Video Gamers Podcast - Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Golden Axe Series and Wolf Among Us II - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

The Video Gamers Podcast is back with another incredible episode of This Week in Gaming. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was announced and is releasing this year! We get excited for another video game adaptation with the announced Golden Axe series, plus get more info on the Wolf Among Us 2 in another awesome episode from your favorite gaming podcast.  Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: YayaArizona, Disratory, Cykasniber 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

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hello, fellow gamers. Welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast, where three lifelong gamer dads get together to discuss gaming. On Thursdays like today, we look at recent gaming news over the last week and provide some of our thoughts. Now, I know that we are a family-friendly show over here, but this intro is going to be a little bit TV, Y7, maybe a little bit pg we can blame kingdom come deliverance to for uh too many funny quotes here this week i am your host paul joining me he can be found running naked and drunk in the streets telling all the people to piss off it's josh guilty and still doing it stop me guys

oh man I had to quote that here in the intro and then joining Josh and me he's a bastard peasant orphan lover warrior it's Ryan what else would I be that's the best multi combo ever use the first letter for each

word it spells out something i'm gonna make me think back i don't take it paul you ruined it 15 minutes later yeah yeah oh man guys we've got some stuff to talk about here today. This is going to be a fun show. Before we start in our normal news stories that we cover, we do owe two shout outs to people on Patreon. We want to say thank you to jwit116. We also want to say thank you to Eric, aka Grim Ghost, who is not on our Discord, but both of them have signed up with RareStatus, and so we just wanted to say thank you so much to both of them. Yeah, thank you! Yay! Hey, for everybody that's listening to this podcast, these people that support the podcast

are the reason we're still here, so just a little mental thank you to all the supporters of the show. We love you! Oh, we absolutely love them. If any of our listeners out there want to join their ranks, head over to MultiplayerSquad.com. You can sign up. You'll get bonus episodes, shout out on the show, all kinds of good stuff.

Again, that's MultiplayerSquad.com. All right. Let's start with a very quick update to a story we talked about last week. We talked a little bit about how Star Wars Outlaws has story content gatekept behind a paywall, which we knew is a mission including Jabba the Hutt. We did talk a little bit about how we weren't too sure if it was all of the content with Jabba or just like one mission or something like that. Well, Ubisoft did clarify this week that it is just one mission that is optional. The Hutts are one of the main syndicates. They said, don't worry,

you'll still interact with them a ton. This is just one additional mission that you'll miss out if you do not buy the season pass. I think we're probably all on the same page i'm guessing paid dlc in a single player game is still dumb but at the same time i guess at least it's not a worst case scenario we'll still be able to interact with the huts uh anything else to say before moving on to our normal stories just why that's if it's one what it's one everyone is going to come clamoring over one mission and buy your season pass? The optics, it looks so much worse over that one mission than probably the return they'll get for the season passes. It just doesn't make sense. I mean, we're not talking a $5 difference here.

This is a $70 difference. You know what i mean so you're telling me that you're paying 70 for a mission that is just an optional thing in the game anyway you know you get you get it three days early too josh yeah for a single player game okay yeah yeah day one dlc that's paid just makes me so mad it's already made it's art like yeah i work for a company that provides a digital product to like you know i mean it's it's like a foundation of our company but it's like at the same time like this product exists whether you buy it or not at that point you know what i mean so it's like it's the same thing like you've already put the development time in like ubisoft already has this they're

literally taking scissors and going snip you don't get to play that part unless you pay us an extra $70. Yeah. I still say just wait a couple months and then release it. People wouldn't care as much. Day one is just so, so bad. All right. Well, we already complained about this last week. Let's go ahead and move on to something new.

This week we got an announcement along with a trailer for kingdom come deliverance 2 which i feel like delivered so much comedy in the trailer that you know i had to quote here in the beginning this is an open world action rpg it is coming out before the end of the year it'll be on pc playstation and xbox it is set in the early 15th century. It has a major focus on historical realism, especially in regards to medieval combat. And they said compared to the first game, which I did not play, this one is twice as big. And they also said that this game is what the first one was supposed to be, except they did not have the resources or the expertise to make it. Above all, it seemed to me after watching a lot of content

and checking out the first game, this is really just supposed to be the most immersive medieval combat game out there on the market. And I was very curious to hear if you guys care about this one. Is this one that you want to check out? What are your thoughts? I am actually pretty interested in this. I have heard a lot of people talk about Kingdom Come Deliverance. I've never played it, but I have seen people gush over this game. And the sentiment is usually the same. It's the most realistic medieval fantasy game that I've played. You are living in this world.

The combat seems ultra realistic. Like you can only swing your sword a few times for you to get tired. I mean, you're wearing big, heavy armor. This isn't casting fireballs and getting smashed by, you know, cyclopses and stuff like that. Like this is what it would be like to live back then. And i think that resonates with a lot of people um i am oddly curious about this to be honest with you i've always loved medieval times um i'd like the idea not i mean i like that place too paul this red night red night green night man come on yellow night yeah so um yeah i'm interested, man. This trailer, I think, was super well done.

For somebody that doesn't know anything about the first game, like, this looks like a AAA title to me. I mean, it's graphically pleasing, the voice acting, the story, the combat is weird because it goes into, like, first person. Is the whole game in first person? It doesn't look like it. That's the only part that confused me was it's into like first person is the whole game in first person. It doesn't look like it. That's the only part that confused me was it's like, it's skipping around between like a story trailer to first person combat to

now the guys are almost looking at each other as if it was like street fighter where it's like the one dude's on left and the other dude's on the right. And I'm like, is he going to uppercut this guy? Like what's going on, man? Well,

yeah. And there's a lot of cut scenes. So they said there's more than five hours of cut scenes i think the game itself is all first person uh but yeah ryan was there anything that stuck out to you here and in what you saw it just seemed to be to me it looked like it's going to be one of those games when the comedy and the action and the gameplay and the graphics all kind of hit so i'm really excited to see where this goes. I definitely never touched the first one.

But watching the footage that we watched, I'm highly intrigued. I mean, I've always, same like Josh, kind of medieval ages. Western cowboy is like my number one. But this knight's in shining armor is definitely close behind. So I'm interested to see what they can do with this. It looks beautiful. Looks like it'll have that comedic relief, you know,

running through the town like Josh. So yeah, I'm excited to see where it's going to go. Well, and I really liked the fact that anytime you ever see any kind of portrayal of like Knights during the early 15th century. Everything is so drab and dirty and gross, but this is a little bit more vibrant. Like you get a sense of these are just like normal people living at that time, but things are colorful. They showed that there's

a lot of different facets of life. Like you see a little shot of a wedding ceremony and you also see a lot of celebration, but then you do also see hangings of people and like surprise attacks against your castle and things like that. One thing that I thought sounded really cool, which is the whole foundation of the first game, is that there are like a hundred ways to resolve every quest and there's always consequences in how you do it. So they were saying, for example, you can talk your way out of problems. If you don't want to fight, a lot of times that's a choice. You can choose to be a thief. You can choose to resolve your issues through violence. They even had a little tagline in the trailer,

you can save the world or punish it for its sins. And so I love the idea of being able to tinker, do all kinds of crazy weird stuff, and see what happens as a result. You guys know how much I love that. This is why I love Dragon Age and Mass Effect and Divinity Original Sin 2, figuring out different ways to resolve quests. So that to me is probably the biggest selling point here yeah i love i am a sucker for let me play the game i want to the way i want to play it and let me try to be creative on how i approach these problems so i mean i'm i'm pretty intrigued by this to be honest the first game came out in 2018 so it's

not like it's super old i'm actually watching a little bit of footage it's a darn good looking game i've heard so much about it so it's just really weird to like not know anything about it yet like hearing good things and stuff like that um i am really intrigued by this so far to be honest like i think i'd like to like see some gameplay, maybe a preview or something like that to get a little bit more information. But yeah, I'm down to be a scoundrel knight,

or streaking through town. One of those two definitely fits me. I don't know if you guys got this vibe too, but watching that and seeing them talk about the game and and just about the world it seemed like they are all in on this so that was exciting to kind of see and hopefully it comes through in the game yeah and i love the idea of like they've already made the game and instead of trying to make something wholly different like let's just refine it and make it bigger and better they said you don't have to play the first one in order to play the second i guess the whole point of the game is that you're a guy

who's out for revenge against people who butchered your family so i think you're a little bit like maximus from gladiator kind of out on a revenge mission. And they said that you start out as a nobody and then kind of work your way up. The one resounding criticism I saw against the first game was that the combat is very hard to learn. And almost any time someone complained, a bunch of people were there to post saying, oh, I bet you just didn't play long enough that you got good at the combat. So it sounds like that part might be a little frustrating. But I think for those when it did hit with a gamer that they really, really loved it.

I'm just real quick, too, because like I said, we kind of all said we don't really know much of the first game. This review, this kind of pulls me in. This dude's got 200 hours on record, and it says, I've been playing PC games for 20 to 25 years now. Kingdom Come Deliverance is the best game I've ever played, period. It is the most interesting, immersive experience one

can have. Real life logic and attention gets you far in this game. Each problem has a logical solution. There are multiple ways to solve each quest i love it i'm in boys you know at that point like yeah that sounds fantastic to me and i like melee combat so paul i know you might struggle a little bit there but they did show a dude riding on a horse shooting crossbows and they kind of mentioned for two we're talking for the sequel that there's like very beginner like pistols you know

like black powder pistols you might just get one shot kind of thing on them but yeah i i'm i'm pretty interested in this game at this point man and we're all big music people like the entire like we did also share i think it was like a 15 minute video the entire last four minutes is just them showing off the score with like an orchestra. And I love the fact that they're incorporating like harps along with the violins and the cellos and the trombones and all the horns. Like the music's beautiful. It seems like for a game focusing so much on immersion, like the music is so central to that. So to me, everything here sounded great

the fact that they started with a dev team of 11 for the first game and then grew to over 200 employees like they have a lot more people working on it now so i'm very curious to keep an eye on this one and it comes out this year we're always saying like announce this stuff three to six months in advance and that's exactly what they did. Yeah, you get a bonus in my book for that one, too. Absolutely. All right, well, let's go ahead and take a short break, and then we'll be right back. All right, guys, this next story here has me very excited.

Do you guys want to know what my all-time favorite sega genesis game series was oh sega genesis all right it's toe jam and earl which we're not talking about today remember that yep but my second favorite series on the genesis was golden axe oh yeah and i i know josh likes golden axe ryan did you play Axe back in the day? Oh, I played a heck of a lot of Golden Axe. Every time I had it, and then any time I would be out and about and I'd see it, I had to play it. I loved Golden Axe.

Now, did you guys play as the Barbarian, the Dwarf, or the Valkyrie Warrior Lady? I think in Golden Axe 2, you could press and hold your magic button and the longer you'd hold it you do a more powerful spell i think i always did the female sorceress because i think she was the water one so i would always pick her and you could like call down like a full screen wipe flood with her which i always thought was really cool the dwarf had the lightning that would go across the screen and clear everything up also yeah listen i know we're getting into this story okay but the main character of golden axe might have the best name i've ever heard in

my life what's his name too yeah battler axe battler oh that's great oh man i i love golden axe so much that when we would play gta online i would just play like the the the little game that they made inside GTA Online that played like Golden Axe. All right. So what we found out this week is that they are adapting Golden Axe into an animated series.

But what's a little surprising is who's making the show. Because when I think of Golden Axe, I don't necessarily think of it as being all that funny. I think about it being full of action. But this is being made by Comedy Central, and they have promised that it is going to be a hilarious and loving homage to the games. I love it. Is this something that you guys are interested in checking out?

They almost made it look a little American Gladiator in how they're making the main characters look and there's a lot of great yeah and there's a lot of great funny people behind it like danny pootie from community uh stuff like that i i want to check this out how about you guys i if dude if any if the recent video game adaptations have been any sort of like indicator then i am in i'll watch i'm gonna watch it regardless you know but it's like i like the idea that they're saying hey we kind of want to focus a little bit on the humor i mean a character by the name of axe battler you know a dwarf that uses lightning like anybody any nerd knows that dwarves don't use magic. No, never.

Yeah, and so I am in on this one, man. Especially if they can really kind of lean into that, just the outlandish nature of those types of things and just make it super over the top. I think it'll do well. I am a big-time sucker for cartoons. I still watch them all the time especially if they're more kind of adult based um i'll you can count me in for sure yeah

and you could play back on the sig of genesis two-player simultaneous co-op and you would always kind of like fight for who would get to jump on the dinosaur which you could run around and hit people with the tail or with the fire. The fire breath, yep. Yeah, so I was like, I wonder if in the show they're going to be racing to see who gets to ride the dinosaur or something like that. It's one we'll have to keep our eye on.

That one might be a lot of fun to check out. These 2D brawlers, man, like Double Dragon, Golden Axe, they were so much fun back in the day, dude. I know we just did our 90s you know gaming in the 90s episode but like that you were a buddy at an arcade machine playing double dragon or golden axe was just some of the best times man or the simpsons i was just gonna say yeah yeah yeah all the turtles games that's so much fun that cabin i was at uh not to get too far off but the cabin i was at where we recorded they had a whole stand-up arcade machine and i found

simpsons on it i was there for hours and they kept coming over what are you playing i'm like simpsons get out of here i'm trying to get to the end uh i got a button mash to pump up this balloon of crusty's head exactly uh so great all right moving on to the next story here so we have mentioned a couple of times on this show that there are upcoming games for iron man and black panther we don't know a whole lot about them we haven't spent very much time discussing it at all we did find out this week that both of those games are going to be open world um all i would say is if i'm playing iron man in a game it better be open world because i I would say is if I'm playing Iron Man in a game, it better be open world because I feel like the whole elevator pitch is that you're flying around in the suit.

So you would think it would have to be open world. Hopefully in Black Panther, they give you a fun way, maybe like some kind of flight suit or something. I don't know what they're going to do there. But we've said on the show before, not every game has to be open world. We've even kind of applauded the games that have kind of reigned things in the last couple of years. To me, this makes a lot of sense. If you're a superhero, you're probably going around the open world, saving people, having fun traversing, whether it's like in a Spider-Man game or Batman or whatever. So to me, this makes a lot of sense to keep it open world. The only thing that my brain can process with how this would work and be really good

is comparing it to Spider-Man at that point, right? Like make the traversal great. That's easy to imagine with Iron Man, you know, give me Anthem flight suits like that. That was like the best flight in a video game. In my opinion, let me feel like i'm flying around in anthem make it iron man give me you know i don't think that'll contain it to like one city like they did with spider-man but like give me that open world where it's not absolutely monstrous you know it's a contained open world um and i could see that being insanely good. Black Panther, is he just going to run like a cheetah? If only there was another giant cat

that maybe he could run like. I feel like he's got to fly some kind of machine or have a flight suit. He's got to go down on all fours, and he's going to run. I think so. Yeah, his name's Black Panther. He's going to run like a panther he's gonna run like

a panther oh god we'll see maybe maybe i won't play that game then no those wakandans got some high tech man so i'm sure they're gonna give them a jet pack or something you know to make traversal fun but yeah it's one of those things where we we've kind of said hey we're almost sick of open world where not every game needs to be that way and that's true but that being said open world works in a lot of ways and so i can envision iron man being this way i'm having a little bit harder time with black panther to be honest with you um i almost envision black panther to be more like the batman arkham games with like that hand-to-hand combat type stuff so we really don't know i i mean it's fine i could see this needing to be open world on one hand but i don't know on both but we kind of need to see it in

action to really judge that too yeah well they got i mean they got the template like you said spider-man is is just it's fun to travel through that world it's it's enjoyable just to go around you'll spend time just cruising around and and swinging doing tricks while you swing they even in spider-man uh the the most recent one they added like these super slingshot uh areas on top of towers where you can just glide now because he's got his web gliders and you can fly that way so if they can do it like i said they have the template if they can do it similar to that where you can you know use these super boosts and and just fly around as iron man i mean what's not to love about that so as long as they get that part right i think it'll be it'll be awesome is anybody in the world upset if they basically just copy the the traversal or the open world like in spider-man

nobody's gonna be oh i saw this in spider-man i you know i can't believe you ripped that out no everybody's gonna be like this is great they nailed it you and then you're like your iron man you can call down like the hulk buster suit you know for a big boss or something you have to spend some credits or something crazy and you can call down cool stuff and you can use different you know weapon upgrades i think it like i said they have it set up to where they know what they need to do. It's just now about execution and if they can do the right thing. And that's been a problem for Marvel games is the execution. They've, we've had a lot of hit or miss entries, whether it's,

uh, what was the one called like Marvel's Midnight Suns or Guardians of the Galaxy or the Marvel's Avengers, which was you know failed spectacularly so we'll have to see i would love to see like a really good flagship marvel game outside of spider-man that i actually want to play for me i'm still holding out for wolverine that's the one that i feel is going to be the most fun but man i would love a great iron man or black panther game at the same time it would be so much All right, moving on to the next story here, Darkest Dungeon 2. So, it's a turn-based roguelike RPG. It released in early access a few years back, had its full release exactly a year ago. The game is now headed to PS4 and PS5, and we got to see a PlayStation

announcement trailer for it i've always been aware of the game mostly just by reputation along with seeing a little bit of footage i've never actually played it josh i think you played did you play both darkest dungeons both man yeah i'm very familiar are they good for these games they're real good. Like, honestly, I enjoyed the heck out of both of them. They are hard. I think I actually prefer Darkest Dungeon over Darkest Dungeon 2. They made a few changes to, like, some of the roguelike stuff. And it's still a great game, but I just, I think I prefer the first. But, yeah, these are roguelike games.

You build a party of characters. They will die. And when they die, they are, they are like you know you can lose them permanently if you're not careful like that yeah and then it's like um they go insane so you're you're kind of managing the whole premise of the game the whole premise of the game is like these heroes are under this insane duress like if you were actually going into these dungeons and fighting these horrific creatures like you're not leaving unscathed so even if you beat the mission your characters will get like ptsd or they'll go insane and they have like serious detriments

at that point or in while you're in the mission like they'll go insane from like enemies like doing like debuffs on them and stuff and then they'll they'll actually wig out like in the middle of the mission and they might attack you or they refuse to attack or all these variables and stuff. So very well done game. Amazing art style to them too. Just look at a trailer. I mean, Darkest Dungeon looks fantastic, dude. So I'm a big fan of both of them, to be honest. So the fact that this is coming to PlayStation now for people is a good thing in my my opinion because there's going to be a lot of people that enjoy these games so you're telling me killing thousands of monsters is going to have mental strain on my characters yeah it really will and then when they go crazy believe me you're

going to know it you know tell that to my diablo characters they are doing a okay yeah the worst thing is is like you spend you finally like you know you have four people in your party you build this party you equip them you level them up you unlock new skills and all this stuff and you start kicking butt and then you come across this hard encounter and it just kills like three of your people and you you you don't make it out to like, cause I, if I remember right in the first one, you can bring them back.

No, actually I think if they die, they're just dead. Like you can, if they get knocked unconscious, you can like put them in a, like a hospital or if they're going insane, like you can put them in a brothel to like cheer them up kind of thing.

That's how you solve PCS. Like, I mean, sure. So that's how they're balancing these sanity meters and stuff um but yeah losing a high level character is the worst because you're like no like he was level 12 like he was my tank for the party and this game wants you to just like bring up another character kind of thing and it's all part of that roguelike system so but for me it's

kind of hard to lose like the party that you were really like amped to have finally too. So that's kind of a mechanic I miss in games. You used to have that a lot, like in the old Tom Clancy Rainbow Six games, where you would like hire people, they'd go on missions, but they could like die on a mission and they're no longer available. Or even in stuff like Dragon Age, if you made a certain decision that one of your party members didn't like,

if it was especially egregious, they would sometimes like turn and attack you. And now you're fighting like your ex party member. And if they die, they're gone from the rest of the game. I like high stakes like that. That's cool. I mean,

even in Metal Gear Solid 5, when you have your fob base and stuff and uh you throw out some s-class soldiers on a really hard mission and you lost a couple when they came back you're like dang it those are a couple of my good guys you know but uh yeah i mean i'm i'm not big into these types of games but uh i don't know probably not for me but i'm sure it's great and i'm excited for people coming to playstation yeah i looked it up on steam and metacritic so darkest dungeon 2 has got a 75 on steam and it's got an 81 from critics on metacritic so it's not like the highest rated game but they must have quite a devoted fan base if they're still working on ports the original is better than the sequel in my opinion i like i said i've i i probably have 20 plus hours in the second and i

think i have 30 plus in the first one i mean i've definitely played these a good bit and the first one is superior in my opinion um 91 positive rating for the first one uh out of 117,000 reviews too. So there's it. They're good games, man. Interesting. Well, last story of the week, not a whole lot to say here. The Wolf Among Us 2 is the game that we've brought up a few times. It is supposed to be released here later this year. Last or not last week, this week, we got to see a few screenshots of what they've been working on which were shared on twitter i think all of us would prefer to see some actual gameplay footage but these four screenshots are all we have to tide us over for now is there really anything to say uh yeah paul looks all right to say because they they started this game's development in unreal engine 4 and then they moved it to unreal engine five which makes me very

excited uh the screenshots the screenshots are beautiful you know this is fantasy uh like like not fables what's the uh what is that like fable yeah like snow white and the werewolf and fairy tales that's the word i was looking for, not Fables. I'm not saying all this because this is one of the games that I drafted in my Game of the Year auction draft that we did and didn't know what I was getting. But now that I know what I'm getting because I've seen these screenshots, it's looking really good, guys.

Screenshots just obviously tell you so much. I was laughing when i was looking at this stuff and coming up for stuff for the show like i was just like gamers are so funny like you just see it's just four screenshots and they're like oh my gosh did you see this or how it is with grand theft auto like some of the map got leaked you know everyone's just everyone's just so eager to you know we just we're just happy doofuses just want to play games. So I think it's funny, but cool. Yeah, the more they bring, obviously, gameplay is best. But yeah, keep them coming.

They're not necessarily the most action-packed screenshots. Yeah. They're a little pedestrian. The games aren't really action-packed either, but know telltale if these are anywhere near the quality of the old telltale games especially the walking dead like like okay i'm in then because the walking dead telltale series is one of the few games that i have like legitimately shed a tear while playing and so if you can get that kind of reaction out of me with the Wolf Among Us 2. Okay. I'll take that for sure.

Very similar and just much more adult. Yeah. That's the one thing that really stuck with me playing the first Wolf Among Us is like right off the bat, you can tell, oh, this is very mature. They're not holding anything back. You know,

the Walking Dead also gets mature as far as like the violence and some of the other stuff but it's kind of like uh like my wife and i sometimes joke when you see tv ratings before a show it'll be like tvma and then you'll see like violence nudity strong sexual content smoking you know whatever yeah it's got like all the letters yeah that's that's like the wolf among us you're getting all the letters with that kind of game so yeah i can't wait to see more i love the first one second one should be a blast i just it felt it felt a little underwhelming that we got four screenshots and we're gonna have to wait for more if it's supposed to come out this year i would think if they're gonna release anything it would be a little more exciting,

but Oh, well, what are you going to do? It's better than nothing. I suppose. Yeah. All right. Well, that wraps up everything here for this week in gaming.

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