Video Gamers Podcast - Light No Fire, Exodus, The Finals and The Day Before Scam - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

Video games hosts Paul, Ryan and Josh bringing you the week's hottest video game news like no other gaming podcast can. We got a LOT of new video game announcements at the Game Awards and we talk a few of our favorites, then we find out what makes The Finals fun before talking about The Day Before.   Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter, Gaius214, Nate, Kiitaclyzm, YayaArizona and Morgau 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. In this episode, we are going to be breaking down This Week in Gaming, where we talk about recent gaming news stories over the last week. We had the Game Awards, along with a slew of new game releases, tons of announcements and trailers, so much to cover here today as we get started. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, you can find him in light armor, dashing around the battlefield with his grappling hook and cloaking device in the finals it's Josh oh that is me that is me Paul

got to witness some of it we hey we got a win we did last game we played we got a win we had a win Paul's just gonna leave on that note he's like I want it I'm done no more in and out baby there you go. Yeah. We'll talk a little bit about the finals in this episode. And then joining Josh and me, he's still got some puffy eyes. I think he's just been crying ever since the Game Awards announced that Spider-Man 2 had eight nominations but took home zero prizes. It's Ryan. That was the intro you came up with come on that's the one what a

that's what i'm giving you ryan i know you're really holding out for spider-man 2 there oh beggars can't be choosers you know all right before moving on to our twig episode here we'd love to ask everyone to rate our show five stars on apple podcasts and spotify come hit us up on socials everywhere at video gamers pod and please consider showing some support to our show you can sign up on patreon starts at five bucks a month even if you only sign up for a month or two and quit it still helps out the show a ton supporters get bonus episodes perks on discord all our episodes ad free and a day early go check it it out at MultiplayerSquad.com. And also, just so our listeners know, this is our last new show of 2023, unless you're signed up

through Patreon for the bonus episodes. Here over the next two weeks, we will be just releasing some Holiday Rewind episodes. That gives us a chance to spend more time with our families and to get everything ramped up for 2024 and then also we want to give a shout out to someone who did sign up on patreon they signed up with rare status we want to say thank you very much to patreon user moriarty yeah all right i feel like i've seen that name moriarty from something before is that like a popular name for something? It's like a move from a movie or something. Is it from a movie or a band maybe? There's a character named James Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes, I guess.

I don't know if that's what you're thinking, Josh. I don't know. I just Googled it. All I know is if that's the case, this guy done sleuthed up the best gaming podcast out there there you go all right very nice awesome thank you for your support arrow or moriarty there we go uh we appreciate it and thanks for joining us thank you come join us on the discord so we can say thank you thank you to you in there too that's where the party's at yeah that's where all the fun is all right josh and ryan we had the game awards we gave out on our episode on monday our own personal awards we actually recorded it during the game awards we got to see some of those

winners come in live however we finished recording before all the major awards were given out of course balder's gate 3 and alan wake 2 were the two big winners balder's gate 3 took home game of the year best rpg along with a lot of technical awards uh alan wake 2 came in winning best game direction best narrative and best art direction any surprises here or any reactions that you guys want to share before we move on to all the other news of the week? I wasn't shocked. I think we all kind of knew

these two games were heavy hitters. I think Zelda was the one that kind of took home a little bit of an L in that regard, but nothing that I found really all that surprising. I'm actually surprised that Tears of the Kingdom didn't get more awards. It got the one, right?

It took home Best Action Adventure. Yeah, which is a little goofy, but fine. You know, it's fine. The biggest travesty of all is the fact that Armored Core 6, Fires of Rubicon, won Best Action Game, and Remnant 2 did not. So Josh, how many hours have you put into Armored Core 6, Fires of Rubicon won best action game, and Remnant 2 did not. So Josh, how many hours have you put into Armored Core 6? Zero. To have that expert opinion.

You know what, though? I have watched, legitimately, I've watched probably an hour of videos on Armored Core 6, because I keep wanting to buy it. And then every time I watch a video, I'm like, this just doesn't look like something I think I'd like, man. So many people seem to love it. Like part of me is I want to just buy it and try it. And if I don't like it,

refund it. Maybe that's something that we can do here over the next few weeks. Maybe I'll pop into it and give it a try. I, yeah. All right. Remnant two got robbed. I can,

I can see Josh watching it. What? This isn't even close to good as remnant two. Yeah. I'm off my soapbox now. But yeah, I mean, Alan Wake, I have petered out, Paul. You've probably figured out. I'll probably not play that game anymore.

Yeah, I figured. I will say this. I can appreciate the accomplishments that Alan Wake 2 had. I just don't know that I was in the proper mindset for playing that. And I did find it to be a little slow. But you kind of knew that already. But all that being said, I can understand why people are seeing Alan Wake 2 and why it's winning these awards because it is really well done. Yeah. All right. So I will poke fun at you a little bit, Josh. So Firewatch, not boring. Alan Wake 2,

a little too slow for you. No. Okay. That is fair criticism, Paul. But again, I think the issue is I have to be in the right frame of mind. Maybe. Lately, I mean, we've been cracking out on Risk of Rain 2. I've been cracking out on the finals. I think I'm just in the mood for that fast-paced kind of hectic action. What will happen is I'll get tired of that, and then it'll be time for me to kick back and appreciate a really good story and good writing and stuff like that. I just got to be in the right mindset. It's kind of like Dark Souls. If I'm not in the mood for Dark Souls, I hate

Dark Souls games. But if I'm in the right mood, they're some of the best games ever made. Kind of like when Lies of P came out, you were on the downswing with Souls-likes. Yeah. So Alan Wake 2, just the wrong timing. Maybe we'll hit you up again down the road. 100%. All right. So let's see. Before we talk about the announcements and trailers at the Game Awards, I think we need to talk about game releases because there were three big releases here. got to talk about two of them apologies to anyone who wanted us to hear our thoughts on avatar frontiers of pandora it came out to very mid reviews i think it's a 73 on metacritic we've kind of been out on ubisoft for a while so i i don't think we're going to talk a whole

lot about that but we have to talk about the day before. All right. Well, the most wish-listed game ever, Paul? The game that was going to break the world? That game? Yeah. Yes. The most wish-listed game of all time.

Still shocking. Shocking to this day. Anyone out there who doesn't know, this is a $40 zombie survival game. It takes place after a pandemic. It has been labeled an MMO, although put a pin in that because we'll talk about that in a minute. We covered the development of this game

very extensively, Josh. We never understood the hype on this game. It was the most wishlisted for a while, then the second most, then back to the most again. Since day one, you and I have really railed on all the video footage being pre-rendered. None of it was actual real gameplay. And you and

I have always said, look, maybe it has a chance, but we don't see it. We don't think this game has anything to write home about. The development, famously a mess. We've covered it in Twig episodes prior. They forgot to trademark the name. They asked for volunteer developers to actually make it. It's suffered multiple delays, etc, etc, etc. Josh, I kind of hate to say it, but boy, does it feel good to be right because everyone hates this game. It's one of the worst games of the year. Listen, we run a gaming podcast. we'd like to think that occasionally we know what we're talking about and we have always said we are not experts we don't pretend to be experts we're just dudes that play a lot of video games and like talking about them so we have always

taken that approach with things one of the things that comes with playing a lot of games and covering a lot of news is you start to just kind of get a feel for things. And this is one of those games where we instantly got a feel for it. And we said, listen, something's off here. It doesn't look right. It doesn't sound right. The more you look into this, the more this falls apart. And I hate that it was true. I hate that this was actually the case because it would have been much better to be surprised. I'd rather be wrong and have a game be really good. You know what I mean? That's fine. We're going to be wrong a ton, man. That's okay to me, but it sucks when we're right about a game

sucking really, really bad. And this is the case with the day before, man. I mean, I get that there were a lot of people that bought into the hype and that's fine. That's not anything against those people. You know what I mean? I'm not saying like, haha, you're dumb for that. I get that people bought into the hype. I get that people wanted to try it out. The thing that really sucks in this is that those people that were excited are the very ones that are coming back and saying, this was a scam. I was robbed. This is terrible. This is nothing like what they said it was going to be. And that's the part that I really hate, because it's like you had people that were excited about something, and then now the truth is coming

out, and people are finding out that this is terrible. Yeah. i've started to learn too as you know being a member of this pod you know you you do see those trends and you see how the games develop you see the tendencies in the production of a game and in what cues look good and what looked bad and this one just looked bad the whole way through and you guys i mean obviously spot on called it a lot longer before i was even here so yeah it's just it's just one of those things and i'm i'm just i'm a sucker for these types of games and even this one just doesn't look or sit right with me yeah and you're not alone ryan because steam reviews oof overwhelmingly negative this game is sitting at 19 oh no with over 20 000 reviews so and the people

are not happy euro gamers tagline for this is it's clear this is an incredibly basic game with little to it yeah the crazy thing with the reviews on this one is this is not review bombing that's happening either. These are actual people that played the game and went, wait a minute. This isn't I'm upset at, I'm trying to make a statement or I'm not happy about this political thing this one guy said, so I'm going to review bomb this game this is legitimately people that are playing it and going this game is sucks it's i i mean you know there there's the whole thing where they just bought a bunch of assets for games and then put it together and just said there's a video game everybody and it kind of went you can't put like watermelon and mustard between bread and call it a sandwich you Yes, technically it's food. And so technically,

the day before is a game. And it costs $40 for that sandwich. Exactly. But see, now here's the biggest problem is because they're smart and they're calling it early access. So because they've called it early access, guess what? Oh, we're going to fix everything you guys hate. No, they're not. This is not... Because we're going to talk about this in a little bit. This is not Hello Games, where they botched the release of No Man's Sky, but they were super passionate about this and are going to make it up to the gaming world over the next seven years. This was a scam from the beginning. It was a terrible idea. I don't know how they got the hype that they got. I hate it for people that bought the game and now they're unhappy with the purchase

well and here's the thing there's nothing wrong with buying assets the problem is that everyone is perceiving it as just an asset flip it's like let me buy a couple hundred dollars of assets throw it together with some poorly made mechanics we'll label it an MMO. Nothing about this speaks MMO to anyone. It's basically just an extraction game. And it's still labeled MMO on Steam. And people are feeling like this is a lot of false advertising. They feel like it's just buying assets

with little actual development behind it. Some people even noticed that they didn't even file for incorporation until just like a year and a half ago. So it just seems like everything was very truncated. The fact that they somehow became the most wishlisted game, I'm honestly impressed. It's a little bit like Anchorman with Baxter, right? Like I'm not even angry. I just don't know how they did it. They don't even have a marketing department so you know i think it just shows people love zombies they love post-apocalyptic games but you gotta

at least have some kind of gameplay to it that's fun because this just seems very basic not much to do people are not happy to either of you believe that in two or three years this game is going to be good no no i don't yeah that's my point there's no passion behind this game is going to be good. No. No. I don't. Yeah. That's my other point. There's no passion behind this game. I'm going to say offer watermelon and mustard sandwiches. You know? I tried to think of the worst combination I could think of, like, very quickly, and I don't know why those two things came to mind.

I mean, that's pretty horrible. That's a pretty horrible combination. Putting watermelon between bread is going to get very soggy as well so i like it's all a good mix kind of proud of my brain for coming up with something so terrible so quickly but at the same time it also makes me question myself and you know some somebody out there is going to go wait watermelon mustard or mustard sandwich that's my favorite sandwich oh they're yeah i'm. Just like there's probably those 20 reviews that are like the day before is the best game I've ever played.

Exactly. Hey, there's people who put peanut butter on hamburgers, so I'm not going to put it past anyone. Number one, that's delicious. Don't we can't get started on that. Guys.

I'm just saying I've had it. I didn't seek it out, but I had it. And that's where the squad. Better. All right. Dang it. That's for the squad cast.

Only I'm adding that right now. Squad cast for the squad cast. It's way better. All right, dang it. That's for the squad cast only. I'm adding that right now. Three questions for the squad cast. You got to pay extra for premium content like that. Last thing I'll say about the day before. Please sign up for our battle pass. Oh, gosh. Yeah.

You can unlock Ryan's opinion for $5. Pretend you'll unlock Josh's and Ryan's. Ain't nobody got time for that. Last stat that I'll share here about the day before. The game came out three days ago. Player count has already dropped 75%. 75%?

There's always a drop. Of course. Right? But normally you see a big peak, it dips and then it peaks again the next day during business hours. This game has just kind of tanked and it's staying low so yeah i think this game is just more or less doa uh don't don't pick this one up if you have not already the sad thing is dude we're gonna learn that this game made like

half a million dollars or something stupid like that where it's like you know not enough people way more than the game yeah they should have been more than that i'm just like but then it's just it's just such a bad thing man there's people out there that have figured out if if you can make something that somebody can control we can call it a game and we can charge money for it and if you hype it up enough enough people will buy it well even just with 20 000 steam reviews at 40 bucks a pop, that's $800,000 right there, let alone all the people who never left a review. So even with a lot of refunds, they've made a lot of money. All right.

I think this episode is going to go very long because we've really only talked about the day before. All right. Let's talk a little bit about the release of the finals. Yeah, now we're talking. This is a free-to-play shooter uh we have also extensively covered this game as well kind of the one claim to fame this game has is very destructible environments and we played it during a couple of betas and we've kind of talked about how this or x defiant is probably going to become the new hotness.

We've kind of just been waiting to see who's going to win out. The finals is releasing here first. Reception has been okay. Some people seem to really like it. The Steam rating is 72, which is somewhat mid. Do you know why? Well, I do know why. I looked at the negative reviews most of them answer to this

actually paul well that's a separate issue believe it or not they don't mention speed in the negative ratings the most common complaints is crashes which i have not experienced myself crash i i i have not either uh optimization issues and believe it or not, complaints about the AI-generated voice acting. Oh, we covered that article. I'm pretty sure we covered that on a twig. That's just kind of dumb to me. I mean, I love that voice actors get, you know, they're a talent and I love that they, you know,

get hired to do these cool video games. We generally mention them in reviews and things like that. Dude, they've not, they weren't hiding it. This is kind of a big people getting mad about nothing, in my opinion. Guess what? AI exists in this world. And you know what? These aren't like them ripping off people's voices without their permission.

They're just using AI to generate voices in a video game. I don't know why that angers some people at that point. But I mean, they were honest about it. Yeah, I mean... don't know why that angers some people at that point but i mean it's a multiplayer shooter yeah i mean it's not it's not like larian voiced every character in baldur's gate 3 with ai generation like that would be terrible right but this is just a shooter with quick matches like no one's listening to the the voice yeah they do actually i i like having the voiceover i mean it's kind of like with um halo multiplayer and halo where you got you got the overkill. And I'm pretty sure you had that in Quake and stuff like that too. I love the announcer voice. In my opinion,

half the time I think I tune it out, but when I do hear it, it does add a little bit of excitement to a game. Yeah. Now, Josh has been a very big fan of the finals. I think it's fine. I said, I don't think it's great. I don't think it's fine i i said i don't think it's great i don't think it's bad uh ryan i think you installed it but have you had a chance to play i mean this one literally just released so i i don't think you've been able to hop in yet right no i've been playing a couple games with joshu poo there but uh no i haven't i have not been able to play yet but i'm you know you know me i'm always down to play whatever we'll have to get a three-man squad going for that one. No, I've watched tons of videos of it, but I just haven't been able to get on yet. It's, uh, hopefully it's more like, um,

honey and, uh, watermelon instead of mustard. But, but not on a sandwich, right? Not on a sandwich. We're not putting watermelon on, on bread. That's all I know. So Josh, with you being the biggest fan of the three of us, give us like the quick pitch. What is it about the finals that you enjoy so much? For me, it's the pacing of the game. I liked it. I equated it to you

because I was kind of trying to sell it to you, Paul, even though you've already said, hey, I don't think it's a bad game. I don't think it's a great game, but you've been playing it with me too. with me too. So it's the pacing. It has that apex-y type movement. Everything is very fast. It's very fluid. It's very smooth. You can do some really neat kind of parkour ledge grabs and jumps and things like that. So I really appreciate the flow of it. I like that there's three different classes that you can be. You can be light, medium, and heavy.

They all play very differently. They all serve a different role. And I like- Different loadouts. Yeah, I like the chaos. Like this is a game, again, I love just crazy stuff going down and happening. And this game lends itself to that.

And I like the fact that you're never out of it. I mean, we were playing a few matches, Paul, where we thought we were doing great. And then we got bypassed by another team or we came from behind. The whole goal is to get money and deposit the money in one of two locations that are on the map at any given moment. So this pushes people to certain areas, but maybe you get lucky and you go to the one where everybody's not. And then you can make a nice safe deposit. But if you kind of clean up after a fight, even if you're the worst team, if you can clean up after a fight, grab 20K and go run and deposit it, you can win. So things can swing from one way to another very, very quickly.

And I just appreciate that we're never completely out of this. It's incredibly fast-paced. And there's a lot of traversal stuff added. So some classes can have like a grappling hook. Others can throw out zip lines and all of the movement stuff is very fun. I think the only reason I've considered it not great is because it's so fast. It almost feels a little bit to me like it's a multiplayer game where we're playing next to each other. Like we're all agreeing, let's go hit this point. But because we're running at different speeds and you die so fast or you kill people so fast,

there's not a whole lot of time to strategize an individual encounter. It's more like broad strategy. And then we're all kind of carrying it out at the same time um i think it's it's it's good i think it's a good game personally i enjoyed the x defiant beta more but who knows how these things are going to shake out i mean ultimately whatever my friends are playing is what i'm gonna play and so we're just gonna have to wait because x defiant you know has had a few delays and and the finals has the advantage of being here first the real question is does the finals have spiders like x defiant no spiderling bots no that is the best part of x defiant that was the best it does have deployable energy shields flamethrowers and some other stuff though cloaking devices gas grenades yeah there's definitely

some fun stuff in there yeah although it was it was very funny josh when we were both playing light for several matches and then we both decided to go heavy the next match and we felt like we were plotting so slowly on the battlefield it's even though it's still fast that's the funny thing it's still a fast game, but especially when you're calibrated to light class and then go heavy. It feels like you've got bricks. I felt like a chunky boy that was just trying to move after Thanksgiving

dinner, man. It was like... I was like, I just gotta go back to my fast guy. Check it out. Again, it's free to play. I think it is very, very fun. I've been playing it a lot and enjoying my time with it. So the beauty of this is if you think you're in the mood for a shooter that's three-man squads, it's usually 3v3, v3, v3. Again, check it out. See if it's

for you. But this is one game that's free to play that I think a lot of people will find that they enjoy and play for a while. Yeah. I think anyone can find enjoyment in this game. And since it's free, everyone should check it out. Yeah. All right, well, let's go ahead and take a short break and we'll be right back and we'll break down some trailers from the Game Awards. All right, guys, let's talk about some of these trailers and announcements that we saw here this week. First of all, we have to mention Light No Fire. All right, weird name. If you just hear that name, I don't think you know anything about this game, but more than anything else that we saw at the Game Awards, this is what I wanted to talk about. Even as we were sharing links during the

week, I said this was a non-negotiable must cover. We have to talk about it. You guys basically repeated, yeah, I totally agree. So we haven't shared our thoughts on the trailer, but this is made by Hello Games, who famously slash infamously released No Man's Sky, which was in terrible shape. Now it has turned out to be one of the best space games you can play. Light No Fire is hilariously, in the words of Sean Murray, something that's more ambitious than No Man's Sky, which is wild. But this is a game featuring adventure, building, survival, and exploration. It is a multiplayer game where everyone is on a single planet, which is larger than the size of Earth, and it is filled in with procedural generation. This hyped me up way more than anything else I saw. Am I alone here? Are you guys seeing something here differently than me,

or are we all hyped? Dude, I mean, I watched the trailer for Black Myth, Myth Wukong. I watched the trailer for God of War Valhalla. I mean, there were some gnarly good looking trailers that came out at the Game Awards. And the one that I'm legitimately the most hyped for is Light No Fire. So the fact that you thought that, Paul, I thought that, and Ryan,

I'll let you tell people what you think about it, but that's at least two out of the three so far. Well, I know just going over show prep, we talk about stuff before. We talk about what we're going to cover, and I'm like, all right, let me check this out. Obviously, we're trying to keep up on everything we can keep up on. And I watched this and I am blown away. I immediately messaged the guys like, this is awesome. This looks so good. This looks so amazing.

I am so excited for this game. I want it. I want it now. Where is it? Yeah. I mean, that's a unanimous from us that it's rare that all three of us are like, this is the game I want to talk about. Like, this is the one. And again, we'll cover some of the other stuff, but like,

I thought I was crazy when I was like, dude, this, to me, this game looks like the best of the bunch, man. And then Paul, I didn't know Paul thought the same thing. Cause he's, he's sneaky like that. Uh, I knew Ryan, you thought it looked good because you i think you actually said i've watched this trailer eight times now yeah yeah right ryan let loose a little bit about an hour ago yeah he was enjoying that to me just to kind of explain of valheim meets arc but with and i don't say this lightly with way more potential and josh you and i absolutely love valheim we made arguments that like maybe even game of the year contention you know stuff like that this just looks so much bigger and better it has a little bit of

a fantasy bend. And I think that the visual, yes. And the visual style works perfect with this because we're seeing like dragon dinosaur like creatures. There's like rabbit men soldiers. We see at one point, the game is a little bit stylized to fit that. And it looks gorgeous. There are colorful environments. It looks like the kind of world I'm going to want to explore. I'm going to see like a tower or something in the difference. I'm going to want to go check it out. I mean, we see flying mounts, looks like there's dynamic weather. And when you're throwing everybody on this singular planet, this to me sounds amazingly cool with, of course, the caveat,

if they can pull it off. Now, Hello Games, they bungled the launch of No Man's Sky so badly. I don't think they want that to happen again. So maybe this comes out six years down the road when it's ready. Like we have no idea, but I think this is one that they're going

to make sure it's in a good place before it releases this to me look it's not tier one tier one anticipation is gta6 for me and nothing else but this is right here in the next tier um along with stuff i'm really looking forward to like dragon age 4 the wolf among us 2. It's right there for me in most anticipated games. Yeah. My first thought when I saw this trailer was... And I almost skipped over the trailer, honestly, because the name's kind of weird. Light No Fire. I was looking at... It's very weird. I'm looking at God of War and all these other big name things. Senua's Saga,

which we're not going to have time to talk about. But I thought that trailer looked incredible. And so I'm scrolling and I see this Light No Fire and I'm like, blah, blah. And then the name, the game by Hello Games. And so I went, and I was like, wait a minute, what's this? I watched the trailer. You can tell that they made this game. It definitely has some of that No Man's Sky DNA to it, right? But dude, everything about this game just drew me in. The fantasy setting, the co-op aspect, the building, the exploration, you could see people's appearance changing. Dude had a big old shield on his back at one point. He's got a sword. So you're going to fight in this game, which looks good to me. It's like melee combat. Maybe it depends on the type of character or how you play it.

But then they show people taken to the skies on dragons and giant hummingbirds and all these weird creatures. I am in, dude. And I'll tell you what, I do not think that they are going to bungle this again because what they had to go through with the release of No Man's Sky, in my opinion, they've learned that lesson. We have said repeatedly that they've made up for it. You are good in my book, Hello Games. No Man's Sky is incredible in my opinion. And so I can't imagine a world where they botch this release. And if that's the case, if we have faith that they're going to do it right,

I think this game dude is going to be great. I can't wait to play it. He's so excited. I am. I'm very excited as well. When I saw this, the first thing I thought of was Josh's game moment of the year, which is just sitting over the Hogwarts,

you know, Hogwarts, just looking over. And that's what it brought me back to. And then this has so much more than that as well. So I'm excited. I can't wait to see what they do with it. And it just, only time will tell how far this goes. But I think it's going to be really, really good. If it hits, it's going to hit really well.

Yeah. We've talked about whether or not MMOs can survive today. And I don't know how many elements of this game will be MMO-esque. But regardless, we're going to have millions of players on a singular planet. So by nature, it's, you know, MMO. And if they can land the ship here, it's going to be a lot of fun. I cannot wait to see more about this one. All right, moving on to the next one here.

We got a world premiere trailer for Exodus, which was introduced by Matthew McConaughey. I know a lot of people weren't so happy about all the celebrities involved in the game awards, but Exodus is a triple a sci-fi action adventure RPG. It is being made by archetype entertainment, which is underneath the parent company wizards of the coast, who of course own the rights with magic, the gathering and dungeons and dragons.

Yep. The head of archetype is James Olin, who was the senior creative director of Bioware and was the lead designer for the Baldur's Gate games, Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age Origins. This guy's got a pedigree is what you're saying.

Yeah. He basically ushered in the golden age of Bioware. Did this trailer grab your guys' attention the way it did for me because i loved this one too so much fun stuff to watch i it's funny because i watched it but i watched it after some of the other trailers that i you know i thought maybe i'd be more interested in so the first go round i kind of went all right space game whatever i watched the trailer again and And that's when I went, okay, this looks like a current day Mass Effect to me. That's exactly what it is. The celestials, the super cool robots that we're fighting that are like robot aliens. And they showed about 30 seconds of gameplay, which I

enjoy. I hate when it's just a cinematic trailer. So at least they gave us that little taste. But in the gameplay, I was just like, this looks like Mass Effect, but in 2023 to me, which I absolutely would love. So the pedigree that this developer has or the lead creative guy has with this and the footage we've seen is sign me up i want to play hopefully we can all play together but yeah i i i feel the same i think uh when you looked at it it came out very very well and it showed you what the game was kind of gonna be but not too much to where it was like over the top so i i thought it looked great i'm excited for it i'm excited to see what what more we can learn about it so uh yeah i i know we obviously know paul's ready for it so oh yeah i mean all the comments

on youtube are like oh so it's mass effect yeah you know there's a lot of jokes like with me i'm commander shepherd and this is my favorite original space game of the citadel you know and i love it it's all poking good fun but everyone's excited because we all those of us who like mass effect really love mass effect and andromeda left a little bit of a bad taste in the mouth. We want a new one to play. Now, Josh, I want to ask you a question. What's the one thing that you and I always say about what should the relationship be between the artist developers and the businessmen publishers? Yeah, stay out of it, businessmen publishers.

Let the game people make the game that they want to make. And if they make a good game, that game will make you a ton of money. Yes. Right? Yes. All right. There was an article in Rock Paper Shotgun where they interviewed James Olin. And here is what he had to say about starting archetype entertainment.

All right, Josh, you're going to love this. Here's what he said. My demands were, I only do this if I get to start my own studio in Austin. I get to choose who I hire. I get to choose exactly the kind of IP I want to make. No one is going to tell me anything about how to make the game. At this point, Olin adopts a megalomaniacal tone. I want control over absolutely everything. I want all the all the power all right so that's what he said to his surprise wizards said yes and olin has been happily presiding over archetype entertainment ever since building a new sci-fi rpg world without interference and here's a quote

from him if you've seen the games i like to build it's's that style of game, he says. It's worth noting that Mass Effect legend Drew Karpyshyn joined Archetype in 2020 as lead writer. And then here's a final quote from him. The feel in the studio reminds me of my early days at BioWare, wrote Karpyshyn in his blog at the time. I can feel the magic in the air. Paul, I just want to tell you that when this episode comes out, I'm going to listen to you read all that over and over again. Because we love to hear it. I mean, what more do you want, right? I mean, guys that know how to make video games,

the golden age of Bioware is phenomenal. I mean, this is when Dragon Age, Mass Effect, I mean, Knights of the Old Republic. Yeah. I mean, there's others. Jade Empire, which is a great one. That one kind of fell off the wayside, but that was Bioware, I think. I mean, just these phenomenal games.

And then you're telling me that these guys are going to develop these, this game, without the crap that we see publishers pushing on devs all the time, this game's going to be great. I'm going to bet on it already that if you just let them make it, it's going to turn out to be a phenomenal game. Just let them make the game. Yeah. There it is. There you go. I like that iteration of uh of josh's tagline yeah we've said it a lot and i know it's easy to just say things when we're not responsible for millions or billions of dollars of stock and and things like that but man it just seems like with this attitude of price

gouging consumers i just love hearing someone who says you know what if you'll just give me carte blanche control over the whole thing let me make the kind of game that i know i can make and i've done it look at my pedigree that just looks to me like all signs are pointing toward positive things and if this game comes out and it sucks and it loses a ton of money fine maybe we were, Josh, but I feel like this is one of those stories where I really hope it works out well. You know how we talked about with the day before how sometimes you just get a vibe and you kind of know the recipe for something to be good or bad? We kind of predicted that. This one, we're kind of saying, listen, if you're

giving the devs time to make the game and with the history that they have, they know how to do this, then I can't imagine that this is going to turn out poorly. Yeah, I would agree with you, except I did go on a limb and say all these things about Glenn Schofield when he was making the Callisto Protocol. That was a swing and a miss. Look, you can't hit all of them.

Didn't they bring him back for that, though? He had been out of the game for a while, right? Maybe. I don't remember all the game for a while, right? Maybe. I don't remember all the details. I'm sure not like that. Don't say that at all. We were doing so good. I know.

I know. We have a pretty good track record on these things. That was one rare miss for us. Yeah. Yeah. All right. And I know we're going long, but we got to mention one last thing. Last story of this episode. God of War Ragnarok has already released a free DLC at the time of this recording.

Now, we are recording this right before it launches, so we have not been able to play the DLC called Valhalla. But who wants to tell the people about this? How about you, Ryan? You were the first one to post. Yes, I was. Ryan's dancing in his seat. I am dancing in my seat. I immediately, immediately reached out the second I saw it and I said, dude, we got DLC.

You're not getting my PlayStation is what you said. We got DLC. You're not getting my PlayStation. Paul's going to have to give it to you or you're gonna have to buy your own dude. I am playing this game. I'm gonna replay it and replay it again. Just if you guys

can watch it, just even the trailer was amazing. Anything God of War obviously just blows everything away. But I was so i was so excited for for this when it came out and not to mention they release it boom then they say it's free boom and they say it's coming out tuesday boom yeah like what what world are we in where

we're a developer or or anything comes out and does that you know it's it's it's usually a build-up of like six months and then it's like oh you got to do this oh sign up for that oh you know and they're just like oh yeah yeah we're coming out dlc on tuesday here you go yeah and there's no yeah pay for three extra days of early access none of that garbage now josh for for better or worse i think the actual gameplay of this dlc is a little bit outside the box i don't know that anyone really saw this coming why don't you tell the people what it actually is so from my understanding this is a rogue like god of war dlc um and if you watch the, the vibe I'm getting is this is basically going to be like an arena, survive multiple waves kind of challenge. I think there's going to be a little

bit more to it than just that. Maybe there's some story that goes along with it or some progression elements or something like that. We don't know. All I know is that in this trailer, it shows Kratos going ham like Kratos does on freaking all these monsters. Dude, I freaking love God of War. The animations in this game, Kratos fighting and the animations and just the vibe that you get from that is second to none. And I honestly, everybody knows how I feel about these games, but the combat in those games is part of that perfect recipe. And it's so good. I'm watching him kick butt and I'm just instantly like, yeah, yeah, get him, get him.

And it's like, I want to play this now. And I'm jealous that ryan's being stingy i'm gonna have to buy a playstation there's there's two playstations here yeah that's true that's true yeah ryan was so excited i believe there were several exclamation marks in the discord messages about this yeah the only thing that's a little bit of a bummer for me and i'm curious to hear from you guys if you feel the same way. We all played God of War Ragnarok when it first released. All right, that's going back a ways now. When there's a DLC like this, are you able to just reinstall the game if it's on PC or pop in the disc and immediately jump right back in? It is so hard

for me to do that. I almost always feel like I have to restart the game, play a couple hours, and then I can play the DLC content. Are you guys the same or am I just old and weird? I get the idea. To be honest with you, I get it. Because it's like, well, am I going to be prepared? Am I going to get everything that I'm supposed to get out of this? If I play the other game beforehand, then yes, I will. And so I understand that, but it would not, in this case, I could dive right in because I think the focus of this particular DLC is just the combat. I think, like I said, it's going to be like a roguelike or something along those lines to where there's not some grand story where you have to be caught up with everything or something like that. So I think in this case,

yeah, you can just jump right in. I know I would, if I had a PlayStation five, this is all I'm saying. Well, you would, if you stopped buying smokers.

Hey, that's been delicious. Yeah. Josh, I think you're going to need a PS five, dude. You're going to have GTA six. Is, uh, is, is just do it is uh black myth a ps5 exclusive yeah but i'd play that on no it's not it's on pc too okay i remember there being some other souls like game like that that's exclusive i just can't

remember which one all right well this ended up maybe being our longest twig episode ever i mean i kind of thought that might end up being the case, but Merry Christmas to all our listeners. Yeah, it's the last one of the year. Why not? Last one. Yeah. All right. Well, a very happy 2023 to everyone. What an amazing year for games. I mean, we've said it so many times. We've been just so blessed to have so many fun games to play and so many of you out there supporting the show. As a reminder, please make sure to check out Patreon support options if you haven't already over at MultiplayerSquad.com. And make sure to toss us a follow on socials everywhere at Video Gamers Pod.

And then until next year, happy gaming. I just want to say thank you to everybody. You guys have all welcomed me so graciously. I know I'm new to the pod. End of the first year has been awesome. But if you can, get on the Discord. It's an awesome community. Tons of great people there.

Everything is nice and gracious. And a lot of people get together and play some great games that you otherwise would not have played. So get on the Discord. and then otherwise, see ya. Yeah. I'll just close by saying thank you to everybody that supported the show, that is listening. I mean, this has been a journey. Paul mentioned it. We've been doing this for four years now, man. Yeah, it's crazy. It is crazy. But you know what? We do it because we love it. We do it because of the people that we get to meet.

Ryan just mentioned the Discord server. We're there interacting with everybody. But yeah, it's been a crazy wild ride. I can't wait to see where things go in 2024. Even if the games suck. Yeah. Sometimes it's fun to talk about bad games. We'll find the good ones too, for sure.

All right. See you, everybody. good ones too for sure all right see you everybody