Video Gamers Podcast - Ghost of Tsushima, Dune Awakening and The Alters Announced - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

The Video Gamers Podcast is back with another incredible episode of This Week in Gaming. A new video game called The Alters drops a cool looking trailer. Dune Awakening gives us another look at this upcoming survival MMO, and the beloved video game Ghost of Tsushima is coming to PC finally! Plus we dive into the trailer for the new Fallout series and more in another gaming packed episode! Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: YayaArizona, Disratory and Cykasniber 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

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com. Hello, fellow gamers! We are the Video Gamers Podcast, hosted by three dads who are lifelong gamers. Today we are breaking down This Week in Gaming, where we're going to be talking about our favorite gaming news stories of the last seven days. Please make sure to rate our show five stars and leave a written review. You can also find us on socials everywhere at Video Gamers Pod. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, he has a flight booked to Arrakis, the most dangerous planet in the galaxy. It's Josh.

I am the Lisan Al-Gaib. And you've already seen Dune 2. I have. Oh, it's so good. No spoilers, but it's so good. Also, you guys, if I was going to play a race in Dune, what race do you think I would pick? Like, which house do you think I would pick? Like which house do you think I would be? Sandworm. I was going to say sandworm.

That's not a house. You just stole it from me. I'd be a Harkonnen. Come on, man. Bald, you know, evil.

Oh, there you go. It does fit. All right. Come on, guys. You guys call me a sandworm. Oh, man. Oh, man.

I stand by it. And then joining Josh and me, he's pondering his regrets in life, wondering how things might have turned out different if he changed his decisions. It's Ryan. Wait, is this just about me or is this a game? This is therapy time, Ryan.

Is this an intervention? What's going on here? I'm a sandworm and Ryan needs intervention. Pondering life. Yeah. Oh, goodness gracious. I'm happy in my life. Being a sandworm's cool.

So, you know. Sure. Aren't you jealous, Ryan? No. Wait. Yes. I don't know. I can't decide.

I have a cool name like Shy Halude, though. All right. Well, I think with that note, I think it's probably best if we start today should we start with dune awakening i mean that kind of feels like the big news rails already guys why not yeah sure let's stick with the dune theme so dune awakening is the upcoming survival mmo and this week we got a direct live stream that was about 25 minutes of interviews and video footage. We had seen some teaser trailers in the past. This was more a lot of interviews.

I'll say that. Not necessarily a whole lot of gameplay, but we did get to see some footage as well. How do you guys feel about what we were able to see? I know Josh is very much excited for this i'm very much excited as well i did not i didn't i did not watch this one twice like i did the last one but uh i did no rest for the wicked yeah like no rest for the wicked but uh this one i'm not the biggest dune head i you know i thought it's the movie was awesome but if you go survivalist game and mmo and all the stuff they talked about i'm i'm in i'm it hyped me up pretty good so it's did it

it did its job yeah i like a lot of what i saw in this i wish we could see more to be honest like they do show off some gameplay but it's an mmo and one of the things in the gameplay that they don't show off a whole lot is just other people. You know, like they show you a little party kind of thing. And it's like, oh, well, you know, there's my two buddies, you know, chilling on a balcony in this housing that we built. But that doesn't really tell me a whole lot about the game itself, you know. And so I kind of would like to know a little bit more about the actual mmo aspect of it um so you know there is that but man what they show off looks so good the

ornithopters the sandworms the survival elements you know the building this seems like a fully fledged mmo they keep referencing the survival aspects. They keep referencing the fact that you can get these different skill trees. Like you can be a Ben a Jesuit and use like the voice on people. You can do melee combat. You can do range combat. So they're touching on all the points that I'd love to hear.

I just want to see a little bit more than an action. And in that actual like MMO setting, not just like what looks to be almost like a single player environment almost. Yeah, there was definitely more talking about the game than showing the game, which definitely had a lot of people concerned. Like the whole live stream, the chat was kind of the whole time being like, show us, show the game, you know, instead of just talking. Now, that being said, there is a lot of stuff I think to like. I love the fact that they said the movie cast and crew have collaborated a lot with

the game devs. So they've had access to the sets and the special effects assets and all that kind of stuff. I mean, the game looks incredible graphically. I will say that I thought it was very neat, the whole concept of building a base and then saving the blueprint and being able to sell the blueprint or to share it with others. So you can tell they're kind of thinking outside the box. I've never heard of that being available in an MMO. If it's been out there, I just don't know. But at the same time, I don't know. There were some things that I found to be a little bit of a bummer. They did say you cannot kill or ride the sandworms. Yeah.

I guess that's not a huge surprise, but it's still a little bit of a bummer to know that all you can do is run and hide from them, you know? But other than that, I was kind of curious, like, are you guys concerned at all that the whole game is like desert?

Cause after watching all the footage i was like i feel like after a while it's gonna start to look a little drab that's like my biggest worry i i can see that i i remember always in diablo and uh was it luke lane or whatever the the act the desert area but after a while you just kind of get sick of just the bland dirt and sand so yeah the the inside the hall, the great halls and stuff, and the bases and all the people there, that part does look cool. But, yeah, I am a little concerned with how just going out into the desert every single time.

We live in the stinking desert. I don't need it in my games, too. We already live it. We already live it every day. I need to escape. Arrakis is based on phoenix yeah i think from a color palette yes it's going to be a little bit drab but i mean that's the setting right i mean look how beautiful the movie dune is and it's all just desert right so i think that there's going to be the opportunity for flair and the characters and i mean they talk

about factions and working for the harkonnens and the Atreides and the Fremen and things like that. So it's like, I think they could lean into the design elements of the different factions and things like that. At one point in the gameplay trailer, your guys are opening a treasure chest and then some like sleek looking ship goes flying overhead. And it's like, okay, well, that is obviously one of the factions um you know you have your sieges you have your cities you have your desert you have your deep desert so i think there's gonna be variety in the environments but we're probably talking just multiple shades of brown at that point but i don't i don't know i like yes it would be nice to have some variety but i could see how they just make that variety in the cities the towns the characters the ships and stuff like that too i also really like the fact that they said that

they're going to like draw people in with physical survival where you have to worry about shelter and water in the beginning but then you have to start worrying about political survival and this is all like stuff that's you know laid out in the movies and stuff i thought that was really neat did you guys catch the one part about how you can satiate your thirst? They told you there's a couple of ways you can do it. They said, one, if you want,

you can like find plant fiber and chew it and that'll give you some hydration. But if you eat a lot of it, it'll make you sick from getting all the fiber. What's, what's the other way you can satiate your thirst, Ryan? I want to drink your

blood you can drink the blood of your enemies i'm pretty sure that's not how it works in real life but i i love the idea of that that's so funny i can't spoil the movies guys but i can tell neither of you have seen dune 2 yet so they actually go into that a little bit more movies yes i don't know that you're actually consuming their blood but for people that haven't seen the movie that's all i'll say well if the fbi asks you guys i did do some google searching can you drink blood to hydrate and the answer is pretty resoundingly no you're you're just bringing in more risk than you are helping i bet uh i bet bearrylls will find a way.

That guy could make liquid from anything. Yeah. All right. Well, before moving on to our next story, let me tell you guys a little bit about Patreon. If you like what we do on the show and you want to be able to help us out with what we do, you can pledge support starting at five bucks a month. It helps our show pay the bills. Additionally, we give out some perks like two bonus episodes every month go check it out at multiplayer squad.com support your local

sandworm yeah all right our next story here we do not often talk about video game adaptations to movie or tv we talked a lot about The Last of Us when that came out on HBO. But the Fallout series has been turning some heads lately. We did get an official trailer from Amazon along with some information through interviews with the cast and crew. It really does seem like they nailed the feel and the atmosphere of Fallout, I gotta say. I am so hyped for this, guys. If you had asked me before I had seen this trailer, I would have given you the same skepticism that I saw with the Halo series.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't talk about these very often because they generally just aren't that good. I mean, Last of Us being the only hit video game adaptation show that I can think of. Halo, yeah, I watched part of the first season, and then I was just like, this isn't really what I was hoping for with Halo. I hear season two is a little bit better, but I haven't checked it out because it just doesn't... I'm not hearing enough good things to make me interested in it,

and I don't watch very much TV. But man, does this trailer look good boys like does is everything in this feels like fallout does it not yeah it just totally totally nailed the vibes the feeling the atmosphere all of it you instantly just feel like you're in that world well after i watched the trailer i had like goosebumps i'm like honey honey i called my wife over check this out remember that game i used to play watch and she watched and she was like, cool. Yeah, that looks cool. You seem really excited.

And I'm like, I am. Is the dog in the trailer dog meat? It's got to be. It's got to be, dude. Why else would they have a German shepherd in there? Looks exactly like him. And how perfect is the casting of Walton Goggins to play the ghoul? Yes.

I love him. He looks so well-suited. I love the fact that we see clips of him. So we're going to be able to see his journey of what happens with his character. And just the scale. They have thrown a lot of money at this series, obviously. And the fact that Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy are executive producers, they're the people who did Westworld. So they know

how to do big budget, large scale things and make it look awesome. And this looks to really fit that bill. I mean, I don't want to overstate things. I don't think it's going to be as good as The Last of Us, but I think this is shaping up to be a really fun series to watch. I hope that we get a chance to maybe even talk about it after we've all seen a few episodes. Maybe we can kind of check in and give some thoughts. But yeah, I'm very excited. This one very quickly rose on my list of shows that I'm waiting for. Oh, yeah. You can tell, too, that when they're going through this trailer, that these people intimately know the game. And that's part of it, right? A lot of times we just see, well,

here's like a source material, just run with it. And then gamers are looking like, what are you doing? That's not accurate. Like with Master Chief taking his helmet off in Halo, right? There's a lot of gamers that are like, what is this? Exactly. But it's like, dude, they're showing off like dog meat. They're showing off the Brotherhood of Steel. They've got the power armor. I mean, they've got the ghouls. There's just so many. They show life in the vault and how the world looks at these vault dwellers and stuff like that. I mean, it felt like every 15 to 20 seconds, we were getting an actual game element in the show to just show us like, hey, look, we get it. This is what gamers are going to recognize.

But even if you're not a gamer, I feel like the production value of the show is good enough that like my wife and kids might want to watch it, you know, because it just looks like a high production series as well. So I'm pretty excited. And we get all the episodes all at once instead of this once a week stuff.

So you can totally binge this to binge time, baby. I'm a binger for sure. But the, one of the quickest ways to turn off your viewership base when it's an adaptation from a game like that is to get those things wrong. And it seems like they're going to really pay attention to make sure they get those things right.

Cause you start seeing things way, way. That's not, that doesn't line up. That doesn't match. You know, you've mentioned master chief taking off his helmet that's instantly like i don't know about this so i'm super stoked like like we said they just nailed it yeah and jonah nolan has said in

interviews that this basically is kind of like fallout 5 like he said i know you don't get the choice and to do you know you have any agency in matter, but you may as well just call it Fallout 5. And you can tell that these are people that love the games, incorporated that same feel. Even when you get the opening of the vault and the main girl steps out for the first time, it's blindingly bright outside, exactly as it should be. It really seems like they nailed all those little details. If you had told me this is all like cut scene footage that is in the next fallout game, you would totally buy it because that's just how it feels. It seems like they've done a really good job.

So yeah, April 11th is when all those episodes drop and maybe we'll try to check in maybe like mid to late April and give some thoughts. All right, let's go ahead and take a short break and then we'll be right back. All right. So this week, Xbox had a partner preview showcase. And honestly, there wasn't a whole lot here that captured my attention, except for one game that I really wanted to talk about called The Altars, which did give us a gameplay reveal trailer. So if you haven't heard of The Altars, I wouldn't blame you, but this comes from

11-Bit Studios. They had a lot of success with Frostpunk, which sold over 3 million copies. They also made This War of Mine, which sold over 9 million copies. And in my opinion, that's probably the winner for me for the best game I've ever played on mobile. And it's also on console and PC. The Alters has a very clever premise. It takes place in the future. You have crash landed as a miner on a planet and you have this mobile base that's state of the art. The problem is that it requires a full crew, and you're the only survivor. But you discover this substance on the planet, you let a quantum computer analyze it, and it turns out that through using the substance and

the computer, you can actually create clones of yourself, but simulated as if you had made different decisions in your life. And you're going to be able to bring in more versions of you with alternate history, and they're going to make up the crew of your base. So they go through some specific examples, like what would I have been like if I never left my hometown? What if I didn't drop out of college? What if I worked harder on my marriage and didn't get divorced? And when I hear stuff like this, this is like sci-fi catnip for me. I'm less into big crazy ships and travel out in space. I love things like this, where it's more like human stories. They mentioned that you're on a very dangerous planet and within a certain time frame

you're going to be in the line of sight from the sun and it's going to fry you to a crisp so you and all of your clones have to be able to work your way off of this planet and i feel like that is such a cool idea for a game it kind of makes me wonder why no one's done it before for it was a stare off just it was a stare off i was like you jumping in here right make a clone where i jumped in right away there make a difference isn't it no i um what a what a neat idea i know uh interdimensional you know in multiple universes and all that stuff's kind of the hot thing um right now in movies and other stuff so i get why they're doing this but i think the way they're doing it is really cool where you find this substance and you get to look and see how this

all works and then one of the really cool parts of that is because of those different choices that your clone has made or whatever clones you have they have different personalities different features different things make them happy or sad or upset throughout your base and you got to try to balance all that as well so i think the way it's set up and then that idea is just something that's so cool i'm with you paul like i love that type of stuff in like kind of the supernatural i played uh this war of mine a pretty good bit it it was it was a good game i just don't know that it like resonated a whole lot with me from like the game i felt a little lost if i remember it's been a long time since i've played it but i do

remember like digging the style of it and stuff like that you can definitely get the influence of that game in this with like the different rooms in the, that kind of 2d perspective. Like you're looking in from the outside of the ship, the ant farm view. Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah. That's a really good way of putting it. But man, the production quality on this game is really good. Like I, am I the only one that thought it looked a little bit like death stranding at times? A little bit. Yeah. Cause you do go out and explore the world. Yeah. And you're running around in this suit and you're,

I don't know what you're looking for at that point, but then they get back to the base and you're, you know, upgrading the botany lab and you're creating a clone of yourself. That's a doctor for like the med lab and stuff like that. But then they start to show like some of the good traits that that guy might have but then the bad traits start kind of growing on this neat little graph and then you're like oh man things are gonna get a little haywire which i think is a really neat touch

i am a little bit concerned and this is just a personal thing for me solely in some of like the simulation type stuff because again like sim games don't resonate with me super well. So how much of it is just trying to work with your clones and playing the sims in that regard versus the sci-fi aspect of growing your base and exploring and things like that. But I will say this developer has a very good pedigree. They have a really, really neat style of how they approach their games. And I had never heard of this game until you posted this link, Paul. And if you guys ever wonder when one of us gets excited about something, to make sure that we didn't miss this, Paul actually said,

make sure to watch this trailer. This is a really unique game idea. And anytime I see that, I kind of go like, ooh, that means I'm about to see something good. And anytime I see that, I kind of go like, ooh, that means I'm about to see something good. And this game looks good, man. I am very intrigued right now about the premise for this. I will fully admit this is far more up my alley for my kind of game than Josh's, but this has like definite influence from RimWorld. You definitely see that with like how Ryan was mentioning, they have their different traits and goals.

And they even say in the trailer that as dangerous as it is outside, the conflict amongst the people on the inside is just as dangerous, if not more. So I love how you have to like balance all of that. That's very much like RimWorld. You have all the base building very much looks like Fallout Shelter or like this war of that. That's very much like RimWorld. You have all the base building, very much looks like Fallout Shelter or like this War of Mine. And I can see how that won't be for everybody. So you have the simulation and base building, but then you do go outside and go on missions.

They do show and highlight that. What exactly you're doing on the outside, I hope it's not just as simple as finding some mats and running back and going inside. I'm hoping there's more to it. But this trailer showed enough that I felt very intrigued, definitely wanting to see more. The rest of the showcase was just a huge bummer, in my opinion. But this is the one that I said, okay, whether or not we cover it on the show, I will pick up and play this one. Yeah, this game looks really unique. I have not seen a game that kind of touches on stuff in the way that this one does and with the quality that this one does, too. So I highly recommend checking out the trailer because it's kind of hard to make sense of.

Yeah, you kind of have to see it. The other thing is your base is a giant wheel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like in Prometheus. Yeah. It's like the wheel in Prometheus. It is. It's cool.

It's got some cool visuals, man. I'm definitely intrigued on this one. I thought it was super cool. We were talking about your people in the conflicts where it was a scientist or something. He's like, we need to conserve supplies. And then this other guy's like, I want better food. And so you just got this infighting with there i loved even on like metal gear solid you know your fob you got all your soldiers that

you have to manage and stuff i loved doing that part so if they have it to where like you said have a good mix to where there is cool things to do you're not just collecting mats outside of your base you if they can meld the two and have a good mix then i think it's going to be awesome and it comes out this year so oh yeah we have had chalk up another one such a killer year yeah add it onto the list man this year is shaping up to be incredible all right let's go ahead and move on to our last story of the week now funny enough we almost talked about this last thursday of course we record a couple days early, but there were rumors abound that there was going to be an announcement that Ghost of

Tsushima was coming to PC. We kind of talked about, should we talk about it today? And we ultimately decided, you know what, let's just wait. If it's officially announced, we'll cover it next week. And that's exactly what happened. The rumors have been confirmed the pc port of the director's cut has been officially announced it will arrive on may 16th famously i have not played it despite having a ps4 i know that you two both love ghost of tsushima right so good absolutely i this is i mean we can let the cat out of the bag. I guarantee you, Ryan or myself was going to pick you, Paul, to play Ghost of Tsushima at some point.

I mean, I think it was right at the top of both of our lists as far as like, Paul, you've got to play this game. For sure. There are aspects of the games that maybe you won't like as much as some other people will. But overall, this game is, I mean, honestly, kind of a masterpiece. So the fact that it's coming to PC now, does that mean it's not us forcing Paul to play it? He's just going to pick it up on his own? Because you know Paul's going

to be like, no, no, you guys, you have to force me, right? Well, that's what I was going to ask you guys. Is this an automatic deep dive or are we going to hold off on right? Well, that's what I was going to ask you guys. Like, is this an automatic deep dive or are we going to hold off on it? I really don't know. I will say I've always wanted to play it. I don't know why I never did. But like you guys tell me because you've actually played. Why would you say that this game might be a masterpiece?

Because I've heard a lot of people say that. I've seen clips. I think the game looks gorgeous. But what makes it so memorable? I mean, the last thing you i think the game looks gorgeous but what makes it so memorable i mean the last thing you said there about it looks gorgeous it is one of the most beautiful games i've ever played and the fact that it's coming to pc now and it's going to be like even upgraded even more especially now you got your new supercomputer set up and your mega monitor slash tv um yeah it's it's just a beautiful game. The gameplay is unbelievable.

I mean, we were just talking before we started recording about Uncharted 4. It reminds me of that kind of in a different setting where it's just you traverse this world, has awesome, amazing gameplay. It's beautiful. There's so much to love about this game and very, very little not to like. I think

it just would, the perfect type to be right up your alley. Yeah. I'm with Ryan on this one. This is one of those games that puts everything together, right? Like the character development, the story, you know, why you're doing what you're doing. You really lean into that and you care about the characters that you meet along the way. The world building and the world that you're in is second to none as far as just how beautiful it is. The combat is super fluid and fun in that regard. You've got the option to go stealth. You've got the option to go in swords of blazing. You do get to make choices on how you want to interact with certain people and things out in the world. There's the progression elements.

I mean, it really just has everything that you could hope for in a game. Paul, I mean, if I had to say the one thing, it's like, I know you don't super care for melee combat that much. And there is, I mean, you're a samurai, so obviously you're doing a lot of melee combat, but even with that, I think you would look at this game and just be like, I don't, I'm crazy that I haven't played this one yet. Like I really find it hard to believe that you would look at, or you would play this game and then come back and be like, it was okay. It definitely seems like a game I would love. I I'm fully confident. I'll enjoy it. Do you think this game is going to look better or worse than Rise of the Ronin oh man

you ruined it for him I know it's not fair to Rise of the Ronin man but yeah you got to compare it to this the other thing too with I mean in this little kind of preview that we saw for the PC port is it includes all of the like latest technology like the DLSS

and the super sampling and ray tracing, I guess, and all these other things that they're going through. It also includes the Icky Island expansion, which I never played from the original two. So this really does look like they are doing it the right way. I mean, it's one of those things, right? We always worry

a little bit because like i even with a beloved franchise like the last of us when they ported that to pc is a little bit of a disaster and and so you kind of go like please don't do that with ghosts of tsushima please you know but but then we have god of war which is the best pc port i've ever seen in my entire life so So, you know, it seems to me like they're on the right track for this, hopefully. But I don't replay games. You guys know that. And I am

pretty darn confident that when this releases on PC, I'm picking this one up as well. Oh, I'm 100%. And even on there, Paul, you can write haikus and you meditate out there. Oh, i did hear about that yeah so in honor in honor of that i wrote a haiku for the video for video games pixels fill the screen worlds crafted in code and light escaping we thrive

very nice i'm gonna have to verify the syllables on that is that five seven yeah what's the pattern five yeah what five seven five okay honestly i lied i just had ai do that so i would i would hope that it's right that's the right number of syllables now i have to go back and listen that's too funny as i said i've never known ryan to be into writing poetry so i was a little little surprise makes a lot more sense if it's chat gpt i was inspired okay very nice all right well i think that covers everything here for this week in gaming as a reminder to all of our listeners please go check out patreon support options you can do that at multiplayer squad.com you can also make sure

to leave us a five-star rating we are on socials everywhere at video gamers pod, and make sure to come back and check out our next episode on Monday. We do have a deep dive ready, which was a legendary pick from one of our supporters. We're not doing a pre-dive of that. We're going to go straight into the deep dive, cover all of it at once. It'll be a lot of fun to get into and talk about.

We want to say thank you so much to all of our listeners out there. Until next time, happy gaming. See ya! All right, see ya, everybody!