Video Gamers Podcast - [Bonus Episode] The Squadcast - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: July 20, 2024

We're celebrating the weekend with a free release of our awesome BONUS EPISODES. Usually these episodes are reserved for our official Squadmates that support the show, but we wanted to say thank you to everyone that has given us a listen. The Squadcast is a twice a month gaming episode where we get a little more laid back, a little more silly and a little more in depth. Filled with gaming chat, video game questions, entertaining banter and a whole lot more they're the perfect episodes to kick back and listen to. We hope you'll enjoy this FREE bonus gaming episode. Thanks for supporting the show! Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

hello everyone welcome back to another video gamers podcast squad cast i am your host paul and i am here with josh hello what's up my people my gamers, my brothers and sisters in gaming? What's going on? What an intro. So much energy. And Ryan! Dang, Josh bringing the heat today. We gotta pump this energy up, man.

Also, I'm really tired now, guys. Sorry. Just burned out quickly. Very nice. Alright, guys. Let's just hit the ground running here what question what questions what games have you guys been playing lately outside of the pod ryan what you've been playing man other than here other than quarter of a million dollar golf courses oh geez that's just

for the membership that's annually that's bananas dude yeah anyways um i have been playing a whole heck of a lot of once human and then the other game i've been playing quite a bit of and i'm gonna give you guys a little little game sound effects here see if you can guess it oh oh oh yeah that's the best if i've ever heard it best game of the 2020s tears of the kingdom the Kingdom. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I can't even. No, quick story. Somebody saved me. My wife was in the other room, and she's like, what are you guys playing? And I started cracking up laughing. I'm like, oh, I know.

I know. She's like, it kind of sounds like sexual. And I was like, yeah, I know. Good old Tears of the Kingdom. I love it. I love that you and Jackson are back into it. And you've been having fun with Zonai devices, you were telling us. Oh, dude, I figured out a good kind of run through to farm all the mats and stuff.

And we've just been building the most ridiculous things. It's been fun. Yeah. I have also been playing a fair amount of Once Human. I know that we're going to talk a lot about that for the Twig episode on Thursday. So I think we'll hold off on most of our thoughts josh i couldn't help but notice that you're playing a fan-made expansion of slay the spire instead of spending time in a real game with me and ryan get him no no okay why do you hate us that's a fair that is a fair question let me give you a little glimpse into the life of josh so you guys know i loved Hearthstone, right?

Used to play Hearthstone a lot. I need a game. There are many a time where I eat at my desk because we like to surf the internet or we're just not eating like together. You know, people got stuff going on. It's just like, hey, come get dinner or, you know, you're playing a game. Brandy will bring me dinner at the desk and it's great, right? But I have always had a game

that I can play while I'm eating. Okay, and that used to be Hearthstone, but you guys know I hate Blizzard now and I refuse to play Hearthstone again. So I remember- Yeah, you play Overwatch, but go ahead. I can see your activity. Don't question things, Paul.

So I remembered, ooh, I have Slay the Spire and I haven't played that in a while. This would be the perfect game to play while I'm eating. The only time I have Slay the Spire and I haven't played that in a while. This would be the perfect game to play while I'm eating. The only time I play Slay the Spire is if I'm eating something or I have like 10 minutes because we're about to leave to go somewhere and it's like, don't have time for anything else because that game loads in like two seconds. So and the downfall expansion was a fan made expansion that the devs love so much that they said,

we approve this as like an official thing. And so you can download that too, which is great. If you like slay the spire, it's a great expansion to it. That'd be awesome. If they said, Oh,

this is great. We're going to see you trying to type stealthily to Ryan. I'm not typing anything. Also, you can totally farm mats on uh once human one-handed just go around and just f i did the other day my fever kicked up and i was eating like a bowl of something and no problem you had a fever just no my feet were kicked up on the desk i thought you said my fever kicked up and i was like oh i mean that's i got a fever and the only prescription hey there's more once human i i will guarantee you something locked and loaded josh guarantee if you guys are on once human and i'm not doing anything i will absolutely join you 100 of the time all right i'm glad i'm

glad to hear that because if we were playing once human and you were playing slay the spire i would feel a little sad i mean slay the Spire is a fine game. For all the hate you give mobile games, Josh, it's a mobile game at its heart. It's a very good scaled back card game, but it's no one's game. I'll take gaming with my homies anytime over a single player card game.

It's just because I was eating and like, oh, I need something. Gaming with the homies. Gaming with the homies. There go oh very nice all right so moving on in our outline here uh for listeners who don't know josh puts together our squad cast outline oh don't you blame me paul i like oh no i'm giving you credit i'm not blaming you i'm just kidding this this is a good question we've we've we we have pushed this question several weeks, actually. We're finally getting around to it. So basically, Josh, you want us to talk a little bit about content drips

in games, what pulls us back into them. Famously, in the last couple of weeks, we've seen this with a lot of games. Pal World, they released a pretty big update. We have not really seen a whole lot of response on our Discord. I did see that there was a little bit of an uptick in people playing, but for the most part, people kind of seem done with Palworld. Helldivers 2 has had a constant but small drip. It seems like some people have finally lost their luster for Helldivers 2. Hogwarts Legacy released, if you want to call it an update, it's almost nothing nothing it's a valid point into the question though yeah they released one quest and some minor cosmetics so what is the line what does it take for you to jump back into a game that you have quote already had enough of

uh this is very easy for me it is something called called Phantom Liberty or Shadow of the Earth Tree. So you need a full blown $40 expansion. Otherwise you're not really interested. Yeah. I mean, for me personally, you guys know I have a really, really hard time going back to a game that I've already played. If I'm going to go back to it, it has to be something that really wows me. I brought up the Hogwarts Legacy thing thing because you know like hey guys we just released our summer update for hogwarts legacy it's a new quest and some cosmetics like yeah are you going back to play hogwarts legacy because they did that like it just doesn't make sense to me you know it's free free advertising they just want an article written i think that's what it comes down to i think it's smart.

And I'm not throwing shade against anybody that was like, well, I went back to it because I wanted to see what the quest was. Hogwarts Legacy is an amazing game. And I know that there's people that love their comfort games and they'll go back to them time and time again, like you two. But it was more just that kind of funny, like, is this even content? Like, what does this do? And I think you're right, Paul. I think it's just an excuse to get on a gaming website to say, hey, don't forget about this. Personally, I do need like a full-blown

DLC. I need, you know, Downfall, the expansion for Slay the Spire for me to go, ooh, well, what's that? Or something really spectacular like Phantom Liberty or Shadow of the Error Tree or something. What about you, Ryan? It's not too much that it takes to get me back into a game usually, but to keep me there, usually I have to

have really liked it before or not written it off already. I just, with one of the new seasons for Diablo, my buddy was hyping me up and saying it's really good. And I saw from a couple other people, they said the same, hopped in, had a blast, played a lot of it. Equally so with Destiny, the, you know,

the finality of Destiny. The same guy was hitting me up, want me to come back, bunch of new stuff. It's better now, it's fixed. I've already written it off. I'm done. And I didn't come back to it. I wanted to. I was tempted to.

But it just wasn't there. So to draw me back in, I have to have that, like Josh said, the comfort with that game, that familiarity and the want to play. And so if I get some new content with it, that's the best part. But yeah, it's tough to get me back into certain ones unless you know the homies are playing and we can all get hyped up then then i'll definitely hop in yeah for me i almost never get back into a game because of new content yeah i will replay a game but it's almost always the base game and it's because i either want to

experience the story by making different decisions. Like if I play Mass Effect, I'm going to go Paragon the first time every time, but I want to play it again and go Renegade and get all the comedy and all the extra scenes you don't get and all the backstabbing and the violence. And there are other games that I will replay if I can switch my class, and then it feels like a totally different game. Again, Mass Effect does this beautifully. I'll play it once, Paragon with like a biotics build, and then I'll go Renegade with like an engineer build. That's what I want to replay a game with. If there is new content, I will almost never pick it up. I can count on one hand the number of games I've played DLC for,

and I'm going to tell you right now, they're all Mass Effects and Dragon Ages. I don't do DLC for anything else. I just don't care. I like the base game. You get the conclusion usually, and then I turn it off. If there's new DLC, I don't really care. I get that FOMO, man. See, so this is my question, Paul, because I have to ask, is this because you feel like new content requires you to play through the game again? Like from the beginning, because I know like we've talked about Phantom Liberty and Cyberpunk is one of your favorite games of all time, you know? And it's like you have said, yeah, I'm not going to play Phantom Liberty until I can replay Cyberpunk again, because I feel like I feel very awkward jumping into a playthrough where I don't remember what I was doing. I don't remember my builds and that kind of thing. So it's like, but Phantom Liberty is fantastic, dude. Like it's everything you love

about Cyberpunk. So like, do you not have a little bit of the FOMO? Does it just really like, you're like, I played Cyberpunk. I'm done with it at this point. I will absolutely play the DLC when I feel the urge to restart a Cyberpunk playthrough. When, when we picked up Phantom Liberty, we were going to talk about it on the show. So I already bought it. But when I jumped in, they, they changed so much with the skill trees that I'm sitting there staring that I've got these like 130 points or whatever to spend. And I just don't know where to put them. And they've changed so much about gunplay and melee builds. And I'm like, well, now do I have to go do like an hour and a half of research just to know what kind of build I want? And I just sort of like clicked and picked some stuff and I played for about an hour and I was like, you know what? I'll come back to it when I do a full playthrough. So the few times that I have done DLC tends to be,

okay, I'm ready to play this game again. Now that there's some DLC, maybe I'll pick it up. Maybe I won't. Like Inquisition, Dragon Age Inquisition does have like after the game ends major story implications. So I did pick that up and I played it, but honestly the game ends major story implications so i did pick that up and i played it but honestly the game kind of ends in a good place as is you don't even really need dlc i'm usually just fine with the base game so you're saying if if they came out uh rockstar comes out with surprise dlc for red dead you're to replay the whole game through to play that DLC? Really? That's what I'm saying. With Paul, I believe it 100%.

It's just weird because it's like I would jump in to play just the DLC and I would fumble my way through the first two hours. I felt the same way you did, Paul. I didn't know nothing, man. You and I both have a little bit of that choice paralysis where it's like I don't really want to spend these skill points because I'm worried I'm going to spend them wrong or something like that.

But it's like you do just kind of get into the flow. Your body starts to remember your brain's kind of like, oh, yeah, I remember this character. And yeah, I remember how to drive now and that kind of stuff. So it's like I will get past that awkward phase to avoid having to replay the game so that I can experience the new content. Whereas you're okay just saying, I'll just wait until I get the urge to play this game again. And then I'll have that little bit of a new experience to go along with it. Yeah. If it's like a 10 hour expansion, I want to enjoy all 10 hours. I don't want to fumble for the first four and now I'll appreciate the last five to six.

So yeah, certainly like Hogwarts legacy. I don't know that I'll ever launch it again. And I absolutely love and treasure that game, but there are no choices you can make that are going to make me want to replay it. The gameplay was great, but you can't like completely change your build.

It's not like Diablo or world of Warcraft or something. So, you know, I love it. I'm not going back for one small of Warcraft or something. So, you know, I love it. I'm not going back for one small question and cosmetics. I can certainly tell you that. Yeah. All right.

So let's continue a little bit of these, you know, pick one out of threes that we did in the last squad cast. So we are looking at Dune Awakening, Judas, and the new fable, which of course we don't really know anything about quite yet. We don't really know anything about any of these, really.

I mean, we have a little bit of info. We've seen footage of the other two. Now, the kicker here is that whatever you pick, the other two go away. Like, you don't get to play them. For me, I'm crossing out Dune Awakening immediately. I am very concerned about that project. I love the Dune movies. i do not have a lot of confidence in dune awakening so for me it's between the other two judas i feel is the safer

pick because we've seen more and we know that it's a good project fable i'm not convinced that they've really started anything to be honest i mean i really just don't know i think fable for me has the higher ceiling but i i would have to say judas if i had i really just don't know i think fable for me has the higher ceiling but i i would have to say judas if i had to pick today that's what i'm disappointed you don't have to see anything it's fable man it could be great it could be horrendous it may never come out we don't even know we know zilch about it don't put that evil on me this is crazy this just goes to show you how different we are as gamers but this is also what makes things awesome because i'm picking dune awakening like legitimately i mean

everything that i've seen about the game so far albeit that is limited is looking really good i love can't ride the worms i love the dune universe the worms i get that the worms are like just a threat you know right now and of course you have to leave room for expansions paul so you know i i've just i've been hungry for that mmo i'm i'm pretty much done with first descendant at this point i really have lost my will to log in and play and i think everybody andy knows it so like i i'm not like racked with guilt there either, but I love that like MMO type feel. And if Dune Awakening gives that to me, then I'll take it. I'll be sad about Judas.

Judas, I think is going to be Bioshock four, basically where it's going to be like, this is all very familiar. It's awesome. I know it, but I already played games like this at the same time. And I'm kind of with you guys on fable.

It's kind of like, I don't know what to expect with Fable, man. Fable, when it came out, was so groundbreaking. But how's it going to be groundbreaking now? Everything that Fable did in the past has been done a million times since then. So either you have to innovate something completely amazing, or this has to be the most polished, fun game to play to live up to that fable name and i just don't know yeah i i totally hear you so ryan you're just banking on the ceiling of fable and how good it can be is that the thought process here put it all on black put it all the eggs in one basket and i do want to say speaking of mmo type games there just happens to be one that you know maybe your other two hosts are kind of playing right now but i wasn't gonna say it yeah i'll say

it okay okay number one i played the other night by myself and gained a couple levels and i was like hey i'm level like 20 now and i it opened up eternal land and something else that i have no idea what it that's mean the main thing is i just don't know what most of this crap is man it's such a high learning i mean i'm so much i hit level 20 i've got eternal land now a whole bunch of things popped up and i went i don't know what any of this stuff means what the heck are star crumbs what is stardust for what's a stardust generator i can make a stardust deflector wall like i don't even know what stardust is and you're telling me i can build all these things in this game i like the game i really do and i have been playing but it's just i don't even know what Stardust is. And you're telling me I can build all these things in this game. I like the game. I really do. And I have been playing, but it's just, I don't know. I'm having a hard time with like getting sucked into the game. And I want to because I see you

two kind of getting sucked in and it's like, well, I want to get sucked into, but it just hasn't done it yet. And it's nothing against the game itself. It's got its pros and cons. I almost feel like you have to go to once human college and learn all these systems and all these screens. And the fact that I was like level 23 before I even knew to check for season rewards. And then they're like, here's 48 ciphers to go unlock a million new things. I was was like oh my goodness this game it really is live service gaming there is a lot i think it's more akin to an mmo than it is something like rust yeah all right well we'll get into more details for for twig on on thursday all right next question here host question would you rather own a bird a snake or a rabbit the

answer is no you don't want any of them i don't want any of these what i don't want any of them either i don't want any of them man no you guys never wanted any like a cool snake as a kid i we had a snake when i was a kid actually we've had a couple snakes in my lifetime my mom had a snake and then my sister had a snake and snakes are dumb dude like it's cool to have a snake and i I think it's really neat to feed a snake and watch how they actually constrict an animal and then swallow it whole. And it's like, whoa, that's really neat. But then they just sit there, and they do absolutely nothing. That's true.

And then it's like, no, dude, look, I can wrap it around my forearm. And it's like, and then what? And it's like, I got a snake on my forearm. And I'm like, but it's not doing anything. Walk around the mall and be that weirdo with the snake. Yeah. But I don't know if you guys have thought of this though with the bird i would get a falcon and then you could hunt with it dude have you guys seen the videos of the dude that's in arizona that hunts pigeons with his falcon and gets them off of like people's houses and stuff

no but i'm gonna find that ever he's got videos right he's got like reels and stuff you just see him driving down the street real slow and it's like he knows the house and and then he sticks his arm out the window with the falcon and then he just like whistles and the falcon just rockets off to where the pigeons are roosting above the windowsills on this person's house obliterates these pigeons i mean yeah paul like feather explosion and then the falcon just comes back and lands on the guy's arm and it's like job's done dude that's awesome yeah that's funny that's pretty good um if i had to pick one of these i will say i'm going with a bird but i'm getting one of the big like large smart birds like the afric African gray parrots or the cockatoo.

That's like the big one that they snuggle you and stuff like that. I ain't getting a little squeaky cockatiel love bird type thing. That's just going to never shut up. But if you get like one of those crazy parrots, they live to be like 85 years old. Like, do you want, do you,

do you really want to own a parrot for the rest of your life? Cool. Yeah. I mean, if that dude's like chilling with long and he's hugging me and he's sitting on my shoulder while i'm playing games you know and falling asleep and stuff like that like yeah dude i'm all right with that well we we own a rabbit and i i don't like it i don't want to own a snake and i don't want to own a bird i feel like birds are going to make noises that are going to bug me and i don't want to own a snake and I don't want to own a bird. I feel like birds are going to make noises that are going to bug me. And I don't want feathers getting loose.

Like in my house, I will say Ryan introducing like the more predatory birds. I have a little bit more interest, but only slightly snakes. I don't want to walk. I don't want to have to go to the store and like buy mice. Like, I don't know how often you feed them,

like once a week or whatever. I don't want't have to go to pet smart and have to buy another mouse and then feed it i i guess i guess i'll go with bird my brother too had to my brother marcus had a couple snakes and he he was like oh i don't want to do that either so he started having his own rats at home and then they all multiplied to like a million he's like i got too many rats you gotta help me find somebody to take that's a real problem i was helping him find places to take the rats and then no stores wanted them or a few would take a couple of them but not all of them and he just had he had an overpopulation of rats it was hilarious oh my goodness yeah then you buy a cat then you buy

yeah you just gotta keep adding more and then you have a farm like Paul. Yeah, that's how it happens. All right, moving on to an industry question here. So shocker, I can't believe this, but Microsoft is talking about raising the price of Game Pass. They are adding a standard tier. I know that we all kind of took a look. These aren't huge price hikes. It's $2 or $3 a month that they're adding to all the tiers.

And if you decide to go with the new standard tier you don't get the day one titles that you do for the higher tier so if you want you can save five bucks a month for standard but then you don't get the day one titles i don't know i guess i'm not shocked i feel like there's three guarantees in life death taxes and subscriptions raising the price of game pass yeah like how do you guys feel about it because i don't think any of us have an active game pass subscription do we i do not i don't i have created like six or seven different ones over the years to try out a game or something but um it's it's tough because especially now we're kind of seeing the price of everything going up,

you know, I mean, inflation and just the economy and stuff like that. And, you know, people, everything's costing a lot more money and it kind of sucks, you know, but at the same time, when everything's costing a lot more money, you kind of expect that, you know, Hey, the subscription is going to go up a buck or two or $3 or something like that so i don't like it but i still feel like the value you get for having game pass is worth 20 bucks a month which i think is what the premium ultra tier cost like yeah game pass ultimate 20 a month for to have access to like 5 000 games is is that's worth it man i mean i'm paying what is it 8.99 a month for peacock to stream parks and rec we're paying 8.99 a month for crunchy roll so that we can occasionally watch

an anime if we want to it's like i i rarely use those you know and it's like if i had game pass i'm playing video games all day so it just makes makes sense. Depends on the kind of gamer like Ryan and I would be fine playing X defiant and once human. And those are just free. And we would be fine playing nothing but that for a couple months. But especially for someone like you, Josh, where you want to hop around a lot. Obviously, the game pass is a far better value than buying all this. I mean, it is case usage.

I will say that. I mean, there's a lot of people on our Discord server that use Game Pass a lot and they talk about their favorite games on it. I mean, it is a limited library, even though it's a big library. There are games that you're going to want to play that just aren't on it, you know, and then you got to debate like, do I want to go pay for this game that I want to play, but I'm still paying 20 bucks a month for Game Pass. I think it's a case by case usage, but I will say as much as I hate all the price increases on everything, $20 a month for game pass i think it's a case-by-case usage but i will say as much as i hate all the price increases on everything 20 a month for access to that much still seems

like a no-brainer to me yeah that's i mean that's not that bad uh 20 bucks a month i actually i don't know if you guys know this did i tell you that i got an xbox the no the series the s is the newest one right x series or series x okay yeah it's i don't have it yeah i don't know it's an x is the better one than the okay because i well you guys know after our fan fusion thing i got super overhyped yeah and i bought that 3d printer and then i didn't like it and i found a guy that traded me an xbox for it i'm like okay that'll work and so i got it in my daughter's room now but i may sign up for that honestly because she's kind of just starting to develop like what she likes as a as a gamer and she's getting she's playing a ton of stardew valley and don't starve right now but it may be cool to sign up something like that so they could try a bunch of different games see what type of games they like you know before we have to start shelling out money for it so but yeah i mean like you guys

said everything uh everything's going up nowadays anyways but you know luckily all the all wages kind of follow suit right yeah yeah yeah definitely we're making more i'll make more money no yeah yeah wait no we really are wait what it's not going to the CEOs, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's at 20 bucks a month. That's hard to beat. If you figure if that's all you pay for over the course of a year is just Game Pass, you're getting amazing value. There is a thing to be said when you sign up for too many services and you're no longer using them.

Like if you have Hulu, Netflix, Peacock, Paramount Plus, Crunchyroll, and MGM Plus, and you start adding all this up. Obviously, it's stupid, but yeah, $20 a month, especially if you've never had an Xbox or a gaming PC, go play all those Microsoft exclusives and have an absolute blast. And you can always just quit and reactivate it later. It really is a great deal. All right, moving on to a host question. What is the game that you have played over the longest period of time? And what's the secret sauce that kept you going back to it? I know Paul's. I know Paul's. I know Ryan's too, I think.

Oh, yeah. You don't know mine. It's PUBG for Paul. Yeah. PUBG. Over the longest period of time. This isn't most hours played because that would be Warcraft for Paul. But over the longest period of time. Yeah, it hours played because that would be warcraft for paul but over the longest period of time yeah it's not it's not pub g well you did get back in a rating

on warcraft like two years ago i remember when you had your tuesday night warcraft what is this a mobile very first no it's the very first game i ever played i go back to it all the time superman 64 close that's ryan's favorite game. Mario? Yeah, Super Mario Brothers 3. Yep. I will still fire it up. Oh, absolutely. I love playing it. It's a mix of the music, the nostalgia.

I still know where every single hidden coin box is, the whistles. Sometimes I do a speed run where I'll grab the whistles and go straight to World 8. There's other times I'll go through all the worlds and do like you know the ice world and big world and all that i love mario brothers 3 i go back to it all the time and everything about it i absolutely love well but pub g is probably my second okay yeah okay well at least we're on the same mindset you know we thought we knew at least pause this secret mario life i didn't know about i know right yeah oh i play them all the time we can't track it because it's not on steam i know so what's what's mine josh since you know i would

say destiny for you over the longest period of time or maybe a metal gear yeah i was gonna say or metal gear game i get well it couldn't, not Metal Gear, because that's, I guess if you were going to say a series, I played those for a very long time. That would probably be it if it's a series. But for just one game that I've been playing, it would be Skyrim for me. Oh, that makes sense.

I'll still go boot that up and just, where was I? And look, and again, like we were just talking about, I'll fumble around for like half an hour. Oh yeah, I was doing this. I'm making this Da daedric armor and then i start just right away going right back to it and uh just zone out so yeah it's definitely it's that kind of combination of the lore adventure action and then you can just relax in some parts of it too so it's always my go-to yeah just fun getting lost looking around some area. What do you all think mine is? Well, you're back playing Overwatch.

Yeah, Overwatch is a good guess. Yeah, is it Overwatch? It's funny because when did Overwatch come out? Do we know what year? 2016. There was another game that came out in 2016 that I also play a lot of. Oh, Rocket League. Rocket League. Yeah.

My first come to mind for me was Rocket League. I always go back to Rocket League. I might take a month or two off here and there, you know, but it's just that it's that game that never gets uninstalled. I might not play it for a little while, but I, you know, I'll just go back. I'll go back over and over again to see kind of how the game has progressed and the players have progressed. And it's got that arcadey feel where it just never gets old um overwatch would be the other one where it's like i have played it since the day it released i have jumped in from time to time gotten really involved completely stopped playing for months at a time but then you know recently freaking reinstalled it and now i'm playing overwatch again you know so it's like those two i don't know which one

came out first because i played them both since release but it's rocket league i looked it up rocket league came out actually almost a full year before overwatch wow really so july 2015 is rocket league yeah i so i guess that's your answer that's almost uh it's actually just past the nine year anniversary so nine years i've been playing rocket league for who i wish I was better at that game. After nine years. Investing nine years of training. Oh, man.

All right. Moving on to a gaming question here. All right. So we did previously talk on the pod about a trailer that we saw for Alkahest. We talked about whether or not we thought stuff was gameplay or more, you know, filmed cinematic type stuff. It looked very impressive.

We talked about some of the stuff like the arrows getting blocked by a wooden shield. And you see like the wood getting splintered and chunks falling off and flying away. We saw how he was like mixing potions, covering the top with his thumb, shaking it and then throwing the potion at a door. And you see it like turn to ash or something like that.

Yeah. And all that stuff looked really cool. But at the same time, it seems like that's like cool cosmetic stuff within gameplay. But Josh, you kind of wanted us to think through like, what do you think the next big breakthrough in game tech will be that changes the future of gaming yeah so to put some context in front of you guys because this kind of sounds like a little bit of like a vague question where we looked at alkahast and we went this is next gen gaming right here and then we all kind of went we don't really think this is actual gameplay either and the world kind of agrees and they went they tried to make it look like gameplay but we really doubt that it's

actual gameplay but that said i felt like it was a glimpse into the future right because if that was if people are like no dude this is the game like everything you're seeing is gameplay footage i think we'd have our minds blown right to where it's like, wow, well, this is truly next gen type stuff. We talk about, uh, space Marine too, right. With the hordes technology and you know, it looks phenomenal. I mean, you can tell right away, your brain just kind of goes like, whoa, look at all these guys on the screen at any given moment. And like, people have tried to do that before, but I think it's mostly kind of faked in that regard where you can't actually shoot the guys while they're falling from the sky kind of thing or something like that.

And it just got me wondering, like, where is that next evolution of gaming, right? Like, I mean, for a while, it was just single player games, then it became online and multiplayer, and everybody lost their minds, you know, And then we got to where you could have 30 characters on the screen at any given moment. Halo, the original Halo was kind of infamous because you'd be fighting five, six, seven enemies at a time, you know? And you were like, whoa, like all at the same time, you know? And it's's like and they're running around and taking cover like this is mind-blowing so it's just like that thought process of like where does it go from here yeah you got an answer for this ryan um the the only thing that really comes to mind for me is i mean how we describe this um trailer and stuff it's just immersion like i think that's the name of the game like however

they achieve that i i don't know i have no idea um i'm not super detailed and savvy on the tech or the coding or any of that stuff but however they can accomplish creating that immersion to where the consumers just get lost in these games and are and are drawn to them and disappear in this world, however they do it, I think that's going to be kind of that next level that just takes it to new heights and then everyone follows suit. Yeah, my answer for this is along the same lines as yours, Ryan. It's going to be utilizing AI to rewrite storylines on the fly. I think we have been so used to statically programmed stuff. To do this mission, you have to do this. And then as soon as you do it, everyone gets the same reward. Everyone gets the same next mission.

I really don't think we're that far away where the game is going to completely rewrite stuff as you play it maybe if you shoot and kill someone maybe the police open an investigation against you and you start seeing like wanted posters and people might recognize you like i could see ai working stuff like that into a game that otherwise wouldn't have it like could you imagine playing skyrim but all of a sudden the game starts reacting around you the way things would be if you were in that environment? Oh, no. Like, I think that's where you're going to get

that kind of immersion and where you're going to see those next steps. I think a lot of people were hoping it would be VR. Apologies to our VR enthusiasts. If it was going to go fully mainstream, it would have already by now. It's got its niche market. People love it.

But I think it's going gonna be seeing ai do that maybe not yet from the ground up where you can give it prompts like give me mass effect 4 if shepherd did this like i don't that's still a while off but i do think we're gonna start seeing stuff rewritten within games if nothing else npc interactions and dialogue we already know that's in the works yeah yeah we've seen trailers for that too um i'm with you on the ai stuff paul it's just hard for me to actually imagine it because we haven't really seen it in practice you know it's gonna be awesome it's really i do think it's gonna be pretty mind-blowing like you said having the world react around you is something where it's kind of coded in right now.

You know, if you're, if you're Paragon Shepard, you know, versus Renegade Shepard, the game will kind of, you know, Oh, Oh, he's coming, you know, and the NPCs are told to act scared or something like that. But I do see a world where it's actually like dynamic and realistic. I think for me, the one thing that kind of jumps to mind i'm with ryan on the immersion thing and i think that trailer for alkahaz kind of gave us a glimpse of that like what if it what if things actually behave like they did in the real world you know if i block a a fire potion with my shield my shield should catch on fire right and then now it's going to start charring and i need to drop it because it caught on fire. You know, you kill a monster and you can actually

lean down and pick up its weapon because it, you know, it had a dagger that it was trying to kill you with. And it's like, you know, how many games do you loot a corpse? And then it's like, you found a tuft of hair and it's like, well, where was the dagger that that dude was trying to use against me? And it's like, no, you can can't have that or you find the dagger on the boar right or something exactly so i mean i think that level of realism could definitely come into play the other thing for me would just be scale right and i think as gamers we're kind of used to this large scale type stuff but i think we kind of get a glimpse of this with Star Citizen, with persistent universes. I just saw a thing today, literally today, where Ashes of Creation, which is a huge MMO

that has been in development for years and probably still has a few years left, talked about they're bringing the massive back to the massively multiplayer online. And they said that they are going to utilize server meshing, which is what Star Citizen utilizes, where instead of picking, you know how in World of Warcraft, you picked your server and you had maybe a thousand people on that server, server meshing does away with all that. You just have 10,000 people you're playing with at that point. And they're individual servers and they contain themselves, but they interact with each other. And if one server crashes, it just moves to another server,

right? So you don't have these like, hey, the whole server's down now and now everybody has to try to log back in kind of thing. So I do think there's a world where we can see video games approach a scale that we are not used to even today. And I think once they achieve that, I think it will be kind of mind-blowing for a lot of people to say, I've played MMOs, but I've never played an MMO on this scale. Yeah, and besides, once Star Citizen comes out, we'll be long dead. Oh, yeah, we'll be in the matrix. They can just load our consciousness into the game.

Talk about immersive. Well, they're very close to being done they just have to raise you know 27 trillion dollars and then they'll be done it's gonna pay for the release of the game yeah all right i know we're quickly coming up on the end of the show but i feel like we should ask one here because it is timely so i i did i did i did chuckle a little bit at this question but josh you wanted to ask us, what happened to our hype about Flintlock? Yeah. Oh, I did put that in the question, didn't I?

To which my answer is, I was never hyped for Flintlock. Oh, you were too, Paul. Oh, pull up the tapes, dude. It was me. Paul was never. I was not. Although, wait, I'm pretty sure, actually,

we saw a very curated trailer for Flintlock where it actually looked like God of War because they were swapping the camera angles and it was zooming around and it was showing the combat. I think a little bit of that was juiced up. But that trailer got us a little bit hyped. And you even said, okay, this game looks pretty cool. That was when they were comparing it with God of War meets Elden Ring, I think. And they were throwing out big terms like that. well part of it is i i we played the demo yep yeah and the demo is what happened early mid it's yeah that was my answer to this is i played the demo the game is good it's not bad solid six out of ten i think but i just don't really have time to dive into a six

out of ten game right now exactly yeah. Yeah, that's the same thing. I'm like, yeah, I played the demo. That's where my hype went. Yeah, because I think it comes out in two days from the day that this will release. So it's right around the corner. It's kind of like Lords of the Fallen, right? Like we talked about that. Another kind of like, I don't think there's anything wrong with that game.

I've seen a lot of people enjoy it, but it kind of just seems like a six out of 10 game. Yeah, there's a lot of these games that have like amazing graphics or something that they hold on to that they highlight but then there's just something missing from like the entirety of the game but yeah i do any of us plan on picking up flintlock there's not a chance i don't know no okay that's kind of what i thought i figured that'd be a relatively it just goes to show you and this is you know these are all squad mates that we've got here. And it's like, we can get hyped about a game. We can see stuff and we can say, hey, this looks good. And then you kind of start playing. Okay. Maybe not. You know, like

it's the job of a trailer to get you hyped. It's the job of a demo to try to hook you. And in this case, I think we all played the demo and went, there's nothing wrong with this game, but there's nothing really great about it either so i got other games i can play it's a relatively poor source souls like yeah so why would i pick it up yeah thankfully there is demos because i get hyped at every trailer i'm like yeah this looks awesome yeah ryan would be so poor yeah dropping 60 or i bucks per stuck playing Redfall oh there you go oh gosh good old Redfall alright so we always

gotta end on a food question and I am so curious to hear more about this Josh so apparently for our listeners out there Josh said that they ended up in some kind of massive quesadilla debate at work and so Josh has a question for us is a quesadilla debate at work and so josh has a question for us is a

quesadilla made with one tortilla or two and to me this is so clearly one answer but i want to hear like okay josh do you want to present both sides you're going to hear our answer okay well i want to let me just set the stage a little bit okay here. Here we go. Okay. I mean, I go to Taco Bell and I get the spicy chicken quesadilla, right? And it's like it shows up in the box and it's got a tortilla with all the stuffing and then a tortilla on the bottom. I wouldn't even think twice about it, you know, and I've seen many a quesadilla where it has a tortilla on the top, the filling in the middle, and then a tortilla on the bottom.

And in my brain, I've always just said, yeah, that's a quesadilla. You know, if it's got meat and cheese smashed in between it and it's thin, you know, not like a burger or something, then it's a quesadilla. And then somebody went, no, a quesadilla is always one tortilla folded over. And he said, have you ever seen a round quesadilla? And then that kind of blew my mind because i went wait a minute wait a minute wait is that so wait is two tortillas not a quesadilla and then every everybody lost their minds and people are like no it's still a quesadilla and then i just don't know i everything i've always known i don't know anymore and i have a feeling that both of you because you grew up in arizona which you know has very good authentic mexican, are going to tell me that a quesadilla is

only one tortilla that's just folded over on itself. It's definitely one tortilla. What the heck do you call something that has two tortillas? Well, here's the thing. That's a Mexican pizza from Taco Bell is what you're thinking. No, because I have had... Okay, so you're telling me if I take a tortilla and I put chicken and cheese in the middle of it and nothing else and I melt it all up and then there's a tortilla on the bottom that you're not calling that a quesadilla? Sure, I might call it that, but that's taking a weird left turn. No one ever says, make me a quesadilla and goes and grabs two tortillas like that if you grew up with

Hispanic food. I'll just say that yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't use taco bell as your uh example but like if you go to any burtos around here humbertos filbertos arabertos any of them it's always one big tortilla folded over having said that though out of ease of mass production you know growing up we always did two tortillas because it's twice it's twice the amount of food in the same amount of work on like a pan if you're just pan frying them or whatever so we you know put some butter on it throw the tortilla cheese and chicken throw another tortilla on top at the same time it'd take to make one you're making two so and i came from a big family so that's how i always grew up making them but if you're just saying straight up what is like technically a quesadilla it's one tortilla i'm not disagreeing

with you guys it just blows my mind i wouldn't yeah i wouldn't argue with you but i would just say like technicality wise like it's it's one yeah there's not like another word for that i would just say yeah that's a little bit of a weird quesadilla like that that's all i all i would say now what's funny is in arizona our greatest contribution to the culinary world is the arizona cheese crisp i was just gonna say say it this is so weird to me this is so weird so so much better than quesadillas this should replace quesadilla on every menu in the world oh yeah this is the only like people are always talking about the stupid sonoran hot dogs being like the arizona food it's like no get that out of here cheese crisps are so much better it's an

open face quesadilla basically where you take a tortilla item you cover it in cheese and you brush butter around the edge and you bake it and it comes out almost like a pizza where it's got a crispy edge and melts all the cheese in the middle. It is so much better than a quesadilla. I have never understood the cheese crisps thing. Well, it's a nobody else in the country does either. I don't get it.

I remember as a kid, we'd go, we were like on vacation in like Kentucky or something. And we were at a restaurant. And I think my sister asked for like a cheese crisp. And they looked at her like, what's a cheese crisp. I remember as a kid, we were on vacation in Kentucky or something, and we were at a restaurant. And I think my sister asked for a cheese crisp, and they looked at her like, what's a cheese crisp? But yeah, it's so good. You get that crispy, crunchy edge.

And even if you throw a little seasoning on it, like taco seasoning, and then you broil it just enough to really, really bubble up on top. Cover it with lettuce, a little bit of sour cream. Delicious. Isn't that just a tostada at that point? I remember Taco Bell had the little round things. No, tostada's a real hard show. What is this? It's not hard enough. It's not folded over, man. It's not fried. And you're using a flour

tortilla. So it's not like a fried corn tortilla. It's a baked flour tortilla. This sounds, guys, I've had a cheese crisp. This is what I got my kids when they were four because they didn't want anything else and it's literally just a tortilla with cheese melted on top of it. Yeah. And that's it. Like this is

like what is this man? Well, you can put any toppings on it that you want. I mean, if you want to go full carne asada or whatever putting extra stuff on there. It's now it's just a Mexican pizza. Well, let's let's just say all all Mexican food is like 100 variations of different ways to do a tortilla, hard or soft. That's like Mexican food.

Take a grilled cheese sandwich. Fold it in half. They're all the same. It's an open-faced grilled cheese sandwich made on a tortilla instead of bread. No. No. Not exactly. It's in the oven.

Not on a pan. It's different. and bread is much different than a tortilla oh yeah i don't get it well if there's anything we learned today it's we should be taking mexican food advice from john i've been eating double carbs with all these double tortilla quesadillas I've been eating. I'm trying to think of what the equivalent would be for me and Ryan with southern food. What would we screw up so badly? I don't know. I can't even. It'd be like saying gumbo is soup.

Gumbo is its own entity and is obviously gumbo. Oh, that's a good one. If you threw some shrimp and chicken in a soup and tried to call it gumbo like you'd get murdered you know like maybe that's the yeah yeah so it's next poker night i'll bring gumbo for josh yeah like would they this is so brian would somebody know like that didn't know like probably not they'd be like oh there's good soup you know and it's like no so maybe it's the same thing nice all right well that wraps everything up for this squad cast thank you so much to all our listeners for the love and support we appreciate all of you immensely and until next time happy gaming see ya all right see everybody