Video Gamers Podcast - TWIG: Overwatch 2 Details, TGS Thoughts and New World Who Dis?- Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

Gaming hosts Josh and Paul are back with another incredible This Week in Gaming. In this great episode we chat about the Tokyo Game Show announcements, Overwatch 2 character changes and gaming's hottest new release - New Worlds (and why we aren’t playing it). Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: AceofShame, Jake and RangerMiller and Ad   Thanks to Razer for sponsoring the show. Use code: Multiplayer at checkout for your free gift!   Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This Week in Gaming is brought to you by our friends over at Razer. Razer has just released their new Huntsman keyboards, optical switches, and all kinds of other fancy laser technology. What does that mean to you? It means it's the best keyboard you'll ever own. Paul and I think so at least. And you can pick yours up over at multiplayerpodcast.com slash Razer. Use code multiplayer at checkout to get yourself a free gift and the best keyboard you will ever own. Now on to the show. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. It is a Thursday, we are so excited to break down this week in gaming with you all.

We are a couple of dads that love to get together and just talk casually about games. We're not here for hard-hitting journalism, we just want to be here as your guys' friends, just to chat and talk about what's been going on in the world of gaming. If you have not already done so, please leave a review for our podcast. We do occasionally read those out loud on the show and also rate the podcast five stars if your podcasting app allows. Also, if you'd like to help financially support the show, you can head over to MultiplayerSquad.com where you can pledge on Patreon or you can subscribe inside Apple Podcasts. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, I think he's been up to his eyeballs in the new hit MMO of the summer, New World, it's Josh. More like old busted.

Was that too much of a spoiler? No, I don't think so. You know, I thought that one of the first things that we could talk about is the fact that New World released. Josh, you and I famously tried the game out, but before we jump into everything, how are you doing this week? I'm doing pretty good, man. Life's been busy, but good.

You know, I've got no complaints. All the good fall TV shows started up. I don't watch much TV, but this time of year is probably the height of my TV watching. Right. And so there's lots of good shows out right now. I just got done watching Squid Game, which I know you have not seen, but I see why it's getting so much hype out there. But it's been kind of nice, man. I've been able to just kind of veg out a little bit. Yeah. Obviously, I'm going to have to catch up on Squid Game. It's taken over the world by Storm.

I love movies and shows from South Korea, so I'm going to have to jump in and catch up here this week. On top of that, gaming-wise, you and I have been diving into the game Deathloop, which is going to be our next deep dive. That'll come out a week from Monday. And then talking about here this week in gaming, I did mention a second ago that New World released. Josh, it seems to be a rousing success. I was checking some numbers here on SteamCharts.com. They hit their peak just minutes before you and I recorded this episode. They're basically at 1 million concurrent subscribers. I don't think we can poke fun at Amazon Game Studios anymore, Josh.

They've got a hit on their hands. Oh, we can poke fun, Paul. Come on. A million people can't be wrong? Isn't that the saying? It is. I'm happy. I'm happy for Amazon.

The launch did not go without its issues. The server queues were hours upon hours long. It was a little bit of a mess. Now, famously, Amazon owns the servers for, well, I don't know, like three quarters of the internet. If there was ever a company that could make sure they had enough servers to avoid issues, you think it would be Amazon. You would think. And yet they were just plagued by people not being able to play. The queue lines were hours. I saw so many videos where players were just AFK running into a wall so that the game wouldn't log them out and then other people couldn't get in. I mean, we've kind of grown to expect that with big releases. I think the real news story here is that we are not playing New World.

No, you and I were not crazy about it, but it does show that MMOs don't have to die. Here we have a brand new one that people love. We're not just relying on WoW Classic or these long-running MMOs. Maybe there's still a place for them in today's gaming. So at least that's exciting, even if you and I didn't really love New World itself. Yeah, our biggest issue, or at least my biggest issue with it, we played the beta a good bit. We both decided, you know what, I don't know that this is the game for us. I couldn't get past the questing. Honestly, I think we've talked about this before, but in an MMO where leveling is important and you should have fun leveling up,

the quests in New World were the most awful quests I think I've ever experienced. I don't know how somebody thought it was a good idea to have these type of just boring mundane quests. I was out after that. There is a lot to like about the game, but that just killed it for me. What about you? What didn't you like about it, Paul? Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. Returning back to the same three or four farms over and over just didn't really do it. I just didn't get sucked in by the storyline. Didn't really care. I also just prefer MMOs that are a little bit more in the fantasy genre, I guess. I think it's just a lot more interesting. Whereas this game was just, it was seemingly a little bit mundane. I got really excited when I saw there was a really

complicated cooking system. But ultimately, it just wasn't really for me. If I was going to hop back into an MMO, it would be WoW Classic. I would just go back to that. But let's talk about maybe a different game. I don't know if you're excited about this or not, but Square Enix had a showcase. It was all fully, well, almost fully in Japanese. I did not watch the entire thing, but I did hone in on a certain game that got announced that no one really knew anything about. It was debuted at the showcase. The best news is that it's coming out on October 14th,

which is literally right around the corner. I was gonna say, that's real soon. Yeah, this is the kind of announcement you and I love. But this is a dungeon exploration RPG game called Dungeon Encounters. Now, how would you describe this game? What do you want the people to know? It's just kind of weird looking.

The thing that stands out to me the most is the UI and the graphics in this game look so simple. Almost like I kept waiting for them to reveal something else about the game like you know what i mean like where's the rest of it but it's like no this is the game and what's really weird is your characters are moving around in what almost looks like a like a two-dimensional maze it's a crossword puzzle it's a giant crossword puzzle that's exactly it paul yep i yeah that you hit the nail on the head right there man because i could not i was thinking maze and i'm like it's not really a maze because i don't think you can get lost but yes it looks exactly like a crossword puzzle and it's got

these weird random numbers like scattered around the the map and i just didn't really know what was going on and yet i'm oddly excited at the same time, because I feel like this game's probably going to be pretty fun. So here's the weird thing. It's a giant two-dimensional crossword puzzle. Imagine a crossword puzzle, except there's like 50 words across and 50 down. And your guy is just running around this two-dimensional crossword puzzle, uncovering the tiles as he crosses them. And it seems like you have to flip over all the tiles. But as you're doing this, you're finding new companions to add into your crew. You're running into battles. You're finding loot. And I think the weirdest thing to me wasn't so much the map, because the map itself seemed

pretty simplistic, but it was the combat. When it goes into the combat, it's like those old school turn-based combat games like the old Final Fantasies, but there's no combat animation. It just leaves the player banners. It shows the name of everyone in the fight. They just kind of do an attack, and then you'll see the mana and the HP meters changing as needed. But this is incredibly simplistic. There's really no animation at all. Yeah, it's almost like it started to load into combat and like the character names and the monster plaques like loaded in but right and then there's nothing in the middle just got stuck that's

what i was saying in the beginning right is i kept waiting for like more to come up on the screen and it never did um yeah you do see these weird animations they show you know on you're obviously fighting a few dragons and one of the dragons breathes, and the fire breath comes out of its name icon plaque thing and then spreads over to your characters. And you can see them take fire damage, and they all take a ton of damage and stuff. So very simplistic in its UI, but it looks very in-depth in the systems, you know, in the gameplay and stuff like that. I know when you're moving around the crossword puzzle map thing that you're trying to count off a certain number of

squares explored. And then if you do, and you do it like exactly or something like that, you get a bunch of ability points and then you can spend the ability points to upgrade your characters and their skills and stuff like that. So I feel like this is a fully fledged RPG, but without any of the graphical elements that might go along with a good RPG. Yeah, they really hone in on the tagline, don't feel, think. And so I think this is trying to combine almost like puzzle elements with an RPG and stripping it down just to the bare minimum. So this is kind of like solving a puzzle with RPG elements. The presenter himself actually made me chuckle as I was watching it because he flat out says, at first glance,

you won't know what to make of this. It doesn't seem like much. I know it may not look all that fun and it's very hard to describe, but I got my hands on it earlier today, and the fun level is off the charts. This is a game that won't really make sense on the surface, but as soon as you get your hands on it, you'll realize just how fun it is. And you normally don't hear that level of honesty in a presentation, but I really liked the fact that they at least admitted, look, we know this looks way out of right field, but if you get a chance to play it,

it's actually a ton of fun. You know, I'm admittedly somewhat of a graphics snob. I really enjoy games that have really good graphics to them. But ultimately, gameplay is what makes a game fun. You can have the best graphics in the world, and if your game sucks, it's not going to be enjoyable for people. And this game, I think, is going to be one of those where the gameplay itself is legitimately a blast, but there's just not going to be a lot of eye candy there. And it's these kind of games where I feel like you can really get sucked in because if that's all they've done is focus on the gameplay. And I love turn-based combat, right? I enjoy that kind of stuff. I enjoy the progression element of your characters getting stronger and going from fighting goblins to fighting three red dragons all at once.

And that's why I'm super interested in this game. And the fact that it comes out in just a few days, I'm going to be looking for reviews. And I can tell you right now, if it gets good reviews and people seem to be enjoying it, I am going to wind up buying this game. That's exactly what I was going to say. It's not one that I would buy on day one, but I would check back and see what the ratings are. If it's all positive indicators, I would definitely consider getting it. Now, I can't imagine this is going to be a full-priced $60 game. I don't know if they've priced anything yet that the public knows about.

Do you know if they've released any pricing information? Not that I know of, no. I expect this game to be right in the $25 to maybe $30 range. Yeah, maybe, even if that. But, you know, it's from Square Enix. Those guys love making RPGs. They generally do it pretty well. So I'm inclined to at least give it a chance, as long as it's not getting review-bombed. All right. Well, we're going to take a moment here. We just want to say thank you to one of our favorite companies, Razer. Josh and I have been using the Huntsman V2 keyboards. We've been loving it. Josh, tell the people about the keyboard. It's the best keyboard I've ever used, hands down. I have owned every popular gaming brand of keyboard in existence. You know, this is the keyboard of the 21st century. Like, honestly, I don't...

There's nothing that this keyboard doesn't have that I wish it had. I don't know, you know know what more I can say at that point. It's literally, it looks amazing. It works amazing. The technology with the optical switches, it works at the speed of light, they say. And all I want is keys that work good and don't break down and are responsive when I'm gaming. And this is exactly everything that I need. Yeah, it looks great, feels great. It's got a pretty amazing wrist rest that connects to it. It's even got media buttons, which I love to control volume and things of that nature. So if you want to use the same keyboard that Josh and

I have, all you need to do is go to multiplayerpodcast.com slash Razer, and you can put the Huntsman in your cart, enter the key code multiplayer, and you will get a free gift along with this amazing keyboard. Razer is the world's leading lifestyle brand for gamers. Go get yours today. All right. So, Josh, the rest of the news here this week, I thought we would spend most of our time talking about Overwatch 2. This is a game you and I have been waiting for for a very long time. And we have been able to see a lot more

specifics lately, and they released some very detailed footage and information, mostly about Bastion and Sombra. They have been completely reworked. Let's talk about Bastion first, because I'm really excited about these changes. He will not be quite as stationary as he was before. Now, Paul, famously, we suck against enemy Bastions. We have struggled, yes, because we have had trouble with teams actually countering Bastions. We are not pros. We are high gold, low platinum level players. And sometimes you just get that Bastion who's behind an Orisa and a Rein and our teams just literally do not know what to do. And you and I generally don't play DPS anyway, because we're good team players. So we tend to queue as tank and healer. But yeah, Bastion's

been very hard for us to counter. Yeah. And so he did need some changes. He wasn't used a whole lot. Everybody says, it's easy to counter Bastion unless your team is not coordinated. And then Bastion is not so easy to counter. So I guess the developers felt like, hey, he's not really working the way that we wanted him to work. So they've made a lot. I mean, this is a complete rework. But I like it. I think it's going to make him fit a lot more team compositions at this point um some of the cool stuff that they've done is they have made it where when he's in his recon mode that's where he's walking around um that he has zero recoil with his gun um but it

fires much slower now so they they equated it to almost like a slow-paced sniper rifle, which I thought was really interesting. And they showed him kind of pinging a character off from a distance and just doing a little bit of chip damage. So that was an interesting thing because, hey, against an enemy Pharah or something like that, much more effective at that point. And then they showed his turret mode. His turret mode is no longer the immobile Gatling gun thing. It is actually like an artillery. Yeah. How crazy is this, Paul? Because think about all the maps where there's choke points and the enemy team is just huddled up like Paris, famously, right? Everybody quits Paris, but everybody's just on that ledge in Paris.

If you have a Bastion and he can artillery that ledge, I'm assuming it does enough damage that the enemy team doesn't want to just stand there and eat three artillery shells. So I feel like the gameplay for those changes alone is pretty massive because there's not that balling up aspect on defense anymore. Yeah, I believe I read that it will do 300 direct damage and 300 splash damage. So it does a lot of AoE, and you get to... Basically, when you pop your ult as Bastion, it zooms you out to an overhead view of the map, and you get to click three areas where the artillery strikes go. So being able to shoot those choke points will be great. I think it'll be a way

that you get to move people, kind of control where they go, get past the chokes. And I think you're burying the lead here, Josh. Bastion has a hat. Oh, I should have... It's the very first thing they show in the video. They go, we've added a hat to bastion which i don't know why who cares they wanted to make bastion more approachable paul you know because he's just he's cold he's metal he's a robot he's a robot they really did make a big deal about giving bastion this hat that and it's it's torbjorn's hat too so they were very proud of the fact that torbjorn and bastion are now friends i guess i don't know man it's so funny i love it they they did also remove bastion's self-repair so that has now gone and the one thing i think if anyone was really

criticizing the changes it's bastion's alt mode. So now he basically throws a sticky bomb that can bounce around corners, kind of like Sigma's primary fire, but it'll stick to players and then it does AoE damage. So some people were like, why would Bastion be throwing sticky bombs? But I love the fact that he's now mobile. If you see a Bastion on your team, you don't have to make all five players build around Bastion where you have bastion on your team you don't have to make all five players build around bastion where you have to have a mercy and you have to have double shield you know now he can actually move when he's in his uh whatever they call the mode where normally you sit down and you used to be stationary he'll just slow roll so he can still move but it's not at the

normal speed so i to me it sounded like a character I would want to play. I never want to play the current Bastion. This one, I'm a little excited to try out. I'm excited too. And I need to clarify something because I misspoke earlier. So he's got his three different modes. I said that his second mode was artillery. That's actually his ultimate. That's his ultimate. He still has his turret mode, where he's, you know, the spinning Gatling gun, but that is, he can actually move during it now. Now, I'm imagining because they said with reduced speed. So I'm thinking, remember how Orisa, how slow she was when she used to fire and move? Yeah. I think it would be something like that. They've reduced his weapon damage in the Gatling mode by 40%, so it's no longer going to be this just melt everything in sight. And then they also removed his ability to self-heal,

so that's just gone, which I think is smart, because if you made Bastion much more mobile and much more AoE-oriented, which is what I feel like they've done with his grenade and the artillery and stuff like that. They've really made him more of a jack-of-all-trades. You can't have that and then tons of healing on top of everything, too. So I love what they're doing. I think it's going to make him viable in a lot of team compositions. And I think it's going to hopefully be... I don't feel cheesy picking Bastion. Like, wasn't that always the thing? You know what I mean?

Like, if you pick Bastion, you're like, I'm picking him, but I don't feel good about it. Yeah. Or when enemy teams would pick Torb and Bastion, and you would just immediately start, you know, accusing them of just being cancerous. So then the changes that they're making to Somb sombra they keep talking about her being reworked i don't know if she's so much reworked as it's kind of just like a straight up buff in a lot of ways but basically sombra will now deal 50 more damage to hacked targets so it's actually the number one thing that i think people are going to seriously overlook to be honest with you like they've made a lot of changes we can go those, but we'll come back to that one because that one's going to be huge.

Yeah, she's going to do a lot more direct damage as opposed to before. She used to be more along the lines of support. Now she's going to do a lot more damage herself. She can also now hack while in stealth mode. It won't break stealth, but she will be briefly visible. And so that's kind of a game changer. And then I think the major change with her, though, is the fact that her hack is now being reduced on cooldown from eight seconds all the way down to three. So she is continually hacking, but instead of it locking opponents out of abilities for a full five seconds, which as a player who played a lot of Rein,

I absolutely hated facing Sombra's because when you got ability locked for five seconds, it feels like an eternity. Now it's a one second interrupt. So I guess now instead of having these really long hacks, she's just going to be dealing them out for one second every three seconds. So it'll be a little bit more continual, but maybe not as earth shattering as before. But her EMP will also now deal 40% damage to everyone that it hits. So the EMPs are definitely going to hurt a lot more than before. Yeah, it used to be that Sombra's ult was only good as a combo with somebody else's. And now I feel like it's actually just a good standalone alt. I have played a lot of Sombra. I think she's my fourth or fifth most played character because I really love the harassment style and the interrupt style. That's honestly... I have a blast with that stuff. Hacking somebody out of their alt or being able to do something that you know is coming is really fun. I enjoy that aspect.

The one second lockout of abilities, I don't know that that is enough, to be honest with you. I get it. Honestly, she's going to be for shutting down ultimates. I don't know that anybody is going to be able to ult anymore. It's kind of already that way with Hog and Doom and Lucio and all these boops and knockbacks and everything else. But one second, for what? What is that going to do? One second, that's it. It's over. You've got your stuff back. Now, they've tried to talk that up like, oh, well, now if they're hacked, they're revealed to all enemies, even to your team, even behind walls and stuff.

And it's like, that's not that handy. I just, you know what I mean? I don't get it. So it's weird the angle they're going. I love the fact that they're really increasing her DPS because that's where she's always lacked. If you have a Sombra, you have to kind of play around that because she's not doing a ton of damage. And they fixed that because now if she hacks somebody and she focuses that, she's going to do 50% more damage. She's going to melt people, honestly. But the ability to

lock people out and interrupt tanks and that kind of stuff is what made her fun. And I don't know that she has that same fun factor now. Oh, see, I i completely disagree i think hacking someone every three seconds and then being able to melt them and use emps is going to be so much more fun i think the key to her is going to be communication which has always been the case but you had a little bit more buffer room with sombra where if you hacked the enemy ryan everyone kind of had five seconds to realize and focus fire on Rein. Now it's just going to have to be a little bit more coordinated. Like,

okay, I'm going to hack Rein now. And then the other Rein knows to do their earth shatter at that moment. So it's like, you always have that hack available to help your other teammates ults. I think it's just going to require a lot of open communication. I feel like with playing in Pugs, Sombra will still be rough, but I think playing with friends, it'll actually be pretty fun. I'm excited because, like I said, I love playing Sombra. It's just that she's not super viable in that team aspect. And I do think that with some of these changes,

I think she's going to be a little bit more of like an actual brawler now. And that little bit of brawler mixed with the hit and run, because with the changes to her stealth where she can hack without coming out of stealth completely, they've made it where you can detect her a little bit easier since she doesn't become unstealthed. I think there's going to be a lot of different styles that she can fit into. And so I'm very curious to see what's the premier one. Is she just like this DPS, like finish people off machine, where she hacks Mercy and then just blows her up? Is she going to help melt tanks? I don't know. But I'm very interested to try it out, to be honest with you. And the fact that they... I think they had to go with the one-second thing

because you're losing one of the tank spots. That's the big thing with Overwatch 2, is it's five-person teams and it's only one tank now. And so if you have a Sombra that can just shut down the enemy tank for five seconds at a time, that seems too strong. Right, yeah, exactly. So I get the balancing aspect of it. I do like the changes, to be honest.

I'm pretty pumped to be able to actually do some damage with her. I do too. I was watching one video on YouTube, and what the person was saying is that if you look back historically at Overwatch, they have never liked the idea of characters having any kind of overlap. Every new character had to be completely unique to everyone who came before. You really did not have any, whatever the term is, redundancy between characters. And now the fact that they're making some of these changes, they were saying that they thought it was actually a good thing, although everyone is slowly being moved more toward shooting so you still have your characters like doom which are very ability oriented but now with these changes to sombra

she's doing direct damage with her gun bastion is now mobile and does damage with his gun we've got macree and ash and widow and hanzo and so everyone is kind of feeling a little bit more similar but that's actually better from a balance perspective, because you don't have these characters like... If you remember back in season one, Lucio had by far the highest win rate, because he could heal everyone within a 40-yard radius or something bananas like that, and you could solo heal as a Lucio. So I feel like now that everyone is kind of becoming more similar, it'll be easier to balance out. For sure. And I mean, they've gotten,

as you introduce new characters, you have to give them fun abilities. And part of the problem is, most characters have an escape ability, a damage ability. And unfortunately, they started giving more and more characters a CC ability, a knockback or a stun or something like that. It's just one of those things where there's too much crowd control now. There's too many stuns. There's too many interrupts. I love to play Reaper. You guys know that.

And I can't ult as Reaper anymore. I know I'm going to get knocked out of that ult. So it's not even the press Q to win thing anymore. It's just the press q and hope you kill one person before you get interrupted like you know and that's a little bit of a shame because i think that certain characters should have crowd control abilities they should be few and far between and when they do they shouldn't pump out a ton of damage either like your team should have to capitalize on that. But too many characters with that stuff now. And I feel like they're trying to get away from that. They've gone, hey, this isn't fun for people to play with or against. So let's temper that and pull that back a little bit, which is a very good move from a shooter standpoint.

Yeah. So Overwatch 2, I know you and I will absolutely play it. That one's definitely in our must play category. And then our last news story of the week, not a whole lot to say here, but we have in the past talked about how God of War got delayed. We know it'll come out in 2022. I'm not talking about it anymore, Paul. Well, no, this is the good news, Josh. Here, I thought we caused it to be delayed. It turns out that the voice actor of Kratos, the poor guy, he had to have back surgery, both hips replaced, and knee surgery, which delayed his ability to record for the game. It's not us, Josh. We're not cursed. It's all Christopher Judge's fault.

Yeah. You know, Christopher Judge, thank you, number one, for stepping up and taking the blame so that people will quit blaming us for these delays. I mean, honestly, this is a feel-good story to me because you would think a giant company, I mean, God of War, right? How successful is that developer at this point?

You know, and this is one of those where they could have just said, hey, sorry for your health issues. We have to continue on with this game. We're just going to keep rolling. And they didn't. And they said, hey, we want you to be a part of this. We want you to feel better.

And so we'll delay the game to give you time to heal up so that you can actually do the voice acting for this. And I just loved hearing that story, man. Yeah, all around, this is just a great story. It's great for us. It's great for God of War. I guess if it's not great for anyone, it's Christopher Judge. I mean, I can't imagine having to go through all those surgeries in one month, but I hope he's doing a lot better now, and I'm sure the game will be great.

So at least now we know that we're not cursed. But just to be on the safe side we uh still will not discuss any release dates for god of war it's coming out sometime that's all we care about yes it's coming out i'm not taking off at work all right well that's all that we have here for you guys here today our next episode on monday will be a bonus round episode we really hope that you guys will join us again for that and then next deep dive, as we mentioned before, will be Deathloop, if you want to get your hands on that in the meantime. And just as a reminder, head over to MultiplayerSquad.com to become a Patreon supporter, or you can subscribe in Apple Podcasts. The primary benefit of that is knowing that you help support your favorite podcast,

but you'll also get access to two five to 10 minute episodes every week that the public does not get. So you'll get additional content as well. And that's it. I have to say that you have a bonus episode coming up that should not be missed. It made me laugh out loud. I know what you're talking about. When I heard what you... I'm not going to spoil it for people, but when I heard what you did and then I listened to it, I legit was sitting there laughing. It is a behind the scenes blooper-ish sort of thing. I mean, you guys, it's worth the subscription to check this one out. You can only subscribe one month and then cancel.

But yes, there's a behind the scenes thing that Josh and I continually talked about back and forth and I might've put together some audio evidence and it ended up being a good laugh. I think for all of us. Oh, it was great. Yeah. Don't,

don't miss that one. It's worth it. Yeah. So thank you everyone for listening. Thanks for the support. Thanks for all the reviews, all the love on social media. We're very appreciative and we'll see you guys on Monday.

See you, everybody.