fight, every boss is kind of out there in the world

and you can choose to avoid them or you can attack them and get the first strike. Also, frequent, saves, really at no point have I lost any significant amount of progress. True. So I appreciate that, you know, even if you get killed by a boss, worst case, maybe it's a boss that evolves and you might have to go back to the beginning of the boss fight, but you'll be right there.

So it doesn't, it's not punitive, really. And I appreciate that. And there's just not a lot of time in the inventory. You're not like picking up a lot of stuff and you don't have to sell anything, you know, And it's like, you don't have to figure out, do I keep this or do I keep that or what's my weight limit? Again, it sounds like I'm sort of sub-tweeting Bethesda games. It's just a very, RPG is a big tense that encompasses a lot of different role-playing games. And these are sort of diametric opposites in some way.

But like all that busy work. And some people enjoy that. And it's part of the fun of playing a character and playing a role. But it's sort of streamlined in this game and yet not dumbed down. Not dumb down at all. Yeah, they've struck that balance somehow. Yeah, virtually all of your time in menus in the game is arranging your pictos and luminas

and also choosing your skills. Every moment you're in the menu, you're customizing how your characters play, how your team interacts with each other. There's no busy work of organizing a billion inventory items and like, oh, I don't even remember picking up this cheese. I have like three extra broadswords that I guess I picked up at some point. Anyway, let's not jump ahead to oblivion, but again.

Yeah. And they're sort of soulslike elements. I know everyone says that everything is sort of soulslike, but just in the sense that you can rest at save points and it will regenerate enemies, but it will also heal your whole party. So there's a trade-off there and fill up your potions. Yes. And there's also character-discipline.

design-wise and world design-wise, I get sort of from software vibes a little bit from it. But also, like, Studio Ghibly vibes sometimes, too. It's, like, kind of cozy but also scary sometimes. I think it's one of the characters says about all of the creatures you encounter, beautiful in its own way, but deadly, her favorite combination, the painter's that is, who's creating all these things. And that's what the game goes for, too. Yeah, so correlation vibes.

Yeah, right. It's like, yeah, it's just slightly off, but also just majestic. And that Biococ Infinite Belle Epoch era of costumes and architecture, there's just a whole range of influences, as there usually is in any great art that synthesizes them effectively into something that seems original. The other thing is that performance-wise, and here again, there's a contrast with oblivion. Olivia's not coming out ahead in these comparisons, but there are ways in which it does things that Claire obscure just not do, very different types of games, different scopes, etc.

But performance-wise, I have not encountered a bug. I have not had a crash. In fact, the performance is so smooth. I'm always a performance mode over quality mode guy. Yeah. But in this game, it defaults to quality mode and I never switched it because. Oh, I switched. Honestly, I didn't even look at it until I put it performance.

There's no slowdown. I think maybe once when there was just like a ton of particle effects. and stuff exploding, I maybe noticed a little stutter, but that's it. I don't even know. We're both playing on PS5. It's been fine for me. So I've been impressed by that, too, because it looks incredible. Not all 30 frames per second are created equal, right?

Some games, when they're in quality mode, there is a lot of motion blur that when I spin the camera, I just nope out of. Yeah. You know, I'd rather just have like a clean 30. than like a motion blended 30 frames, which I think a lot of developers don't realize sometimes. But I just put it to performance. And immediately, and I in no way even once ever was like,

I wish this looked a little better. Yeah. Put it back to quality, though, and see if you even notice any slowdown because, yeah, I mean, it looks great either way. And there's like lore that you pick up, you know, audio logs, which is certainly not an innovation here, but because of the world building that they've done and all the groundwork that they've laid with the past doomed expeditions and no one knows what happened to them. And as you wonder around this world, you come across recordings or journals or logs from the past expeditions and they all perished in some tragic way, which is kind of funny in a sense, but also sad, but kind of clues you into a little bit more about.

this world, but again, a lot is left to the imagination. And there's just so many little touches, I appreciate. Like, after you have a rough battle where maybe a character almost dies, the character model reflects that damage until you heal. They're covered in like dirt and blood and grime and their closer tattered and everything, which just sort of reinforces the fact that, oh, yeah, that was that was a close call. We just escaped by the skin of our teeth because, you know, usually you're like down to 3 HP or something, and then you clear that battle, and everyone looks like they usually do. And I just, I appreciated that carryover from battle to exploration. Yeah, they look like they need showers in a big way. Yes, very much so. Every battle. Yeah. I also wanted to just touch on,

you know, we're painting this picture of the game, oh, good pun, huh? Yeah. Of the game being this very dark affair, and it is ultimately fairly dark ruminations on, on, um, but the game also, in a way that Final Fantasy, especially used to successfully, it has very lighthearted and silly moments that don't feel, they don't feel at odds with the heaviness of the subject of the game. There is great humor in this game at moments,

and there are funny, quirky characters, so it's not all a dark, depressing game. It is also a joy to play at times and optimistic and hopeful. So I just don't want to give the sense that it's all doom and gloom. No, definitely not. Yeah, I'm struggling to come up with anything negative to say. Like, it's hard even to nitpick this. I guess the platforming isn't very good, I guess. Like, there's barely any of it, but sometimes there are some challenges, though. There are some platforming challenges specifically that are optional. Yes, and they're kind of spoiling anything.

Floody and slippery and imprecise. It's not a platformer, clearly, and that shows. But yeah, you rarely actually have to do any intense platforming. It's just as part of a challenge or an optional exercise or exploration, if you want to get something shiny that you see from far away. Like, that's the only time when this feels anything less than finely tuned and polished. Is there anything that you don't like about this game? Uh, nope.

Yeah, I mean, really? Yeah, no. No, I don't think so. This is a rave review, folks. This is what it sounds like. Yeah, I just, I got nothing. I can't even come up with anything bad to say. That's even worth hearing.

Okay, I got one little thing. Okay, go ahead. It's one little thing. Yeah, and we've touched on it a little bit already. The magic system, the Pictos and Lumina, it is not super well explained. Yeah. And it does take a little bit of experimentation and toying around before you fully get a grasp of it. And that can be a little bit off-putting because as you're trying to figure it out, you're getting more and more Pictos and Lumina and you're starting to feel like, is this going to get overwhelming?

And you kind of figure it out, or at least in my case, you kind of figure it out right in the nick of time and get the hang of it. And you find, oh, this is actually, it works extremely well. see why they designed it this way, even if it is a little bit hard to convey at first to the user? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, as I was saying, yeah, it's hard to make it completely transparent from the get-go and yet also have it not be so simple that it would just be boring and repetitive if you're playing for 20, 30 hours.

But I think it does a pretty good job on the whole. Yeah, definitely I was, there was a learning curve, but I never felt overwhelmed by it. It was more like, okay, there's some tinkering I can do here, some exploration on my own. But, yeah, it wasn't off-putting in any way. And it eventually lets you develop your characters into really customized versions of these characters. You really can choose how, you know, what to lean on in battle, certain skills that you build your character around. You get a new weapon. Yeah.

Changes the element that you're using primarily for that character that leads to, different things that you hadn't thought of before with abilities that you already have. And they're just very satisfying ways to change your build that instantly feel like they make a tangible, significant difference to what you're doing. It's not one of those games where like,

oh, here's another ability that ups this stat by 3%. Like, I hate that in games. And every kind of rejiggering you do of your build feels consequential. instantly. Yep. No notes. Next to no notes. Oh, and the kicker is that this is essentially an indie game. It's the first game. It's the debut game by French Studio Sandfall Interactive made by a roughly 30-person team. That is tiny for a game of this ambition and this polish composed of many ex-Ubysoft devs. And Ubisoft is not known for its RPGs, you know?

Like usually you see people will split off from some massive game-making conglomerate and they will make something like what they made before. And that's not what's happening here. No, and they're also, unlike Ubisoft, not struggling anymore. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what pre-existing expertise, but it wasn't like they honed this on many games in this genre and then just transferred it to an original IP. Like, for a debut effort, you know, usually a game this polished.

I mean, this is a sequel or this is several sequels down the road, which makes me kind of excited about, you know, I'm not even really looking forward to franchising this because I'm just delighting in the fact that it's brand new and it's not a franchise when everything else in the world is. But if they do want to continue to this road, or if they just want to make something completely new and original, with the experience from making this game under their belt,

the sky's the limit. Because for this small a team as a first effort to make a game that wows everyone like this, I mean, that is pretty shocking. There are not too many cooks in the kitchen. They are the right number of cooks in this kitchen. And no one is getting in their way of each other. It is a five-star over-cooked execution in the kitchen. Yeah, yeah.

It feels like, yeah, the originality of, individual voices and creators is preserved here. It's weird enough that you know it's not like sanded down and, you know, thousands of people collaborated to make it, which is a nice thing about games that that can happen too. But you lose a little of the just singular voice that you get with indie games. And usually there's a tradeoff. It's like, okay, you get the AAA polish with this massive team.

But it takes years and years and years and hundreds and hundreds and millions of dollars. And then it kind of conforms to what we accomplish. expect that that game will look like because it has to justify that expense and investment. It has to make a zillion dollars and so it can't take too many risks. And with this game, you're somehow getting all of that just beautiful veneer and polish and depth and lengths, but also the individuality. And it's just like having your cake, eating it to the cake is not a why. I don't know how this happened.

I wish that other developers and studios could learn from this because the crisis of like games take too long and too much money to make and everyone's burning out. Do what they did. You know, easy for us to say. In some ways, this game feels like a response to virtually all of the criticism of FF7 rebirth, which got some flak for being overlong and kind of bloated with, you know, side activities that weren't necessary and just overstuffed. Yeah.

And this game feels like all of those notes were taken. But in reality, it's just that they only had 30 people. Yeah. So just imagine the Nintendo seal of quality, but the button mash seal of quality, we are putting it on this game pending some sort of horrible ending, which I have not heard any tell of. I haven't heard anything about the ending, so we'll see.

Yeah, and nor do I want to. So I'm just... And you should play this game soon. Yes. Because there are, as we mentioned at the top, there are some spoilers that, I don't know, a few days, weeks from now, people are just going to be like, well, people have had enough time and you'll get it spoiled for you and don't let that happen.

No. Be careful out there, everyone. I'm just glued to this game and I just hope that everyone will give it a chance. So from a contender for Game of the Year 2025, let's transition to a popular pick for the game of the year 2006, the Elder Scrolls for Oblivion, but first, programming reminders, as the expeditioners say, tomorrow comes. And each time tomorrow comes this week, a new podcast will come with it because we'll have a fresh Ringervverse episode for you every weekday. Next up is the April edition of Ringervverse Recommends, followed by Andor, episodes four through six reactions from the Midnight Boys, Pugh, me and Daniel on The Last of Us episode three and the Midnight Boys, Thunderbolts, asterisk reactions.

And House of Our will have three deep dives this week as well. The Last of Us episode three later today, and or on Thursday and Thunderbolts on Friday. And then just like on The Last of Us, the cycle of violence starts anew as the Midnight Boys kick off next week's Last of Us and indoor coverage with their instant reactions on Sunday. As you all know, you can watch the Midnight Boys and House of Our episodes at Ringaverse on YouTube. You can find us on the socials at the same handle. Plus, you can contact button mash via email at Ringervverse Gaming at Gmail. This episode is brought to by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess.

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Embrace a floral and fruity scent inspired by Rio's nude beach with chiqui bikini. Or caps your sun-kissed bliss with limonada gelada, where zesty Brazilian lemonade accord meets coconut milk and golden brown sugar. Don't miss Sol de Janeiro's limited edition perfume mist collection, only at Sephora. Okay, so obviously we talked more about Clare Obscure than we're going to about Oblivion, which I think reflects our excitement about this game, but also the fact that we're talking about a almost 20-year-old game here, and people probably have some sense of what Oblivion is. And the Elder Scroll 6 may be years away,

but in lieu of a sequel to Skyrim, can I interest you in a new version of the predecessor to Skyrim? Turns out a lot of people have been interested over the past week and really over the past couple of years because the fact that an oblivion remaster was in the works leaked in 2023 and the rumors escalated lately. But the actual release came the same day as the official confirmation, just a nice little shadow drop. I always appreciate when that happens. One of these days we'll wake up and we'll just have Silk Song. That's how it happened. But before Skyrim and Starfield, before Fallout 3 and 4, there was Oblivion, which came out in March of 2006, a few months after the release of Xbox 360s.

So how would you sum up the impression oblivion made at the time, the way it's regarded in the Elder Scroll series, its legacy 19 years later? I think the legacy of it is kind of like, I think that Skyrim was sort of the polished version of Oblivion, whereas Oblivion, a lot of the people who hold this game so close to their heart to this day, a lot of the joy of that comes from how kind of broken this game can get in like the most fun ways, the jank of it. Yeah. Just being an open world game where you can just break all the stuff.

And there's just a creativity in the jank that seems to remain. And has in some ways defined a lot of Bethesda, you know, games over the years. Like, you don't want to fully jank-free experience with those games, right? You want some weird physics here and there. and like, you know, some, I just killed this guy in the quest and this weird thing happened. Yeah, I don't know. And PC is just clipping halfway through a wall or whatever.

Yeah, it wouldn't be oblivion or Bethesda without that. And we're tolerant of that because, well, partly nostalgia, but also because of the scope and ambition of the game. So we're praising the polish of Clare Obscure. But Clare Obscure is a more curated, contained experience. It's more linear. There's exploration, certainly. You can do certain things at different times, but it's not oblivion.

It's not the Elder Scrolls, which is just we're going to plop you down in this massive world. You bust out of the stores, and here's where you should go, but also go wherever you want. Yep. And right after the launch of the 360, right, this was kind of, it was kind of a technological Marvel to a degree. I mean, it was never peak visuals despite, you know, because Bethes is not going to give you

the best graphics, but it was, you know, a pre-Breath-of-the-Wild open world, see that, go there, mess around with stuff, tear it apart. Yeah, even if unlike Breath of the Wild, it wasn't that you could just seamlessly climb every mountain. It was that you could kind of like bug your way to the top of it.

Like on Bethesda games, it's like, there's no real climbing mechanic sometimes. It's just like, you can do it. It's not really designed to let you do it, but also it kind of is. But it just doesn't look great when you do it. But yeah, it looks good at the time because that was sort of the beginning of the HD console era. And then Oblivion comes out and makes the most of that. And I do think that in retrospect, its reputation has suffered. somewhat, or at least it's been eclipsed a little bit, because Marrowind, the Elder Scrolls

Three, kind of created the template or at least expanded the template and was on consoles and was a hit and really just raised the bar for what you could accomplish in a game like this and how open-ended could be and how emergent the gameplay could be and everything. And then Skyrim perhaps perfected that. And then Oblivion is just in the middle. It's like an evolutionary link in the chain. and absolutely an improvement in many ways over Marrowind and a great game in its own right. But then the world, I guess, and even Bethesda has said this is a little less memorable than Skyrims.

It's a little samey, the classic fantasy kind of cookie cutter setting. It just has a little less of maybe an individual character or sort of a trailblazing status, I guess, in relation to the game that preceded it and then came after it. but it's still a legendary game in its own right. Yeah, I don't think I played a ton of this game when it came out. I think I only dropped it, I don't know, maybe like 15 hours in or something. I had barred it from a friend at some point. It wasn't until the pandemic hit,

and I dropped into Skyrim on my switch for 140 plus hours or something insane, that I really got into this series. So it's been great for me to check out Oblivion, you know, in a post-Sky-Rim world to see, like, what that one step before was and how they decided to polish some things up for Skyrim and vary the environments, as you were alluding to. Because, yeah, walking around an oblivion, the biggest difference in the environments is like whether you're inside the oblivion gate or not, really. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not really an Elder Scrolls head. I just, I find them a tad too intimidating. And that's not to say that I don't like games where there's a lot of exploration or emergent gameplay. But I just, I remember being so excited when Marwin came to Xbox and then just kind of bouncing off it. It was just, I guess the combat, you know, that's never a strength, obviously, of these games. So it's gotten better over time. And then just being set down in this world, And a lot of people find that freeing and exciting and liberating. And it is all of those things. Just, hey, you can follow the main quest line if you want.

Or you can just go do whatever the hell you feel like. And there's this massive world. And I find that that almost shuts down my interest at times. And that at least when it comes to RPGs, I tend to gravitate more towards something like Claire Obscure, where a, partly at this point in my life, especially just the time investment, if I can look at Clare Obscure and say,

I can beat this in 30 hours, and it's going to feel epic, but for an epic RPG that actually feels quite manageable and digestible. Whereas with an Elder Scrolls game, okay, if you just stick to the main quest line and do nothing but that, yeah, you can plow through it. But then you're missing a lot of what actually makes those games appealing. And if you really fall in deep, then you can be lost forever. And that's a selling point for a lot of people. But for me, that tends to be daunting.

Yeah, it's not really, you know, you can look at the playtime of an Elder Scrolls game and say, man, this is a hundred plus hour game and that sounds really daunting. But in actuality, it's not a game that you like need to spend 100 plus hours in. It's a game that you want to spend 100 plus hours in because it's just kind of relaxing to wander around the world, stumble into some things and get some new loose. and check another box off here and there and find a new quest. And there's really not an urgency to it that I think you find in most games that are obscene lengths like a persona or an Eldon Ring. It is definitely more just a thing you kind of vibe out to

as a kind of fantasy nerd. And it's been interesting, playing this game in the same year as I played Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. Yeah. Which is a series that I think obviously is very inspired by Elder Scrolls, but has a lot more of a rough start, like you're a weak character and everyone kicks your ass and you feel very much powerless at the start of that game. Yeah. And there's minimal handholding.

And I kind of felt like that's how Elder Scrolls game. used to feel, but jumping into it now after playing Kingdom Come Deliverance too, I'm like, I have a bow and my skills in marksmanship are pretty high, and I feel like I could pretty much kill anything right at the jump, which is a very different vibe. So that's been fun, I guess. Kingdom Come Deliverance, too, is great, by the way. Yeah, I was going to say that I wonder, Right, it's like, you know, until you take an arrow to the knee, I guess you're going to feel. Yeah, there's a wind up. Yeah, but it's, I wonder whether there will be a divide because this game has been well received, of course, and many people are playing it.

But I think a lot of people are revisiting it. And so they're just thrilled that the game that they remember in their mind's eye, it now actually looks like that. And it's more than just a fresh coat of paint. This is at least visually really. well designed. Like they've bragged about every single asset being redesigned from scratch. So this isn't just upscale textures. This is like new physics system. Everything rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5 with ray tracing and fancy lighting and everything else and, you know, made in collaboration with Bethesda, but outsourced to virtuous games and they have just a massive team working on

things. And so it looks close to on par with a modern game, at least, in some respects. Like, it's Bethesda and the characters are still going to look weird and uncanny Valley. And that was the case with Starfield, too. But it'll probably be the case with Elder Scroll 6 whenever it arrives. They love that weird, like, focusing where, like, you're walking around and then your focus is snatched from whatever you're doing. And someone is, like, just like half a foot too close to your face. Like, yeah, personal space invading you being like, the castle is on fire.

And they're like, whoa, whoa, taking a step back. Yeah, that's constant. And people who are playing this for the first time in a world with Baldersgate 3 and Dragon's Dogma 2 and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and all these games that kind of built on the foundation, or Skyrim for that matter, will they be as tolerant of some of that old school stuff? And that's why I think this remaster, it kind of has it both ways. And I think does a decent job balancing those demands because you want to. to please the people who remember the 2006 oblivion and just want to be transported back to that, you know, kind of like people who played classic World of Warcraft or whatever, or original Overwatch, or it's just, hey, I want to play the thing that I remember playing and

want it to be like that, but also look like it was made in this year. But you also want to preserve its essence. And so remake and remaster, these are squishy terms. And they really run the gamut when it comes to, okay, what's the difference between a remake and a remaster? And sometimes it is sort of a built from the ground up visual redesign. And that has happened here. And yet I think it's fair to call it a remaster. Yep. It's funny.

It's like if you look at some things that are called remakes, visually they are, but then they're even more faithful to the original than this game is. like they preserved a lot of that jank and character that you were talking about, down to some of the bugs. Like there are new performance problems also, which is not great, but also the old ways that the game can break because you could go anywhere and do anything and things go wrong when that happens. Also, even like flubs with voice acting, you know, famous lines where the voice actor says,

like, let me take that again. That's still in there. So they didn't fix that stuff and people wouldn't want you to fix that stuff. But they did update some things. So the UI, the interface is smoother. And they kind of address the level scaling, which is always a complaint about Oblivion. The enemy is just like leveling along with you and that being frustrating at times. And they've kind of fixed that.

Like, you can sprint now. You couldn't sprint in Oblivion. It's just these little things. And it's tough to strike that balance of, you know, it's just a remaster. it's a fresh cone of paint, it's a facelift, but it's also more than that because we don't want it to be super frustrating, but we also don't want to alienate

the people who remember the things that a more modern player coming to this for the first time might find extra frustrating. Yeah, I think they've done a great job of a remaster. Like, you shouldn't, if it's a remaster, you shouldn't be smoothing these edges, especially in a series where those rough edges are such a big part of the appeal.

I had a bug last night when I was playing where I was like, what the fuck is happening here? And I went to the internet and looked at a Reddit thread from forever ago and found out what the bug was. And got the same bug fix. Game Facts forum threads that will still be applicable here. Yeah, the same bug fix from way back when

worked in this one. And I was like, wow, it's a really genuine experience I just had of this 2006 game and yeah 20 years later yeah the combat system has been improved and the kind of convoluted leveling of your character I think has been streamlined somewhat and like there's a targeting reticle and third person view now just little quality of life things and also more significant things

but not really ground up remade the way that the visuals are And I think Bethesda said, we looked at every part and carefully upgraded it. But most of all, we never wanted to change the core. It's still a game from a previous era and should feel like one. Yeah, and they absolutely understood the assignment. And I think they did a great job of it. Aside from the fact that when I'm just walking around the world, sometimes, I get frame rate dips that are a little annoying. I get some weird visuals at night before it settles down into night mode.

I don't know, there's some weird, weird stuff going on in new ways that are in line with how it should feel, I think. But this is a game that I'm definitely enjoying. It definitely is an old game. You can feel that, but I don't think that, I think the visuals go a long way towards making it palatable for a modern audience. And I think it's a game that I'm not going to rush to beat, but I think it's also a game that I might never uninstall from the hard, drive. I might just live on there and I'll hop into it for a night here or there for, I don't know, until it's eventually done someday, you know? Yeah. I mean, how many times has Skyrim been released? So I guess they can keep releasing

this game over and over again as long as there's demand, which clearly there is. And just the response to it and the number of players who were playing this at the same time just goes to show how much goodwill there is and the fond memories that people, will retain for this game. So would you say, though, in a world with all of these more advanced, more modern RPGs that do what Oblivion did arguably better in some ways, and games like Claire Obscure, for that matter, would you recommend this for a first time player? Or is it mostly a trip down memory lane only? Or sort of like, well, if you want to be familiar with gaming history and memes. It would be edifying to play this and to understand the people who played this in the

past, but there are probably better options out there if you're just looking for a time sync RPG. I don't think it's an instant recommend for everyone, but as someone who didn't have a great history with the original, I'm certainly enjoying it. And I think that anyone who vibes with the kind of game where you love exploration and you love testing systems and breaking them. And if that's your vibe, just walking around and breaking stuff and seeing what's around the next corner,

and it all feels fairly low stakes, it's a game you can just put on whenever. There are people who are going to vibe with that, and there are people who, that's not primarily why they are going to play games. They want a snappier combat system, right? This is probably not for you. If you have no real interest in the gaming history here,

you might not be as friends. forgiving with some of the, you know, jank. Yeah. But it's definitely for a large subset of people worth your time. Yeah, it's a competitive genre, obviously, and not just clear obscure, but also avowed. Or, I mean, games that are kind of spanning the action and adventure RPG, Monster Hunter, Wilds. There are so many constantly coming out, whether it's straight-up RPGs or games with RPG elements. and many of them take many, many hours.

And so there's no shortage, but that's not to say that it has been surpassed and that memory and nostalgia is the only reason to play this game because it was great. It's not ancient history, first of all. I mean, if it were, then it would make us feel even more ancient, having been around when it came out and when its predecessor came out. But also, sometimes a game from that era will impress you and still have a lot to offer. and sometimes you just do need that sprucing up of the visuals to just make it a little more accessible,

you know, because it's not like the original game looks horrible, but if you didn't play it the first time, then you might just see it and say, I don't think so. Yeah, and the day you get your Switch 2 and you fire a Wind Waker on your Switch 2, a game that came out before this game, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, I don't think you're going to,

I don't think you're going to be swimming in jank or wishing for better visuals. Like, yeah, it is, it is, you know, something that not all games from back then felt like this. Right. Yeah, it totally depends on the systems and also just on the art design of the game. Obviously, like 2D games typically age well or better than early 3D games maybe. and we still have all sorts of retro throwback games made in that sort of S&ES 16-bit mold. And then there are games like Wind Waker, which was initially maligned at the time from people who thought it was too cutesy or kidsy. But then it turned out that the cell-shaded link aged really well and still looks fantastic even now, even without an HD version.

So, yeah, I think Oblivion, if you know what you're getting into and maybe you've gotten into it before or you're interested in getting into it for the first time, I think they had a tough assignment here just to take a beloved game and modernize it, but not modernize it too much and not piss off the original fans who wanted that essential oblivionness to be retained, but then also just lower the barrier for entry a little bit to the people who haven't tried it yet. It seems like they pretty much nailed that. That's exactly what they were going for. And it's a shocking amount of self-awareness for the company considering some of the issues that people had with Starfield. Yes, that's true. Yeah. And I like that impulse to just say, like, we don't have to fix wolves.

You know, we don't have to fix it in post like the George Lucas special edition. Oh, it could be just a little bit better. Sometimes it can. And sometimes those are actually additive. But then sometimes you tinker too much and you lose some of the charm in addition to just the historic value of what was this like to play at the time, which is sometimes a consideration with earlier games not being that accessible, which isn't so much an issue with oblivion, but with some games where it kind of becomes the default version of that game,

and suddenly it's different from what it originally was. And then there's also almost an identity crisis of like, what is the definitive version of this game? Which do we prefer? Which do we preserve? So, yeah, I think something for everyone in RPGs this week. Absolutely. If you want to just explore at your leisure to your heart,

heart's content. You want to break stuff. You want to mess around. You don't mind running into some bugs and some crashes. Then you've got oblivion. If you want just an absolutely perfect, but more self-contained and original and brand new game than you've got Clarebscure. And again, like, I'm so happy that people are enjoying this. Because you mentioned metaphor. And that was a hit. And that was an original series, but it was from Atlas. And so it had so much built-in credibility and people who were looking forward to that game. And this one, this was all sort of organically generated just from previews and people playing it and looking at it and thinking, wow, this looks incredible.

It's not based on past track record or pedigree of the developers or anything like that. It's just sort of started from scratch and it's awesome. So we're happy campers right now is what we're conveying here. Hopefully you can hear the giddiness in our voices. So even though the feed is crowded. I'm glad we got a chance to clear out and talk about these two games because just absolute landmarks. It's nice to recognize the old classics, but it's even nicer, at least in my mind, when we have a newly minted game that can just stand alongside. And you know what?

Hopefully, someday we're on this podcast going over the TV adaptation of Expedition 33, because that could be one of the greatest video game adaptations of all time if they decided to do that. I've been thinking that as I play, that this should be a series, this should be a movie, this should be something. It's just like too high concept, a premise and setting for it not to be. And the fact that the game is so successful, I'd be surprised if those conversations weren't happening already. Like split fiction already got optioned and Sidney-Sweeney starring it. And it's, you know, the director from Crazy Rich Asians and Wicked and, you know, all the muscle

behind that. And that was the weak point of that game, at least in our minds. That was less about the story and the characters than it was about the great gameplay. In this case, as we said, there just is no weak point. So we love Therps gear and also recommend oblivion if you're looking for a remaster of an almost 20-year-old game done right. So thank you, Matt, as always, for joining me and for sharing in my love of these games. What a joyous time to be here. It really has been. I can't wait to finish this and talk with you about it. I know.

Whether it's on air or off, hopefully we'll revisit this at some point down the road. Or, you know, maybe 19 years from now, we'll talk about the Claire Obscure Expedition 33 remaster. Not that it needs one. It just looks great. If the Pinterest hasn't erased us by then. Thanks to Devin Ronaldo for producing this episode and to our Juno Ramgapal for acquiescing to my request for double button mash this week. You can contact us at ring. orverse gaming at gmail.com.

And you can stay tuned for new pods every day this week, except Saturday, including more button mesh first thing Thursday. I will end this episode like Gustav ends his journal entries. For those who come after!