Video Gamers Podcast - Battle Royale Buffoonery, Forspoken, and Dark Alliance Impressions - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: March 25, 2021

Gaming hosts Josh and Paul are back with another This Week in Gaming and we’re diving into some recent news and releases. Did we just see the worst example of a battle royale to hit the gaming world? What the heck is Forspoken (should it be Forsaken?) and we chat updated Dark Alliance impressions and more in this week's amazing gaming podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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where we discuss gaming news stories that dropped here over the last week. I am your host, Paul, and I'm excited for some of these stories that we're going to talk about. And with me is my co-host, I can only hope he's as excited as I am. It's Joshua. Oh, wait a minute. That means I'm in trouble. What have I done? I'm sorry. Please don't ground me. It wasn't me. It was my brother. I have never heard anyone call you Joshua. Yeah, that's because I'm only called that if I'm in trouble. Like my mom and occasionally my wife, if I did something bad, I'll hear, Joshua!

And then I'm like, uh-oh. That's where you just go run and hide. Yes. So normally everyone calls you Josh, but I was just curious to see what your reaction might be. And also, have you ever known me to not be excited about something? That's very true. I can always count on you being excited no matter what. You know what I'm not excited about, Paul? What, what are you not excited about?

I'm not excited about Rocket League. Oh, were you in another tournament today or something? No, this wasn't a tournament. This was just the worst. I don't understand. Okay, so I've gotten really close to getting to diamond two in rocket league, right. Which will be the highest ranking that I've ever been and is getting very close to like champion level. Right. Okay. And like,

for no reason whatsoever, today was the day that I lost like eight games straight, could not score a goal. Nothing was working. It was like, and it wasn't even like I was playing like super bad. It's not like I was just like straight up whiffing the ball or any of that stuff. It was just like, I feel like every team we played were just like professional Rocket League guys. And I was like just touching a controller for the first time. I don't know.

You know me, dude. I don't know. You know me, dude. I don't rage quit very often, but I like straight up was just like after like the eighth loss in a row, I was just like, I'm done. I'm out, man. I'm out. I'm done.

I hate this game. And then just click. That's the worst. I hate when you get really close to those new peaks in like SR and then you just tank where it's like, even if the matches are close and you just lose that coin toss like eight times in a row, that's one of the reasons that I have not played Battlegrounds since I hit 7,000 for my SR. I hit 7,034 and I said, I'm not playing this game

at least for a week or two because I know I'm going to plummet 500 points. It's going to depress me and I'm just going to stay away. I'm just going to sit in the glow of hitting that new high, and I'm just going to let that sit a while. You're smart. You're smarter than I am, apparently, because I got butt hurt, man. I'm not going to lie.

I was mad, and I was supposed to be playing to have a good time, and then I got all grouchy from it, man. So I don't know. That's the worst. I hate when games are supposed to be fun and then they just leave you in a bad mood. Then it's like, what am I even doing? Well, keep plugging at it, Josh. You'll hit Diamond 2, I'm sure.

I'm sure. I'm sure. And you know what? Everything's better. We're recording a podcast, which always puts me in a good mood. That's good. And it'll just make Diamond 2 all that sweeter because you had to work harder for it. Oh, man. I can taste it. All right. So this week in gaming, there were quite a few news stories. I feel like we had a little bit more to work with this week than we did last week. Last week was a little bit of a down week for news.

But this week we got some really interesting game trailers, and I thought that's where we could last week. Last week was a little bit of a down week for news. But this week, we got some really interesting game trailers, and I thought that's where we could start off. So there was a little bit of coverage on our podcast of an upcoming game that was not yet titled called Project Athia by Square Enix. And this week, we had the official title announcement, where now we know that this game is called Forspoken. What do you think about that name, Josh? And what'd you think of this trailer? Okay. Number one, what the heck is Forspoken? I have no idea. My mouth goes to say Forspoken and my brain just shouts out Forsaken. Forsaken. The same thing for me. So it's like, watch, Paul. Forspoken, right? But

your brain is hearing Forsaken, right? Like, why? It's a little bit of an odd title. I don't totally understand what it's supposed to mean, but I guess I like it more than Project Athia. I mean, yes, that's true. But is that even an English word? Is forespoken? Is that like if you're married? Like, you can't ask for her hand in marriage. She is forespoken for. Sure, it is now. Use forespoken in a sentence, Paul. There's a new game out called forespoken.

No, that doesn't count. I tried doing a quick Google search, and I did find Forspeak, but there is no Forspoken on Merriam-Webster. So I'm going to go ahead and say they made up this word. Okay. All right, so this is a game that's still not going to be out for a while. It's not slated for release until 2022. But this was an interesting trailer because they did a little bit of a brief interview with an actress who did a lot of the motion capture and the voice work of the main character. And then they showed a little bit of a cutscene from the game. And then there was a little bit of like a quick montage of movement and gameplay skills in the open world.

What were your impressions from this, Josh? So initially, like this trailer shows, like you said, it shows the actress, but then it goes into the game and obviously it looks like the actress. So they did a lot of face capture and stuff like that for it. But she's hiding behind a pillar. And then this gigantic gigantic like dragon looking thing is walking by and i'm like i like i like me some dragons so i was like oh oh this looks cool like all right and she's hiding and there's some weird voice talking to her and then i'm kind of

like well that was kind of lame because then it cuts out for a little bit and then i was like that's it like what kind of trailer is is that? But then it started actually showing some gameplay. And I thought, like, that captured my attention. Because they had her, like, jumping and flying and dashing and, like, doing these weird, like, semi-teleport moves, almost. Like, I don't know. It's hard to describe. You have to just check out the video i guess but yeah that part got me like okay okay like this this game actually looks like it's got

some uh some interest behind it now yeah absolutely it's a relatively short trailer and the cut scene that they chose to show i guess it was kind of neat because you get to see the dragon but there's really no action in the cut scene so it's kind of neat because you get to see the dragon, but there's really no action in the cutscene. So it was kind of a funny scene to pick because it didn't have anything that would really ramp you up for excitement. But the one thing that I'm surprised you didn't mention is that she's trying to hide from the dragon, and she is not doing a good job. She would not do well in a game of hide and seek because her entire head is above the stone pillar and it's like what are you doing she's not even hiding well so like half the youtube comments were cracking me up where it was just people you know blasting her for not being able to hide and you know oh it's a good thing

that dragon didn't just look slightly to the right because she just got her giant head sticking up but yeah to me it was the last 15 seconds of that trailer that was just really amazing. The movement in the open world seemed very fast. And it was almost like she was jumping and blinking between trees. It was almost kind of like, I don't know if you ever saw the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where they could like fight and they were almost like half flying and jumping between trees it looked very crisp animation and action it had me very excited it looks to me like movement in the world is actually going to be fun and not a chore yeah one of the things too is like at one point i think it might have been right at the very end she did like a ground slam or something too and then like these like particles like yeah like came flying out and stuff and they showed uh like some big like

ogre looking giant troll thing or something too so there's gonna be like fighting in it she's obviously gonna be taking on these like mythological creatures or whatever but i i was very bored up until like the last 15 seconds but then when they showed that it was like that actually got my attention so i'll be very curious to see i mean square enix is a great developer so i'm i'm hopeful for sure um but i mean what is it gonna be 2022 before yes we're still at least a year away which is a little bit of a bummer away man i know it's it's hard to wait and with half these games getting pushed back nowadays it's rough uh we're not planning on talking about it but i saw that gotham knights got pushed back to 2022 and yeah just left and right these games getting pushed you really you really get to learn patience these

days with you know that that you know all those Steam sales and free Epic games? 2021 is going to be about catching up on those. I didn't know I bought this game. What's this doing in my library? Yeah, all those games have been sitting around, going to have to install and check out. So one other thing that I thought was really cool about this trailer before moving on was the graphics. Now, I know in these reveal trailers, a lot of times the games released, they don't look as good as you see in the trailers. But this to me was the first time that I saw a trailer where I thought, oh, this actually like even blows Red Dead Redemption 2 out of the water. And I didn't think I'd be saying that anytime soon.

That's a red dead is gorgeous. That's a bold claim, man. Because Red Dead is gorgeous. That's a bold claim. Yeah. But in this game, you see them travel between the forest and then also the desert, and it's almost like the Grand Canyon at the very end. And when you just see the resolution in the game and all the detail, to me, it looked incredible.

Like, the next-gen stuff is definitely here. Yeah. to me it looked incredible like the next gen stuff is definitely here yeah well and this game's ps5 and then pc which is interesting because it's like i i love that ps5 stuff is starting to release on the pc but then if you're on the pc is it's like pc and xbox are almost the same but it's like no you can't have an xbox but pc guys can yeah it's one of those very rare yeah you don't normally see that it would be like if it was a switch and ps5 exclusive or something like you don't normally see that combo yeah how funny all right so that's all that we had here for for spoken i'd highly recommend checking out that trailer and make sure you stick around for that last 15 seconds or so and then we have another

game that we had mentioned before that we said we were going to keep our eyes on and it's a game that is coming out very soon josh you don't have to practice a lot of patience this game's coming out on june 22nd it's a little game called dungeons and dragons dark alliance dude as soon as you say dungeons and dragons i get excited and then when said Dark Alliance, then I was like even more excited. But then I had to be like, wait a minute, where do we know this name from? And then it dawned on me that we talked about this probably, I don't know, four or five months ago. Because there was that weird, that very weird, like cinematic pro trailer thing that they did yep with uh yeah but anyway this looked a lot better they had a bananas trailer the last go-round but josh this trailer

was also kind of bananas because who who thinks dungeons and dragons RPG, you know what we need playing in the background? Ozzy Osbourne! Straight to Hell by Ozzy Osbourne. What? I know! Who made this decision? I don't know, but I like that guy and I want to hang out with him, to be honest. It was so funny to me.

Both of these Dark Alliance trailers have the last possible song, I would think. That song, Straight to Hell by Ozzy, just came out last year. So this isn't even a well-known Ozzy song like Crazy Train or Mr. Crowley or something like that. This is a 2020 Ozzy song on an RPG game when they're fighting dragons and trolls. This did have some goofy stuff in the trailer like you see these giant beasts that are like playing guitars and jumping into each other while the aussie song is playing and i'm like what is this i was gonna talk about the two trolls that chest bump in the air yes yes they've got these big old pot bellies, and then they're like, jumping chest bumps and stuff.

I don't understand the music choice, but I am all for it. I do have to put myself on blast a little bit here because I can't make fun of combining Ozzy with D&D. Because back when AOL Instant Messenger was the hotness, one of my usernames, because I would cycle through them and I'd make new ones based on whatever I was interested in. But for a little while, my screen name was Ozzy Everclear, which kind of tells you this came somewhere around 1997, because my favorite bands at the time were Ozzy and Everclear. This is when like, I will buy you a new life was on the radio. Yeah. So I've combined Ozzy with weird things before and now a dark Alliance has

done the same. Yeah. It's the, like I said, I don't know who their guy is. It's like the guy that like runs like the Wendy's Twitter or something, you know, it's like,

right. This guy is just bonkers. He's bananas. But like, everybody loves him because he's just crazy, man. But I mean, there was actually some decent gameplay footage. They had like a 10 minute kind of gameplay reveal kind of thing. And then they had the trailer, which was showing some in-game footage as well this game is straight up a cooperative uh like hack and slash adventure using some of my favorite characters ever i talked about

this last time but it's the uh it's the icewind dale heroes dris dorden caddy brie wolfgar and brunor Battlehammer. I'm assuming you can play as any of the four. They did only show two people at a time. They did not show a party of four. So I'm a little concerned, but I'm really hoping that it's four-player co-op. It is. It's still four-player co-op, but they removed the couch co-op mechanic in the game.

So now you can still play online, but it is up to four people. Is that really that big of a thing anymore, couch co-op? No, which is probably why they ditched it. I mean, they sounded really sad, because they were like, hey, we were really trying, but it just wasn't in the cards. Like, we're sorry, but no couch co-op. But there is online, which is, that's all that matters, man. Yeah, it is a little bit of a bummer, because I played the original Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 1 and 2 co-op with a buddy of mine, Andrew.

And it would have been neat to be able to go through it again co-op, but everyone will just have to buy their own copies and play it online. Now, they did make a couple other changes to the game, and probably the most important one is that they completely moved the camera and the perspective. Because the old school Dark Alliance games were very much almost like a bird's eye view, like Diablo. Yeah. But now it's more over the shoulder.

So it's more of like a traditional third person perspective, which I think is probably a good change. I think it is because otherwise it's just going to feel like a dungeon crawler, like a hack and slash, like, you know, like a Diablo clone or something like that. I, I like the over the shoulder. I was reading some of the comments on like YouTube and people were like, oh, I hate that they moved it over the shoulder. They wanted something, I guess, a little bit more traditional but i get it but yeah i like i think this game looks super fun like is it going to be cheesy as anything like yes it is is it is there anything like groundbreaking in the graphics department or any of that stuff like no there's not but i mean it just looks like a good time man i you know i i don't think this is going to be a game that we're insanely stoked for or is going to be earth shattering in any way. But I'm planning on picking it up because I can't think of another game like this. I mean, what, Avengers maybe? But I heard Avengers sucks, man. So much that I have not even tried Avengers, but like that, that third person over the shoulder kind

of brawler type game, you know, give me dungeon dragons universe. Give me these heroes that I absolutely love. Um, I mean the combat looked fast paced as anything they said, like each character has like 60 different moves, you know, ultimate abilities, like you get gear in between every mission you can like there's mission difficulty levels. So one of the things that they were talking about that I thought was really neat was like, as you go through a mission, you can stop and rest at a campfire. And if you rest, I guess it will, I don't know if it saves it or you can just save your gear or whatever, or you can choose to continue on. But if you choose to continue on, it ramps up the difficulty. I guess you have a higher chance of failure at that

point, but you also get better loot. So it's like this really neat risk reward system at the same time. I'm pretty excited, man. That sounds like just a bunch of fun to me with friends. Yeah, I had a very similar reaction. I thought that the animation and the dodging and all that stuff looked really fun. It looked slightly deeper than an old school hack and slash, because this one did seem to have more stuff in regards to like positioning. So you can put out like a poisonous cloud or you have have to avoid a cloud of ice and stuff like that. The healing abilities will put a marker on the ground, and you have to actually stand inside it. So all that stuff sounded kind of neat, where you're not just mashing the A button over and over,

but you actually have to do a little bit more thinking than that. But to me, it sounded a bit like Vermintide in regards to some of the stuff that I read. They said that in between missions, you go back to a central hub where you get your loot, and that there's going to be a total of seven quests that have three missions each. So it sounds like you swap out your gear, you open your boxes, you queue for another run, and it sounds like you'll probably just do a lot of quick play and just join others randomly and then you run through as a group of four but one of the neat things is that they did say the game would be 40 even for the ps5 version

so nowadays when a lot of these games are 70 bucks 40 is kind of like the new 20 game from the past that's a pretty good discount yeah i think so i mean it's one of like the new $20 game from the past. That's a pretty good discount. Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's one of those things where I don't, like I said, there's nothing groundbreaking that stood out to me about this game, but I think it's going to just be just fun. Like that's the easiest way I can describe it. The article that I was reading was the guy got to play it. And he was one of the things that he was saying does not come through in the video at all was like you can see damage numbers. And so he was like, the combat's actually a lot more visceral than it even looked like in the video because you don't see a lot of the other stuff that's going on while you're fighting because they wouldn't let them display the UI either. And then the other thing that I thought was neat was he was saying the combat's hard.

That was the thing, is he was saying they were playing with a really overpowered character, but he was like, it actually does require a lot of group coordination and dynamics and stuff like that. It's not just mash buttons as fast as you can and kill everything around you, because there's a lot of big monsters and they'll kill you quick, which I thought was nice, too. Like, I just, you know, I like games that have a certain amount of difficulty to them, because especially in co-op, like, I like being able to depend on you

to save my hide or vice versa or something like that. Yeah, and I want to be able to communicate over Discord and all of us use our individual characters to our strengths. And that way we know that the rogue is going around to flank and then the healer is over here, so I need to keep line of sight. And I think that would be a lot of fun. I know how much we all love the D&D mechanics of these kinds of games. And the idea of this one kind of being somewhat like Vermintide to an extent. We all love that game. So I think we'll definitely have quite a few people pick this one up, and I think we'll probably cover it for the show, for sure. Yeah. And I mean, like I said, I've mentioned they are staying true to the characters. Again, people that aren't familiar with the stories, but I did notice there's a point where Drist Dwarden summons Gwenevar, his astral panther cat thing that he has.

So there's a few people out there that read the books that are going to nerd out with me for a second there. But it does look like they're actually sticking with what makes these characters unique and some of their abilities and stuff too which should translate to the combat really really well because these are some of your like most powerful like recognized like dnd characters and so the fact that they're sticking with those and what they're good at and kind of some of their abilities and stuff i think is is going to be a really neat touch too definitely. Definitely all good signs for Dark Alliance. And June! It's coming out in June, man! That's not that far!

I feel like this is the only game other than Outriders that's coming out in the next six months that's anywhere on my radar. Right, yep. And coming up next, there was another trailer that dropped this week, and if you thought combining Ozzy Osbourne with Dungeons & Dragons was weird, just wait for Final Fantasy VII The First Soldier.

Because, boys and girls out there, we're getting a Final Fantasy VII Battle Royale. Everyone's been asking for this, Josh. Baby. You know, my grandpappy. Everyone has wanted this for years my great great grandpappy had a saying that has stuck with me through my entire life and that saying is just because you can do something doesn't mean you should well wait it gets better so not only are we combining final fantasy 7 you know a turn-based rpg somehow with a battle royale this is coming out on mobile

this is not even on pc or console this is a mobile battle royale set in the final fantasy seven universe this trailer for this looked absolutely terrible like i don't know tell them to put the drugs away or something man because i watched this the very first thing i saw when the trailer starts is it says on ios and android and then i went okay thank goodness because that means i don't have to play it right and then number two there's a part where they show it's got the final fantasy ui and the you know all that stuff and then there's a part where it shows somebody with a sniper rifle zooming in on somebody. And the dude is standing completely frozen still. Like, in a battle royale.

Like, who does that? So this guy just... But he's still for like four seconds. And I'm just watching. And I'm like, that's the worst player I've ever seen. Well, they don't just do that once. They do it like three times in the trailer where you see someone sniping and

someone's just standing still. Oh my goodness. Oh, and then it made me laugh because you see that like one character is on a motorcycle, but then the guy's riding a chocobo right next to the motorcycle. And I'm like oh man this is just this is so goofy and i start scrolling through the youtube comments and i think

it was the second or the third highest upvoted comment but they just said this is officially the weirdest thing to ever be made and i am totally with that person because this is just strange it's just bonkers why that's all i can say is why just like like i said is number one the battle royale genre has been around for a while now so if you're just getting into it you're really to the show number one you know what i mean and it's like nobody on the planet went man you know what know what? I would really, really want to play as a Final Fantasy Battle Royale. Here's the best part. Not only are the people standing still for four seconds while they're waiting to get sniped in the head, but there's one part where they

obviously want to make this look like Final Fantasy. So this guy is running up to another character. You can tell, man, they're about to duke it out, Battle Royale style. And the guy stops, and he starts casting this big, long summons, and he summons Ifrit. And it takes like eight seconds to summon Ifrit, and Ifrit comes crashing down, and then starts attacking the other guy. And I'm like, so you're just going to sit there

for eight seconds while you wait for this summons to finish? You know what I mean? Just snipe him in the head. Yes, exactly. In those eight seconds. I don't get this, man. And all I could sit there is just laugh and go, why? Why would you do this? This looks absolutely atrocious. You couldn't pay me to play this game, man. It's just so strange. I read a couple articles about it, just trying to figure out the why component of this. And the only thing I could find is that the developers said that

the Final Fantasy VII demographic is a very limited and age-specific demographic aka people who were like teenagers when the ps1 came out right and they were saying that that demographic loves battle royales so therefore let's toss this out there i guess i i don't i don't get it whatever oh my goodness yeah i don't think this is a game that either of us would pick up. I mean, you don't do mobile gaming anyway. No, thankfully no, because I have zero temptation to even look at it. I don't know, man. That was one where I shook my head and I was just like, just because you can doesn't mean you should, man.

So strange. And then, since we're running out of time here, we have just one or two last minutes but i did want to mention because this is more my kind of thing here but payday 3 which was officially announced all the way back in 2017 now has a release year and boy josh you wanna you want to learn patience this game is being planned to come out in 2023, but it is now fully funded, and they are developing it. They're still releasing content for Payday 2.

I don't know if you knew that, but they are now working on Payday 3. And I was just kind of curious, anything in particular you'd want to see in a Payday 3 game? Just make it different, you know what I mean? If you're telling me that we're talking about release years versus release dates you know at that point like don't just make it a clone of payday 2 like spice it up a little bit more you know i mean it's kind of like payday vermentide like it i don't want to have the sequels feel like the first one,

because then they're just going to get old really, really fast for me. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think for me, I'm hoping that they move away from the arcade shooter elements and make it a little bit more stealth-based, make it a little bit more gritty and realistic. For me, that would be kind of like my dream, is to play a heist game that is more like the movies, whether it's Den of Thieves or Heat or Logan Lucky. I want that kind of heist. Or like GTA Online.

They had great heists. GTA Online. Give me GTA Online, but a little bit of the payday setting and some of that stuff. Give me a hybrid between the two, and I'd be all for it. Yeah, I'm with you there as well. For this one, we'll have to wait at least

two years, but at least we know Payday 3 is already funded. It will come out. It's just a matter of when. So we'll have to wait. Alright, well that's all that we have here for you guys. Hope you enjoyed hearing about this week in gaming we will be back with an episode on monday we're going to be doing a bonus round

episode and i believe todd will be back with us for that one so we are going to be coming out with some kind of idea for a tournament we have not decided what that will be yet so we'll have to brainstorm and figure that out here in the next couple days. But we will have Todd with us. And then come check us out on social media at MultiplayerPod, on YouTube at MultiplayerPodcast. And if you would like to help support the show, which we would truly appreciate, you can head on over to MultiplayerSquad.com and you can choose to support the show with one of the tiers starting off at $5 a month. Since the show is run independently by us dads, we would love to have that support. You can also subscribe, leave a

review, rate our podcast five stars, and that will help the show out tremendously. And then we will be back with our episode on Monday, and we will see you guys then. See you, everybody. I got nothing. I got nothing, man. I went blank. I was just kind of zoning out while you were doing the outro, and then I was like, oh, crap.

And then my brain was just frozen. Like, yeah, no.