Video Gamers Podcast - Dragon Age: Failguard, Half-Life 3 Tease and Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

The Video Gamers Podcast is back with another incredible episode of This Week in Gaming. Gaming hosts Josh, Paul and Ryan are back chatting the latest gaming news. Dragon Age: Veilguard has us bummed after recent announcements, Half-Life 3 gets a tease, we chat the newest Zelda trailer and more. All the video game news you need, each and every week from the Video Gamers Podcast! Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Disratory and Ole Jake 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

This episode is brought to you by Samsung Galaxy. Ever captured a great night video only for it to be ruined by that one noisy talker? With Audio Erase on the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, you can reduce or remove unwanted noise and relive your favorite moments without the distractions. And that's not all. New Galaxy AI features like NowBrief will give you personalized insights based on your day schedule so that you're prepared no matter what. Buy thesung galaxy s25 ultra now at samsung.com hello fellow gamers we are the video gamers podcast and today we are breaking down This Week in Gaming by discussing our favorite news stories of the week.

I am your host, Paul, and joining me, he might be a little disappointed because we vetoed him wanting to talk about yet another Black Myth Wukong trailer. They released their final one. It's Josh. Okay, it was a four-minute trailer. It was amazing. It showed off tons of combat and boss fights. No it was a four minute trailer it was amazing it showed off tons of combat and boss fights dang it we can't talk about it every episode we can we're deep diving it we're gonna have so much to talk about that's fair enough you'll you'll get you'll get your day in the sun don't worry my man all right and then joining josh and me he is reverse binding himself to a bird. So that way he can fly around his favorite gaming series that he's finally come around on.

Zelda. It's Ryan. Oh. Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We'll talk about this in a little bit. It's your favorite series of all time, Ryan. No.

Yeah. I thought you came around on Tears of the Kingdom, Ryan. Yeah. Tears of the Kingdom ryan yeah tears of the kingdom i did all right we've got a lot to talk about guys i'm not happy about this first story we got to talk about dragon age uh i am back to calling it the fail guard i'm laughing but i'm crying on the inside. All right. So, guys, you'll remember a couple of weeks back, we got some we had that horrendous trailer that we ripped on. Then we got a little bit of gameplay.

And I remember pointing out to you guys, it looks a little weird because it seems like you can't control your companions. They did have where you could pull up a wheel and do like ability combos, but it seemed like you didn't have direct control of the rest of your companions. And this week we got confirmation, guys. We are not able to control our party members. There was an interview with game director Corinne Bush, I think is how it's pronounced.

And they have dropped party controlling we no longer even have three companions they have dropped it to two and the reason that we are told is that this game requires a high number of actions per minute and that it was overwhelming to control more than just the main character uh my favorite part of this is that they described this as a feature because they said in all the play tests uh people are more engaged than ever what are your guys thoughts thank you for saving me from myself is all i can say guys you know what actions per minute i can't keep up with that. I'm just a dumb gamer. They have to protect me from myself.

And so they're doing this for me. They're doing it for me, you guys. They don't want me to be frustrated. I know that I personally was so concerned and worried about my ability to play this game. And I am beyond relieved now that I know that I don't have to worry about that many actions per minute and controlling my, you know, my companions. I did. I did tell my wife, she heard, she heard us talking about this game the other day. And I remember like, I told her, I said, baby, I'm just really concerned that I'm not going to be able to

keep up with the actions per minute in dragon age veil guard. And she was like, yeah, you're getting older. Your actions per minute are really starting to slow Guard. And she was like, yeah, you're getting older. Your actions per minute are really starting to slow down. And I was like, what am I going to do? How am I going to play this game? Josh, I've been having nightmares thinking I can't click my mouse that fast. How I've seen the trailers. You have to sometimes walk to the left and shoot an arrow. Sometimes you have to dodge.

Combat and movement at the same time? How are we going to do this? Walk and shoot. No, no way, sir. Yeah, that's asking too much. That's asking too much. Guys, this is so preposterous. We have seen not a ton of footage,

but there is nothing to suggest that this is like too complex or too complicated to be able to control party members. I really, I just don't understand. Josh, you've been with me since the beginning.

We love dragon age origins and dragon age two, super divisive. Some, it has, it's fine. I get it, but it was still a good video game. Yeah.

It was highly playable. Maybe not as good as, you know, Origins. Right. And then Inquisition kind of, you know, brought things somewhat back, you know, and it was a little closer to Origins. It's kind of like a hybrid between Origins and 2. But, like, this is an action RPG series. Origins was much more RPG than action. And now we are talking about having too many actions per

minute it seems to me like we've just swung the pendulum all the way back to being action and being more arcadey i'm not happy to hear this i was really hoping this game would lean more into the rpg side of things but it's definitely not i when i when i saw the the link come up when we were talking about what we were going to cover, I just said, oh, no, poor Paul. Yeah. And I'm not one. I haven't played any of the Dragon Age. So this is like a big time feature, right?

Like this is a huge change for the series overall. Well, yeah. Well, Dragon Age 2 was a little different where you couldn't like change armor and builds and stuff like that of your companions but historically it's definitely had pretty strong rpg elements where sometimes you have to pause your action and make decisions and set where people walk and things of that nature now it's more like dragon's dogma 2 like ai is just going to control your companions movement they did say that you can decide when your characters will do like

special abilities that are on cooldowns but it's no longer going to be where you're positioning your party and feeling like you're in control of what they're doing which i see as a huge downside i i view this as a huge downside too this is the dumbing down of a game that is it like dragon age has always been like a bit of an action rpg but it's also meshed a little bit of like a crpg at the same time um and this is just in my opinion straight up dumbing down dragon age this is this game's been in development for a long time we don't have the time or resources to put in this feature so we're just going to strip it out and tell people some really, really dumb excuse. Like we tested it internally and oh, this game is so much better if you don't have to worry about

switching to your other characters, guys. Like, come on, man. And listen, I don't want to blow something out of proportion that like may not, know ultimately affect the game but like this is going to affect the game man like this is going to be it's going to not feel like dragon age at that point like you know that's the problem is that it's like it's going to be the dragon age characters and the dragon age settings but after that this is going to be completely different than dragon age at that point it's just so stupid they look kind of goofy too right there the character design looks different than normal a little bit i mean it's it's just been 10 years since inquisition so like things

are going to naturally look different just with you know all the tech advances and whatnot i know i'm a little bit behind the curve i know a lot of people have been hating on Bioware for a long time. I've been like one foot in that camp. I've lost my last final shred of faith in Bioware. I read some comments that I thought were kind of interesting. Josh, the creative director of Dragon Age, their name is John Epler. And he said that they had to learn from the failures of Anthem in order to do well with Dragon Age. I saw this. You saw this? I saw this. He said that the problem of why Anthem failed is that they were focusing on something different that they weren't proficient at,

while they should be doubling down on single-player RPGs. Is that why Anthem failed? No. Anthem had phenomenal bones. The gameplay was great. Yes, exactly. Yeah, it just didn't, they didn't cook it enough, and they didn't give you enough stuff to do, so it became very repetitive after eight hours, and everybody went, wait, this is it? But that eight hours was fantastic,

so they obviously were onto something. They don't know the problem. Yeah, and then they talk about do what you know, but double down on what you're good at, and it's like, okay, well, give me an RPG then. Give me this action RPG where I can control my characters and this party and develop these characters in this party throughout my entire play time in this game. I can start getting attached to these characters.

I know how they fight. I can construct this party the way I want. I can go control the wizard and make him combo with this and cast a spell on the rogue and all this strategic stuff. That's great. And now they just go, nah, that's too much, man. It's too much action. Make it where we want action. Cause that's what, you know, that's what people need. Um, and we kind of change the graphics a little bit. So we got to make something else. We, you know, that took a long time. So we got to make something else. That took a long time. So we have to cut something here and there. I don't buy it. I don't like it. Don't call it

Dragon Age. You know what I mean? Is this game going to be fun? I have no doubt. Legitimately, I have no doubt that this Dragon Age is going to be a good time and it's going to be a good video game. We kind of saw that in the 20-minute, but it's just not, it's not dragon age four, man. You know, it's not the, it's not the dragon age four that anybody asked for or was expecting. And it's like, you can try to sell this, but I feel like you're just like beating on the old junker car out in the, this baby gets 40 miles to the gallon. If you get out and push you know what i mean like it's like wait a minute like this is not like no so well yeah i have my doubts josh i i'm not convinced it's gonna be super fun we'll have to wait and see i'm very worried that

they don't seem to understand the problem with anthem they don't seem to understand what dragon age fans actually want this all just seems so so bananas. They're lost. And the thing that I hate the most, we've been talking about this a lot, is developer honesty with game delays. Hey, we don't want to go up against that game. And hey, we needed more time to polish this. We found a lot of bugs, whatever. But don't come out and say that this is to save gamers from themselves because we can't handle the actions per minute. That's just dumb, man. What is that? What PR guy gave them that excuse?

And he went, yeah, we'll roll with that. They'll buy it. Well, we'll have to wait and see about the final product, but I'm not feeling very confident. All right. Moving on to the next story. This is a shorter one, and then we'll take our break. So I'm sure we have a lot of older gamers because we're all gamer dads. We're all in our 30s to mid 40s, and we're all used to the Half-Life 3 rumors. I feel like every couple of years, these make their rounds. Well, we have another

round of rumors. A voice actor whose name is Natasha Shondell listed a valve project on her resume called Project White Sands, which has since been removed and is no longer listed. A lot of people notice this listing and they notice the fact that White Sands is the name of a national park in New Mexico, which is where Black Mesa is located. Half-Life 3 confirmed. Oh, baby. valve can't count that high though that's the thing they can't no because they got cs2 tf2 portal 2 dota 2 left for dead 2 nothing's a 3 and anything any game they make after that is just a new name so who knows but uh i i'll tell you this much i've waited more than half my life for half life three yeah that's true yeah yeah that's oh that's crazy dude isn't that crazy 20 years since

half-life 2 came out it's never gonna happen that was just playing around but i don't think it's ever gonna happen i was gonna ask you guys do you legitimately think half-life 3 will ever come out my answer is no because what's the upside? They print money left and right. They bring in whatever. Six and a half million, I was reading. Yeah, well, they bring in billions of dollars a year with having 300 employees.

There's zero upside. All they're going to do is disappoint people with it, and they're making money. So I don't know why they would ever make it at this point anyway. Just to say you did it. Yeah, why not? Look at bioware and dragon h4 they they did it guys no no don't do that remember remember how excited we were about overwatch 2 and diablo 3 and these follow-ups are so good you know they never they never get worse oh man yeah plus plus let's not ignore

the fact that it's clearly a code name and guess what you usually don't make code names that are hints at the real project i don't think this has anything to do with half-life i i actually thought maybe this i thought it was maybe deadlock you know like because it's got such a cast of characters but then there was a lot of thinking that it's like no deadlock is already known like they're i saw a thing that's like 18 000 concurrent players right now in deadlock so they're like it's not a secret anymore valve yeah and if it was then why would they have pulled all their stuff down immediately exactly you know yeah i don't know i mean don't get me wrong nothing would make me happier than half-life 3 coming out in my lifetime.

Don't say lifetime. Oh, no. I'm just saying. It ain't never going to happen. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it would be a standalone. Something kind of like Half-Life Alex. I feel like that's best case scenario. Sequel to Half-Life Alex makes more sense than Half-Life 3, to

be honest. Yeah. I totally agree as well. All right. let's go ahead and take a short break, then we'll come back and talk about Ryan's favorite, Zelda. This is an ad from BetterHelp Online Therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships, but it's just

as important to focus on the green flags. If you're not quite sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify those qualities so you can embody the green flag energy and find it in others. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online and sign up only takes a few minutes. Visit BetterHelp.com today to be a little bit older than a week by the time this episode airs. But Nintendo gave us another trailer for The Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom. And we talked about how all of us started that last announcement trailer. And we were all kind of like, this looks really dumb. And then by the end of the trailer, it was like, oh my gosh.

They've kind of come up with another really clever mechanic with this game. And so what Nintendo gave us here is basically like showing off the different biomes and talking about different ways to travel in the world. But they did also show us some new mechanics. And I was very curious to hear your guys' thoughts here. Like, what are some things we saw and what stuck out to you? I'll tell you what we saw. We saw another company just joining the mob of the woke world where they go in and they turn Zelda into a woman. Can you believe it? I can't believe it.

I can't even believe it, man. I just don't even know what to say. Oh, man. Just, yeah. Walking straight into what's the name of the city with all all women oh oh the desert one uh yeah oh what's the name i don't remember it doesn't matter yeah i know but it is very funny now that you're actually playing as zelda yeah you don't have to go find the clothes yeah yeah you don't have to sneak your way in i i'm having a hard time this is so like superficial guys the animation the animation and the graphics in this game make it look like it's made out of play-doh or like or like legos

but like not legos like the duplos like the cheap leg oh yeah you know what i mean like why does this look like this game was put together by preschoolers in that art style? I don't know. It's just, it distracts me. I will say, I think underlying, there's a lot of really neat mechanics. You can tell Nintendo was like, dude, Ultra Hand, all this stuff that they did with Tears of the Kingdom, they are now just absolutely embracing that whole sandbox, open thinking mentality of let's just give people tools and see what they do with them. That's what this Zelda game was kind of advertised as.

We talked about it with the echoes where if you can get the echoes of beds, you can build bridges with them and stuff like that. And they showed off a ton of that. But then what they did is they started talking about, hey, if something's moving, you can attach yourself to it. And so if you attach yourself to a bird that's flying around, you will fly around with the bird. And then I was like, well, okay, this is really cool. Like, honestly, like the game might look really weird to me,

but these are some neat aspects. And then the reverse one where it's like, if you're moving, you can pull something with you. And in the game trailer, they gave like the, like this little snippet of where there's this giant boulder that you can't break, but you can attach yourself to it and then walk and it will follow you.

And then you just drop it into this like abyss. And now you can get past this boulder kind of thing. I mean, this stuff's pretty cool, man. It's really cool. Yeah. The stuff is cool. And I mean, that's one of the biggest things for like tears of the kingdom the ultra hand is what sold me on that

game um and it still continues to me my son just yesterday we're watching different stuff people have made for like 45 minutes we're just sitting there watching all these crazy creations and and it just shows when you give people the tools to just go have fun and go crazy the the imagination and the stuff they can do within the game is awesome i just i'm having a real hard time getting past this this style like they finally give her her own game like where she's the badass chick and and they put it in this no i know i when i fired up the trailer immediately i was like wait why did i like this game again i was like oh yeah yeah yeah the one and i'm like this looks so stupid and then by the end of the trailer again i was like all right bind and reverse bind this

looks very cool i loved when they showed zelda grabbing a spike ball and binding to it and then just running around popping enemies using this spike ball as a weapon. And I'm like, that's so neat. I have no doubt that this is going to start showing up on my TikTok feed, same way Tears of the Kingdom did. There's going to be very goofy things that speedrunners do. I think people are going to discover really clever ways of duplicating items, using Bind. And it's not that long before this game comes out. It comes out in less than six weeks. That's crazy.

It's September 26th. Okay. So here's a question legitimately for you guys. And this could just be the way that they present the game in this preschool style of toys almost. I don't even know how to describe it but that's like the best way i can right it's like it reminds me like toys you'd find in like a preschool class yeah it almost looks like claymation yeah yeah it's something weird man but like okay so with tears of the kingdom i have to even though you know that's not my favorite game ever i have to give them credit

with especially some of the shrines like some of the stuff in these puzzles were very, very cool to figure out and overcome with the Zonai contraptions and stuff like that. And just letting you kind of roll with how you want to approach it. It could just be the way that this game is presented, but I feel like there's these really cool tools and there's these neat mechanics that they've introduced, but it almost feel like, is this going to be a really dumbed down sandbox? Where it's like, yeah, you can do all this stuff, but you don't ever really have to think about a lot of it. Where do they balance the giving you these abilities, but also the challenge level of the game itself? Because if you can do both, it winds up coming out really, really good and entertaining. But if the challenge level is super

simple even though you have all these tools it's kind of like for me that would just be the most boring thing ever you know so it's like i'm very curious to see how they balance those two things yeah i mean because yeah if you have uh this cool way to do these amazing things and then you're just like get across this lake or get up yeah i just throw beds down and that's it like i can solve every single problem in the game with just throwing a couple beds down and climbing up on those like yeah that's not interesting to me yeah what's it's not engaging it doesn't draw you in as much because i know personally there were some shrines i did where i was like just beating my head against the wall and then i came up with some crazy way to do

it and i'm like i don't think that's how they designed it but i got it done and like that's rewarding that's right that's fun and um i just i same thing i hope that there's stuff like that in this where you just you're you're drawn to to be so creative instead of just kind of using the same spam technique to get challenged yeah challenge right yeah exactly i don't think there's gonna be a lot of challenge i mean it's zelda like when like even if a couple of shrines are a little bit more difficult it takes you a few minutes zelda's not a game that ever presents like major challenge yeah so i mean i think it's gonna be simple but i think it's gonna be a really fun sandbox and i think it's gonna present a lot of fun i think kind of like tears it's gonna set some new

mechanics that i think we're gonna end up seeing in other games down the road all right so let's go ahead and move into our last story of the week so a quiet place the road ahead is an upcoming game it's set in the world of the movies if anyone listening somehow hasn't seen any of these it's about blind aliens you haven't seen them ryan no It's about blind aliens. You haven't seen them, Ryan? No. That's a dumb story. None of them? Are you serious?

The fireplace is good, dude. Okay, you have aliens that can't see. They go strictly by the sound. Yes. And yet people can still walk around and breathe and do all this stuff. They would easily hear all that stuff. They're not that sensitive unless they're nearby. Why not?

They can hear you. If they're in the room with you, better like be holding your breath kind of thing but from further away you just can't make any loud sounds well and if you had seen the movies ryan you would know that they carve special ways of walking so they have to walk certain paths where they've cleared out gravel and stuff like that so that way they don't make any noise uh so yeah you, the game, it's first person perspective. It's a horror game, of course, to match the movies. It's set to release on October 17th and it's going to be 30 bucks. So it is a little bit on the cheaper

side, which I like. We have not talked about this game at all, even though there have been a couple of previews and trailers. I will say you play as a pregnant college student who has asthma, which is almost over the top funny, making a game where you can't make noise. Like seriously, are there any two things that are going to make more noise than like asthma and being pregnant? But in any case, did you guys have a chance to watch any footage about this? I wasn't sure. We have not talked about this at all on the show or off i i did i got instant alien isolation vibes from this game well like we have alien isolation at home vibes i mean it's true it's true but i'll tell you what i am a fan of that suspenseful horror like alien isolation does And so this does at least like pique my interest where,

you know, man, like if you watch the trailer, I think that gives you a pretty good idea of the sense of dread that is happening when that thing is crawling around looking for you and you're right there, you know, or you have to take a puff of your inhaler and hope that it doesn't hear you and it kind of builds that suspense and stuff like that so i will say i think they did a very good job kind of showcasing what this game is going to be but i'm also with you paul where it's like why shouldn't i just play alien isolation if this is the experience that i'm looking for yeah that's a good point i mean i i said how i felt i haven't seen the movies but um i i was i was a little unsure but this game looks kind of cool to me i i'm i you know how i like post-apocalyptic worlds like the world's torn

apart and you're just trying to survive and stuff like that um i like the part when she you know you see her hitting the inhaler and and what a what a a hard thing to do when you you're sitting there you don't want to die but you also can't breathe and you're not trying to do when you're sitting there, you don't want to die, but you also can't breathe and you're not trying to cough or any of that stuff. And the suspense, like you said, Josh, you can feel it even just watching the trailer. So I love that kind of stuff too. So I don't know, for 30 bucks, it may be worth the flyer.

Check it out and see how good it is. It is kind of funny seeing the lungs and as you have to take the inhaler but you haven't and you can see like as as it gets worse and worse wanting to take that inhaler so you don't die i will say i like the idea of them trying to make it suspenseful where you're sneaking around and stuff like that i think this has a couple of problems i don't i don't know that it's going to have any combat because this is totally about trying to escape these aliens yeah you don't fight them so right off the bat that kind of puts like an upper limit to me for how good it's going to be and

i was already feeling bored watching 10 minute clips of this like i don't know if you guys noticed but every time you open a door or open like a vent, like you have to slowly move your controller. And I know we haven't done our deep dive of heavy rain yet, but let's just say Ryan definitely struggles a bit with doing the slow actions. And this was just like every 10 to 30 seconds, you're trying to open something slowly and you're so slowly creeping around. i would worry that i'm going to get bored with with that kind of like slow process that's yeah that's fair as long as the thing they have to do is make sure that they build enough of that suspense in there to where

you don't get bored it reminded me too of kind of like sneaking around um with the clickers in last of us like you just hear that 100 you know that clicker noise and you're trying to go around and then it's suspenseful it's intense just doing that little section what would be cool if they were in these types of games where there's obviously it's not like you can 1v1 one of these monsters but if you uh they had a way to where you could set up a trap or something so you were still interacting but found found a way to, to fight them, you know, as opposed to like,

just, you know, straight up fight. But I don't know. We'll see if it's too slow. You know, I probably will get bored too. Yeah.

You can build suspense, but if that suspense doesn't ever, if nothing ever happens, you got the payoff, you need to pay off. Right. Exactly. Then,

then you just start getting kind of bored. I will say in the trailer, like the girl accidentally kicks like a metal bucket and it banged. And I was instantly, cause I've seen the movies, you know, and I was like, Oh no, you know, and then I was like, that even got me in the trailer. So I don't know. I'm curious again. I mean, I think this experience kind of already exists, but quiet place is a really, really good couple of movies. I haven't seen the newest one in the theaters um i've heard it's pretty decent but the prequel one yeah yeah so i i mean this is one

that probably won't really stay on my radar but then again it's october there's really nothing coming out in october you know so maybe unless we're all still playing zelda uh did you guys notice how loud the footsteps were? Like everyone can't stop making jokes about it because you're not supposed to make any noise. These are the loudest footsteps I've ever heard in a game. That's what I'm saying, man. They got to juice it up there.

Yeah, they got to juice it up though. If it's sound related, you got to be like, oh, I'm making so much noise by walking. Yeah, and walking around with a sound meter where you can see how much noise you're making. Maybe this will give Hellblade 2 a run for its money for you, Josh. Yeah, I don't think so. Could be.

I don't know about that. Walking simulator? Maybe. All right. Well, that is it for today. We would like to ask all our listeners out there, if you enjoy what we do and like the show, if you want some more content or even just to help us out, you can sign up for Patreon support starting at five bucks a month.

Go just visit multiplayer squad.com. Please also make sure to rate the show five stars. You can join the free discord. You can also catch us on socials everywhere at video gamers pod. Thank you so much for listening until next time. Happy gaming. See ya. Okay. see you everybody