Video Gamers Podcast - Plentiful Palworld, Awesome Avowed and Hyped for Hellblade 2 - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

The Video Gamers Podcast is bringing you the hottest video game news each and every week. Video games hosts Paul, Ryan and Josh are back with another packed episode filled with the gaming news you want to know. This week in video game news, we talk about the insane explosion of Palworld, dig into the recent gameplay footage of Avowed, get hyped for Hellblade 2 and discuss the newly announced Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.  Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter, Gaius214, Nate, Kiitaclyzm, YayaArizona Morgau, Disratory and Jwaf Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Samsung Galaxy. Ever captured a great night video only for it to be ruined by that one noisy talker? With Audio Erase on the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, you can reduce or remove unwanted noise and relive your favorite moments without the distractions. And that's not all. New Galaxy AI features like NowBrief will give you personalized insights based on your day schedule so that you're prepared no matter what. Buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra now at Samsung.com. Hello fellow gamers! Welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast. We are so excited to be here.

The three of us are going to be covering the biggest gaming news stories of the last week. An awful lot has happened. We saw a surprise game absolutely explode upon release. We've got some amazing footage for an upcoming co-op survival game that at least one of us is jazzed for and we also had the xbox developer direct i am your host paul and joining me he is busy running around looting pal spheres that ryan left on the craft bench it's josh all i want to say is ryan is a dirty rotten egg thief ryan and you think I forgot about it I incubated that egg for four hours man four hours and Ryan goes up and yoinks it right in front of me and I call him out on it and then he goes oh oh did I grab it okay well you can have it if you want yeah I was gonna get it I hatched it for four hours Ryan dude I I was on till 1 30 in the morning last night and that was the last thing

i'm like oh i haven't built the incubator but we can do that i have two electric heads in the chest feel free to use them and then you're hoarding this egg that you're like oh my precious yeah my four hours ryan and then you just yoinked it oh and then threw that stupid bird back in the thing and then you i said you can have it Oh, and then threw that stupid bird back in the thing, and then I said, you can have it. Thanks for giving me my pet back, Ryan. Let's not forget the game's called Pal World, not Fiend World.

All right. And then joining Josh and me, he is busy enslaving pen gullets, forcing them to water our berry farm. It's Ryan. You better water that farm, or else you get the cleaver. Or you will get butchered. Yes.

Oh, man. Guys, we, okay. Obviously, we have to start the show with Powell. Paul's already like, what are these guys doing to me? Oh, my gosh. All right. Basically, this game exploded out of nowhere. This is kind of weird because this game got revealed, I believe, in 2021.

And people didn't really seem to care. And so all of a sudden with it coming out in early release, I was a little surprised that everyone decided collectively, let's all go spend almost 30 bucks and go buy this game. But for those who are maybe not yet in the know pal world is an adventure survival game that can handle up to 32 people on a server it is 100 just the game arc along with some pokemon elements i mean that's really probably the best way to describe this game uh did i did i say pokemon oh yeah oh my't oh my gosh dude we've all we've all been doing

that sorry they're pals not pokemon they are the most generic looking pokemon ripoffs you can think of but yeah we got we got we have to call them pals because that's what pal world calls them the game sold a million copies in the first eight hours the servers crashed epic had to have an emergency meeting with them about this to get servers back up. The game has now sold over 4 million copies in the first couple days. By the time this releases, I don't know, it could be 8 million by then. All three of us did pick it up. We felt like with this game going gangbusters, we had to give it the old college try, give a couple of our thoughts. I don't think we're going to go into a whole lot of detail because I think we're going to be doing some kind of deep dive or first impression episode

that'll be releasing soon. But how do you guys feel about Palworld now that we have played for the last 24 hours? Yeah, it feels like it. You said it, Paul. This game came out of nowhere. I mean, I feel like I saw the title of this game at some point, and then I just instantly blew it off because I go, I don't play Pokemon. And that's basically what happened. And then people started talking about it on social media. And I kind of went, yeah, I don't like Pokemon. And then more and more people started talking about it. And then everybody started saying, hey, this game's actually a lot of fun. And then I still tried to ignore it. And then eventually, people started talking about it in our Discord server. And then I was like, okay, wait, what is going on here? Why is everybody

saying this game is great? And then everybody just went, it's great. And then I finally went, dang it, you guys are going to make me pick this game up. I'm trying to play Prince of Persia. I'm trying to play SpongeBob. I'm trying to play the other four games that I play. Star Citizen. Yeah. And then it was just like, do I really have time for this? And then I went, no, of course I don't have time for this. But then my brain went, it's a new game. You can play it. And I went, okay, fine. so i picked it up you guys instantly were like yeah we'll pick it up too we hopped in and it's not bad so i don't want to spoil

anything because i think we are going to try to do a dedicated episode on pal world um but we have been playing a lot i should say ryan and i have been playing a lot paul has been standing outside the window looking in jealously as he has real life stuff so so this happens every survival game right like you start on one server and then you have to restart i was a little ahead of you guys initially on our server and then we realized oh paul has to be logged in for us to be able to log in as well. That doesn't really work. So I said, I'll set up a dedicated server, same way I did Valheim.

Maybe we can invite a couple other friends. It's a work computer. It's on 24-7. So I set up the dedicated server only 15 hours ago, guys. And that includes a full night of sleep during that time you guys somehow managed to get on i even asked you like i was legitimately asking like do you think you're almost done with the game because you guys have not stopped playing i had a date night with my wife last night had church church this morning. I have not been able to play. You guys have somehow put in, I think, like 12 out of the last 15 hours you've been logged into

Palworld. I don't know how you guys slept. Ryan was posting up until 1.30 a.m. in Palworld. I think it's safe to say everyone's been enjoying it. I just checked my Steam. I have 9.3 hours, and I picked this game up yesterday at about about like 7 p.m i think somewhere oh my gosh uh yeah i mean there's a reason that this game has an insane amount of hype right now i mean the the hype level is through the roof and honestly you like to see it right because you know a game comes out and people talk about it and then more people talk about it. And then it gets so much hype that people go, well, I have to see why 4 million people have picked up this game. And that obviously means there's something to it,

right? Like 4 million people are not going to buy a garbage game. I mean, this game is still in its infancy. Again, we've got nine hours, but the game just came out. Does it have legs? Does it have long-term sustainability? Where is it going? Is it only fun for the first six hours? I mean, we've seen that for plenty of games, right? So we're kind of in that point where I think we're going to start seeing the glimpses of what is to come at this point and that really is a true unknown for us so i think that's why we want to get more play time in and then hopefully do an episode on it but for now there's a reason that the hype is there yeah and ryan you're caught hook line and

sinker right oh of course these these dang games because i i'm not one on these survival games. I know Josh. Josh loves, like, satisfactory. He loves to build and organize. He was already complaining about his chest. He's like, oh, this one's for this. This one's for that. I'm like, yeah.

It was like one in the morning, and I'm just throwing stuff in every chest. And I'm like, oh, Josh is going to be mad tomorrow. So I was like, I'll build two or three more chests, and I can put all the rest of my stuff in every chest and i'm like oh josh is gonna be mad tomorrow so i was like i'll build two or three more chests and i can put all the rest of my stuff in there because he was long asleep and i just these games that i just i get sucked in man i can't i can't help it like there's there's nothing else there other than just i love to be part of the – because our little base is a community, and we can build it up. Hey, I got this farm done. Hey, I got this done, that done, the incubator.

I love that we all are doing things together to try to make this base better than what it could be. And so, yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff to it man i'm i'm hook line and sinker like you said it feels a little dirty talking so positively about it because this is a game that honestly does not do anything new or revolutionary i mean not at all they straight up rip everything off of other games arc most clearly i mean the tech tree is straight up from arc i mean there's there's no change it is literally they ripped off the code from arc and pasted it in there this is after we just played it we just played arc you know yeah this isn't like we took a good

idea and then made it our own this is we took their idea. Even some stuff like where your pals work on your base and have different traits feels very RimWorld-esque. I mean, everything in this game is basically straight from something else, but it's been fun. I mean, we support it with our money and we're having fun, but I don't know that I feel good about it, if that makes sense.

All right. Before we start our next story here, if you are listening to this show and you have not yet left us a review or a rating, please just take a couple of seconds and do so. You can rate us five stars in Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If you have an iPhone, even better, you can leave a quick review. Even if you just write, Paul told me to do this and hit submit, that'll work. We'll take it. We might read your review on the show. So please take a second to do that. And also, if you like what we do and want to help support our show financially, we do

exist because almost all of our support comes from Patreon. It starts at five bucks a month, and we really do try to make it worth your time. If you sign up, you'll get two bonus squad cast episodes a month, which are a ton of fun, lots of other perks. Go check it out at multiplayer squad.com. All right. Next story that we want to cover here. We have to talk a little bit about a game that I have been getting excited about. I hope you guys are as well. I don't really know for sure, but it's a game called Nightingale and it's an upcoming shared world survival crafting rpg might have a little bit overlap with pal world in that sense but it does let you group up to groups of six and survival games the funny thing is i was already thinking this before pal world even you know exploded survival games are kind of oversaturated right now i would say

even more so now with pal world uh so everyone seems to be chasing like the next rust or valheim or maybe even pal world kind of game ign released a 20 minute video of nightingale that was not received terribly well because it was 20 minutes of like the very beginning of the game the tutorial stage a lot of running around collecting flowers very mid reviews and then the very next day maybe because nightingale asked them to i generally released another video showing some more later end game content fighting a boss of a swamp biome i think this game looks incredibly promising. I think there is a lot here to set it aside from other survival games. But what are your guys' thoughts on the status of Nightingale? I did not know this game existed until you brought it up, Paul. You somehow went,

I forget how you even brought it up. It was at the end of a recording of one of our episodes, and we always just chat a little while. And you brought this up. And I'm like, wait, what game is this? Was this one we talked about? And you were like, no. And I'm like, well, I don't know anything about this. And you're like, well, you should watch a trailer. And then I start watching this trailer. And I just went like, you've got to be kidding me. How do I not know about this? Bananas. Right. Yeah. And then I went, how did I not know about this game? And then I got curious. So I started looking up more gameplay trailers and footage

and articles and things like that. And I literally posted in our Discord and said, the ambitiousness of this game is bananas. Because if you watch some of the gameplay footage in the trailers for this game, it is insane what they're trying to do. I mean, they have giants. I mean, actual giants. And the way that they do the perspective, I just went, whoa! Why are more people not doing that? And the giant's just walking around. He's doing his little giant things you know he's not really bothering you but then they show the people building these giant cities on like the sides of cliffs they showed the survival elements which is the same thing as always it's picking a bush and chopping a tree and you know that's fine but i'll tell you what man if they pull this off and it looks like they might based on the footage if they pull this off, and it looks like they might based on the footage, if they pull this off, this is going to be a crazy good game.

And I don't know how I didn't know about this game two days ago until Paul was like, guys, shoot. And it comes out next month. Yeah, which is crazy. Now, it's early access, if I remember right. But even still, I mean, Pal World's early access, and it's got 30 hours worth of content for it. So you owe it to yourself to check this out.

There's a reason that we're bringing this up. I mean, I'm super glad that Paul mentioned it because I had no knowledge of this game up until a couple of days ago. And now I'm really hyped for this game. The biggest thing to me was the audio. Like the birds chirping in the background. You hear the woodpecker.

You hear all the little in the background. You hear the woodpecker. You hear all the little noises. The splitting of the wood when you chop with the axe. There's a lot of just splinters. Yeah, it's like it splints as it goes down and falls through. You can hear where the branches would have hit other trees and stuff like that. There's a lot of cool little features within it. I liked the the umbrella like you can pop that umbrella and you can glide like that was super cool yeah yeah fly around the map with your umbrella it's kind of weird but i like it yeah exactly it's some sort

of i mean as we've known um people nowadays are a little um unaccepting of lack of mobility, I guess you would say. So we got to be able to move fast. It's 2024. Let's go, baby. So being able to zoom around the map with the umbrella was cool. I was a little kind of taken aback by the boss, like the boss fight that they had. So that wasn't my favorite thing. I think that the gameplay looked a little off of what it could have been,

but I still think that this is very promising. I think there's a lot to it, and I'm excited to see kind of where it goes. Yeah, and there's a lot of fun stuff in here, right? There's melee, there's yeah and there's a lot of fun stuff in here right there's melee there's guns there's magic yeah the idea of throwing all of those together you don't see all the time i really like that the scale and the size of the boss being like the swamp biome boss to me was the closest i have felt since valheim of experiencing something like that. Like the first time you fight, you know, the elder tree or whatever they call it, you know, stuff like that was just so much fun.

There were some other things in here that did kind of make me chuckle a little bit. So your umbrella does protect you against the rain because there's like a wet meter that'll build. That's what I saw. The umbrella goes down. Yeah. And as you step into the swamp swamp it starts building a disease meter so if you stand in the swamp water too long you're gonna get sick and i was like oh that's kind of a clever survival

element uh i will say the only thing that i am a little more nervous about is that the game is very light on quests and storytelling they basically said we want players to kind of set their own goals and accomplish it. For me, that's usually a little too loosey-goosey, but if they have a boss in every biome, and if that's our only goal is to find all these bosses and kill them, or they call them like apex creatures, I think, then that's all I need. That's going to be enough guidance just right there. It worked for Valheim. I mean, honestly, in Valheim, you didn't really know what to do until you found the boss altar.

And then it was like, oh, okay, now we got to go work towards killing this guy. I will say this game looks like it literally has it all. I mean, the combat looks really good. There's magic. You see a giant casting something at you. I guess you can add to those guys and then it's like he's a wizard giant and i was like oh this is great um i mean there's a card system

yeah like there's there is a card system but now here's the thing for me now this is what i think is really cool but also worries me is you get these cards that unlock biomes and you can stack these cards how you want so So you can actually say, I want a forest biome. I want it to be high level. And I want it to have these light modifiers. So maybe there's some weather or dangerous weather or something like that. Lower gravity, stuff like that. Yeah. And then it'll open up a portal to this world that you basically created. And it will procedurally generate this world based on the combination of

cards that you use. So you can imagine this opens up a ton of possibilities because it's like, hey, I want a desert biome with very hazardous weather, but easy creatures. And then you go in there and then you can farm unique materials and things like that. Procedural generation, I have yet to find a procedurally generated game that works on the level that we hope for. You know what I mean? Like No Man's Sky, they've fixed a lot in that game, but how many planets can you land on where you just go, okay, that looks neat. There's nothing here. I'm taking off again. And so I'm very curious to see how this plays out with these biomes that you can basically craft and then go into. How much is there going to be to do in those? If they can land that,

whoa. But again, if it's just empty and there's some plants that you can pick and maybe there's some rocks that you can chop and blah, blah, blah, I just don't know how much depth there's going to be on something like that. But the building, the exploration, the survival, the combat, the over-the-top boss battles, this game literally has it all. I just don't know if they can execute on it. But I'm very excited and blame you fully for this one, Paul. I'll take it. I would say this game has lots of promise and then as we get closer we're going to keep an eye on it for sure it is a little bit of a bummer that it shares a release date with pacific drive which we have been very hyped for we're agonizing this is the

things people don't get to see is we're literally going like well i'm super hyped for nightingale how do we not play this game and then it it's like, oh, wait a minute. Pacific Drive comes out. February 22nd? Come on. And then it's like, wait a minute. Like, no. It's like we're trying to figure out,

can we play both games at the same time? Too many games, not enough time. It might work. I like having the combo of a single player game like Pacific Drive and a co-op game. So maybe it'll end up working out. But yeah, they do both come out on the same day, which is a little bit of a single player game like Pacific Drive and a co-op game. So maybe it'll end up working out. But yeah, they do both come out on the same day, which is a little bit of a bummer. All right.

Well, we're going to take a short break and then we'll come back and talk about the Xbox Developer Direct. This is an ad from BetterHelp Online Therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships, but it's just as important to focus on the green flags. If you're not quite sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify those qualities so you can embody the green flag energy and find it in others. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online and sign up only takes a few minutes. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month.

That's BetterHelp, H- that's better help help.com all right we are back the xbox developer direct took place and we're gonna just talk about three of the videos that were highlighted in it let's start out with the gameplay reveal trailer for indiana jones and the great circle all right of all, I think that's a terrible name. The Great Circle. Dude, it's the Great Circle. That's really underwhelming. What would you like?

The Mediocre Circle? What do you want them to call it? Well, compare that to Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Subpar Circle? Yeah. The Great Circle. It just sounds a little lazy. All right. So, Indiana Jones, we like uh it sounds a little lazy all right so indiana jones we have

talked about this a little bit because we haven't seen any gameplay until this but we did talk about it on previous this weekend gaming episodes it is first person which also surprised some people because in all the cut scenes you do have harrison ford's likeness as indiana jones it's not voiced by him however that, that's done by Troy Baker, famously the voice of Joel from the last of us doing a Harrison Ford impersonation, which is very funny, but it's single player.

It's of course an adventure game. It is set between the timelines of Raiders of the lost Ark and the last crusade. I'm very curious to hear your guys' reaction to this. Ryan, you're the, you're the last crusade i'm very curious to hear your guys reaction to this ryan you're the you're the the the fan here let me guess right ryan loved it yeah i did love it i know you guys aren't gonna love it but i freaking loved it one first i want to say with troy baker like i i try to think like oh i can do impersonations oh i can do voices and then i hear like his harrison ford and stuff like that and it just it's a whole nother level like these

professionals are just so so good um but to get off that i thought it was awesome and i'm gonna 100 get it you guys probably won't but that's my story and I'm going to 100% get it. You guys probably won't, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I have no idea what Josh thinks. What would you think of this? I think it looks good, man. I will say I'm not super hyped about it. I really want to see a little bit more. I like the first person perspective because you get to be Indiana Jones versus experiencing Indiana Jones, if that makes sense. God of War, one of my, I mean, my all-time favorite game. You aren't Kratos, but you're getting to kind of experience what Kratos is going through. You're right there going through his journey and stuff like that.

But when you put it in the first person perspective, you get to be that character. Cyberpunk, right? I remember when Cyberpunk came out and everybody was super mad that it wasn't third person because The Witcher was third person. And it's like, but you get to be V at that point. You're living that life from that perspective. So I actually think I'm a fan of the first person perspective. Honestly, this sounds so stupid. The thing that bothers me the most was the whip. Yeah. Oh, no.

No, it just looked so weird. The whip doesn't work in games. It was weird, man. It was fat and chunky. And then you could tell they tried to give it perspective. But then it just didn't look right, man. I don't know about whip physics. I mean, you got to have the whip.

I'm not saying take the whip away. But it just looked funny to me. There was something about it that just kind of made me kind of go like, what? Yeah, your multi-million dollar game was great but you know the whip was just developed a little wrong hey you know if we can get jiggle physics we can get whip physics down right okay excuse me i'm just trying to show oh my goodness so so here's one of the things-person perspective you normally use when there's character creation, right? Yeah. Normally, when you have a preset character, whether it's Commander Shepard,

Geralt of Rivia, or Lara Croft, those games tend to be third-person because you're playing as an established character. You're playing as Indiana Jones. So the fact that you can see Indy in the cutscenes, but then the gameplay is first person doesn't necessarily bother me. It's just a little bit of an off-the-wall choice. What struck me as being odd, nothing about this trailer felt like Indiana Jones to me. I'm seeing the right pieces, right? I'm seeing a whip.

I'm hearing a guy who sort of sounds like Harrison Ford, but it just didn't, the gameplay loop did not look or feel like the Indiana Jones that I know. When you watch the movies, Indy is always barely scraping by, by the seat of his pants. Like he'll go off a cliff in a tank and you think he's dead and he barely crawls his way back up and he's almost dead, like indy is usually getting the best of him and then he scrapes by at the end this trailer shows indy jumping out of an airplane onto another airplane like yes that's that's fine that's that's like a different action franchise this to me was like this is almost like a complete reimagining of indiana jones forget everything

you know about him to me it just felt a little bit weird it it's not what i expected is all i'm saying i'm still trying to get used to it this to me okay i know you guys don't like this and i'm i'm gonna stand on this hill because of how much i love this but like i even put that in in my show notes paul like andy's he's not a superhero he's not invincible he always usually gets his butt kicked in all the movies he's he's like barely he's barely able to like oh you know he's kind of stumbling up and then he knocks out the guy and then he's able to do what he has to do so i've always loved that part in the series jumping from airplane to airplane is a little wild but he's going ham in this in this gameplay trailer it's a video game dude come on now we want to have like yeah

craziness but yeah i i don't know i'm i'm i'm maybe it's just because i love the series that i'm super excited about it hopefully it's good but i don't know. You guys are the experts. I'm interested for sure. I just don't know if I'm hyped about it. Yeah. I'd say I'm in the same camp. I'm not saying it's bad. Game of the year. Oh, boy.

My immediate reaction was just, that's a little weird. It's not what I would have thought. There are two other games that we do want to talk about from the direct. There's probably a little bit less to talk about because there wasn't as much new stuff but senua saga hellblade 2 you know we have talked about this game a bit it josh named it one of his most anticipated of the year they say in this trailer everything is bigger and more expensive which is what we expected after the success of the first i will say that they said exactly what I thought seeing the other trailers, that it is an all new combat system here for the sequel.

I thought that was by far the weakest part of the first Hellblade. So the more I see, the more excited I get, but they're still not showing us too much, but it does look like a much darker storyline, even though the first one's pretty dark already, it seems like this one's even darker. But if they improve the combat, then I think this game is shaping up to really please a lot of people.

Yeah. Being the resident Hellblade lover, I am beyond excited for this. Everything I see with the production value, with the effort that they're putting into this, I mean, they keep talking about the fidelity of the graphics and the audio and stuff like that. I mean, they are always showing off the motion capture technology and the face capture and stuff like that. This is going to be an insane video game production. I mean, hands down. I didn't mind the combat in the first one. I get that it was lackluster. So if they can take the elements that people found a little boring and improve those, I think they're going to absolutely nail it because everything else they're only going to improve on over the original. And so I was actually talking to some people on social media about this because there were a few people that approached it like you, Paul.

And then they came back and they said, this game is kind of boring, man. Like, what the heck? Why is everybody hyped about this? Quote walking simulator. And you had said, I think I approached this game the wrong way. I think if I went into it with knowing what I was getting into, I could appreciate it a little bit more. And so I think you need to know what this game is. This is not God of War by any means. This is an insanely intimate look at a woman that

is very, very disturbed and suffers through psychosis and yet is thrust into being a leader for her people. And there are a few games that capture a character like Senua's, like Hellblade does, to be honest with you. So if you can get into that, and you like cutting-edge audio, and cutting-edge graphics, and cutting-edge character development, I think that's really going to resonate with you. If you were looking for God of War with a Celtic heroine, you're going to be sorely disappointed at that point. But everything I've seen, absolutely incredible. They came out and they said it's going to be about a seven or eight hour game, which is pretty much what the first one was. I'm pretty sure that we all three or all four finally crafted experiences. Not every game needs to be a 40-hour open world game. I'm

fine with the time on this if you're giving me an absolutely incredible experience. The one thing that did kind of make me laugh in the video is that they talked about using all these reference points in Iceland to create the world. Yeah, that was just an excuse to take a vacation. Yeah. I'm like, no one cares. no one cares if you're using real locations in iceland i don't think a single person would be like oh no i've seen that mountain and that that's not exactly how the summit looks that part did make me laugh a little i i do think some people just wanted to vacation absolutely kudos to you for figuring out how to make that happen

so how do i get us to do that like yeah let's vacation guys all right well you put up the money for us to develop a video game ryan and then we'll go on location hey the way how words can been going like man we just make whatever just let's pick something copy it and then just make it better and then good go just throw two darts and just add the two games together see what we get. All right. And then finally, we have to cover a little bit of Avowed. So we got to see a gameplay overview. Avowed is something that initially I was like, man, I love Obsidian. This game looks a little bit weird. I was in kind of like wait and see mode. But as time goes on, the more and more I see, the more and more I like. I think this game for me is now my second most anticipated game of the year, only behind

Helldivers 2. I love so much of what they said in this trailer. They talked about how the game is not hack and slash. You do have to be strategic and tactical in how you fight. You got to swap out all these different, you know, weapons and whatnot. More than anything though, I loved how they shared a specific example. And I love when games do this

because they can promise the world, but show me how it actually works. And they said, here is a side mission where you run across a whole bunch of dead soldiers and you have to investigate and talk to all these people involved. And you have to make decisions. Like, do I think someone is responsible for this? Or do I think this is just like a bad coincidence, but I'm not going to say anyone is to blame? Or

am I going to call someone out and have them pay the penalty for what's happened here? And then after you make those decisions, that impacts the world at large. And you're going to see the repercussions of those choices. And they said, we are embracing nuance and gray areas. Love it. I love it. I love when video games,

especially RPGs have this. And the fact that they're telling me everything I want to hear about combat, they're telling me everything I want to hear about story and they're showing it to me i could not be more hyped for a vow at this point i am i am super stoked but that's also so scary paul because what if i choose wrong i know but what if i choose the wrong thing though man i can't play again because then i'm like a second playthrough what what do i do i don't i don't know. I don't know. I just can't play anymore because I just don't know what to pick. Choice paralysis.

I love what I've seen of the gameplay. I think one thing that really stood out to me was the casting mechanics. The characters with the wands. Being able to... And how they would cast their spells and how they would react and the characters would react. Like, I loved all of that. I thought it looked brilliant. I am just, yeah, I'm with you guys.

I'm pretty stoked as a big kind of Skyrim fan and these types of worlds. If you can kind of add some depth to it, I'm all in. The one thing that I really like on this is that they are pulling from the Pillars of Eternity world. It actually takes place in the same universe as Pillars of Eternity. And I know that maybe we weren't crazy about that game, but the lore in that game with the giant statues walking around and the fire islands and stuff like that, I mean, the setting was really cool. If you're diving into Pillars of Eternity for the first time and you have limited time like we did, a lot of that gets lost. But when you're seeing it first person also, I think that's really going to kind of help out. I'm with you guys on all this. I mean, Obsidian knows how to do the gray area, the choices matter. I mean, I like good combat,

but ultimately those are going to be the things that help carry the game and make it memorable, not how many goblins I can kill and things like that. So I think that the, the scenery looks beautiful. I like the graphical style on it. I like the choices. I like that they had to show off this side quest because most people would be like, well, we can't spoil anything for you. Just trust us. But they actually walked you through this side quest a little bit and you could, you know, you're talking to the guy and you're like, dude, I think you abandoned your, your, your squad, you know, and you're going to jail now. Or, you know, you give them all the dog tags. I know they're not dog tags, but you give them something and say, here, I trust you, you know, go back to town and tell everybody what happened kind of thing.

And you don't know if you're making the right choice. And you might find out about it three hours later. And I love that stuff, man. That's so scary. Because maybe that dude's in a pub, half drunk, talking to everybody, telling them how he got one over on you. And then you feel bad, you know, and then you just murder him in a pub half drunk talking to everybody telling him how he got one over on you and then you feel bad you know and then you just murder him in the pub and then the city guards come and kill you you know but yeah i mean i'm very excited about this my one my one criticism or concern did the characters kind of look like they were almost like claymation to you guys a little bit?

Like when they were fighting some of like the weird little goblin looking things, I don't, there was just something weird. It looked like they were either like low frames or it was like almost like claymation or like stop motion or something. I don't know, man, there was a weird, I'm hoping the gameplay isn't like that, but do I sound crazy? Do you know what I'm talking about? I think you know what I'm talking about? I think I know what you're talking about because I've seen that in a lot of other games. I think, and I don't know if you're going to remember this or not. Do you remember seeing that in Gotham Knights? Yes. Gotham Knights had a lot of action where I was like, whatever game engine this uses, and I don't know offhand. And I felt like there was something a little goofy with that.

And maybe this is built in the same engine. I don't know offhand. there was something a little goofy with that and maybe this is built in the same engine I don't know offhand there is something a little bit odd about some of the motion and textures that doesn't look the same as everything else when it's moving yeah yeah I know what you're talking about I mean I think it's a minor thing and again this is just you know to point out that I did notice it in the trailer and I kind of went oh I hope that's not like that in game and I don't think it would be a deal breaker by any means, but I don't know if it's a restriction on the engine or like a design choice or something, but that was the only thing, honestly,

the only thing I saw in the trailer where I kind of went, ooh, but everything else I was like, ah. So Ryan, between these three games, which one are you most excited for? Oh, man. Probably Avowed. Yeah. Okay. games which one are you most excited for oh man um probably avowed yeah okay yeah i i mean as much as i i love indie and i love um you know history and stuff like that but just yeah avowed is one that i i definitely think um is gonna hit the marks for me you know skyrim nerd and and i just i love the spell casting all that type of

stuff so i think it'll i think it'll be good um i was gonna say the glitch maybe for josh might be age no he was running too and i know he had a birthday 120 frames a second so eyes are going start losing it a little bit it's not looking the same it's not it's not i can't let me dial in my spectacles you know oh my gosh josh's eyes looking a little cloudy you got some cataracts uh i i would agree with ryan avowed i would have number one and then hellblade two i would i would say a second what about you josh it's actually how i rank them to avowed i think it has the potential to be absolutely incredible. Hellblade.

I have zero doubts that it's going to be great, but I think a valid, if they pull it off, could be special. We're going to have so much fun in, in a Hellblade. Oh, dude,

I love Hellblade. Oh, you're talking hell divers. I'm talking. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. I was like,

you can't play hell. Yeah. You know what I meant? You know whatdivers. Sorry. I was like, you can't play Helldivers. Yeah. Helldivers is one player. You know what I meant. You know what I meant. Okay. I was so excited. It's a multi-voice single player.

Yeah. Well, I did look up just for fun, but Avowed is in Unreal Engine, so maybe there's some kind of motion setting in Unreal that does that. Gotham Knights is also... That one's in Unreal Engine 4 4 so i don't know i don't know if that's engine related or not but in any case i think that wraps everything up here for this week in gaming it's so good to be back in the regular swing getting lots of good news always so much fun to break it down for you all as a reminder please make sure to rate us five stars leave a written review you can find us on socials

at video gamers pod and go sign up on patreon over at multiplayer squad.com hope everyone out there has some great games they're playing go check out pal world if you haven't already and until next time happy gaming see ya all right see everybody All right. See you, everybody.