Video Gamers Podcast - Deep Dive: The Forgotten City - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

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Paul, I am super pumped to talk about the Forgotten City in this episode. But before we do, I am even more pumped to tell you about these Razer Huntsman keyboards. These things are amazing. They're the best keyboards I've ever laid these fingers on. And our listeners can pick one up over at multiplayerpodcast.com slash Razer. And if you enter code multiplayer at checkout, Razer is going to send you not only the best keyboard that you've ever used in your life, but a free gift to go along with it. Make sure you check them out after the show. Take it away, Paul.

Hello, squad mates. Welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. We are so excited to have you guys here with us today. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, he better not be thinking of stealing or murdering anyone, because we're in this together. I don't want to suffer for his sins. It's Josh. Paul, if you left this up to me, we're all gonna die. This is why they did not invite me to the Forgotten City. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so today is a very special deep dive episode. Josh and I are gonna be talking about the Forgotten City. This is a game that just released a couple of weeks ago. Very unique, although it is a time loop game and somehow

we've ended up playing five time loop games here this month. I don't know what's going on. I'm not upset by that. But if you are new to the show here, if you have not already, we'd like to ask you to please rate our podcast five stars and leave us a review in your podcasting app.

You can also help financially support the show by subscribing in Apple Podcasts, or you can head over to MultiplayerSquad.com, which forwards to our Patreon page. But either way, if you do support us, you will get access to two extra Quick Take episodes every week, and we would be eternally grateful for that support. All right, now we do have a little bit of housekeeping here. We do want to extend a special thank you to legendary supporter RangerMiller73, along with Epic supporters RedLetter and Yoda. And Josh, we've got some awesome news today because we do have a new legendary supporter joining their ranks. Ace of Shame upgraded his account this week to

Legendary. What a guy, man. Much, much love for Ace of Shame. Ace, I know you're listening. We genuinely appreciate you, buddy. Ace is super active in the Discord. He's just an amazing human being. Love that he's chatty, always supporting everybody, cares about everybody in the community. I mean, this is not simply because he just upgraded to legendary. Really just true mad respect for Ace of Shame. We were fans of his already before being legendary. Now we just like him even more. Just a little bit more. Actually, a lot more now. So that means that Ace gets to pick a future deep dive game, which he has already done. I don't want to steal his thunder, so I'll give him a chance if he wants to announce it on our Discord channel first. But I will say it is a very popular game. I think the people are going to be really excited to hear

about it. No, it is not Fortnite. That is the only clue that I will give you all. But Ace does have a game ready in the barrel for me and Josh, and I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I am excited for that game. I've never played this game either. I have heard of it. I do know that it's very popular, but I've never once laid controller or keyboard upon this game. So I'm pretty excited about it as well. Oh, very nice. All right. Well, that's all that we got for housekeeping. So let's go ahead and jump into the Forgotten City. All right, so if you're new to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast on these deep dive episodes, we generally spend roughly an hour talking about

the game that we have been playing here over the last couple of weeks. We will read a description of the game, we're going to jump into some of the mechanics and the storyline, and then we'll finish things up with a couple of segments where we read some community reviews left on Steam. We also try to guess the user score online. We'll also play Make Love, Marry, or Murder, and we will finish things up by ranking The Forgotten City on our overall leaderboard. All right, so let's kick things off with the description of The Forgotten City that is on Steam, and here's how that reads. The Forgotten City is a narrative-driven time-loop adventure in ancient Rome. Discover the ruins of an ancient underground city, travel 2,000 years in the past, and unravel the mystery of who destroyed it by cleverly exploiting the power to wind back time.

The fate of the city is in your hands. Alright, now as we jump into things, since The Forgotten City is definitely narrative-driven, as it was worded in the description, we are going to keep things relatively spoiler-free here in the beginning. This is going to be very similar to our 12 Minutes episode. We're going to talk about things in more general terms. We will only spoil the first few minutes of gameplay because that's just necessary to talk about it. And then at the end, we will give you guys a warning and then we will jump into all things

spoiler. Sound good to you, Josh? I love it when we get a chance to do that because it's so fun to be able to talk about stuff at the end, you know, to really cover the things that we want to touch on. So if you don't mind spoilers or you've played it, stick around at the end. If you have not played it, but you think you're going to, by all means necessary, avoid spoilers because this is one of those games where you kind of have to discover it yourself. Yeah. When a game is labeled as a mystery adventure, you don't want spoilers. No. Because it's really just going to undercut the experience. All right, now as we kick things off,

I did want to share a couple of facts that I thought were interesting about The Forgotten City. Now, this game was developed by a small Australian indie development company called Modern Storytelling, and it was started by a guy named Nick Pierce, who used to be a lawyer, but loved gaming. Kind of like how, you know, you work in insurance, I work in social work, and we love gaming and started this podcast. He was a lawyer, fell in love with a Fallout New Vegas mod, and decided to teach himself how to do mods. Started doing a mod in 2012 in Skyrim that ended up becoming The Forgotten City. So this is a game that's technically nine years in the making. He ended up having almost four million downloads of the initial mod in Skyrim. People started telling him, hey, why don't you

hire some people? Make it your own standalone game? That's exactly what he did. He hired two guys. So this is only a three-man development team that released it. And it just came out on July 28th, 2021. It's on all consoles. It's on PC. It's a $25 game. But what a neat little story. I feel like we've had a lot of these lately, whether it's Splitgate or Forgotten City or Valheim, just these small teams that end up kind of exploding. It's so cool to see. I love it. I'm becoming more of a fan of indie developers. I think everybody loves a good AAA title. We joke because my movie tastes differ from your movie tastes in the degree that I love popcorn blockbuster type movies. I'm just in it for the entertainment ride. I don't care a whole lot about the cinema and the

photography or videography and all that stuff. I mean, don't get me wrong. I do appreciate that stuff, but I just want to have a good time, man. And so I think you're seeing that more and more with these indie developers. And the fact that this game was made by three people is mind-blowing to me, because we're going to get into some of the detail and stuff here, but it's very impressive that three people made this, and that this thing started off as a Skyrim mod. I don't know of anybody that's... I've heard of, what is it, the Half-Life mod, Black Mesa, where the fan kind of recreated it, but a little bit better graphics and stuff. And that's super neat. But this is an impressive feat of development,

I guess, is the easiest way to put it, because there's a lot going on. But this is a very well made game. You would not know it was a lawyer and two of his buddies, I guess. Right. Yeah, you would not think that. And so the one thing is, I jumped into this game not knowing a single thing. We had heard The Forgotten City was coming out. We knew it was Beloved. I didn't look up anything. So when I loaded up the game, it starts off by giving you a subtitle saying present day. And I'm talking to a woman in modern day clothing. I initially was thrown off because I actually thought this was going to be set in the world of Skyrim. I did not realize this was going to ancient Rome, but it actually starts present day. So I just got to experience all of this as a surprise, which I thought was a great way to go.

But, you know, the game starts out where your character kind of just like wakes up next to a river. You find out that there's been some kind of incident and this woman has saved your life. And basically, how does the game start off from here? What's the goal? How does it start out? You don't know. Honestly, that's the beauty of it. Like you said, you just wake up on this riverbank and this lady's like, oh, you're awake.

I pulled you out of the river. And you have a chance to kind of just have a short conversation with her. And she tells you about her buddy, Al, that went to go investigate some runes. And she's like, I haven't seen Al. Would you mind going to look for him? And you're like, well, yeah, I'll go find Al, sure. And that's what starts a very interesting journey for your character. Journey through space and time, right? Yeah, yeah. You see these old ruins and then you go down this well or something. I forget how you actually go down. You fall down this big pit into this pool. And now you're in this old ancient Roman ruin that's in really good shape. There's all these gold statues everywhere. The atmosphere

in this game is incredible. And you kind of touched on something earlier. Even though this was a Skyrim mod, this has nothing to do with Skyrim. So if you're not a fan of Skyrim, you've never played it and you're listening going like, oh, I guess this doesn't pertain to me. That's completely wrong. This is 100% standalone game. The only thing it uses is the Skyrim engine and the character developer or something. I don't really know. You can tell that it's the same engine.

But other than that, there's nothing Skyrim about this. So don't be put off if you're not super familiar with that. But yeah, you go down into these ruins, you find a tablet and a skeleton that's Al, and then you're like, oh, I knew you well, Al, rest in peace. And then you go to this altar, and then poof, you're back in time. Like this old crumbled city is now a bright, vibrant living city. And you see some Roman dude standing in front of you. So of course,

what are you going to do? You're going to go chat up this Roman guy. Yeah. And then basically you just start walking around, talking to people, and then the whole game starts to take shape. Now the game does let you pick your class, which is not terribly important important but they do give you i forgot there was classes there even are classes i did too you brought it up i totally forgot and

then i was like oh yeah i did pick a class yeah when i started putting together like an outline for the flow of the show i was i i went back into the game because you know i beat it and i hadn't played it in a couple days and i just wanted to get a refresher. And I totally forgot that you have a choice of classes and gender and skin tone. So it doesn't really impact your playthrough a whole lot. However, your options are that you can be a soldier, which is a very special option because it gives you a pistol along with 10 bullets. And normally when you jump into this game, you don't have a weapon in the beginning.

You can also be an archaeologist, which gives you occasional insights into the ancient world. You can be a fugitive for 25% faster sprint speed, or you can be an amnesiac, which I did not even know was a word. I guess it's just a person with amnesia. And it makes you 50% harder to take down. I don't know what that has to do with amnesia, and it makes you 50% harder to take down. I don't know what that has to do with amnesia, but...

Like you forgot you're wounded? Yeah. You can't kill me. I forgot about that wound. You forgot how to feel pain. So I did not know what to pick, and I kind of stared at them all, and I thought, oh, well, being 50% harder to kill sounds like no matter what, that's advantageous. I hate dying. I hate lost progress. So I went with the Amnesiac,

which I would say I totally regretted. I think it's by far the worst option out of the bunch. I was going to say that's got to be the worst pick. It's kind of hard to die in this game, to be honest. The one with the gun, we'll get into the ramifications of the game but i see zero purpose i think having a gun and bullets would be too much of a like too much temptation for me oh yeah and i'd be like that's it man i'm taking you out bang oh you won't let me into uh that room well too bad so do you remember what class you even picked? Oh, 100%. I went with the Fugitive. Give me any game where I can run faster. I know I want. I mean, how many games have a spell that you can cast that makes you run faster? Ooh, Haste. I love it.

Right. Exactly. So when I saw that, I'm like, even if I'm not in danger, the ability to run around everywhere quicker is going to be beneficial to me. And so that's the one I went with. And I'm super glad I went with it. I would say it's probably the most handy class to go with just because there is a good bit of movement, like running around the city and looking around and stuff. So apparently I was smarter than you, Paul. Yeah, absolutely. So this game, I would say, is probably a good 90% running and talking to people. So the extra run speed honestly would really come into play. You can die in this game, but it doesn't happen very often.

There's the whole time loop mechanic that keeps things running anyway. I would highly recommend going with the sprint speed. Although I will say for my second go-round, I did choose Soldier to start out with the gun because people in ancient Rome, I noticed they would comment on my flashlight where they're like, oh, you have the light of Apollo with you. What is this in your hand? And I was really curious to know if they would comment on the gun. What is this thunder stick? Yeah, they do comment on it. They're like, what's this in your hand? And yeah, so anyway, I would probably stick with Fugitive.

So, you know, so Josh mentioned you're trying to find this dude, Al, who you don't know. He is dead and he has left an inscription warning anyone coming by his corpse where he says, no matter what you do, do not go through the portal up ahead. There is nowhere to go. There is nowhere to escape. You would be better off just killing yourself here and now. And then the game shows you where the portal is and you immediately sprint to that portal because you just can't help yourself. Yeah. I think Al mentioned something too. There's

a little context clue there where he says, I've been trying for like 2000 years to escape or something like that. Something like that. Yeah. There's a little bit of an ominous foreboding to it, too. And that's why he's like, do not, don't do it, man. And of course, you're like, forget you, Al. I'm going, man. Look at this cool, glowy portal up here. Yeah, absolutely. So the portal brings you back in time.

And then the first dude that you meet is a guy whose name is Galerius. And he looks straight out of the movie Gladiator or something. He's clearly from ancient Rome slash Greece times, and he tells you that you need to go meet Magistrate Sentius, who is the ruler of the city. Basically, you go and you meet him, and then he sets up the entire rest of the game where he tells you there is only one law and one rule of this place. It is called the Golden Rule.

And it can be summarized by saying, the many shall suffer for the sins of the one. And so basically there are inscriptions around this town. Nobody came to this area willingly. They all kind of accidentally wound up here, and they read the inscriptions, and as new and more people get added to their civilization, they have just believed that if anyone in the city commits any kind of major sin, that the gods will be angry, and they will all have their lives taken from them. So the idea is that in this city, everyone has to respect the law and the rule of the Golden Rule. And so I think that the whole idea of this game

probably came from the main developer hating that rule in school, where the teacher would say, if someone doesn't fess up to this, everyone has detention and no one one's going to recess was that not the worst thing when you were a kid oh it was but it worked i mean think about it man did it work it would because you'd be like i know it was you you better say something man i better don't say something i was playing i'm playing kickball today i do love it it adds a very neat kind of philosophical background question to the to the entire game because that is the whole thing about this game is here's these people that have been brought from all over Greece or ancient Rome or whatever. And here they are. They didn't know each other.

They have a wide background of Roman legionnaires and peasants and stuff like that. And they're put into this society. And you better behave because if anybody sins, everybody's dying. And this is not like you're just getting punished. This is everybody dies if anybody sins. And so it's a really neat dynamic, in my opinion, to see that because we all know human nature. And it's like, can this even happen? Is it possible? And like you said, number one, the first guy you meet, Galerius. I don't know that I have loved a video game character more than Galerius because of how much he does for you in this game. Dude, he's your little errand boy. That's literally what he is. I love Glarys, man.

I love that guy so much. We'll get into it a little bit, but he's just very warm and welcoming, number one. You're some weird guy that just popped up through this portal. You're wearing weird clothes, but they just, I guess they're used to it. So it kind of fits and they're like,

oh, hey, a new person, like welcome. You know, please don't break the law or we're all going to die. Oh, and go see Sentius because he'll get you lined out and welcome you to the society. to open this portal that brought you there. And the same portal will also restart that day. And he has been told that someone this day is going to break the Golden Rule and one of the gods does not want to see everyone destroyed. And so basically they have given Sensius this ability to summon people in. And so he tells you,

your job is to investigate the town, find out who's going to break the Golden Rule, and then stop them from doing so. And basically, it's just kind of assumed that if you are able to stop any breaking of the golden rule, that it will create a time paradox and it will send you back to your time. So now we kind of understand this is what Al had been doing for hundreds, if not thousands of years. He was unable to do it. And somehow he must have died and left his corpse, which we found. So this is the whole idea. We get to play detective and figure out what's going to happen.

And now, since this game does use the time loop mechanic, the golden rule is going to be broken. It might be broken by you. It might be broken by someone else. Say it's not so, Paul. Do you remember the first time that the rule was broken in your playthrough? I'm pretty sure I did something bad. You did something? I know I did.

I do know that that loop looped a lot for me. Did it? Yes. I forget what I did. I think I was talking to the vendor. I stole something, if I remember right. And then it was like, we should say that when somebody breaks the golden rule, or you break the golden rule, which is very likely to happen, this super deep booming God voice just goes, the many shall suffer for the sins of the one and like the

world starts shaking the lighting changes it it's freaking dramatic man it really is like they do an amazing job of you going like oh crap like this is bad man this is real bad and then it just tells you like run to the portal so that you can reset the day. You have to meet Sentius there. And you know, Sentius explains like, hey, I have to like give my life for this. So if you make it to the portal too soon, Sentius is standing there like doing this little ceremony thing. And then you're like, hurry up, Sentius, hurry up and die. Hurry up and die. They're going to kill me. Because if you die in this game the portal does it's not like you just it's not like 12 minutes where if you die the time loop resets if you die it's game over you gotta reload yeah you

gotta reload at that point but if you make it to the portal then the time loop resets but you keep all progress at that point too yes so you do keep like all of your items so if you do steal and then you run through the portal you still have that in your pocket so you might actually end up like reluting the same chest 10 15 times but you get to keep it from the previous run which also makes it different from 12 minutes because you get to keep your inventory so uh yeah and and the other neat thing is when that does happen, everyone starts panicking in the city. They're all screaming. Chaos. It's chaos, man.

Yeah. So the whole city is full of these golden statues, and all the gold statues come to life and start killing everyone in the town, turning them into gold statues. And so it definitely creates this interesting atmosphere because a lot of the people in the town don't believe that the golden rule is real. They do not think that these, you know, Greek or Roman gods really exist. And that's maybe one of the reasons why the golden rule gets broken. Maybe it's not you, but a person in the town because they just don't believe it. And so there's even interesting political dynamics because some people think that the magistrate, Sentius, is running things too strictly. We got to vote him out.

We need a new leader. This leader doesn't even believe in the rule. And so the whole game, you're kind of like trying to figure things out. And the bad news, Josh, is that basically everyone in this town is going to break the golden rule this day. I guess they all decided on the same day they're going to do this. But there's basically just all of these separate quests that you start investigating. And then kind of one of the neat things of the game is that as soon as you resolve someone's issue and you prevent them from

breaking the golden rule on the next time loop, what does your boy Galerius do? Oh, Galerius, my best friend in the whole video gaming universe. He's so obedient. Dude, number one. So when you reset the loop, but now you have the knowledge of like, hey, this person's going to break the golden rule. When you pop out of the portal and you re-meet Galerius again, you can kind of skip forward and say, Galerius, we've had this conversation. I know who you are. Because I guess people are kind of aware of this time loop a little bit in a sense or something, but maybe not. I can't remember exactly. But basically what you can do

is you can tell Galerius, hey, so-and-so is about to break the golden rule. Why don't you go run real quick and do this or give this thing to this person or tell this person this thing that you figured out so that they don't do it? And then you go, go, go, go. And Galerius goes like, oh, okay, I better run and go do that. And he takes off. And you can see him running through the city. You can follow him. You can follow him.

He will legit, he'll say everything that you said. He'll go to the person's house or the business or whatever. And it's very cool that this is happening in the background. But Paul, this is how you do time loop without it getting repetitive. 12 minutes, you botched it because this is the way to go. Because anytime you make progression, you don't have to redo it every single time. You got Galerius, you got your buddy Galerius that's taking care of you. And so eventually as you start to solve, as you investigate and figure these things out, before you know it, you're sending Galerius like four to five different places in the city and you can just focus on the new stuff. And that is the best dude. It is all I could think about.

And I hate to slam 12 minutes, but all I could think about was this is how best, dude. All I could think about, and I hate to slam 12 minutes, but all I could think about was this is how you do it. This would be the equivalent of if you had a butler in 12 minutes and you say, butler, please go fill these mugs with tepid water from the sink, go put out the dessert, and then tell my wife that I'm ready. And you would just be able to skip it, right? Yeah. So I don't know why Galerius is just so obedient, because all you got to do is say, hey, I'm from the future. We've already met. Hey, can you just tell this person this and

give this person this and then run and tell someone else about this other person? And he just goes, oh, sure, I'd be happy to. And then spends the next eight minutes in real time actually doing it. So you can actually follow Galerius. You'll hear all the conversations. He'll tell someone, hey, you need to give this to that person. And then they're like, how do you know this? And Galerius is like, just do it. And then he runs off to the next one.

But it does have that built-in shortcut. Galerius does also give you a zip line, which by the way is the most worthless zip line ever. I don't know what the point of the zip line is. It's so silly. I don't know if it's a mechanic that they thought of and then that just didn't really ever come to fruition. Yeah, I don't, I never use,

I use the zip line the one time that you have to use it. And then since then it was like, I never use those. You can run almost as fast as you can zipline places. Yeah. And the zipline's not, like, powered. So you can only go from a higher area to a lower. So it's not very often you need to use it because the Forgotten City is not small, but it's definitely not large. Like, in the beginning, the map is a little bit,

what's the word I'm looking for? Intimidating. But after you play one or two time loops, you finally learn, okay, here's the market. Here's where the leaders are. Oh yeah, that's right. Here's where the temple is. And you start to learn the layout and you really don't need the help of the zip lines. I maybe used three or four zip lines over the course of the whole playthrough, but the game was very conscious of giving you shortcuts. They did not want you to have to do the same thing over and over like 12 minutes did, so this is how they prevented that from being the case. And I'll say this too, the city is the perfect size to where there are vastly distinct areas that you can go to, the city is the perfect size to where there are vastly distinct areas that you can go to.

But the size of the city is, in my opinion, perfect. I never once got tired of running from point A to point B because nothing was far away. It took me a little bit to learn my way around. Like, wait, oh, there's the businesses over here. And then there's the housing over here. And then there's this little area over here. And there's the amphitheater there. So there definitely was a little bit of learning the landmarks. But once you do, getting around is so easy in this game. That's another thing with the convenience of having Galerius be able to do some of the problems for you when you solve them. And then just being able to get everywhere you need to get to in the city in no time at all is two very good quality of life things that they did. They really knew what

they were doing to make a time loop game not feel repetitive. Yeah, the game does not leave you wanting a mount like A New World does by amazon uh gonna do a little bit of a drive-by there on new world but you know that's a game where the the the traveling is just so burdensome in this game that's not the case at all no so basically you start to solve these quests you also start to discover some secrets about the world because you have to learn about the actual time loop like why is why is it here? What's its function? How can I break it? Do I want to break it? You also end up learning that there are multiple endings in this game, and there are actually several different ways to create a time paradox that will end the game. And the game doesn't shy

away from that. They even tell you what ending you just unlocked. And so there are four major endings. And I don't think that this is a spoiler to talk about the first one because it's a rather silly ending that just kind of highlights how this works. So the magistrate even tells you as an example where he says, if you allow me to die and someone commits a sin, then I can no longer open the portal, which means you never arrived to begin with because the portal never opened. So therefore, it would probably kick you out of our civilization. At least I assume you had the same reaction I did, but what's the very first thing you did as soon as you said that? Oh, I put an arrow through that guy. You murdered him, right? I murdered that guy in cold blood because it took me a minute though, because it's like, you're so scared of breaking this

golden rule. Like you have to be conscious of that the whole playthrough. And then I remember it's your number one quest, right? You have all these subquests and stuff like that, but number one is create a time paradox so that you can not be stuck in this time loop. And then you're talking to this guy and the light bulb went off and I was like, wait a minute, can I create a time paradox if that guy's not around? I get that's not what the solution is. So I put an arrow through that guy and sure enough, ending number one. Yep. And if you start the game off with the pistol, you can literally do this 40 seconds after entering the game. So that's why I say it's not really a spoiler, but that's an example of

where you did create a paradox. The problem is that that's a really terrible ending, because while it does kick you out of the time loop, you are still stuck in the city and you don't know any way out. You never discovered a way back to the surface. And so you're just left, I guess, to starve to death. I think that's what happened to Al, honestly, because you find his skeleton and he's just stuck down there and he couldn't take it after a while. So don't be like Al. Don't be like Al. So basically, you get to discover the other three endings of the game, which are true endings, but there's one best ending

that you definitely strive for. Yeah, that's the one you want to actually work for. You know, you don't like murder the magistrate and be like, well, that was a fun game. I'm done now. You know, made it out of this time loop. Huzzah. Like, no, you actually have some work to do

to try to get the real ending. All right. Well, we're going to take just a little moment here. We want to extend a very special thank you to Razer. They have decided to sponsor the show here. They are the world's leading lifestyle brand for gamers. Josh, this week you and I got to play around with the Huntsman V2 optical keyboard. And this thing is amazing. I'll be honest. You guys know I don't recommend things unless I'm truly in love with them. I even did a Quick Takes episode for the supporters and our subscribers for the show where I talked about my Razer gaming keypad that I have.

I'm a huge fan of that. Razer sent us these Huntsman keyboards because they're super proud of them. They're this new optical key technology. So instead of having to make physical contact and some of the issues that go along with that, these use little mini lasers, man. This is like high-tech fancy stuff where these little lasers are there. And when you press the key, it breaks the laser and it registers the keystroke. The technology in these things, it looks like an amazing keyboard, but what's underneath, like under the hood,

you know, is absolutely bananas. How cool this stuff is. It's, I mean, we're super thankful. Number one, that they gave us the chance to try these things out.

And honestly, the fact that they're sponsoring the show is absolutely incredible. So huge shout out to razor, but I am, I have not had a better keyboard in my life, Paul. Yeah, they're very incredibly well made. And with the optical technology, the keys actually work faster. So it actually gives you a competitive edge. And so if you want a game with the same keyboard that Josh and I are using,

and I can second what Josh said, it's by far the best keyboard I've ever used. You can actually head straight to the Razer website, or you can go to multiplayerpodcast.com slash Razer, and that'll take you right there. Plop that Huntsman into your shopping cart, enter promo code multiplayer, and they'll actually send you a free gift along with the keyboard. So it's a great way you can support us, great way to support Razer. They are a company that is by gamers, for gamers. They just get it. So don't wait. Head on over to multiplayerpodcast.com slash Razer and get your Huntsman keyboard today.

All right, Josh. So we talked a little bit about the first ending. We're not going to spoil anything about the other three for right now, but in general terms, I guess mostly speaking to the final ending four out of four. Did you find it satisfying? Did you like the story? Was it interesting?

I did. I thought the story. I'm a huge fan of mythology. I've made no qualms about that. There is a good bit of Roman mythology in this game that touches on some other more ancient civilization mythologies, which I thought was really, really cool. I did think the only thing that was disappointing about the ending on this game to me was that it was over. In all honesty, I was having so much fun with this game and the mystery solving and the talking with the characters and stuff like that, that when I got the best ending,

like the final ending, I kind of went, huh, like, well, that's kind of a bummer. Yeah. So I think it did a good job. I mean, I've seen a few people complain about the ending and they weren't real satisfied with that. I don't know what you expect in that case. I mean, you have your big aha reveal moments. You've got your plot twists. You've got an actual, hey, this is the end, so you know that the game has ended. I'm not really sure why somebody would be disappointed in that. I thought it was plenty fine. I mean, it was everything that it should have been, in my opinion. What did you think? I completely agree with you. I thought it was super satisfying. I was constantly curious to find out more. And especially as you start to peel back the curtain and figure out some of the secrets, there's definitely some

wild twists that maybe you can see one or two of them coming, but I don't think you'll see all of them. And so I will say that in the middle of the game, it just started to slow down ever so slightly for me. But then it very quickly picked up as soon as you kind of get past like a certain checkpoint, if you will. And then things kind of really take off from there. So I really did enjoy it. I know that you and I aren't diving into like a lot of the moral discussions around it all, but the game has a lot to kind of think through, like, you know, what is considered sin? what is not. It even looks into things like cultural appropriation and all of these different subjects. So, it actually has a lot of deeper

subject matter as well. Maybe you'll agree with the game's philosophies, maybe you won't, but it's definitely a conversation starter, and I do find that really interesting as well. So let's stop there and go into our segments here. That way, anyone who wants to stay spoiler free, they'll be able to hear the rest of the show. And then we'll jump into spoiler territory. So Josh, why don't you hop into those community reviews that you've got for us?

All right. So as we do, I have pulled up a bunch of reviews from steam to see what people think you know some good some bad we want to kind of get an overall impression of what people think about this game um so we go through a few steam reviews and read some that we think were funny or kind of on point or touch on some of the things that we've talked about to kind of reinforce that stuff so So first review, not recommended, 0.9 hours on record. So this person played for 54 minutes. Sure.

And then decided to leave a review. Okay. And they wrote, I do not think it is a great game. It is a nice game, but not more than that, because you will die a lot and often, which means you will have to start the level from the beginning. Makes you lose the fun of the game. Okay, so they don't understand what time loop means. And if you're dying, the only way that you can die in this game is if you break the golden rule, and then like you mentioned, all of the crazy golden statues come to life with their creepy blue glowing eyes and they take you out unless you can make it to the portal in time so either this guy wasn't aware that you needed to make it to the portal to reset the loop or he

was just a complete like criminal and was breaking the golden rule just left and right wondering why this game wasn't working i don't really know okay so this next one is recommended 7.1 hours on record and they say this game made me feel the way outer wilds made me feel and that's the highest praise i can offer now paul you shut your dirty mouth all right because outer wilds is an amazing, amazing game. It's one of those games that sticks with you forever. Paul, forever. And so I had to pull this one just to troll you a little bit.

Fair enough. It definitely belongs in the same genre, being a time loop game. It definitely seems like we're getting more. If you love Outer Wilds, honestly, you'll understand why that's such good praise to call this game similar to that all right this next one recommended 8.6 hours on record i don't i feel like that's about the play time that it would take to beat this game it's not a very long game but i feel like there's probably anywhere between

six to ten hours maybe yeah i'm good i would guess eight to ten yeah i i beat it over the course of two days and i did kind of crack out on it. I played a lot more than I normally would. But yeah, you can definitely crank this one out in one weekend. All right, so this one's recommended, and it says better than 12 minutes. And boy, are they right. Shots fired. Sorry, that's two jabs for you, Paul.

Sorry. All right, and then this last one is not recommended. 6.2. All right. And then this last one is not recommended. 6.2 hours on record. I have to say I highly disagree with the overwhelmingly positive reviews. There's nothing special about this game. It's basically a walking simulator. You go around talking to a lot of people over and over again. There are no puzzles you have to piece together.

It's all just dialogue and running from one conversation to the other. There are four endings in the game, and the fourth ending is the canon ending, which is supposed to be the ending, the perfect one. But in my opinion, it wasn't all that. It was actually really corny. Hold off for a big sale or just watch a playthrough. You'll get the same experience. I kind of get what he's saying about the corny ending there was one aspect about the ending that I wasn't crazy about it's not how how I would have written it but I still thought that it was fine there were a lot of aspects about the ending that were really neat I think I know what he's referencing there is a little bit of corniness at the very end but I think it's fine

everything else makes up for it there's's a smidge, honestly. And here's the thing. This guy kind of references that it's all dialogue. We didn't really touch on the characters and stuff in this game. But yes, a ton of this game is getting to know the society that you're in. I mean, there's probably like, what, 12 different characters in the society? 22. 22, really? Okay. I mean, maybe I didn't interact with all of them equally. But every citizen that's in the city has a very unique personality. They're memorable. You have neat conversations with them. You know me. I'm antsy. I like fast-paced action stuff.

I thought that the dialogue and figuring things out in this game was phenomenal. Like I did not once get bored with trying to, you know, investigate via talking to this person. Well, this person gives you a clue and says, Hey, that person might know. So then you take that information over to this person and you talk to them and then things blow up or they don't blow up or you get another clue. And some of these people are just absolute jerks. And then you have saints like hilarious that just make your life so amazing the whole time, you know? And so, you. So we didn't touch on that a whole lot, but the character interaction and the dialogue and what you gleaned through that to me was incredible. It was definitely a high part of the game, not like a chore or tedium at all. I think you and Galerius need to get a room.

That's all I got to say. Hey, you know what? If I told him, hey, Galerius, we need a room, you know what he'd do? He'd run out and he'd reserve like five different rooms for me and say, take your pick of the best one. He would. Watch out, Brandy. You got some competition. I will say that the game is definitely dialogue focused. There is a very little bit of combat in the game.

It's mostly like two quests that are somewhat short where you do a lot of combat. But the game is primarily dialogue. That is true. Maybe we need to talk about that during the spoilery part. But the one quest where it actually warns you, hey, this is like a horror sequence. Yeah, you can skip all of the combat if you want. Don't skip that. That was crazy. That was an amazing part of the game, by the way. And I guess we can dive into that a little bit later in spoiler territory. But there's a couple parts of this game that border on scary or very creepy. And I thought that was an amazing thing to throw into the mix on this to really flesh everything out, so to speak.

Even speaking to the creepiness, as soon as you enter the ruins, you hear voices. There's voices whispering that you hear where it's like, I will help you. And things like that. And it's like, who's talking to me? Am I going crazy? Is this a Roman god? Like, what's going on?

Yeah. Yeah, it is. So there's a lot of atmosphere in this game that doesn't communicate through us talking about it. But okay, Paul, so that's four reviews. There was a context clue in there. I joked around about this before we actually wrote down our scores and before we started recording, because you and I both know that this game is well, well received. And so that's probably going to give us a little bit of a clue as to what the actual part is so all right on a scale steam scale zero to 100 paul what do you think the overall review score is well i believe i guessed first last

time plus you're on like a four episode win you want me to guess first yeah yeah you get to go first all right i know that this game is well received i personally think it's well received as well. So I went high. I went 95%. So I jotted down 95 as my initial guess. Oh my goodness. And since you read a review that mentioned overwhelmingly positive, which I believe means 95% or higher, I'll just have to say 96% as my guess. Dang it, Paul. Is overwhelmingly, is that the break point? 95%? I thought% as my guess. Dang it, Paul. Is that the break point?

95%? I thought it was like 94%. Dang it. I was hoping you'd go under. It is 96% on the money. Yeah. On the money, Paul. I'm back.

I'm back, baby. Broken. Way to go. I should have let you go first. You would have picked 95%. I know the answer. I could have cheated. I definitely would have said 95 because that's what

i wrote down well wow it's been a little while paul are you rusty do you need to you need to shake the rust off for this next intro nah nah i got it let's all right let's hit that music hey there lady sentia i'm really glad i just bought life insurance because when i saw you my heart stopped. All right, so this segment is called Make Love, Marry, or Murder. This is where Josh and I each rate the game with our own score. Is this a game that is make love territory? You liked it, but it's short term, not something you want to commit to. Is it marriage material, or is it murder, and you don't recommend that anyone play it?

It's highly subjective, but do you want me to go first, or do you want to go first, recommend that anyone play it it's highly subjective but do you want me to go first or do you want to go first josh go for it you won man let's hear me okay i'll go first i'll say that this game is a mary now i will say the 25 price point it feels just a little high to me i i feel like if this game was 20 or less, then it's an absolute home run, out of the park, absolute marriage material kind of game. If you're on a very limited budget, since this game gives you such limited hours, you're not going to get more than 10 hours out of this. Absolutely. You're not going to. So if you're a big time gamer and you pick up a lot of games, this one is definitely a must play. If you're on a budget,

I'd let it pass. But that does not speak to the quality of the game itself. The game is pretty amazing. I agree with you on everything you said. It's a Mary for me as well. I was honestly a little blown away by this game. I knew that people loved it. I didn't know that it was going to be my kind of game. And that was the thing. I was very disappointed with 12 minutes. And I was a little hesitant that I was like, oh man, is this going to be kind of more like the annoying repetitious thing? It was not. And this game is not like any other game that I've played recently. I would say I agree with the one review that said it left me feeling a little bit like Outer Wilds did because there's just so much to enjoy with the game. Now, that said, even though Mary would imply long term, this game is fairly

short. I mean, I'd say probably eight hours is going to be the average. You might be able to beat it in six. And for $25, six hours worth of enjoyment. It's like, ah, you know, that's close. The experience is wonderful. It's one of those things you can talk about for a long time. I would recommend this game to everybody, but I am with you. And it's goofy that $5 can be that price point difference. Because if this was 1999, it feels better about it. Right. You know what I mean? But it's like, it's $24.99 and that $5 makes a big difference. But I thought this game was great. It pleasantly caught me by surprise. It's phenomenal. I would recommend it hands down. All right. Well, it's this time of the show, Josh. Let's go to the leaderboard and see where

this game stacks up. All right, so for the leaderboard, which by the way, you can see on our website, multiplayerpodcast.com. It's right there on the main page. You just got to scroll down a little bit. But Josh and I, at the end of every deep dive, we have to come to a consensus. Where do we rank this game against every other game that we have deep-diven up to this point? And we have covered a grand total. I got to pull it up here. But we have now done a deep dive on 56 games. We have things in here like Terraria at 12.

We've got No Man's Sky at 22. We've got Knockout City at 34. Civilization VI at 44. And Halo Reach at 53, just to kind of give you an idea of what we got in here. So looking at Forgotten City, what do you think, Josh? Are we looking at the 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s? What are you thinking? This is a really good game. It's a unique game. It's memorable. It's different than most things out there. This is a phenomenal production that was made by three people. I have mad respect for that team and the game that they actually produced. I want to go high on this thing, man. There wasn't much to not enjoy about it. I mean, if the only complaint is that it was too short and it left me wanting more, that's a compliment. I mean, I'm looking at probably

in the teens. I'm looking and it's like, Terraria is so beloved. Risk of Rain 2 is awesome. I'm kind of in that area, man. That's pretty close to what I was thinking. I had it just a couple spots lower. I would definitely put it below Splitgate, which we have at 14. Splitgate, you know, for the price point and the number of hours you get, if I had to choose Splitgate or just a couple dozen hours at most of multiple playthroughs of Forgotten City, I'd rather go split gate so i was thinking it would be somewhere in the destiny rainbow six black ops cold war range maybe even one or two lower than that but i would have it somewhere in that 15 to 20 range is what i was

thinking i'm totally fine with that to be honest um so let's let's let's maybe just think through a couple of these would you rather the experience of Forgotten City or the experience of Resident Evil Village? Because I think that's the tough one. Oh, man, that's tough. Village is a more complete game, but Village was also $60. Right.

So how do you rank them? It's tough. This is the fun of the leaderboard. I really liked Resident Evil Village. I mean, you and I were both huge fans of that game. I don't like you for this, Paul. Forgotten City is so good, but it's so short. Yeah.

And Resident Evil Village is so good, and it's long, but it's $60. With a $60 budget, would you buy Village or Forgotten City plus a bunch of other cheaper games? Personally, I would buy Forgotten City plus a bunch of other cheaper games, to be honest with you. So I would say put it above Village. What about Black Ops, Cold War, and Rainbow Six Siege, and Destiny 2? I've soured a lot on Cold War, and this has nothing to do with Cold War. This has to do

with Vanguard that they're releasing. And it's like, you've kind of burned me a little bit on your money grabbing with releasing Vanguard so soon. I would put it above Cold War. I don't know that I would put it above Siege, even though they're completely different games. I mean, Siege is sweaty. I could make the argument for that. But then it's like Rainbow Six Siege is such a well-known and loved game, too. I'm right in that area. If you wanted to lower a little bit, I'm right around that 16. I could go 15, 16, or 17, and I think I'd be fine with all three. Let's go 17. We'll put it below Rainbow Six Siege, but above Black Ops Cold War. Does that work for you? Yeah, I think that's its home.

Awesome. We'll plug it in. Makes perfect sense to me. And so now we're about 52 minutes or so into the episode. This is now the point that you want to turn it off. If you have not yet played this game, or if you plan to play the game, turn it off here. I'll give you a couple more seconds as you fumble to grab your phone while you're in your car driving to work. But this is the point of no return. We're going into spoiler territory. All right. So I kind of just thought, are there any quests? Are there

any twists? Anything here that you wanted to talk about i'm gonna assume that at this point most people sticking around already know the story so most of the spoilers i wanted to talk about are more of just like funnier moments if that makes sense yeah yeah i mean for people that maybe you're like i want to know the twists in this game but i'm never gonna play it you know we could get into i mean're just going to spoil it, right? Let's just spoil it. Yeah, whatever you want to talk about. Everybody's dead, right? That's kind of the big twist is that you're all dead. You're all in... You basically have been taken to hell, so to speak, but not really. You're in purgatory. Some of the cool reveals are that the lady that was on the river, her name's Karen. She even says,

like, hey, my name's kind of... I think it's making fun of the whole she are that the lady that was on the river her name's karen she even says like hey my name's kind of i think it's making fun of the whole like she's a karen things yeah um but really she is karon of the river styx the ferryman that takes you that transports souls to the land of the dead you are in the land of the dead. The golden rule is 100% real. It was created by a god to test humanity and stuff like that. To see, there's a lot of backstory and some nuance that goes along there. Sentius is a complete psychopath, even though he comes across as the magistrate that you want to win the election and be a nice guy. That dude, cray cray.

So let's talk a little bit. I thought that the reveal that he was keeping his memories from every loop, that was the one I did not see coming at all. When he reveals to you, oh, actually, this is how I've been able to be immortal and maintain power is I can keep resetting this loop every day. I don't even want you to successfully stop the golden rule from being broken. I don't care. As long as this problem exists, I can live for forever. And I thought that was such a neat concept. And that one definitely hit me that I did not expect. Yeah, I didn't expect that either. Like I said, they do a good job of revealing how bad he is. You figure out at one point, you're working to try to unlock this area. What's the name of that thing? The area above the cisterns.

Yeah, the cistern. That's it. And you go in the cistern and you're looking around and there's this lady that is chained up that's in there. And you're like, what the heck? And it's his daughter. He chained his daughter up and left her to rot, man. Father of the year. That guy's crazy.

Yeah. And then you're like, yo, you're really bad. I think it was after that point that I actually shot him with the bow. Oh, yeah. It was a little bit later in the game for me. But yeah, so you figure out that he's super bad. I mean, some of the spoiler stuff, we got to touch on the castle part, right? So there's this part of the game, and we mentioned it earlier, that you have to go into this castle. Now, you can skip this, but don't skip this part.

But as you go in, I guess it's a palace, not a castle, since it's Roman times. But the game will pause for a second, and a menu comes up that says, Hey, this next sequence is scary and maybe disturbing. You know, are you sure you want to continue? And you say yes. And then this is where a good portion of the combat of the game comes from. There's these golden statues that are moving around. They're not the ones that the God summons. They're these weird, almost like zombie things. And you have a golden bow that you get. So you actually get Athena's bow and you can shoot them and you turn them into gold. Now, one thing we didn't say in the show is that when you get Athena's bow, any living matter that you shoot turns into gold. So this is actually part of

like puzzle solving and stuff, because sometimes you have to shoot moss that's in water to turn it into like a solid platform that you can jump on. You have to shoot moss that's in water to turn it into a solid platform that you can jump on. You have to shoot vines so that you can climb walls and stuff like that. But you discover that this lady is hearing these golden statues talking to her, which you're hearing throughout the game too. That's that creepy whispering that you mentioned. And this lady realizes that there's people inside these golden statues. Like they've been turned to gold, but they're still in there. And so she tries to, to like separate the gold from them to like peel back the gold.

But in doing that, she completely mutilates these people and there's blood everywhere and there's guts and it's just gross. And then there's like this, these torture rooms gross. And then there's these torture rooms where you can tell she's been doing all these experiments. And then you're like, yo, this is nasty. What have you been doing? Well, and it's driven from a good place. She can hear the voices. And so she thinks, well, if I peel off this gold, maybe we can release them. But in reality, you end up learning that it's almost more of just like if you were peeling off your skin, like it's causing pain and discomfort,

and they just want to be killed. They just want to die. And when you shoot them with the golden arrow, they go, thank you, as they die, which is even that is like super creepy. But that I would say is the most memorable and the most fun of the whole game, is that one quest line. It really was enjoyable from top to bottom. It was creepy. It had action sequences to it. There was puzzle solving. That part really did stand out to me.

Not that the whole game needs to be action. This is not a game that's intended to do that. But when you couple the mystery solving and the investigation and the dialogue and all that stuff, but then you throw in this little flavor to the game, it really just added so much to it and made it feel very complete to me. Yeah, absolutely. The one moment that made me laugh the hardest by far had to do with Dooley, the prisoner. Oh, Dually's great, man. So this is one of those moral quandaries that they cover in the game. Dually loves to snoop and get into other people's things. And the magistrate is so afraid that he's going to steal

that he preemptively locks him up, almost like Minority Report style. We know he's going to steal, so we're going to lock him up, even though he hasn't done anything yet. But we're so afraid about the golden rule that we need to keep him locked. And so Galerius says, well, if I get elected as the new leader, I'm letting Dooley out. He's done nothing wrong. And you have to do so much to get Galerius voted in as magistrate. And his very first order of business is to release Dooley.

Free Dooley! Yes! I was so excited! Were you not excited? Of course I was. And I kid you not, it's about 14 seconds later. I laughed so hard. The many will suffer for the sins of the one.

He's already stolen. He's been free for 12 seconds. Did you not watch him when he gets free? No, I ran away. Oh, I watched him. You let him out. Like you said, I ran away. Oh, I watched him. You let him out. Like you said, this is a long quest, right?

This is not something that happens easily. And it's one of the final pieces of the puzzle because Dooley has this tablet that you got to get and it's in his cell. And so it's one of the last parts of the game. So you get Galerius elected magistrate. You're so happy. You're like, Dooley's going to be free. Yes.

Best leader. I'm watching and Dooley's going to be free. Yes. Best leader. I'm watching and Dooley walks out of his cell and he's this kind of old, forgetful. He's got a little bit of like, you know, amnesia or whatever. And he just starts walking around. He walks right out of the building that he's in.

And there's this little cart directly across the street from his building. And he walks over to it and he picks up this shiny thing, which is theft. And all of it goes to pot, man, because it's like, the many shall suffer for the sins of the one. And then you're like, no, Dooley, no. So then you gotta run.

You reset it. So then I was like, well, obviously I did something wrong. So how do I keep Dooley from stealing i body blocked duly paul no lie for a solid five minutes to see if maybe he wouldn't go steal something and it did not matter he was going to the second i left duly stole that thing off that card again and i was just like oh my, that is the funniest thing in the world. Because there's nothing you can do to stop Dually from just yoinking this pot or whatever it is. I don't know, like some chalice or something. Oh, it's so funny because, yeah, you think that maybe electing Galerius is going to lead into the ending because you think he's such a good man.

We know Sentius is bad. But no, things actually get worse with Galerius as the leader. So he's a great errand runner, terrible magistrate. Yeah, no, no. He's not very good at politics, that's for sure. The vendor was one. You had the shady vendor that tries to trap you in the building when you get the golden bow. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. You know who I'm talking about? The guy that wouldn't sell you the antidote to go save the other person's life? Exactly, yeah.

So at one point, you can steal, like not steal, but you basically talk him into this scheme where he gives you like 10,000 denarii. And then you basically tell him like, ha ha, you gave me this money and I gave you no information. And he's like, well, you told me something I already knew. And you're like, well, that's not my problem. It doesn't break the golden rule. And now you have 10,000 Neri in this game, which is a ton of money. And he gets so mad at you, but he can't do anything because it didn't break the golden rule.

Like, you gave him an answer, even though you kind of swindled them. And then the last thing I'll bring up is the vendor, the lady, the one that's selling a way to get out. Do you remember that one? The one who has all the rumors and she'll sell them for like 5 denarii? Yeah, she's like the barkeep or whatever. And so she keeps telling people, I have a way for you to get out of here. If you want to leave this city, you can do that. But then she charges you like 5,000 denarii for it, which is a lot of money in the beginning of the game. So you finally do it, and she gives you a bottle of poison. And there you go. And then you realize that you've been

scammed. And then you're like, wait a minute, how does this not break the golden rule? And she's like, well, that will get you out. I didn't lie to you or anything. So there's all those little subtle things in there where it's like you start to realize the characters and their personalities and these kind of aha moments and stuff that I thought were just great. Oh, it's so funny. Yeah, there's very memorable moments along the way that are really great. Well, that's all that we have here for The Forgotten City. Great game. Josh and I recommend it. So if you've got the money available, pick it up. It's a blast to play. And just as a reminder, please head over to MultiplayerSquad.com if you'd like to become a Patreon supporter or subscribe inside Apple Podcasts. Super easy. Just got to sign up for a couple bucks a month. That'll help fund our show and you'll get access to the extra episodes. And then if you want to play the next game that we are going to deep dive, we are going to be playing Deathloop. We're just going to keep adding on more time loop games, Josh.

This is the year of the time loop. So get in your hours for Deathloop. That one will be covered two weeks from today. And of course, as always, the next episode will be a Twig episode on Thursday. We'll see you guys then. See you, everybody. And thanks again to Razer for sponsoring the show!