Silksong Act 1 Impressions, Hell Is Us Review, Borderlands 4 Interview

<v Speaker 1>Hey, everybody, Welcome back to the Game Informer Show, a
<v Speaker 1>weekly podcast covering the video game industry. Join us every
<v Speaker 1>week for a discussion about the latest gaming news, reviews,
<v Speaker 1>and exclusive reveals, alongside Game and Former staff and special
<v Speaker 1>guests from around the industry. I'm one of your hosts today,
<v Speaker 1>Alex van Aiken, and today I'm joined by Marcus Stewart.
<v Speaker 2>Hey doing, Marcus, I'm doing well? Ready to hunt some vaults?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, it's uh, it's about that time now. Uh,
<v Speaker 1>Borderlands four as of the time that you were hearing
<v Speaker 1>this is out in the wild. We've been playing it.
<v Speaker 1>But before we get into that, Eric Van Allen, how
<v Speaker 1>you doing, Eric?
<v Speaker 3>I'm ready to hunt some bugs, you know. Yeah, Hunters Marsh, Yes,
<v Speaker 3>the evil, evil place of Hunters Mars.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>The the the hell season of game reviews is upon us.
<v Speaker 1>But it's a very exciting time. Some people look at
<v Speaker 1>it as Christmas, video game Christmas. We've got all the
<v Speaker 1>releases coming out this week. We've got Borderlands four out.
<v Speaker 1>We've been playing some Silk song that dropped last week
<v Speaker 1>and having a blast and this is a packed episode.
<v Speaker 1>In just a moment, we're gonna transition Marcus you sat
<v Speaker 1>down with some folks from the Borderlands team, didn't you
<v Speaker 1>to ask them some questions about the game?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. I spoke with the creative director of the game,
<v Speaker 2>Graham Tim So I believe you also spoke to during
<v Speaker 2>our cover story.
<v Speaker 4>Cover Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and.
<v Speaker 2>Good old Andrew Reiner, who was the global Global executive
<v Speaker 2>what is.
<v Speaker 1>This, Yeah, global creative executive officer at Gearbox, formerly our boss.
<v Speaker 1>Big disclosure, big disclaimer. Yes, we worked with Reiner for.
<v Speaker 4>A long time.
<v Speaker 2>Tell us what to do.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, he used to tell us what to do, and
<v Speaker 4>now he's on the other side of this thing.
<v Speaker 1>And Graham, Yeah, there you go. It's him and Graham
<v Speaker 1>and Marcus sitting down and talking about Borderlands four. And
<v Speaker 1>then after that the three of us are going to
<v Speaker 1>get into Hollow Night Silk Song for a very good,
<v Speaker 1>deep discussion on I would say the first five to
<v Speaker 1>eight hours of the game, you know, we talk about
<v Speaker 1>Hunters marsh March, rather we talk about I think a
<v Speaker 1>little bit of gray More and that's kind of like
<v Speaker 1>where we stop our conversation if you're wanting to kind
<v Speaker 1>of you know, avoid certain spoilers, that kind of thing.
<v Speaker 1>And then later in the show Marcus surprises both of
<v Speaker 1>us with a very fascinating hell is us review? And yeah,
<v Speaker 1>exactly right. And I didn't realize that that thing was
<v Speaker 1>not a Soul's like. And so I'm excited for you
<v Speaker 1>to dive in and tell us all about maybe some
<v Speaker 1>of the misconceptions about the game and why you think
<v Speaker 1>it's worth playing. So that'll be later on in the show,
<v Speaker 1>but right now we're going to jump into that Borderlands
<v Speaker 1>for interview. We'll see you on the other side.
<v Speaker 2>Hey, welcome back to the Game Informer Show. My name
<v Speaker 2>is Marcus Stewart. You may or may not have heard
<v Speaker 2>me earlier in the episode, but I am here with
<v Speaker 2>two special guests to talk about the impending launch of
<v Speaker 2>Borderlands four on September twelveth. First off, we have the
<v Speaker 2>game's creative director, Graham Tenmons. Hello, I'm good, and we
<v Speaker 2>have a familiar face to Game Informer fans, the Globo
<v Speaker 2>creative executive and former Game Informer editor in chief Andrew Reiner.
<v Speaker 2>How are you.
<v Speaker 5>Oh my gosh, this is surreal. I'm great, this is awesome.
<v Speaker 5>It's good to be back with you. Marcus.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, when was the last time you were on the
<v Speaker 2>GI Show?
<v Speaker 5>Two decades ago to day. Yeah, exactly twenty years. No,
<v Speaker 5>it feels like a long time, but it was I
<v Speaker 5>don't know, like three years maybe, yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I guess so. I can't remember if we had
<v Speaker 2>you on after you'd left or not, but regardless, welcome back.
<v Speaker 2>We've kept our seating form for you. And yeah, like
<v Speaker 2>I mentioned, we are on the precipice of the launch
<v Speaker 2>of Borderlands for Depending on when you are listening to
<v Speaker 2>this at the time of recording, it's coming out this Friday.
<v Speaker 2>Odds are it's probably already out if you're listening to
<v Speaker 2>this now. And the first question I want to ask,
<v Speaker 2>I'm sure you both are hard at work, and now
<v Speaker 2>that you are this close to launch, how are you
<v Speaker 2>both feeling? I'll start with you right how are you
<v Speaker 2>feeling right now?
<v Speaker 5>Confident? If you would have asked me this a year
<v Speaker 5>ago or six months ago, even, it would have been excited,
<v Speaker 5>but nervous, like we were still proving things out, we
<v Speaker 5>were still working on the game. But now that it's
<v Speaker 5>done and I know what we have, I think we
<v Speaker 5>have an amazing game on our hands. And yeah, I'm
<v Speaker 5>I'm super excited for people to play it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you guys have just got back from from a
<v Speaker 2>games calm. I would imagine what a game was. I
<v Speaker 2>believe it was playable there. It seems like just from
<v Speaker 2>that and from the uh the preview coverage for Packs, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>from Packs, and it seems like people are pretty high
<v Speaker 2>on It's so farm Graham, how have you how are
<v Speaker 2>you feeling right now and how have you been how's
<v Speaker 2>the early reception to the game so far been for you?
<v Speaker 6>I mean, it's an exciting time. I'm obviously a little anxious.
<v Speaker 6>I want to make sure that people enjoy the game.
<v Speaker 6>And you know, I've been with the franchise since day
<v Speaker 6>one and so being in this position this time around,
<v Speaker 6>you know, I'm really excited about what the game is
<v Speaker 6>and I want people to play it and just see
<v Speaker 6>what the reaction is because we put a lot of
<v Speaker 6>hard work into this one and I think it's going
<v Speaker 6>to show nice.
<v Speaker 2>So going back to the beginning of this project, Grahm,
<v Speaker 2>you mentioned you've been working on the Borderlands franchise from
<v Speaker 2>the beginning. Can you give just the the fan base
<v Speaker 2>sort of just a quick overview, like how where did
<v Speaker 2>you start in the Franchi from Borderlands one and sort
<v Speaker 2>of how has your role changed to where you are
<v Speaker 2>now to creative director on this latest century.
<v Speaker 6>Sure, you know, I joined Gearbox basically back in two
<v Speaker 6>thousand and five. I became the lead level designer in
<v Speaker 6>Borderlands one, so I went through the whole storied are
<v Speaker 6>transition you know, many years ago, and then I went
<v Speaker 6>on to be leads on other projects. I was lead
<v Speaker 6>level designer on Borderlands three as well, so and I
<v Speaker 6>you know, I made a ton of levels for Borderlands two.
<v Speaker 6>I worked on the I made the first Moon level
<v Speaker 6>and then the pre sequel. So yeah, I've been with
<v Speaker 6>the franchise since it started as like just Project Willow.
<v Speaker 6>It was as code name and see it kind of
<v Speaker 6>transition and become you know, this this massive ip that
<v Speaker 6>I'm very proud to be a part of.
<v Speaker 2>Awesome. And for you, Ryan or this is your first
<v Speaker 2>big game that you've worked on since you've get to
<v Speaker 2>the to the dev side of the industry, how did
<v Speaker 2>this look for you in the beginning in terms of
<v Speaker 2>just your your expectations for what it would be like
<v Speaker 2>to work on not only a game, but one of
<v Speaker 2>the biggest franchises on the planet.
<v Speaker 5>Uh. When I started, a lot of it was on paper, Uh,
<v Speaker 5>you know, I knew what the pillars are or were,
<v Speaker 5>and I was excited by the promise that they were
<v Speaker 5>putting forward. When they had me jump into the build,
<v Speaker 5>it was just this sprawling field of nothing, you know,
<v Speaker 5>just gray blocks. So I hit it pretty early on.
<v Speaker 5>They were proving out a lot of the concepts, you know,
<v Speaker 5>the new move set, traversal set, all that was still
<v Speaker 5>coming online, so I've been pretty connected with it since
<v Speaker 5>its inception.
<v Speaker 2>Nic And I'm glad you mentioned those pillarsus. I would
<v Speaker 2>love to know what sort of coming off of the
<v Speaker 2>reception the Borderlands three, what were those like initial pillars
<v Speaker 2>for what the team wanted to accomplish, what Borderlands were,
<v Speaker 2>What were the areas of improvement that you wanted to
<v Speaker 2>focus on, and how did those pillars change over the
<v Speaker 2>development cycle.
<v Speaker 5>I'll like Graham talk to this a little bit, but
<v Speaker 5>the one that stood out to me was the seamless world.
<v Speaker 5>This promise of just this sprawling terrain with no load
<v Speaker 5>times on it, and then just being able to explore that.
<v Speaker 5>That's something that in previous Borderlands games, you were kind
<v Speaker 5>of on a linear path, right, like you'd have buildings
<v Speaker 5>around you, but you knew you were never going to
<v Speaker 5>be jumping around on those or exploring them how you
<v Speaker 5>wanted to. This game allows that, right you You can
<v Speaker 5>get up to everything and explore pretty much everything that
<v Speaker 5>is in that you see, you know, whether it's on
<v Speaker 5>the far horizon or near you.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, that was a core a thing that we, you know,
<v Speaker 6>we wanted to do since Borderlands one, and software and
<v Speaker 6>technology just hadn't caught up to our ambition there until
<v Speaker 6>this generation. And you know, seamless, we use that word
<v Speaker 6>not just for the world, but I wanted a seamless
<v Speaker 6>player experience. So that's why you can get your mission rewards,
<v Speaker 6>you know, directly into your inventory. You can change your characters, augments,
<v Speaker 6>and capstones and your skill tree without respecting your whole tree,
<v Speaker 6>and you can do that on the fly. You know.
<v Speaker 6>The whole goal was to make sure that players are
<v Speaker 6>not interrupted as they played the game. You know, back
<v Speaker 6>in Borderlands three, I would count all of the level
<v Speaker 6>transitions you'd have to go through permission, and I said,
<v Speaker 6>there's like a hard cap. I don't want to see
<v Speaker 6>players to see any more than two to three load
<v Speaker 6>screens per mission. And if your mission was going to
<v Speaker 6>show go into multiple environments, well break up your mission
<v Speaker 6>into a couple of missions so you could get some
<v Speaker 6>you know, reward and turn in effect. So yeah, going
<v Speaker 6>into Borderlands, for we just want to make sure players
<v Speaker 6>could just pick up the game and never be given
<v Speaker 6>an excuse to put it down. And so we really
<v Speaker 6>looked at all those those friction points and tried to
<v Speaker 6>smooth them out.
<v Speaker 5>And another one was a more grounded tone, right like
<v Speaker 5>kind of getting back to Borderlands one and two, just
<v Speaker 5>kind of establishing that that world setting and flow, both
<v Speaker 5>for the narrative and and just for what players can
<v Speaker 5>expect around you know, every corner as you're discovering what
<v Speaker 5>this world has to offer. H those things. You know,
<v Speaker 5>when when I was at Game Informer, we'd look at
<v Speaker 5>games and it was like, that's the factor, that's the attacker.
<v Speaker 5>I thought this one had it all over the place.
<v Speaker 5>I was really excited just just from the prospects that
<v Speaker 5>I saw on paper.
<v Speaker 2>Awesome with the uh with the writing and Borderlands of
<v Speaker 2>or how did you decide to sort of like overhaul
<v Speaker 2>or go back to the writing Borderlands one and two?
<v Speaker 2>Like what when you were looking at those first two games,
<v Speaker 2>how would you describe sort of the approach to humor
<v Speaker 2>and the tone, and then where do you guys feel
<v Speaker 2>like you might have strayed when it came to the
<v Speaker 2>Borderlands three, I.
<v Speaker 6>Mean I would say that looking at the tone, we
<v Speaker 6>wanted to just, you know, always be creative and try
<v Speaker 6>new ideas, and we do that every game. Like Borderland's
<v Speaker 6>one story was very like had a lot of dark humor,
<v Speaker 6>but you had to read it all because it wasn't
<v Speaker 6>self evident in the missions, right, And so from BL
<v Speaker 6>one to BL two, you know, we added a lot
<v Speaker 6>more life to our missions through dialogue and these characters,
<v Speaker 6>you know, Anthony Birch, you know, developed Handsome Jack, who's
<v Speaker 6>become kind of an icon of a character. And then
<v Speaker 6>from BL three, we didn't want to redo BL two
<v Speaker 6>we had done that, and so we tried inventing these
<v Speaker 6>two new other characters to the clipso twins and tried
<v Speaker 6>bloring a different type of tone in that game, so
<v Speaker 6>like it has changed game to game. I think going
<v Speaker 6>into Borderlands, for my goal for the team was I
<v Speaker 6>wanted the player to feel like the hero. You know
<v Speaker 6>that was a critique in BL three story is that
<v Speaker 6>you felt like you were kind of a bystander to
<v Speaker 6>some of the more pivotal moments moments. So with Bill four,
<v Speaker 6>you know, we have the player in the cinematics. It's
<v Speaker 6>your character with your cosmetics, it's you in the cinematics,
<v Speaker 6>and we wanted to make sure that the motivations of
<v Speaker 6>the world and the player matched so that the story
<v Speaker 6>was more clear, you knew what was going on, and
<v Speaker 6>to have stakes, you know, there's something at risk here
<v Speaker 6>to get you involved and passionate about. We still have
<v Speaker 6>tons of humor though in the game. We love humor.
<v Speaker 6>It's core to Borderlands, of course, but in the campaign
<v Speaker 6>we wanted to be a little more grounded. The side missions,
<v Speaker 6>you're going to meet more crazy, crazy characters, but the
<v Speaker 6>humor itself is more grounded in the situations of the
<v Speaker 6>game and of the characters of this world, as opposed
<v Speaker 6>to kind of leaning on pop culture references. You know,
<v Speaker 6>and that's hard to do anyway, because game development takes
<v Speaker 6>so long. A lot of the things that are popular
<v Speaker 6>won't be popular culture and when the game comes out,
<v Speaker 6>and so you know, this approach to have the humor
<v Speaker 6>be more grounded in the situation of the game and
<v Speaker 6>the in the moment to moment of the of this world,
<v Speaker 6>you know, was our goal, and I think we found
<v Speaker 6>a great balance of having those stakes and having some
<v Speaker 6>and some like important meaningful moments, but still having levity
<v Speaker 6>throughout the whole game.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, Graham brought up the stakes there and that that
<v Speaker 5>kind of begins with the timekeeper, right, just his presence
<v Speaker 5>creates a much darker tone what he's trying to accomplish,
<v Speaker 5>and you know what you're trying to overcome with him there.
<v Speaker 5>The story kind of moves along with that. You know,
<v Speaker 5>it's just very dark and from the moment you begin
<v Speaker 5>to get me. I don't want to spoil what happens,
<v Speaker 5>but from there, that's that's the tone, you know, that's
<v Speaker 5>the line that the game follows. And as Graham said,
<v Speaker 5>you know, there's a lot of fun stuff on the side.
<v Speaker 5>Like the other day, I was playing the game and
<v Speaker 5>there was a guy that was trying to argue that
<v Speaker 5>Kiros is a flat planet. You know, it's it's the
<v Speaker 5>flat world. So I was like, I'm gonna go talk
<v Speaker 5>to this guy. I want to find out what's going on,
<v Speaker 5>And all of a sudden, I'm on this zany mission.
<v Speaker 5>You know that lasts for a good hour. So we
<v Speaker 5>have we have it all, you know, humor all over
<v Speaker 5>the place. But yeah, foundationally I think the Timekeeper at
<v Speaker 5>the core of this is really kind of driving that tone.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, how did you approach a designing the Timekeeper like
<v Speaker 2>he's seems like a very cool and unique villain. And
<v Speaker 2>but I've I've always thought that the series because of
<v Speaker 2>how good of a villain Handsome Jack was in Borderlands too,
<v Speaker 2>it always felt like to me subsequent games were almost
<v Speaker 2>trying to chase the ghost of Handsome Jack because he
<v Speaker 2>was such a strong character in such a strong presence.
<v Speaker 2>Was there any sort of like intimidation of trying to
<v Speaker 2>again like him we make create a villain that lives
<v Speaker 2>up to Handsome Jack in terms of how memorable and
<v Speaker 2>like flesh out he is. And how did you approach
<v Speaker 2>sort of like trying to differentiate the time keeping him
<v Speaker 2>making his own unique Anitay.
<v Speaker 6>Well, you know, we're not intimidated by the challenge, but
<v Speaker 6>it is a challenge, like we you know, we had
<v Speaker 6>great success, but that's a good problem to have, right
<v Speaker 6>to live with a character is you know, revered as
<v Speaker 6>Handsome Jack. Going into this project, we wanted the Timekeeper
<v Speaker 6>like We didn't want to do Handsome Jack again. We
<v Speaker 6>never want to revisit that character. That is his role
<v Speaker 6>in our franchise, and that's a special place and he's
<v Speaker 6>going to be there for this time around. As Andrew
<v Speaker 6>was saying, really the goal was to have a world
<v Speaker 6>with stakes and that's more grounded. So we wanted this
<v Speaker 6>character to take the world more seriously, to be you know,
<v Speaker 6>a little a little more sinister in terms of like,
<v Speaker 6>he's got this goal of keeping all of the inhabitants
<v Speaker 6>of Cairos on lockdown, putting these bolts on them, and
<v Speaker 6>basically controlling a planet worth the people. Because he has
<v Speaker 6>a very specific goal, and we wanted to make sure
<v Speaker 6>that there was some stakes to that so that you understand, like, oh,
<v Speaker 6>this guy, he doesn't mess around. He's he's got a
<v Speaker 6>goal and you're you're part of that goal in executing
<v Speaker 6>some of his plans. So over the course of the game,
<v Speaker 6>you know, we have some great moments where you, uh,
<v Speaker 6>you see firsthand how serious the Timekeeper takes this goal
<v Speaker 6>of keeping Cairos on lockdown.
<v Speaker 2>Nice and for the new volt Hunters with all of
<v Speaker 2>which look awesome to play in control, Where was the
<v Speaker 2>starting point for each of them. How do you ensure
<v Speaker 2>just in general with each game, how to not sort
<v Speaker 2>of overlap with the Volt Hunters and previous series. How
<v Speaker 2>do you how did you approach making these four Volt
<v Speaker 2>Hunters feel distinct from each other? And just for fun,
<v Speaker 2>who was your Favoritevault Hunter play ASDs for each of you?
<v Speaker 6>Andrew, you start, I want to hear you what.
<v Speaker 5>Do you want me to start with? You could speak
<v Speaker 5>more to the designs of the characters themselves. Obviously want
<v Speaker 5>them all to be distinct and to not feel like
<v Speaker 5>someone from the past, right, Like even with the Sirens,
<v Speaker 5>we have a siren in each game, but it's how
<v Speaker 5>do how do we make this version Borderlands for Sirens
<v Speaker 5>stand out and be memorable? Right? I think that's just
<v Speaker 5>foundationally where we start with as we're designing these characters. Graham,
<v Speaker 5>you could speak to that a little more.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, I mean, you know, we do have some archetypes
<v Speaker 6>game to game that you're going to see, right, and
<v Speaker 6>the siren is an example. We always have like a
<v Speaker 6>soldier like class as well, because we want to speak
<v Speaker 6>to different fantasies, right, and you know, but we always
<v Speaker 6>want to twist those fantasies game to game. So if
<v Speaker 6>our Siren is like your prototypical mage fantasy in the
<v Speaker 6>RPG world, you know, this time around we went down
<v Speaker 6>a like a warlock kind of like fantasy or a
<v Speaker 6>witch fantasy. I kind of I viewed the acts as
<v Speaker 6>a witch this time around, and that's how we came
<v Speaker 6>up with Trouble as re pet. You know, there was
<v Speaker 6>another act skill that she had earlier in development that
<v Speaker 6>was just not appropriate in terms of the scale and
<v Speaker 6>scope and the technical challenges, and so I was like,
<v Speaker 6>we really don't want to go down that road. And
<v Speaker 6>but you know, if we look at VECs as a witch,
<v Speaker 6>which is always have a familiar, they always have a
<v Speaker 6>black cat. And so you know, that was how we
<v Speaker 6>started to look at Vas through a different lens as
<v Speaker 6>opposed to a mage, but more of that witch. Same
<v Speaker 6>thing with the soldier. You know, we always want to
<v Speaker 6>have a great character for strict first person shooter players
<v Speaker 6>that can just like pick up the gun, go to
<v Speaker 6>town killing dudes. But even with the soldier, you know,
<v Speaker 6>he's got a couple action skills that you can just
<v Speaker 6>press a button and more or less get you know,
<v Speaker 6>hit the wind button. We also have our first third
<v Speaker 6>person action skill ever in a Borderlands game, in the
<v Speaker 6>Soldier in the Exo Soldier of Rafa, And so again
<v Speaker 6>we're looking at all these fantasies, but how can we
<v Speaker 6>twist each time we look at these characters? And then,
<v Speaker 6>you know, we love like I said, we love being
<v Speaker 6>creative and being inventive, and I think we you know,
<v Speaker 6>this time we're I'm very proud of the work that
<v Speaker 6>the character team did because I'm in the same camp
<v Speaker 6>as everyone else. I play all the characters, and I
<v Speaker 6>really do think this time around, there's going to be
<v Speaker 6>way more players running multiple characters because they're just so
<v Speaker 6>all enjoyable to play all of their personalities, and the
<v Speaker 6>writing with these characters are so great that you know,
<v Speaker 6>I think people are going to have more than a name.
<v Speaker 6>It's going to be who are you maining right now?
<v Speaker 6>Until you swap over and run another character up to cap.
<v Speaker 5>And then the second part of the question is who
<v Speaker 5>are we playing now or who do we like the
<v Speaker 5>most out out of the cast. That's a difficult one
<v Speaker 5>to answer, but I'll say this, I love Harlow like
<v Speaker 5>the power of fantasy that's there, being able to bubble
<v Speaker 5>up enemies and slam them around. That speaks to the
<v Speaker 5>Star Wars fan in me a little bit the Jedi
<v Speaker 5>kind of thing. And you're shooting at the same time,
<v Speaker 5>like you're doing two things at the same time, and
<v Speaker 5>then she kind of has a BFG effect and then
<v Speaker 5>a great uh what is that one Graham the area
<v Speaker 5>of effect? Like yeah, like she has that as well.
<v Speaker 5>Like I think she's amazing. But story moments where I
<v Speaker 5>laughed the hardest is with aim On. I think he
<v Speaker 5>is fantastic as a personality, and then co op if
<v Speaker 5>I like being vex, I like giving crowd control and
<v Speaker 5>kind of directing that way for for the friends I'm
<v Speaker 5>playing with. So right now I'm just leaving Rafa out
<v Speaker 5>for Rafa, but I love him too.
<v Speaker 2>He's great.
<v Speaker 6>I think by my current favorite is I've been playing
<v Speaker 6>aim On a lot. I like the depth of his
<v Speaker 6>action skills and kind of the crafting you can do
<v Speaker 6>through the multiple elements. And then I also really enjoy Rafa.
<v Speaker 6>I think I can kind of zone out when I
<v Speaker 6>go into his exo blades, the hack and slash mode.
<v Speaker 6>It's just fun zipping around the world with him. So yeah,
<v Speaker 6>it you know, like I said, I've got characters on
<v Speaker 6>all of them, but those are the two I've played
<v Speaker 6>the most recently, and you know, just enjoying the game.
<v Speaker 5>With Marcus, I'm gonna ask you, like, who's speaking your
<v Speaker 5>interest right now? If you're just looking at the characters,
<v Speaker 5>you know, you're booting it up for the first time,
<v Speaker 5>who do you think you're you're gonna go with?
<v Speaker 2>I Usually, especially in the first two games, I gravitated
<v Speaker 2>towards the sirens like Lilith and whatnot, and the siren
<v Speaker 2>in this game, especially with the being able to summon
<v Speaker 2>the they're not ghost, but yeah, they that's pretty cool.
<v Speaker 2>So I'm kind of leaning towards her as like my
<v Speaker 2>my first sort of like I guess, like main playthrough,
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, I think that's that's probably where I'm gonna
<v Speaker 2>go to begin and then move around from there.
<v Speaker 6>Cool well, like.
<v Speaker 2>Someone ghosts through a people and rates and all of
<v Speaker 2>stuff as you do as you do well, I mean
<v Speaker 2>of old Hunter is no good without a fun world
<v Speaker 2>to explore, you know. This game takes place on a
<v Speaker 2>brand new area called cairosh moving away from Pandora, sort
<v Speaker 2>of following up from the way that Borderlands three ends.
<v Speaker 2>Can you talk about sort of the design inspirations behind
<v Speaker 2>Cairos and sort of what was your initial goals for
<v Speaker 2>designing a more engaging open world to explore.
<v Speaker 6>Well, you know, as we said, we wanted to build
<v Speaker 6>a seamless world this time around, so that was like paramount,
<v Speaker 6>and I really wanted us to kind of explore re
<v Speaker 6>establishing a single planet. You know, in Borderlands three, we
<v Speaker 6>had a great depth of environments because we want planet
<v Speaker 6>hopping right or the course of Borderlands three. But this
<v Speaker 6>time around, I really, as you know, I'm a level
<v Speaker 6>designer at heart, I really wanted the opportunity to re
<v Speaker 6>establish a whole planet and its cultures and its history
<v Speaker 6>through its you know, visual storytelling and the characters that
<v Speaker 6>would inhabit this world, and really establish Chiros as its
<v Speaker 6>own planet that you know, a lot of people think
<v Speaker 6>of Borderlands, they think of Pandora. You know, I wanted
<v Speaker 6>to have us go into Borderlands for and have another
<v Speaker 6>planet at that same level. And so you know, our
<v Speaker 6>goal was to be really thinking about every part of
<v Speaker 6>this world in terms of what its history was, what
<v Speaker 6>the timekeeper was doing here, what happened to the inhabitants
<v Speaker 6>over you know, over these many years on the planet
<v Speaker 6>and you know show that in the world through visual storytelling.
<v Speaker 6>And then previous games, if you weren't on a camp,
<v Speaker 6>if you weren't on a mission, as Andrew was talking
<v Speaker 6>about earlier, you didn't really have a reason to explore
<v Speaker 6>these different areas, right. The campaigns and the side missions
<v Speaker 6>drove you through the content in a really entertaining way,
<v Speaker 6>but you never were completely rewarded for kind of veering
<v Speaker 6>off the beaten path. So using our nutraversal mechanics of
<v Speaker 6>like the grapple and the glide, the dash, double jump,
<v Speaker 6>we wanted to make a world that you could just
<v Speaker 6>freely explore and still be rewarded without having a single
<v Speaker 6>mission on your screen, and so we had to, you know,
<v Speaker 6>invent a whole host of new activities that players can
<v Speaker 6>come across. We have a whole layer of dynamic events
<v Speaker 6>and patrols that kind of fill out the environment, so
<v Speaker 6>you know, on foot point to pay point, you're always
<v Speaker 6>coming across something new to explore and see and interact with.
<v Speaker 6>So really, you know, we wanted to make a big,
<v Speaker 6>seamless world, have a cohesive story, and then just literally
<v Speaker 6>pack it full of content. I do not enjoy open
<v Speaker 6>world games that are just large for the sense of scope.
<v Speaker 6>I think that's there's some games that create a lot
<v Speaker 6>of atmosphere through that. But for me are you know,
<v Speaker 6>first person shooter players and myself, we always like to
<v Speaker 6>be shooting and killing stuff. We don't want to just
<v Speaker 6>be running around with nothing to shoot at. And you
<v Speaker 6>know that's important to Borderlands. You have to shoot things,
<v Speaker 6>get experienced, to use your gear, to level up, to
<v Speaker 6>use your action skill. So we literally packed the maps
<v Speaker 6>just chock full of stuff to do. So now you
<v Speaker 6>can literally run around without a mission and still have
<v Speaker 6>a super enjoyable time. Like I spend many a nights
<v Speaker 6>just grinding out areas because I'm having fun naturally without
<v Speaker 6>needing to have a side mission moment to moment.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, it's really interesting. Early on is we were trying
<v Speaker 5>to figure this out, Graham kind of had a directive
<v Speaker 5>of like, the players should never go I don't remember
<v Speaker 5>how many seconds it was going twenty that'll always be
<v Speaker 5>ingraded in your head twenty seven seconds without something happening,
<v Speaker 5>And I think it's even lower than that. Now we
<v Speaker 5>have like dynamic events, migrations of enemies coming in. There's
<v Speaker 5>always something in front of you, which I think is
<v Speaker 5>really impressive and something I haven't seen in a game
<v Speaker 5>of this scale before. No matter where you look, you
<v Speaker 5>could be standing at a cliffside and be like, there's
<v Speaker 5>like eight things I can interact with or I want
<v Speaker 5>to go explore just in front of me, and that's
<v Speaker 5>not even including what's behind me. Right, So the density
<v Speaker 5>we have is really impressive, and there's a lot of
<v Speaker 5>things that are just going to lureal along and we
<v Speaker 5>have some great prizes for you to to uncover.
<v Speaker 2>Graham. Why twenty seven seconds that's such a specific number.
<v Speaker 6>Well, it comes down to player speed and their actual
<v Speaker 6>movement and how many units they can pass and unreal
<v Speaker 6>at a time.
<v Speaker 3>You know.
<v Speaker 6>Another thing I remember early on when we were starting
<v Speaker 6>to look at the open world, I went back to
<v Speaker 6>Borderlands three and it was re exploring some of the
<v Speaker 6>zones there because we always like we've made open world
<v Speaker 6>asque games. Borderlands have always given that impression, right, I'm
<v Speaker 6>very proud of that that you know, you could look
<v Speaker 6>into another zone and then you would level transition there
<v Speaker 6>and you'd be there and you look back and you'd
<v Speaker 6>see stuff in the skybox where you were so we've
<v Speaker 6>always given this illusion of that, and in the larger
<v Speaker 6>in the larger maps and like Borderlands three, you know,
<v Speaker 6>they were very still, very big, the ones that had vehicles.
<v Speaker 6>So again I literally traveled Borderlands three maps and time
<v Speaker 6>from point to point to point, and the average was
<v Speaker 6>about twenty seven. And so there's always a new camp
<v Speaker 6>of enemies, maybe a hut to explore, maybe you come
<v Speaker 6>across one of the collectibles. In Borderlands three, I think,
<v Speaker 6>you know, the world of Borlands three was an excellent world,
<v Speaker 6>and I said like, hey, guys, we've done this before.
<v Speaker 6>We just need to do this at a scale we've
<v Speaker 6>never done. Typically those open worlds and Borlands three, there
<v Speaker 6>was only like you know what five six of those,
<v Speaker 6>and I was like, well, now we're doing the whole
<v Speaker 6>game is that? And there's just a handful of these
<v Speaker 6>linear areas, and so the scope and scale is kind
<v Speaker 6>of flipped on its head this time around. And that
<v Speaker 6>was a little intimidating to the level design team and
<v Speaker 6>the world creation team, but they absolutely understood the assignment
<v Speaker 6>and execute it. And I'm really excited about how well
<v Speaker 6>all of these different elements have come together so that
<v Speaker 6>you can just like I said, just play Borderlands four
<v Speaker 6>and have fun without needing a side mission. I loved
<v Speaker 6>using our playing our side missions, but this is the
<v Speaker 6>first time where you can just kind of run around
<v Speaker 6>and have fun, and that really wasn't quite the case
<v Speaker 6>in the previous games.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, were there any other like genre that you guys
<v Speaker 2>look to for inspiration? Like even just hearing you describe
<v Speaker 2>sort of the the events that can happen in the world.
<v Speaker 2>When I first heard about that a while ago, I
<v Speaker 2>initially I was like, Oh, it's kind of like a
<v Speaker 2>live game. It sounds like they're kind of pulling little
<v Speaker 2>pieces of that to make the world feel more dynamic.
<v Speaker 2>Were there any other like live game specifically that you
<v Speaker 2>guys enjoyed it? She said, like, oh, we can maybe
<v Speaker 2>turn take some of that and put it in our
<v Speaker 2>put our own spin on it. Excuse me? And what
<v Speaker 2>were Were there any other sort of shooters or even
<v Speaker 2>just the other genres that you guys use for inspiration?
<v Speaker 6>We I mean for me? I, I I mean like,
<v Speaker 6>because I've win that the game so long, I can
<v Speaker 6>look at any other game and try to look at
<v Speaker 6>their designs and how would I interpret their designs for
<v Speaker 6>a Borderlands game? With our pillars, and so I take
<v Speaker 6>inspiration from a lot of games. You know, I love
<v Speaker 6>old Genesis games, So I've got some like in the
<v Speaker 6>back of my head. As far as like how I
<v Speaker 6>could interpret some of those ideas this time around, I
<v Speaker 6>would say genre wise, though, we do look a lot
<v Speaker 6>of people like Gearbox play a very wide variety of games.
<v Speaker 6>All of our team, our game players ultimately, so we
<v Speaker 6>look at a lot of like RPG games. I know,
<v Speaker 6>we've got a lot of people who play Diablo or
<v Speaker 6>Path of Exile. I still play Call of Duty and
<v Speaker 6>war Zone and Overwatch, probably too much and get a
<v Speaker 6>little too competitive, but yeah, we take you know, we
<v Speaker 6>look at all types of games through the lens of
<v Speaker 6>like why are they successful? Is there anything for us
<v Speaker 6>to learn there? But never lose sight of we're making
<v Speaker 6>border Lands, So we never just kind of look at
<v Speaker 6>another game in terms of how can we just like
<v Speaker 6>take that idea. It's really about like what are they
<v Speaker 6>doing and how is it satisfying ditter goals up there?
<v Speaker 6>What are they doing that we could learn from to
<v Speaker 6>help us satisfy satisfy our gument design goals and interpret
<v Speaker 6>it for Borderlands, you know, Borderlands we have our own
<v Speaker 6>kind of brand of you know, action and depth, and
<v Speaker 6>we want to make sure that we're always like staying
<v Speaker 6>current and you know, leveling up our experience. So we
<v Speaker 6>look at our contemporaries, but always through like a distinctly
<v Speaker 6>like border Lands approach.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, there's some you know there. I'll give a couple examples,
<v Speaker 5>like some environment puzzles. I'll be like, oh man, that
<v Speaker 5>reminds me of like Half Life two, Like that was
<v Speaker 5>really cool, Like figuring out how to how to get
<v Speaker 5>in that building, or coming across a cave that has
<v Speaker 5>like a mysterious sigil energy sigil on it and you're like, well,
<v Speaker 5>how do I get in here? This looks important. That
<v Speaker 5>reminds me of like the Zelda's and the Metroids, you know,
<v Speaker 5>that kind of elemented discovery, knowing like I got to
<v Speaker 5>go do something else and then come back here, making
<v Speaker 5>a mental note that I got to go explore this cave,
<v Speaker 5>and once I do something later in a different region,
<v Speaker 5>I come back that cave gives way to a whole
<v Speaker 5>like dungeon like experience that has a boss at the
<v Speaker 5>end of it.
<v Speaker 3>Like I love that.
<v Speaker 5>And that's all throughout this game and you know, there's
<v Speaker 5>subtle nods or you know, lessons we've learned, you know,
<v Speaker 5>from playing games ourselves of what feels good and what doesn't.
<v Speaker 5>And we really leaned on those moments of making it satisfying,
<v Speaker 5>not having friction things that will frustrate the player, but
<v Speaker 5>just great discoveries along the way and great you know,
<v Speaker 5>just moments you're going to celebrate, whether it's like a
<v Speaker 5>legendary gun dropping or seeing a familiar character return or
<v Speaker 5>taking on a boss of a scale that you wouldn't expect. Like,
<v Speaker 5>we like to surprise and delight, and I think Borderlands
<v Speaker 5>has that in spades.
<v Speaker 2>We mentioned a legendary gun shopping. Of course, Borderlands all
<v Speaker 2>about guns, billions and billions of guns. You guys have
<v Speaker 2>a really cool sort of like weapon like customization system
<v Speaker 2>where you can just take the different weapon manufacturer parts
<v Speaker 2>and just pretty much making like weapons that are just
<v Speaker 2>an amalgamation of different manufacturers. Can you talk about how
<v Speaker 2>you came up with the idea for that system. Was
<v Speaker 2>there any concern over whether because when I think about
<v Speaker 2>just previous boarding goings, games is a loot game. It's
<v Speaker 2>all about just like I have a gun, kill a guy,
<v Speaker 2>find a gun, it's better ditch that old gun, rinse
<v Speaker 2>and repeat. But now that I can sort of more
<v Speaker 2>or less make my own gun, was there like is
<v Speaker 2>there a balance in that between making sure like, Oh,
<v Speaker 2>I want to make something that feels like it's gonna
<v Speaker 2>last and it feels valuable, but I'm afraid I'm immediately
<v Speaker 2>gonna get a drop that kind of makes me get
<v Speaker 2>rid of this gun that I just put all this
<v Speaker 2>time kind of building.
<v Speaker 6>Well, to be clear, there's no customization. What it is
<v Speaker 6>is we you know, we've established all these great brands
<v Speaker 6>in the Borderlands University's manufacturers, and they all have, you know,
<v Speaker 6>very identifiable mechanics, and so Jacobs as an example, you
<v Speaker 6>fire Jacob's gun in the previous games, if you got
<v Speaker 6>a critical hit, it would ricochet that bullet one more time.
<v Speaker 6>So getting crits with Jacobs always felt super satisfying. What
<v Speaker 6>we did this time around, you know, we wanted to
<v Speaker 6>make each gun feel more unique, and instead of it
<v Speaker 6>only being driven primarily through maybe stat changes as you
<v Speaker 6>were alluding to, like the numbers go up, must be better,
<v Speaker 6>we wanted the behaviors of the guns to change and
<v Speaker 6>you build around that so that Jacob's behavior could spawn
<v Speaker 6>on like a lad Off gun, so you could have
<v Speaker 6>a lad Off SMG, which are big mags and high
<v Speaker 6>fire rate, and now you could with the Jacob's license
<v Speaker 6>behavior on it. You can now ricochet all those headshots
<v Speaker 6>that you're just pouring into. So like you're not you know,
<v Speaker 6>customizing your guns. Because we are a loot game, loot
<v Speaker 6>is paramount, we like put it up on this pedestal.
<v Speaker 6>We don't want players to like ever be able to
<v Speaker 6>customize something and feel like they've they've accomplished their goal,
<v Speaker 6>like you should always be reaching for something better. So
<v Speaker 6>this time around, we just wanted to add way more
<v Speaker 6>depth to the gear chase by having guns spawn up
<v Speaker 6>to multiple manufactured behaviors. So you might be a Jacobs
<v Speaker 6>player and in the previous games you'd only only look
<v Speaker 6>at Jacob's guns, those are the only ones you enjoy, right, Well,
<v Speaker 6>this time around you can look at every gun and
<v Speaker 6>see if they have that Jacob's behavior really like. And
<v Speaker 6>now you're playing with our gear as a player like
<v Speaker 6>you've never you know, wanted to before, because now any
<v Speaker 6>gun can actually fit your character, if the role is right,
<v Speaker 6>if the job is right, if those behaviors are right
<v Speaker 6>that play into your build, so you know it. Really
<v Speaker 6>what I love is I'm playing with way more different
<v Speaker 6>manufacturers myself in my own playthroughs because of those licensed
<v Speaker 6>behaviors possibly showing up on all of the guns this
<v Speaker 6>time around.
<v Speaker 2>Awesome. Can you a real quick sort of going back
<v Speaker 2>to favorites? Do you guys have a favorite weapon manufacturer
<v Speaker 2>for your preferred place though?
<v Speaker 6>I mean, right now, I'm really enjoying Jacobs. That's why
<v Speaker 6>I mentioned that. I think Jacob's shotguns are really satisfying
<v Speaker 6>the kind of old school shotgun vibes paired that with
<v Speaker 6>like Torg stickies as they're called, so that on a reload,
<v Speaker 6>all of your my my ricocheted Jacob's bullets from the
<v Speaker 6>shotguns all blow up at the same time. So that's
<v Speaker 6>kind of my current builds has been around Jacobs and
<v Speaker 6>Tourgs Sticky. So again, whenever I see a shotgun drop,
<v Speaker 6>I'm checking to see if it's got that combination of
<v Speaker 6>licensed behaviors.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, right now I'm rocking a Torg gun that has
<v Speaker 5>like it. I don't know how many forty sticky grenades
<v Speaker 5>I can shoot at an enemy, So it's just like
<v Speaker 5>it looks like a Christmas tree that's just glowing and flashing,
<v Speaker 5>and then you reload and it's like a bag of
<v Speaker 5>popcorn in the microwave. It's just so satisfying to see
<v Speaker 5>them go up. But t R is a lot of fun.
<v Speaker 5>You know, these are guns that you could as you're
<v Speaker 5>you load, you throw them out. They have personalities, you know,
<v Speaker 5>as you throw them away, they'll be like I love
<v Speaker 5>you or why'd you do that?
<v Speaker 6>You know, like, well, how many times have you killed
<v Speaker 6>yourself with the TDR?
<v Speaker 5>Quite a bit some of them are tricky. Some of
<v Speaker 5>them try to lure you. They'll walk around in front
<v Speaker 5>of you and it'll the little pet icon will come
<v Speaker 5>up and you're like, oh, my gun wants me to
<v Speaker 5>pet it, and then it explodes on you and it's like, yeah,
<v Speaker 5>that's not cool. But there's there's things like that that
<v Speaker 5>you just never know what to expect from the guns.
<v Speaker 5>And when you get those legendary drops, they really do matter.
<v Speaker 5>Like I have a machine gun right now, that assault
<v Speaker 5>rifle that just basically spits death right. It's amazing. I've
<v Speaker 5>had it for a while, Like it's kind of running
<v Speaker 5>towards the end as I level up throughout the game,
<v Speaker 5>but it's been powerful and something I could use for
<v Speaker 5>a good ten levels, right, that's the legendary tag on
<v Speaker 5>that one. Whereas if I have something I can epic
<v Speaker 5>or below that, the life of it's probably not going
<v Speaker 5>to be that long. Right, even though I like the style,
<v Speaker 5>I'm going to be hunting for that again, like I
<v Speaker 5>want the leg version of what I had. You know, Like,
<v Speaker 5>there's so much depth there. It's a lot of fun
<v Speaker 5>just to see, especially as you level up. Graham, you
<v Speaker 5>might want to talk about this a little bit, how
<v Speaker 5>different drops happen at different levels and basically what you
<v Speaker 5>can get expands over time.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, I mean, our gun system is the deepest has
<v Speaker 6>ever been, and you know, it's so deep. We found
<v Speaker 6>out early that we were overwhelming the players with too
<v Speaker 6>much stuff. Early in the game. There was too many mechanics,
<v Speaker 6>too many things that could happen on a piece of
<v Speaker 6>gear that just made it overwhelming. So it's not until
<v Speaker 6>you hit level twenty five before all of the weapon
<v Speaker 6>parts are actually in the pool to spawn on on
<v Speaker 6>the drops, and so you know, and then even after that,
<v Speaker 6>we added firmware, which are our new gear sets that
<v Speaker 6>you can get on things that are not guns, like
<v Speaker 6>your shields and rough kits and whatnot. Those don't start
<v Speaker 6>spawning until level twenty, and then there's even more that
<v Speaker 6>you get unlocked when you get into our endgame. So
<v Speaker 6>you know, we wanted to kind of meter out that
<v Speaker 6>experience so that players don't feel overwhelmed. They start to understand, Okay,
<v Speaker 6>this manufacturer does this, this manufacturer does that. Oh, I'm
<v Speaker 6>getting more comfortable. My character's action skill is really going
<v Speaker 6>into this damage type. Oh well, that will make sense.
<v Speaker 6>If I get this type of gun, it will feed
<v Speaker 6>into my action skill this way, right. And so as
<v Speaker 6>you're leveling up your character through the campaign, we're adding
<v Speaker 6>in these new behaviors and gun parts that naturally kind
<v Speaker 6>of grow with the character as much as your action
<v Speaker 6>skill tree, and so you know, by the time you
<v Speaker 6>complete the campaign, you're now just starting to see the
<v Speaker 6>full range of everything. And it's like I said, as
<v Speaker 6>a result, gear feels new all the way up until
<v Speaker 6>you hit level cap, and even then you're still going
<v Speaker 6>to be grinding for the god roles.
<v Speaker 2>Right.
<v Speaker 6>So I think we struck a great balance of adding
<v Speaker 6>a really what kind have been complex or overwhelming level
<v Speaker 6>of gunplay through the gear. We kind of metered it
<v Speaker 6>out in a way that just feels really natural and
<v Speaker 6>it's super approachable.
<v Speaker 2>Right, And I mean, and that probably feeds into the
<v Speaker 2>end game. I know when we did our our cover
<v Speaker 2>story coverage for the game, we had to speak quite
<v Speaker 2>a bit about just how Borderlands four has sounds like
<v Speaker 2>a pretty substantial end game, I imagine, don't want to
<v Speaker 2>get too too deep into that, but can you at
<v Speaker 2>least we could talk about it now, Okay, yeah, let's
<v Speaker 2>get into it. Can you elaborate on just sort of
<v Speaker 2>like how big is the end game, how much content
<v Speaker 2>is sort of waiting for players on the other side
<v Speaker 2>of the credits, and how does the loop continue to
<v Speaker 2>evolve sort of post game?
<v Speaker 6>Sure, well, like I said, we expect most players to
<v Speaker 6>be in the mid thirties, let's say, after they completed
<v Speaker 6>the campaign. But you'll still want to want to head
<v Speaker 6>up to level cap, which is level fifty, so you'll
<v Speaker 6>still want to go back out into the world complete
<v Speaker 6>side missions and complete activities to level up your character.
<v Speaker 6>But you'll also have unlocked Ultimate Vault Hunter mode in
<v Speaker 6>Ultimate Vaul Hunter Rank one, which is a difficulty, and
<v Speaker 6>then that difficulty, you'll have access to new firmware that
<v Speaker 6>will start dropping. But the whole goal of our endgame is,
<v Speaker 6>you know, have the game changing week to week to
<v Speaker 6>keep it fresh and then also kind of have you
<v Speaker 6>prove that you can complete a set of challenges. So
<v Speaker 6>at launch, there's five difficulties of Ultimate Vault Hunter and
<v Speaker 6>to do that, each rank has about four challenges that
<v Speaker 6>task you to go out and kill a particular enemy
<v Speaker 6>at the current level that you're at right and there's
<v Speaker 6>no gaming it. You can't like want to do the
<v Speaker 6>hard stuff on the easy mode that ain't a thing,
<v Speaker 6>and you'll want to get to the Ultimate Vault Hunter
<v Speaker 6>five is kind of bragging rights, and also it gives
<v Speaker 6>you the best you know drops in terms of world drops,
<v Speaker 6>currencies for the economy, and you know, continue to build
<v Speaker 6>your character to level fifty and then over the course
<v Speaker 6>of week to week, we're going to have weekly wildcard missions.
<v Speaker 6>We're a different mission each week. You'll get to replay
<v Speaker 6>it for a guaranteed legendary for completing that mission using
<v Speaker 6>a set of specific enemy traits. We have these kind
<v Speaker 6>of like minor behaviors that we add on to enemies,
<v Speaker 6>and you know, we'll add those to that mission. We
<v Speaker 6>also have Maurice's Vending Machine was a feature that we
<v Speaker 6>created in Borderlands three where somewhere hidden in Cairos is
<v Speaker 6>Maurice's black market vending machine with a couple pieces of gear,
<v Speaker 6>a legendary gear that you can spend your cash on
<v Speaker 6>that will move week to week. And then each Moxie,
<v Speaker 6>you know is in Borderlands four, she has the big
<v Speaker 6>Encore Machine where you can farm bosses right in the
<v Speaker 6>game now without having to save load, and each week
<v Speaker 6>one of those bosses will be marked as the big
<v Speaker 6>Encore Boss of the week, and then you can go
<v Speaker 6>use your endgame currency Iridium to purchase a more difficult
<v Speaker 6>version of that boss, but with much better dedicated drop
<v Speaker 6>rate of that that specific enemy's loophool. So you know
<v Speaker 6>there's a and then even beyond that, you know we're
<v Speaker 6>going to have our first invincible, which is like our
<v Speaker 6>raid boss will be coming later this year. So even
<v Speaker 6>once you've got your character kitted out, you feel like
<v Speaker 6>you you know, max them out, Well, there's going to
<v Speaker 6>be this new challenge you know, in a few months
<v Speaker 6>from now that's going to really test you. And then
<v Speaker 6>if you do that you'll unlock a new Ultimate Hunter
<v Speaker 6>Mode difficulty that's where you get the first one, and
<v Speaker 6>there'll be new firmware there, and so you'll have to like,
<v Speaker 6>oh man, I can mind max my character a different
<v Speaker 6>way if I get this gear set, I could do this.
<v Speaker 6>So you know, it's going to evolve over the whole
<v Speaker 6>course of the first year as we add more content
<v Speaker 6>to the game for everyone, uh just the base sque.
<v Speaker 5>And that's going to give way to our first big
<v Speaker 5>story blc UH, which is matt Ellie and the Vault
<v Speaker 5>of the Damned. Well have more on that very soon
<v Speaker 5>at TGS.
<v Speaker 6>We can't talk about yet.
<v Speaker 2>I have I have to ask because at the time
<v Speaker 2>that we're recording, there's a new episode of Conan O'Brien's
<v Speaker 2>Clueless Gamer where he is playing Borderlands for uh sort
<v Speaker 2>in support of a new charity. I watched it not
<v Speaker 2>too long before hopping on here. I have asked, is
<v Speaker 2>it more exciting or nerve wracking to see Conan O'Brien play?
<v Speaker 5>And occasionally it's awesome. Yeah, it's awesome. I always enjoyed
<v Speaker 5>seeing that. For the other games we know, it's tongue
<v Speaker 5>and cheek. It's just for fun, right, I think it's cool.
<v Speaker 7>Yeah, yeah, I mean it's kind of a big moment
<v Speaker 7>to know that Borderlands has kind of reached that kind
<v Speaker 7>of space where you know, these other highly refevered games
<v Speaker 7>of my that I really love have been on there,
<v Speaker 7>and to have Borderlands be part of that.
<v Speaker 6>Is you know, it's a it's a cool, like more
<v Speaker 6>and fuzzy feeling. It's nerve wracking because he doesn't know
<v Speaker 6>how to play and having him stare up at the
<v Speaker 6>ceiling is just like my god, dude, but it's still cool.
<v Speaker 2>That's awesome. Well, now that we're uh said, you guys
<v Speaker 2>are very close to to I know saying the other
<v Speaker 2>side of launch, even though you guys have like a
<v Speaker 2>full year of content playing planned and who knows what
<v Speaker 2>beyond that. So you guys are still going to be
<v Speaker 2>hard at work, but you know, of the initial launch,
<v Speaker 2>you know, now that you're you can look back on
<v Speaker 2>in hindsight of development, what do you guys feel like
<v Speaker 2>is you know, maybe the biggest accomplishment is something you're
<v Speaker 2>proud of that you've worked on with this game, anything
<v Speaker 2>that stands out in your in your mind for something
<v Speaker 2>that you're like, I'm glad we were able to pull
<v Speaker 2>this off.
<v Speaker 5>U Ryan, I'll start with you, and there's a lot.
<v Speaker 2>Uh.
<v Speaker 5>We've done so much work on this game over time.
<v Speaker 5>I work closely with Graham. Like working with Graham has
<v Speaker 5>just been amazing.
<v Speaker 1>Uh.
<v Speaker 5>He tolerated me writing him team's messages all the time
<v Speaker 5>about certain things in the game. I'll bring up one
<v Speaker 5>that Graham and I could Bill speak to. Is this
<v Speaker 5>guy here the Becus bobblehead. Not you Marcus. It's a
<v Speaker 5>different Marcus.
<v Speaker 2>But you know, I asked.
<v Speaker 5>I was playing the game and exploring it, I was realizing,
<v Speaker 5>like I'm getting up to places that I didn't you
<v Speaker 5>know as a player. I was like, oh, I can't
<v Speaker 5>believe I got up here jumping around, gliding all over
<v Speaker 5>the place, climbing around, and there would be nothing up
<v Speaker 5>there right, Like it was just kind of like a
<v Speaker 5>little cavern or just this little space on a rooftop
<v Speaker 5>or around a cliff. So I nervously went to Graham
<v Speaker 5>one day and I was like, hey, I kind of
<v Speaker 5>think something is missing.
<v Speaker 6>Here pretty late in game development.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, and so yeah, grem you could you could take
<v Speaker 5>it from there?
<v Speaker 6>Well yeah, and he pointed out this kind of like
<v Speaker 6>there was something missing for like getting to these places.
<v Speaker 6>He had this kind of expectation because so much of
<v Speaker 6>the world was packed with things to do and see
<v Speaker 6>and get reward through. He would find these locations and
<v Speaker 6>they just felt oddly and given kind of the content
<v Speaker 6>that we already had put in the world. And you know,
<v Speaker 6>he threw out some ideas and I was like, well,
<v Speaker 6>those ideas I don't agree with, but you're absolutely correct
<v Speaker 6>there is something missing here. And so I took that
<v Speaker 6>and I interpreted it as like, Okay, what is something
<v Speaker 6>that's distinctly Borderlands And you know, growing up on Borderlands
<v Speaker 6>one we had the Marcus bobble head that you know
<v Speaker 6>it's on the van or the bus. Sorry, And so
<v Speaker 6>I was like, okay, I know that content exists. We
<v Speaker 6>can get that imported quickly, and maybe we'll just hide
<v Speaker 6>these around and reward players with just experience. There's not
<v Speaker 6>it's not a collectible. You don't have to find all
<v Speaker 6>of them in the world. They're there just as something bonus.
<v Speaker 6>So just like finding a loot chest or an ambo chest,
<v Speaker 6>now you might find a bobble head somewhere out in
<v Speaker 6>the world that Ryan or here might have said. I
<v Speaker 6>think this is a good spot for one, and he'd
<v Speaker 6>give me the coordinates and we would go in there
<v Speaker 6>as level designers and put one in there. So I
<v Speaker 6>think it was a great ad, which said came on late,
<v Speaker 6>but usually you know, if it makes the game better,
<v Speaker 6>we're going to keep doing it up until we can't.
<v Speaker 6>And that was a great moment for sure.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, and the team puts so much work into it too,
<v Speaker 5>Like they made like little scenes for Marcus, like he'll
<v Speaker 5>be like in front of this beautiful artwork, like this
<v Speaker 5>framed artwork, like admiring it, you know, and you go
<v Speaker 5>over and click them in his head bobbles, and you
<v Speaker 5>get experience, and I just love it. I think there's
<v Speaker 5>over two hundred of them in the game for players
<v Speaker 5>to uncover. But it's not like we're not Needle and
<v Speaker 5>Hay snacking it. You don't have to find these, but
<v Speaker 5>it's just like if you get up somewhere and you
<v Speaker 5>find that bobblehead, it's like, yeah, we knew you'd get
<v Speaker 5>you were going to get there. Now, Graham, what about you?
<v Speaker 5>What stands out to you?
<v Speaker 6>I am proud of the intro because I actually got
<v Speaker 6>to add like actually still do a level in the game.
<v Speaker 6>So the very opening of the game, I did the
<v Speaker 6>layout of the opening moments the game. One of our
<v Speaker 6>goals was seamless. I think the opening of our game
<v Speaker 6>is our most seamless experience in terms of like player experience.
<v Speaker 6>So and a lot of people did a lot of
<v Speaker 6>work to get our intro to gameplay seamless. So I'm
<v Speaker 6>really proud of the team to like take my vision
<v Speaker 6>and Adam maze vision for the art direction side and
<v Speaker 6>execute it as well. I'm very proud of our characters.
<v Speaker 6>Like I said, I think this is the first time
<v Speaker 6>I think, I know I'm playing all four characters, and
<v Speaker 6>that seems to be kind of the consensus online is
<v Speaker 6>that everyone's got got a pretty even split between all
<v Speaker 6>the characters and then the seamless world in the missions.
<v Speaker 6>I think we've got a really great world to explore.
<v Speaker 6>We've got really memorable missions and characters to come across,
<v Speaker 6>and you can you know, explore and see Cairos as
<v Speaker 6>a whole planet with its own whole history. That kind
<v Speaker 6>of now joins Pandora in terms of having that memorable
<v Speaker 6>world and environment to really explore.
<v Speaker 2>Nice and yeah, I guess as we wrap up here,
<v Speaker 2>is there anything else you would like fans to know
<v Speaker 2>about Borderlands four before they get to play it themselves
<v Speaker 2>in the very very near future.
<v Speaker 6>I mean, I'm excited for everyone to play it. I
<v Speaker 6>think from the story you don't have to have played
<v Speaker 6>the previous Borderlands games. That was another goal, so we
<v Speaker 6>wanted to make sure this was an approachable So if
<v Speaker 6>you're new to the franchise, this is an excellent time
<v Speaker 6>to play because we open the game assuming you know nothing,
<v Speaker 6>and over the course of the game, though, for those
<v Speaker 6>people who have grown up on Borderlands and know our lore,
<v Speaker 6>know our story, the connections we make to the previous games,
<v Speaker 6>and kind of what that sets up for our future,
<v Speaker 6>I think is going to really speak volumes to our
<v Speaker 6>returning audience. I think they're going to really like the
<v Speaker 6>direction that we take as they go through the game.
<v Speaker 5>For me, it's I think it's such a great social experience.
<v Speaker 5>I think it's an amazing co op game.
<v Speaker 2>Uh.
<v Speaker 5>You know, whether you're together as a tight knitue group
<v Speaker 5>riding on your your bikes down the road, or if
<v Speaker 5>you divide and conquer. There could be moments like we
<v Speaker 5>had a play session where we just was playing with
<v Speaker 5>Graham and we just kind of went off on our own.
<v Speaker 5>We were doing our own things. Uh, and then all
<v Speaker 5>of a sudden, after like an hour of silence, came
<v Speaker 5>back together for like this big, big encounter that that
<v Speaker 5>he needed help on. And I think it's just a
<v Speaker 5>really freeing co op game that that really kind of
<v Speaker 5>celebrates what it's like to play with friends. And yeah,
<v Speaker 5>I love that element. I think that's it's our best
<v Speaker 5>co op game yet.
<v Speaker 2>Awesome. Well, one last thing, ryin Er, since you're pretty
<v Speaker 2>much done with this game anyway, I've got this feature
<v Speaker 2>I've been working on. Do you think it's okay if
<v Speaker 2>an inbox to see you can give it a.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, I'll give it, I'll yeah, I'll give you some notes. Yep.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, that's great. Yeah, it's coming your way. Thank you
<v Speaker 2>both so much. Best of luck with the launch, and yeah,
<v Speaker 2>excited to could get in there and blade myself. And
<v Speaker 2>thanks for listening everyone.
<v Speaker 1>Welcome back to the Game Informer show. Everybody, it's time
<v Speaker 1>to get into some Silk Song.
<v Speaker 4>Now.
<v Speaker 1>I know everybody out there is probably worried about, like
<v Speaker 1>you know, we're not going to spoil big things from
<v Speaker 1>the game. We are going to talk about the explicitly
<v Speaker 1>the first act, but up until Graymore. So if you
<v Speaker 1>are playing along and you know what, Graymore is great
<v Speaker 1>if you if you're in Hunter's Marsh, you're kinda that's
<v Speaker 1>kind of like the area we'll be talking about and
<v Speaker 1>other places around there, but we're gonna kind of try
<v Speaker 1>to stick to those those points, so folks, you know,
<v Speaker 1>can can have reference. Yeah, I would say like first
<v Speaker 1>five hours, five.
<v Speaker 3>First five to eight hours is definitely that ballpark.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, man, y'all.
<v Speaker 4>I adore this game.
<v Speaker 3>It's good.
<v Speaker 1>This is I'm coming from. I I bounced off of
<v Speaker 1>the first hal Hollow Night, not because I didn't think
<v Speaker 1>it was great. I just I think I got busy
<v Speaker 1>at the time, and so I told myself I would
<v Speaker 1>play this and if I really loved it, I would,
<v Speaker 1>you know, consider going and playing a full play through
<v Speaker 1>a Hollow Night one. Uh And right now that's my
<v Speaker 1>plan because I have really been enchanted by this, this
<v Speaker 1>world that is on display in Silk Song. I think
<v Speaker 1>bugs have won your heart, the bugs of one dude.
<v Speaker 1>I started looking at Hollow Night tattoos. I was like, okay, okay,
<v Speaker 1>I gotta get these bugs on my body, on my
<v Speaker 1>body now. Yeah, Yeah, I'm having such a blast exploring.
<v Speaker 1>Don't get me wrong, there are times where I want
<v Speaker 1>to rip my hair out because I am it's like
<v Speaker 1>the choice between an incredibly difficult boss who's like really
<v Speaker 1>really challenging me. Uh, and then like this other room
<v Speaker 1>that's like what I call the hell room, which is
<v Speaker 1>like there's a I have to fight like twenty enemies
<v Speaker 1>to progress, and it's just as it's pretty much its
<v Speaker 1>own boss fight and its own But yeah, I'm really
<v Speaker 1>enjoying the I think Miller called it search action Games
<v Speaker 1>and his review and progress or like a metroid Vana.
<v Speaker 1>But I'm having just so much fun, like you know,
<v Speaker 1>getting back to those those kind of genre staples and
<v Speaker 1>and the exploration and satisfaction of of getting to new
<v Speaker 1>areas that come with that kind of play style. But
<v Speaker 1>I just think Hollow Nite Silk Song does it better
<v Speaker 1>than almost anyone else. It's it's incredible, I think so
<v Speaker 1>far so. But I want to hear what you guys think.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe you disagree, Maybe you're right up there with me, Eric, how.
<v Speaker 4>Are you feeling.
<v Speaker 3>I'm actually in the same boat that you are, where
<v Speaker 3>I've I've tried the beginning of Hollow Night a few
<v Speaker 3>times and it never stuck for various reasons. And I've
<v Speaker 3>heard from people who are in the know who enjoy
<v Speaker 3>those games that the first hour to two hours of
<v Speaker 3>Hollow Night are definitely a bit slow, take a while
<v Speaker 3>to build up. I think Silk Song it has absolutely
<v Speaker 3>won me over, and it is a combination of things.
<v Speaker 3>I think the opening areas are a lot more vibrant
<v Speaker 3>and interesting than some of the early Hollow Night areas.
<v Speaker 3>I do like the kind of dark decrepit depths and
<v Speaker 3>all of the you know, shells lying everywhere. But in
<v Speaker 3>Hollow Night one, I remember getting like the gray scale
<v Speaker 3>vibes of it, kind of getting a little sam y
<v Speaker 3>as I've played, Whereas here in the first few major areas,
<v Speaker 3>it feels like you move through this game a lot
<v Speaker 3>faster than I felt like I was moving through Hollow
<v Speaker 3>Night one. But also you have the Massy area. You
<v Speaker 3>have this kind of deep lava rock area that has
<v Speaker 3>a lot of danger in it and things like that
<v Speaker 3>and really cool mechanics around it. Then you have Hunters.
<v Speaker 1>There's a Marrow, which is like Marrows Great, You're kind
<v Speaker 1>of getting your like gray scale there, but it's intersected
<v Speaker 1>by It's like book gunned by vibrancy.
<v Speaker 2>I think they introduce more vibrancy a lot quicker than
<v Speaker 2>I do in the first game.
<v Speaker 3>I like the Marrow because it feels like the spine
<v Speaker 3>of the first act where you have this like tree
<v Speaker 3>trunk of area that you learn to kind of navigate
<v Speaker 3>through and get to sort of the branches that give
<v Speaker 3>you different things, and the Marrow kind of connects it all.
<v Speaker 3>I really like design like that. I find it really interesting.
<v Speaker 3>But I also you get some more as folks may
<v Speaker 3>call it, sh movement options very fast, some real shmoven
<v Speaker 3>that you can do where within the first I want
<v Speaker 3>to say, three to four hours, you have the obviously
<v Speaker 3>the diagonal down dash slash thing, which I know has
<v Speaker 3>been contentious, but I think feels really really good when
<v Speaker 3>you start to latch on to it and figure it out,
<v Speaker 3>and you start doing these backflips off of enemies into
<v Speaker 3>other enemies and then moving, and Hornet just feels like
<v Speaker 3>she moves differently than the main character of Hollow Night.
<v Speaker 3>And you eventually get the dash, you get some other
<v Speaker 3>really cool things, and then you start changing the way
<v Speaker 3>that your weapon could work and things like that, and
<v Speaker 3>all of the toolkit that you get just immediately feels
<v Speaker 3>a little bit more expressive, like they kind of said, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>you've played Hollow Night one, You've seen what the curve
<v Speaker 3>looks like over a long period of time. It feels
<v Speaker 3>like they have shortened that by a certain degree. And
<v Speaker 3>I actually enjoy that because I want to get powers.
<v Speaker 3>I want to start to build up and do cool
<v Speaker 3>things with my toolkit very early on, and having that
<v Speaker 3>expanded vocabulary faster really feels good. But I also just
<v Speaker 3>love the world. I think having Hornet as this vocal
<v Speaker 3>protagonist also adds a lot to this game, and having
<v Speaker 3>a care character that you feel like you're watching go
<v Speaker 3>on a journey, it does a little bit more for me.
<v Speaker 3>And so all of these things have combined to make
<v Speaker 3>me I do want to go back to Hollow Night
<v Speaker 3>now and see more of it. But I think Silk
<v Speaker 3>Song is really winning me over in a way that
<v Speaker 3>I would be surprised if Hollow Night can match, you know,
<v Speaker 3>at least for me personally. But I do. I really,
<v Speaker 3>I really like it so far. I did not think
<v Speaker 3>I would like it. I thought I would enjoy it.
<v Speaker 3>I didn't think I would like it as much as
<v Speaker 3>I like it right now?
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, Marcus, what about you? How are you feeling?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'm probably not knowing where you guys are at
<v Speaker 2>in a game. I'm probably made the least amount of
<v Speaker 2>progress just because I've been busy with all kinds of
<v Speaker 2>stuff over the last week.
<v Speaker 4>Traveling.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, a lot of traveling. But I am a probably
<v Speaker 2>like two three hours into the game. I did beat
<v Speaker 2>the first Holid Night back in its stay because I'm
<v Speaker 2>a real gamer boy like that, you know, as they
<v Speaker 2>tell me. And I did really like the game a lot,
<v Speaker 2>love it like everyone else was really excited for this game,
<v Speaker 2>and initially when I was playing this game, and I
<v Speaker 2>also want to say that I feel like I don't
<v Speaker 2>even feel like I kept my expectations in check for
<v Speaker 2>this game because it was initially announced as an expansion
<v Speaker 2>that then became a sequel. But I even throughout all
<v Speaker 2>the years of hype in my fandom for the first game,
<v Speaker 2>I kind of never allowed myself to think this would
<v Speaker 2>sort of like change my life. I guess maybe some
<v Speaker 2>people would, so that kind of helped me with the
<v Speaker 2>first couple of hours of the game, which I think
<v Speaker 2>are good, but they don't like blow you away. It's
<v Speaker 2>very much like the I would say, up until you
<v Speaker 2>get the dash ability, which I'm gonna elaborate on a bit.
<v Speaker 2>It's very much like, okay, yes, this is hollow Night.
<v Speaker 2>It's kind of like easing you back into it as
<v Speaker 2>someone that has not played the original game since twenty
<v Speaker 2>eighteen when it came to switch and getting used to
<v Speaker 2>sort of like the rough edges of it, and I
<v Speaker 2>mean rough, just like intentional rough edges of like oh right,
<v Speaker 2>there's no map, Okay, I have to go look for that,
<v Speaker 2>and oh right, I can only equip at least for now,
<v Speaker 2>like a single like a single piece of equipment that like,
<v Speaker 2>I wish I could have two of these things, but
<v Speaker 2>only one of them, and one of them is like, hey,
<v Speaker 2>would you like to see where you are in the
<v Speaker 2>map in real time? Or would you like to be
<v Speaker 2>able to heal uninterrupted? And you're like, I'd like both
<v Speaker 2>of those. Actually this would be extremely helpful right now.
<v Speaker 2>But okay, it's like, that's right. The first game was
<v Speaker 2>a lot making a lot, not even just a lot
<v Speaker 2>of hard choices, but making basically specialized builds or even
<v Speaker 2>just changing the way that the game operates just through
<v Speaker 2>the different pins you could attach. Like the combat feels
<v Speaker 2>the same, Like, you know, it's got that weightiness to it.
<v Speaker 2>It's got that impact where you kind of go backwards
<v Speaker 2>a bit when you hit something. It's got you know,
<v Speaker 2>the art style. While like I think the animation is
<v Speaker 2>a bit better, it's still it's that hollown Are still
<v Speaker 2>looks good. So it's like, you know, if you're coming
<v Speaker 2>today expecting to be like blown away, I think initially
<v Speaker 2>you're like, yeah, it's holid night, and you know, and
<v Speaker 2>I say, this is someone that's returning. But and I
<v Speaker 2>would say that I was a little I was a
<v Speaker 2>little disappointed, just because I remember Team Cherry talking about, like, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>the difference between Hornet and the guy in the first
<v Speaker 2>game whose name I don't even remember, is that Hornet's
<v Speaker 2>a lot faster and more nimble. And you know, there
<v Speaker 2>are I don't know if you guys, I had got
<v Speaker 2>far enough in the first game where because you do
<v Speaker 2>fight Hornet a few times in the first game, she's
<v Speaker 2>like a recurring rival and you see her like flipping
<v Speaker 2>around and doing stuff and you're like, oh, ow I
<v Speaker 2>get to be that that sounds great, and you don't
<v Speaker 2>really get a lot of that. Like she's a little
<v Speaker 2>bit more nimble first guy, but she isn't like wild
<v Speaker 2>Like you're moving kind of slow ish in the beginning,
<v Speaker 2>but when you get that dash ability and you can
<v Speaker 2>run around and jump and flip into things, that's when
<v Speaker 2>the game becomes the game to me of like, oh,
<v Speaker 2>this is what I was promised with this sequel, like
<v Speaker 2>because I was having like a pretty good time in
<v Speaker 2>the sense of like, oh, it's cool to be playing
<v Speaker 2>a Holidnight again. But then that's when it Okay, this
<v Speaker 2>is what Silk Song is gonna be, all right. That's
<v Speaker 2>and as someone that just prefers speedier characters and games
<v Speaker 2>in general, like I love just a flippy, nimble person,
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, yeah, this is this is exponentially more fun
<v Speaker 2>than the first game so far. So yeah, I'm I'm
<v Speaker 2>not too much farther beyond that, And I know it
<v Speaker 2>sort of varies based on direction you kind of decide
<v Speaker 2>to head in.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, what have you unlocked so far?
<v Speaker 3>Marcus?
<v Speaker 2>I have are we talking about just like pens and
<v Speaker 2>stuff areas or areas so I I mean I might
<v Speaker 2>get names wrong, but there's like the green area that
<v Speaker 2>just start in the mossy area. Did as much of
<v Speaker 2>that that I probably can at the moment, unless I've
<v Speaker 2>missed something, and then I've did all of the next.
<v Speaker 4>Area that bottom.
<v Speaker 2>Is it the it's got fire and lava and yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>yeah I did that. I I've unlocked fast Travel.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, I've done that really fun early moment, I really
<v Speaker 3>really like that part of the game. That that was
<v Speaker 3>where it started to click for me.
<v Speaker 2>And of course I have the associated ability that you
<v Speaker 2>need to be able to even get to the fight
<v Speaker 2>that unlocks fast Travel, which is like a cool like
<v Speaker 2>like basically like a rope spear that you throw out,
<v Speaker 2>which I like, that's the other thing that clicks with me,
<v Speaker 2>and ask action games like if you have any range
<v Speaker 2>weapon that can just if I can throw a thing
<v Speaker 2>at an enemy from afar and maybe even preferably bring
<v Speaker 2>them back to me, like if the closer you can
<v Speaker 2>get me to Scorpion for Mortal.
<v Speaker 3>Komba at the better Basically I had that and then
<v Speaker 3>I stopped using it because I got the Virgil slash,
<v Speaker 3>the like circle area slash, and I was like, that's
<v Speaker 3>that's what I like.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, I do not have a virtual Slash's.
<v Speaker 3>I I think this game just does move at a pace,
<v Speaker 3>and I think that's been maybe one of the more
<v Speaker 3>contentious parts. Obviously, there's been a lot of discourse about
<v Speaker 3>how difficult the game is. I do think it's challenging.
<v Speaker 3>I don't know that I would personally say that I
<v Speaker 3>find it as difficult as other games I've beaten, at
<v Speaker 3>least at this junction, at this.
<v Speaker 2>Odds, I think we're all still relatively early, but.
<v Speaker 1>I will say I have fought some things that that
<v Speaker 1>are yeah, I don't know, but even then, I feel
<v Speaker 1>like they feel doable, they feel se Yeah, they still
<v Speaker 1>feel doable, Whereas in other games there are some bosses
<v Speaker 1>where I'm like, I'm not even gonna I'm not even
<v Speaker 1>gonna try, Like there was I have no hope.
<v Speaker 3>My experience comes from like playing games like Original Launch
<v Speaker 3>Dark Souls too, where I'm like, I don't think this
<v Speaker 3>game is built for the average person to beat it,
<v Speaker 3>which was infamous back in its day for just having
<v Speaker 3>wild runbacks, and this game does have some for for
<v Speaker 3>those may not know, runbacks are basically this has the
<v Speaker 3>same Soul's style mechanism where when you die, your body
<v Speaker 3>drops and if you want to get your stuff that
<v Speaker 3>you were carrying, your kind of rewards, your currency, which
<v Speaker 3>are rosary beads, which I really really like. I think
<v Speaker 3>that's a very flavorful currency in this game.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I like that a lot.
<v Speaker 3>If if you want to go get that back, you
<v Speaker 3>have to go get back to where your body dropped
<v Speaker 3>and kill the silk cocoon that was there, which I
<v Speaker 3>like more than I think in Hollow Night it was
<v Speaker 3>like this malevolent spirit that you would have to kill
<v Speaker 3>or something like that, if I remember correctly. But I
<v Speaker 3>like in Silk Song that there's a cocoon that you
<v Speaker 3>take out and then you kind of you do your
<v Speaker 3>corpse run.
<v Speaker 1>It fills it also fills up your when you hit
<v Speaker 1>that cocoon, it fills up your silk meter right, so
<v Speaker 1>you can instantly heal from it or you have access
<v Speaker 1>to your R one ability two charges of it typically.
<v Speaker 3>So that's your corpse run. And then a run back
<v Speaker 3>is if you're fighting a boss, it's the distance between
<v Speaker 3>your most recent rest point, your your checkpoint, and then
<v Speaker 3>getting back to the boss room. That's the runback. And
<v Speaker 3>I do think there are some pretty challenging runbacks in
<v Speaker 3>this game, but they.
<v Speaker 1>There is one in particular, and Hunter's Marsh that just
<v Speaker 1>is demoral.
<v Speaker 3>I'm so I think I know that one, and I
<v Speaker 3>think that's where I am right now. If I end
<v Speaker 3>up like leaving and going and doing a bunch of
<v Speaker 3>other stuff and finding all kinds of things that felt
<v Speaker 3>like I was advancing too far, and now I'm back
<v Speaker 3>in Hunter's March because I want to go back and
<v Speaker 3>finish that part, and I love I think Hunter's March
<v Speaker 3>is my favorite area in the game so far, just
<v Speaker 3>because it's the moment where the game says, all right,
<v Speaker 3>lock in, you got to learn the mechanics.
<v Speaker 1>It's kind of like I view it as like the
<v Speaker 1>klid a little bit, a little bit this game.
<v Speaker 4>That's what comes to me.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's also it's also red yeah, yeah on
<v Speaker 1>the map like Klein, and so I just think there's
<v Speaker 1>some natural but it's like the point where you're like,
<v Speaker 1>oh damn, like I out of the kiddie pool.
<v Speaker 3>It's it's the part where the game says, Okay, you
<v Speaker 3>have this mechanic of it. Literally, I think there's some
<v Speaker 3>very clever level design in this game where to enter
<v Speaker 3>Hunter's Mars you have the red spike pit with a
<v Speaker 3>single red flower, and that one is literally just teaching you,
<v Speaker 3>like Mario one to one. Okay, this is how you
<v Speaker 3>do your you know, pogo jump to get across where
<v Speaker 3>you jump you if you're downward diagonal slash, and if
<v Speaker 3>you hit this red flower, you'll get a backflip off
<v Speaker 3>of it, and that you can get more distance that way.
<v Speaker 3>And then as you go through it, it gradually begins
<v Speaker 3>to introduce new pogo jumps. So you have one that's
<v Speaker 3>several of those flowers in a row, and then you
<v Speaker 3>have flower and then escalating flowers that kind of turn
<v Speaker 3>into stairs and you move upwards from them, and eventually
<v Speaker 3>it starts creating these rooms where you have different branches
<v Speaker 3>in different paths where you're thinking about how you want
<v Speaker 3>to pogo between them. And now it introduces flying in
<v Speaker 3>mes that can disrupt you while you're poe going, so
<v Speaker 3>you have to think about it. I genuinely think one
<v Speaker 3>thing that I'm bummed is not getting talked about enough
<v Speaker 3>is I think there's really good level design in Silk Song,
<v Speaker 3>just really interesting, nailed down. We're going to show you
<v Speaker 3>a mechanic, We're going to teach it to you. And
<v Speaker 3>then we're going to escalate it over the course of
<v Speaker 3>an area. And Hunter's March, I think is the best
<v Speaker 3>encapsulation of that, and I love it. I think it's great.
<v Speaker 3>But it also means that some of the runbacks do
<v Speaker 3>end up being a little bit challenging because you have
<v Speaker 3>to keep passing that test over and over again. Sometimes
<v Speaker 3>there's a bench right outside the boss room that gets
<v Speaker 3>you right back into it, and sometimes there's like a
<v Speaker 3>longer track you have to make, and that's just the
<v Speaker 3>way the game is. But I don't think it's I
<v Speaker 3>don't think it's overbearing for me yet. That's that's what
<v Speaker 3>I'll say. I think it's challenging, but I don't think
<v Speaker 3>it's overbearing for me yet.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I will say one of the one of the
<v Speaker 2>biggest sort of like almost kind of funny middle fingers
<v Speaker 2>in the game is the way that Rosary Beach just
<v Speaker 2>can bounce all over the place.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>The first time I hit on those things and I
<v Speaker 2>just like scattered, Everyone's like, oh no, just like why
<v Speaker 2>do they work like this? And then it's like, okay,
<v Speaker 2>all a night, I see what this is. And then
<v Speaker 2>very quickly you meet like I think it's the first
<v Speaker 2>merchant that's like, hey, you can buy a pin where
<v Speaker 2>you just get like magnet powers and you just set
<v Speaker 2>those things up. And I'm like, well I need that
<v Speaker 2>immediately until I found the hey do you want to
<v Speaker 2>see yourself on the map pin? And it's like, well,
<v Speaker 2>I would rather see myself on the map, I guess,
<v Speaker 2>so now I gotta be.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I never I never even bought that magnetic.
<v Speaker 3>I have a necklace.
<v Speaker 2>I haven't gone I want to go money to get it,
<v Speaker 2>but I was like I should. I should probably have
<v Speaker 2>this on deck for when I eventually can equit more
<v Speaker 2>than one.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, although I will say there are I have lost
<v Speaker 1>a lot of rosary beads when I accidentally push people
<v Speaker 1>into spike pits and it's like, well I'm not going
<v Speaker 1>to get those rosary beads because I'll die.
<v Speaker 3>You have like an idol. You should be able to
<v Speaker 3>like pope down in there and fish the mole now.
<v Speaker 1>Like like a cartoon man with a bunch of donuts
<v Speaker 1>strung along a stick, Liken it.
<v Speaker 2>Cursing under her breath the whole time, Like this is ridiculous?
<v Speaker 2>Can I say that? The Also, I really like the
<v Speaker 2>and it was just true at the first game too,
<v Speaker 2>like the music is quite good and also just like
<v Speaker 2>the the the emotes of all the bug people, particularly
<v Speaker 2>man I love meeting at warrior merchant guy. I like
<v Speaker 2>his little song that he sings to let you know
<v Speaker 2>that he's nearby.
<v Speaker 4>Oh her chakra, Yeah is that?
<v Speaker 2>What? What is what's her name?
<v Speaker 4>Chakra Chakra?
<v Speaker 2>Okay? Yeah, tall tall warrior person. Yeah hear that? Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>every time I hear I've I have literally put the
<v Speaker 2>controller down just so I can listen to that. It's
<v Speaker 2>just like, oh, this is just the Really.
<v Speaker 1>It's comforting when you come across her and you're like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>thank god, I've got a friend here that too.
<v Speaker 2>You're like, I can buy some stuff and wor these
<v Speaker 2>these rosary beads for a while.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>There's also along the way there are ways to consolidate
<v Speaker 1>your rosaries that you'll find that I recommend so that
<v Speaker 1>you can keep them throughout death.
<v Speaker 2>You know, have you guys finished any side quest yet?
<v Speaker 4>Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>I've finished many, Okay, I would say the ones in
<v Speaker 1>the ones in when you get to moss the Mossy area,
<v Speaker 1>there's a couple of side quests that I think are
<v Speaker 1>really worth it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, guys, still that I'm ready to turn it and
<v Speaker 2>I just have to go back. I have to make
<v Speaker 2>my way back to where.
<v Speaker 1>The have you done the Mossberry's quest yet?
<v Speaker 2>That's one that I am ready to turn in. I
<v Speaker 2>got to go back and see her.
<v Speaker 4>I use the reward from that.
<v Speaker 3>I still haven't found third Mossberry. I feel like I
<v Speaker 3>was talking to people for a while. I know exactly
<v Speaker 3>where it is. We know where two of the Mossberrys are.
<v Speaker 3>We can't find the third ones.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, I know exactly where the one that you needed.
<v Speaker 1>We got to talk after this then. Yeah, it is
<v Speaker 1>like I I it's so memorable because I'm like, if
<v Speaker 1>I hadn't been here in this moment to see this,
<v Speaker 1>I feel like it's possible I would have missed this
<v Speaker 1>moss Berry, which I.
<v Speaker 4>Know exactly where it's at. I can tell exactly where.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 7>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>And also I have the flea one, like, hey, can
<v Speaker 2>you find my flea buddy?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah one is interesting.
<v Speaker 3>Let me tell you. Let me tell you that's I
<v Speaker 3>think that's the one that takes people by surprise sometimes
<v Speaker 3>the thing you get from turning it in.
<v Speaker 4>And I still haven't completed a flea.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I just got to get back to that guy. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>that's exciting.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, I do. I think some of the side
<v Speaker 3>quests are really good. I just finished one where you
<v Speaker 3>were hunting three different bugs that had different like they
<v Speaker 3>had this special explosive power or something like that, and
<v Speaker 3>you could find them naturally just throughout the marrow, or
<v Speaker 3>you would find their droppings and you would hunt them. Basically,
<v Speaker 3>it would give you like a ghostly outline and you'd
<v Speaker 3>follow their scent to the track and things like that.
<v Speaker 3>I thought that was a cool mechanic, but then ultimately
<v Speaker 3>it was a go kill three of these things, come back,
<v Speaker 3>get a reward, and the reward was okay, it was
<v Speaker 3>all right, I.
<v Speaker 4>Know exactly which one you're talking about.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, And that was the moment where I thought, to myself,
<v Speaker 3>this is cool, but I kind of wish it was
<v Speaker 3>more thought out and just part of something else, and
<v Speaker 3>I don't. It's made me worry that not all of
<v Speaker 3>the side quests will be particularly effective because the other
<v Speaker 3>factor is I've seen side quests like the Fleas one
<v Speaker 3>that are surprisingly impactful on your progress through the game,
<v Speaker 3>and if it's hard to tell what the difference is
<v Speaker 3>between the ones that are just go kill things, come back,
<v Speaker 3>get something, and oh, this is going to have a
<v Speaker 3>noticeable effect on your game. I don't want to do
<v Speaker 3>a bunch.
<v Speaker 1>Of I've got a tip for you. I've got a
<v Speaker 1>tip for you. Yeah, the side quests that are given
<v Speaker 1>to you by NPCs are the meaning are there really
<v Speaker 1>important ones? And the ones that you pick up from
<v Speaker 1>bounty boards are going to give you like some sort
<v Speaker 1>of just currents the reward.
<v Speaker 3>That's good to think.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Yeah, can I also ask have you guys purchased
<v Speaker 2>the pins that tell you points of interest, because I've
<v Speaker 2>only got the ones that show you, yes, point.
<v Speaker 3>I have the bench one. Yeah, I haven't really invested
<v Speaker 3>in the others, but that's supposedly I have invested in
<v Speaker 3>all of them.
<v Speaker 2>Does the does the other one tell you like where
<v Speaker 2>NPCs are?
<v Speaker 3>Like?
<v Speaker 2>What does the show you exactly?
<v Speaker 1>Well, it depends on where you're at, because you're talking
<v Speaker 1>about like the things that you can buy from Chakra.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, like a lot, like hey, these shows and.
<v Speaker 1>She will have more things. Yeah, you will throughout the
<v Speaker 1>game get more things from her. But yeah, they're I
<v Speaker 1>think in the first the first time you meet her,
<v Speaker 1>she lets you buy obviously, like maps and markers, because
<v Speaker 1>the event eventually you get them for like.
<v Speaker 4>Vendors, and.
<v Speaker 1>There's one, there's another one for fast travel points okay, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and it'll start to fill out your map.
<v Speaker 4>I still use.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I'm, like I said, fIF probably close to
<v Speaker 1>fifteen hours in and I am still using all sorts
<v Speaker 1>of markers, and eventually she'll eventually I get to the
<v Speaker 1>point where I was running out of markers to place.
<v Speaker 2>So those are ones like the other ones I'm talking about,
<v Speaker 2>you can manually place those.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I was running out of those, okay, and then
<v Speaker 1>I found she'll sell you more later, like a different color.
<v Speaker 2>Okay. I wasn't sure if it just auto populated like
<v Speaker 2>the bench one does or if it was the place one.
<v Speaker 2>So that's good. The notes, I've been wanting to get those,
<v Speaker 2>just you know, it would be easier to know where
<v Speaker 2>the flea guy is if I could just yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. There's also times when you run into I found
<v Speaker 3>a door that I can't get to yet, or I
<v Speaker 3>can't open yet, and stuff like that. I've definitely wanted
<v Speaker 3>to put something on the map, and I don't hate
<v Speaker 3>the idea of it being you know, you gotta spend
<v Speaker 3>currency to get that. You've got to, you know, prove
<v Speaker 3>your metal to get it. But it has on occasion,
<v Speaker 3>maybe be like, Okay, I know there was a place
<v Speaker 3>that I needed the dash forward to get to and
<v Speaker 3>I can't remember where it was, and I'm like going
<v Speaker 3>through all of the different hallways and stuff just looking
<v Speaker 3>for it.
<v Speaker 1>I would say I would recommend buying the pins. I
<v Speaker 1>bought the pins before I bought all the maps I bought,
<v Speaker 1>like the main map for like.
<v Speaker 3>This guy buying before he buys the car.
<v Speaker 1>That's crazy because what you can do, even though you
<v Speaker 1>don't have a map, you can pull up the map
<v Speaker 1>and it would just be like black space that you're in.
<v Speaker 1>You can still put a pin point down where you're at,
<v Speaker 1>and then once you populate the map, your pen will
<v Speaker 1>be in the relative place.
<v Speaker 3>If that makes sense. Now that's gonna bother me too much.
<v Speaker 4>Does that make sense? It's Marcus, you's looking confused. No, no, no,
<v Speaker 4>And I explained that, Okay, I can.
<v Speaker 2>I can see the value.
<v Speaker 4>You're just wondering why I would do that.
<v Speaker 3>Why you would do such a thing.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, sometimes you know, some people, for me, left
<v Speaker 2>brain thinkers, some are right brain thinkers, and you know
<v Speaker 2>that's a that's a left brain thinker. If I had
<v Speaker 2>ever heard one. M It's not an insult, I swear.
<v Speaker 3>I'll also say I think one thing that I would
<v Speaker 3>be a distraction for me so far, but is also
<v Speaker 3>a positive. It's kind of weirdly mixed in that way.
<v Speaker 3>There's a lot of combat arenas in this game. I
<v Speaker 3>don't know if that was a hollow Night thing as well,
<v Speaker 3>but just a lot of rooms where you go in
<v Speaker 3>the door shuts and you fight, say four to five
<v Speaker 3>waves of enemies over you know, the period of time
<v Speaker 3>where they come in different combinations. I feel like I'm
<v Speaker 3>running into a significant number of those in this game,
<v Speaker 3>and some I would.
<v Speaker 4>Say there's like two or three per area.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and some of them works super well. The one
<v Speaker 3>in Hunter's Marsh, I think is one of the more
<v Speaker 3>notable and interesting ones because it was the one that
<v Speaker 3>has forced me to use my movement the most, where
<v Speaker 3>I had this really cool moment of there's one of
<v Speaker 3>the flying guys with a harpoon that he can throw,
<v Speaker 3>and then one of the warrior guys that'll do the
<v Speaker 3>charging thrust, and they basically were on either side of me,
<v Speaker 3>and I saw a harpoon guy like gearing up to
<v Speaker 3>throw like and I was in the air, and so
<v Speaker 3>he was gearing up to throw, and then guy on
<v Speaker 3>the ground was gearing up to do his dash, and
<v Speaker 3>so I was going to get just that's that's a
<v Speaker 3>chop block in the NFL. That's a red flag right there,
<v Speaker 3>yellow flag. But I managed to kind of just hit
<v Speaker 3>the right verticality and then dash between it. And the
<v Speaker 3>feeling of having the spear under me and the harpoon
<v Speaker 3>over me and me dashing in the middle doing my
<v Speaker 3>downward slash, popping up and then hitting the guy on
<v Speaker 3>the top and taking somebody out, I was like, that
<v Speaker 3>was cool as hell. Well, man, I wish i'd recorded
<v Speaker 3>it because it was really really interesting. And I do
<v Speaker 3>feel like those arenas force you to get really good
<v Speaker 3>at the combat system and use all the tools you have.
<v Speaker 3>But there's also just a lot of them, and some
<v Speaker 3>of them aren't super interesting. Some of them are just
<v Speaker 3>fight a bunch of the grunts you've already been like
<v Speaker 3>murdering up to this point, and I don't know that
<v Speaker 3>they always work for me.
<v Speaker 1>There's one that I'm in right now, and I won't
<v Speaker 1>say where I'm at, or yeah, I won't say where
<v Speaker 1>I'm at, but I'll say I get into the room
<v Speaker 1>and I'm currently like, I'm if I boot my switch up,
<v Speaker 1>I switch to up. I'm right at the start of
<v Speaker 1>the room about to fight it again to try to
<v Speaker 1>get my stuff back. But it is a previous boss
<v Speaker 1>from that I that I defeated earlier in the game.
<v Speaker 1>But there are now two of them, and that room
<v Speaker 1>is sinister as hell.
<v Speaker 3>Oops too bosses.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I'm in a really interesting area
<v Speaker 1>and I'm like, I have to see this through. I
<v Speaker 1>gotta figure it out. Yeah, but it's I I really
<v Speaker 1>really am enjoying the game. Some of the bosses, man,
<v Speaker 1>and some of the bosses. I just straight up I'm like, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>this is clearly not a main crit path boss. I'm
<v Speaker 1>gonna come back to this once I've got some more
<v Speaker 1>pips on my health bar and I'll mark it on
<v Speaker 1>the map and come back. I'm looking at you, Savage
<v Speaker 1>beast fly. I know what's I know the reward behind it,
<v Speaker 1>and I think a lot of people think it's worth it,
<v Speaker 1>but it's not like a crit path boss, and so
<v Speaker 1>I'm like I'm gonna come back later to that.
<v Speaker 2>But your pride, man, your pride.
<v Speaker 1>Well he'll die eventually to my blade, but my needle.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, yeah, but man, this I can't wait to
<v Speaker 1>be done with work today so I can jump back in.
<v Speaker 3>I was having that thought as we were talking that.
<v Speaker 3>I was like, man, I could really go for playing
<v Speaker 3>some Silk Song right now.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, do we have a like, I assume people have
<v Speaker 2>finished it at this point, because there's always those people,
<v Speaker 2>but like, do we have a sense of how big
<v Speaker 2>this game is? Like, because the first it was probably
<v Speaker 2>like I feel like I remember putting like forty hours
<v Speaker 2>into it, but I was also pretty thorough playing.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I asked a friend who beat it. I was like,
<v Speaker 1>how long did what was your our count? And he
<v Speaker 1>told me his our count, which was like forty to
<v Speaker 1>fifty hours. But then he said it's about double the
<v Speaker 1>size of Hollow Night.
<v Speaker 2>That's what I was wondering, because you know, Team Cherry
<v Speaker 2>has kind of said like, yeah, this is gonna be
<v Speaker 2>That's why this is a sequel now and non expansion.
<v Speaker 2>We made it real big. I'm even just wondering, yeah
<v Speaker 2>versus the first the first game, how much bigger? It
<v Speaker 2>actually wound up being.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the how long to beat? I? How long to beat?
<v Speaker 4>Says main Story, twenty two and a half hours. I
<v Speaker 4>do not see. I don't. I don't agree with that.
<v Speaker 2>Those are always hard to judge, specially with games that
<v Speaker 2>are hard. I always just kind of assume, oh, that's
<v Speaker 2>like if you beat everything to first try and to
<v Speaker 2>get stuck, that that's probably the average.
<v Speaker 3>It's like if I if I went back and bleed
<v Speaker 3>Seafood right now, I could probably beat Seafoo in maybe
<v Speaker 3>about a couple hours. But how long did it take
<v Speaker 3>me to originally beat Seafoo? That's a very different question.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, I think also metro Vanea is just the
<v Speaker 1>way in which that you can and also particularly this game,
<v Speaker 1>you can stumble into new areas that are wildly different
<v Speaker 1>from what your counterpart might be where they might be
<v Speaker 1>at the same hour count.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, what you're true with the first game too.
<v Speaker 1>Just based on pathing, and that data is only from
<v Speaker 1>one hundred and fifty six people that have beat the game.
<v Speaker 1>So I'm a wild completionists. Completionists says forty six hours.
<v Speaker 1>I don't trust those numbers based on what I've seen
<v Speaker 1>and where I'm at but.
<v Speaker 4>You said you're gonna need a source, especially because Hollow Night.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, okay, Hollow Night main story is twenty seven hours,
<v Speaker 1>So these people must be just just don't I don't
<v Speaker 1>trust those numbers.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, I don't trust them.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but I've heard like forty to fifty from for
<v Speaker 1>someone who that wasn't a completionist.
<v Speaker 3>That was especially Sometimes you want to enter an area.
<v Speaker 3>You don't want to like run through it as completioneness.
<v Speaker 3>You want to smell the roses. There's a lot of
<v Speaker 3>times in this game where I have intentionally exited an
<v Speaker 3>area and come back and granted, you know, we record
<v Speaker 3>things for video purposes and all that, but there's just
<v Speaker 3>some gorgeous vistas and moments, and I think the very
<v Speaker 3>early one when you start this game and you're going
<v Speaker 3>through the field and kind of the green kicks up
<v Speaker 3>and all that, Oh my gosh, Like it's a gorgeous game.
<v Speaker 3>And so there are times where I absolutely just vibe
<v Speaker 3>and take in the ambiance, and that that adds on
<v Speaker 3>to the hour count too.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Times you want to spend five minutes listening to a
<v Speaker 2>certain shopkeeper singer song, but you can't do it too
<v Speaker 2>close to her because then she stops always got to
<v Speaker 2>I feel like I'm eavesdropping like a creeper, like, well,
<v Speaker 2>let me get some distance, let me get you off
<v Speaker 2>screen and stand behind you and let you think that
<v Speaker 2>you're alone, because you're apparently too shy to just do
<v Speaker 2>it while I'm looking at you.
<v Speaker 3>I think one of my favorite animations in this game
<v Speaker 3>is the way that if you're looking at your map,
<v Speaker 3>the way Hornet pulls out the map and just kind
<v Speaker 3>of like looks at it and walks while you're because
<v Speaker 3>you can move while you have to, and it's like
<v Speaker 3>it's such a good little animation. But that's what I
<v Speaker 3>like to do is I'll stand over on the side like, oh,
<v Speaker 3>I'm just looking at my map, when really I'm like
<v Speaker 3>listening to.
<v Speaker 4>The lie.
<v Speaker 2>Don't mind me.
<v Speaker 3>All of the their vocal stems like crazy in this game.
<v Speaker 3>They're like, oh, yeah, the little dude, Yeah, I like
<v Speaker 3>the the little Pilgrim guys. They're crawling and then they're like,
<v Speaker 3>oh jump you.
<v Speaker 2>Do you think we'll get like a Live Game Awards
<v Speaker 2>performance of the Chakra song that be part of the
<v Speaker 2>Medley orchestra that.
<v Speaker 3>It'll probably just be the orchestral music. But if we
<v Speaker 3>can get a singer out there to actually.
<v Speaker 2>Do it'll be Jeff.
<v Speaker 4>It'll be Yeah, Jeff sing Jeff Jeff scatting Lie Lie
<v Speaker 4>Lie World Premiere.
<v Speaker 2>La La.
<v Speaker 1>I do have a question for you, Marcus, Yeah, and
<v Speaker 1>holl And. I won how many cut scenes like animated
<v Speaker 1>cut scenes were there?
<v Speaker 4>Oh?
<v Speaker 2>Man, man, my memory of the first game, it's very
<v Speaker 2>fuzzy at this point. I don't I I feel like
<v Speaker 2>there weren't like a lot a lot. I think there
<v Speaker 2>were some, but I don't again my memory, but like
<v Speaker 2>I don't remember. I can't remember being some like over
<v Speaker 2>abundance to where it became like noticeable, I guess. But
<v Speaker 2>but like anyone that's played this game more recently than I,
<v Speaker 2>please feel free to refruit my Like I said, that's
<v Speaker 2>one of the last things I remember about the game
<v Speaker 2>is sort of the cinematics.
<v Speaker 1>Honestly, Well, no, that's fair, just because I have noticed,
<v Speaker 1>like there's a fair amount of them in this one.
<v Speaker 4>I've seen.
<v Speaker 1>Three or four at this point, Like sometimes, sir, some
<v Speaker 1>of them are really short, like little like character vignettes,
<v Speaker 1>like introducing like you know, like you unlock something and
<v Speaker 1>it's like Oh, it's.
<v Speaker 3>Like a new area that is like story important or
<v Speaker 3>has like a.
<v Speaker 1>Big important there has There are some of those sometimes though,
<v Speaker 1>it's like, oh, I unlocked like this special merchant and.
<v Speaker 4>I get a little animation of them like doing their craft.
<v Speaker 3>Oh cool. I haven't had any of those yet.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, there's only one of those that I've gotten.
<v Speaker 1>It's a pretty bigger one. It's a bigger one. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>so I can see why it's it got one. But
<v Speaker 1>it's cool to see those when that happens, it's like
<v Speaker 1>fun little moments and it definitely kind of speaks to
<v Speaker 1>I think the amount of time. But you know, the
<v Speaker 1>success of Holly Night kind of let them really kind
<v Speaker 1>of do their big one with with Silk Song, and
<v Speaker 1>it's it's cool to see. But yeah, well, we're gonna
<v Speaker 1>keep playing. Maybe next week we can talk about Act
<v Speaker 1>two if we're if any of us are there.
<v Speaker 4>I don't, I don't, I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>If we're also have we might also have a review
<v Speaker 2>up maybe by then, because I know, you know, we
<v Speaker 2>have our review and progress editorgy Matt Miller, currently making
<v Speaker 2>his way through the game YEP, seems to be enjoying it,
<v Speaker 2>just based on his reviewing progress that he posted. But yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I guess maybe stay posted to the website over the
<v Speaker 2>next week and see what our what our verdict will be.
<v Speaker 2>I've not looked up anyone else's final verdicts that may
<v Speaker 2>have been posting.
<v Speaker 4>Me neither neither.
<v Speaker 3>I've seen a few. They they're what I expect, honestly.
<v Speaker 3>I also I am curious to see what the low
<v Speaker 3>long tail of this game looks like. And that's not
<v Speaker 3>to discount early reviews. I'm just this this is a
<v Speaker 3>game that's been awaited for so long. I think there's
<v Speaker 3>going to be a real fervor to talk about it.
<v Speaker 3>But then I do think it's going to be interesting
<v Speaker 3>to revisit this game and we get to end of year,
<v Speaker 3>you know, because there's still a lot of heavy hitters
<v Speaker 3>that that came out this year, and I think it's
<v Speaker 3>going to be interesting. We're happening as surprisingly, I feel
<v Speaker 3>like this always happens. We get to halfway through the
<v Speaker 3>year and we're like, oh, okay, what's the Fall going
<v Speaker 3>to look like? And the false starts rolling out and
<v Speaker 3>we're like, oh, this is pretty interesting year. In terms
<v Speaker 3>of game releases. I think Silk Song has been the
<v Speaker 3>herald of that, you know, the the vanguard of an
<v Speaker 3>interesting fall season.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, totally agree.
<v Speaker 1>Well, let's move on to our next and final topic. Marcus,
<v Speaker 1>you've been playing Hell is Us, which it's a it's
<v Speaker 1>a Soul's like, right?
<v Speaker 2>No?
<v Speaker 4>Oh no, I didn't know. Oh I think I assumed
<v Speaker 4>it was a Soul's.
<v Speaker 2>Like the same thing. Yeah, yeah, I think if windows early,
<v Speaker 2>because this is a game that was announced like forty three,
<v Speaker 2>four years ago, yeah, I remember we one of our
<v Speaker 2>earliest preview I think was two. Yeah. I so I
<v Speaker 2>played this game early this year. I flew out to
<v Speaker 2>Rogue Factor, which is a new indie developer, and that
<v Speaker 2>was started by a former Ubisoft, longtime Ubisoft art director.
<v Speaker 2>I cannot rember. It was named Jonathan the Top.
<v Speaker 4>Are they in Montreal? Is that right?
<v Speaker 2>They are in Montreal? Still he was the art director
<v Speaker 2>on the DSX games, among other titles. Like, he was
<v Speaker 2>a pretty long career at Ubisoft. Started this new studio,
<v Speaker 2>Rogue Factor. This is their debut title, and sort of
<v Speaker 2>the mantra for this game was, hey, we really like
<v Speaker 2>nineties games. Remember how in the nineties when you played
<v Speaker 2>adventure games like say the Legend of Zelda or point
<v Speaker 2>and click adventure games, particularly nineteen ninety seven's Blade Runner,
<v Speaker 2>How they didn't hold your hand, the that a lot
<v Speaker 2>of kind of like modern Triple A games tend to
<v Speaker 2>do now, And what if we just did that, Like
<v Speaker 2>what if we trusted the player to be able to
<v Speaker 2>figure things out without giving them a barrage of objective
<v Speaker 2>markers or a quest log that tells you everything that
<v Speaker 2>you need to do and when to do it, or
<v Speaker 2>even a map. What if you just didn't have that
<v Speaker 2>and instead focused on level design, like truly good level design.
<v Speaker 2>I isn't like. We had an interesting conversation when I
<v Speaker 2>interviewed him where he talked about how, in his opinion,
<v Speaker 2>he felt like level design today, what we consider good
<v Speaker 2>level design is more aesthetics than the actual design. Because
<v Speaker 2>he's like, a lot like good level design doesn't matter
<v Speaker 2>because so many games just give you an arrow that says,
<v Speaker 2>just go here. You don't need to actually examine your surroundings,
<v Speaker 2>you know, or he's like, if you take that away,
<v Speaker 2>then it come it falls into designer to make a
<v Speaker 2>world that is interesting thing and also makes enough sense
<v Speaker 2>to where players can kind of just look around and
<v Speaker 2>sort of piece together, Like, I think this visual cy
<v Speaker 2>is telling me something that can help me solve this puzzle,
<v Speaker 2>or is telling me is directing me in a certain
<v Speaker 2>way to get here. And that's honestly the crush to
<v Speaker 2>this game. I like a lot of the like I said,
<v Speaker 2>the Soul's like assumptions come from those early trailers. That's
<v Speaker 2>kind of maybe highlighted combat more than anything. But honestly,
<v Speaker 2>this game is minimum probably sixty percent puzzle, and I
<v Speaker 2>think that is the strongest part of the game by far.
<v Speaker 2>So so the preface everything I gave this game. I
<v Speaker 2>reviewed this game. You can remind review now and aside.
<v Speaker 2>I gave it an eight point two five out of ten,
<v Speaker 2>a very good overall like debut, and sort of the
<v Speaker 2>premise of the game is that it is set in
<v Speaker 2>this fictional country called Hadia that has been isolated from
<v Speaker 2>the rest of the world for like centes and is
<v Speaker 2>caught up in this brutal civil war between sort of
<v Speaker 2>the like the populace is kind of divided itself between
<v Speaker 2>it's over it's sort of like fictionalized religion, and you
<v Speaker 2>got like the the traditionalists the conservatives basically, and then
<v Speaker 2>you sort of have the reformist on one side, and
<v Speaker 2>they basically are demonizing the other side. And maybe I've
<v Speaker 2>also been maybe pitted against each other by a higher
<v Speaker 2>power for a a some some you know, a mysterious
<v Speaker 2>gain on their end. Who can say. Also, monsters have
<v Speaker 2>invaded this land just weird, Like I don't even know
<v Speaker 2>how to describe these things like to its benefit. Like
<v Speaker 2>you look at them, and they kind of look like
<v Speaker 2>these pearl like abstract art sculptures that just look melted.
<v Speaker 2>They got like these gaping like they're like vaguely humanoid.
<v Speaker 2>They got these like gaping holes in their faces. And
<v Speaker 2>they also, like some of them eject this like energy
<v Speaker 2>out of their bodies that is ostensibly the manifestation of
<v Speaker 2>like raw human emotion. And they're color coded based on
<v Speaker 2>the emotion. So like some of them will shoot this
<v Speaker 2>red just like pulsating. It almost looks like a like
<v Speaker 2>blown glass maybe, and you'll hear like this distorted like
<v Speaker 2>human guttural scream coming out of it, Like, oh, just
<v Speaker 2>this rage and filled screen. In my review, I compared
<v Speaker 2>to like they the vibes that these creatures gave off
<v Speaker 2>remind me of the movie Annihilation. Uh okay, just very trippy,
<v Speaker 2>like like what is like just the surrealism that is
<v Speaker 2>like that permeates from these things. So yeah, this is
<v Speaker 2>what this Haiti is dealing with is the civil war
<v Speaker 2>and the nice things. And you play as a guy
<v Speaker 2>named Remy who was a soldier who was originally born
<v Speaker 2>in Hadia, but as a very very young child, his
<v Speaker 2>parents smuggled him out of the country, which is incredibly
<v Speaker 2>difficult to do because they wanted him to live a
<v Speaker 2>better life, and he grows up in Canada, become and
<v Speaker 2>he come well, he comes back willing willingly because even
<v Speaker 2>though he he you know, he has a better life
<v Speaker 2>living abroad, he has all these lingering questions about like
<v Speaker 2>who he doesn't know his parents are, He doesn't remember
<v Speaker 2>what they look like. He just has like a vague
<v Speaker 2>memory of just being shipped into a truck, and he
<v Speaker 2>just wants to know, like why why did they send
<v Speaker 2>me out? Where are they now? Are they even alive?
<v Speaker 2>So he joins a peacekeeping mission in a country near Hadia,
<v Speaker 2>goes a wall and sneaks back into the country, and
<v Speaker 2>the only clue that he has about his parents whereabouts
<v Speaker 2>is a necklace that was given to him by them
<v Speaker 2>when he was a kid, and so that's like a
<v Speaker 2>premise for the sort of deduction based gameplay that this
<v Speaker 2>game has.
<v Speaker 3>I'm like getting really sold on this game really fast,
<v Speaker 3>because I, like, like Van Aigen similarly thought that this
<v Speaker 3>was his soul's Like I was like, oh, it's gonna
<v Speaker 3>be uh. It was like, was it the surge and
<v Speaker 3>stuff like that. He was kind of that realm in
<v Speaker 3>my mind of Okay, you know, it's a little bit
<v Speaker 3>kind of weird mixture of fantasy and sci fi third
<v Speaker 3>person action souls. Like I kind of assumed I knew
<v Speaker 3>what this was, and the more I hear about it,
<v Speaker 3>the more this sounds like incredibly my kind of thing
<v Speaker 3>in a way that I'm actively getting annoyed. I haven't
<v Speaker 3>been keeping this on my radar. Would you say that
<v Speaker 3>the so to use a point of comparison, you know,
<v Speaker 3>a very like you know, a hammer instead of a scalpel.
<v Speaker 3>Would you compare this to like Outer Wilds. Is this
<v Speaker 3>like that sort of thing where you're kind of discovering
<v Speaker 3>things and exploring and following your own threads or would
<v Speaker 3>you say it's it's a little bit more like you're
<v Speaker 3>kind of going from place to place and just picking
<v Speaker 3>things up and maybe like a Paradise Killer or something
<v Speaker 3>like that, where you're kind of looking for hot spots
<v Speaker 3>and then gathering things and using that to kind of
<v Speaker 3>build your deductions.
<v Speaker 2>Paradise Killer is a good comparison in the sense that
<v Speaker 2>Paradise Killer itself is very much modeled off of old
<v Speaker 2>point and click adventure games. Yeah, of just like your
<v Speaker 2>exploring environments or finding clues, you're having like these lengthy
<v Speaker 2>conversations sometimes with characters and then presenting them clusaying, hey,
<v Speaker 2>do you know anything about this?
<v Speaker 3>Do you resent clues?
<v Speaker 2>Oh? You can present clues to every single NPC, even
<v Speaker 2>the ones that do not matter. There is a button
<v Speaker 2>like you can either talk to them or you can
<v Speaker 2>present them with something, and then if they don't want it,
<v Speaker 2>they have like a bespoke line being like, I don't
<v Speaker 2>why did you give me this?
<v Speaker 3>Underrated game mechanic is presenting someone with evidence, because too
<v Speaker 3>often you just present them with fist or gun. But
<v Speaker 3>being able to present them with evidence is like a
<v Speaker 3>first person deducer. That's that's kind of what this is
<v Speaker 3>a third person game, I guess, but that's third im Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>You know what's funny and maybe the most surprising thing
<v Speaker 2>about this game is like you don't fight humans at
<v Speaker 2>all in this game. It is just those weird monsters.
<v Speaker 2>And there was multiple points where because you are entering
<v Speaker 2>the country under the guys of you're kind of a
<v Speaker 2>neutral party because you're not. I mean, you are from there,
<v Speaker 2>but you're not because you didn't grow up there. You
<v Speaker 2>don't know what the politics are in this place.
<v Speaker 3>It's an interesting way to describe an invading forces. You're
<v Speaker 3>kind of a neutral party.
<v Speaker 2>Well in a sense that you're just kind of stumbling
<v Speaker 2>upon like this conflict, Like you're just here to find
<v Speaker 2>your parents, and you're kind of learning all the other
<v Speaker 2>stuff happening along the way, Like like Remmy, it's sort
<v Speaker 2>of like an odd of a frying pan instead of
<v Speaker 2>fire of like, oh, this is gonna be hard night thoughts.
<v Speaker 2>I didn't not know all this other stuff was happening here.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, So there was an indie RPG of fear in
<v Speaker 3>a Hunger to termina. I'm sorry if there's like obscure
<v Speaker 3>indie RPG fans in the audience that know better, I'm sorry.
<v Speaker 3>But it was like that where there's similar setup where
<v Speaker 3>you're kind of trying to figure some or pathologic as
<v Speaker 3>another comparicony like this is this is ringing a lot
<v Speaker 3>of really good bells for me.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, like city, like, you don't fight anyone. There's even
<v Speaker 2>though just like everyone tolerates you and like like at
<v Speaker 2>most you know, or at best, like some of them
<v Speaker 2>are kind of antagonistic, but not to the point where
<v Speaker 2>it's like, oh, I because there are multiple times where
<v Speaker 2>I would talk to someone who was maybe a little
<v Speaker 2>bit more aggressive and I'm like, oh, we're gonna fight,
<v Speaker 2>but then it never came. It's like, oh, I guess
<v Speaker 2>you just don't fight people in this game, Like I said,
<v Speaker 2>you just talk to people. You get in conversations with them,
<v Speaker 2>and then you shove evidence in your face and hope
<v Speaker 2>that they have something interesting to say about it.
<v Speaker 3>I love it. So how is the actual combat that
<v Speaker 3>that you do do?
<v Speaker 2>So the combat is like I said, it's funny that
<v Speaker 2>people assume as the souls like because this probably goes
<v Speaker 2>as far the opposite you can get because it is
<v Speaker 2>much more basic and at times borderline mindless than any
<v Speaker 2>souls like game would be where it's pretty much so
<v Speaker 2>you have it's melee combat. You only use like weapons
<v Speaker 2>like axes, swords like long swords, and they're all like
<v Speaker 2>these like specifically built ancient weapons that are made to
<v Speaker 2>damage the monsters because other like conventional weapons don't work
<v Speaker 2>against them. And so you're going around as this like
<v Speaker 2>modernish guy. Like it's set in like an alternate like
<v Speaker 2>early nineties. By the way, I think it's set technically
<v Speaker 2>in nineteen ninety three, but you have a drone that
<v Speaker 2>looks like it's from twenty twenty five, but it's like, ye,
<v Speaker 2>in our nineteen ninety three drones exists, just go with it.
<v Speaker 2>And so yeah, you're just hitting like one button combos
<v Speaker 2>pretty much like and I'm assuming combo combo is singular,
<v Speaker 2>like you were just hitting on PlayStation the square button
<v Speaker 2>over and over to drop these guys you can block.
<v Speaker 2>You have a perry that I don't think is very
<v Speaker 2>good because the it just doesn't the timing is weird
<v Speaker 2>on its where I could never nail it reliably, and
<v Speaker 2>I'm very good at pairing in games, so I kind
<v Speaker 2>of abandoned using it and would just rely on a
<v Speaker 2>dodge instead. You have like a charge attack that's like
<v Speaker 2>the only other type of melee attack, but the wind
<v Speaker 2>up is so long that it's not really worth doing it,
<v Speaker 2>Like you can just kind of just tear through dudes
<v Speaker 2>with just the kind of three to four button or
<v Speaker 2>four hit combo button. The one interesting thing about combat
<v Speaker 2>is that the healing mechanics, so when you take you
<v Speaker 2>have a you do have a stamina meter, so that
<v Speaker 2>that's probably the closest it gets to a soul's like
<v Speaker 2>is managing stamina. But when you take damage in this game,
<v Speaker 2>not only do you lose health, but you also lose stamina.
<v Speaker 2>Like both bars go down permanently until you can heal them.
<v Speaker 2>And sort of the idea behind that when I was
<v Speaker 2>talking to the creative director was like, you know, realistically,
<v Speaker 2>in real life, if you got you know, really messed
<v Speaker 2>up in a fight, you wouldn't be able to run
<v Speaker 2>a mile still, you know, even if you're like bleeding.
<v Speaker 3>Out, adrenaline gets I don't know, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, So I was like, oh, yeah, I guess to
<v Speaker 2>give it coming from So it adds some more danger
<v Speaker 2>of like, oh, not only just lose health, but I
<v Speaker 2>can't recover as quickly. And the way you recover both
<v Speaker 2>resources is that you have this like active reload style
<v Speaker 2>health regeneration, where when you're attacking enemies, you build up
<v Speaker 2>a like a capacity to heal, and then when this
<v Speaker 2>white ring materializes around you, if you time it right,
<v Speaker 2>if you hit a button, you'll regain the health that
<v Speaker 2>you had kind of like primed yourself to receive just
<v Speaker 2>by laying in damage. And it literally works like mechanically
<v Speaker 2>like hitting an active reload in a shooter, like the
<v Speaker 2>same kind of thing, which I actually like, like the
<v Speaker 2>con it makes the otherwise kind of so so and
<v Speaker 2>repetitive combat kind of intense because you're just kind of
<v Speaker 2>looking for that telltale ring to be like, okay, hit it. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>now I'm gonna hit it, and now I got all
<v Speaker 2>that health. Just all that health just came back. That's cool.
<v Speaker 2>Your drone can do like some crowd control assist things
<v Speaker 2>like it's like tied to a like the R one
<v Speaker 2>and some buttons where you can send it to distract enemy.
<v Speaker 2>You can have it like and you can unlock more
<v Speaker 2>abilities like you find these like chips while you're exploring
<v Speaker 2>to basically have up to like four different abilities a drone.
<v Speaker 2>But you can like stun a bunch of enemies at once.
<v Speaker 2>There's one that's kind of funny. Where like Remy grabs
<v Speaker 2>onto it and it like spins around and he's holding
<v Speaker 2>his weapon out, so he's basically like this buzz saw
<v Speaker 2>is he's just like mowing through dudes. Yeah, So it's
<v Speaker 2>just it's like weird little things like that.
<v Speaker 3>Would you say this is more of a mystery game
<v Speaker 3>that has combat in it or a combat game that
<v Speaker 3>has mystery in it.
<v Speaker 2>It is absolutely a mystery game with combat to the
<v Speaker 2>point where that was one of the criticism of my review,
<v Speaker 2>where's like, I think the mystery solving part is really
<v Speaker 2>well done, and it almost feels obligated that it seems
<v Speaker 2>like it has to have combat of like, well, it's
<v Speaker 2>a third person action game, we need to give players
<v Speaker 2>something to hit as they're running around these like because
<v Speaker 2>not open world game is just like open hubs, which
<v Speaker 2>I think is good, like to its benefit, like you're
<v Speaker 2>traveling between these large hubs. Some of them have like
<v Speaker 2>a little town in them, but it's very like modern
<v Speaker 2>Zelda in a sense of like you're just looking out
<v Speaker 2>in front of you and just using your eyes to say,
<v Speaker 2>that's an interesting point. Eventual, us, what's that over there.
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna go over there, look at these ruins or
<v Speaker 2>there's probably something there, and then you'll find like all
<v Speaker 2>these little nooks and crannies where you're like, oh, I
<v Speaker 2>went down this weird little hitten staircase. There's a big
<v Speaker 2>ass door here that has these four like intricate patterns
<v Speaker 2>that are like an elaborate lock. What's that all about?
<v Speaker 2>I don't have the knowledge on me yet to know
<v Speaker 2>what to do with this, but I'm going to sort
<v Speaker 2>of like in my mind make a note of that.
<v Speaker 2>You're finding like relics and notes and all kinds like
<v Speaker 2>keys all over the place, and everything kind of matters, because,
<v Speaker 2>like I said, everything, most everything kind of has a purpose,
<v Speaker 2>no matter how insignificant. Like you'll find a note where
<v Speaker 2>initially you're like, I don't know what this is, and
<v Speaker 2>then it won't be sometimes till like maybe even hours
<v Speaker 2>later that you find like a person that references something
<v Speaker 2>said on that note, And because there's no quest logs,
<v Speaker 2>it is on you to just remember, like, wait a second,
<v Speaker 2>that guy's name that sounds familiar. Didn't I find a
<v Speaker 2>thing with that last name earlier? And you go through
<v Speaker 2>your inventory and you go, oh, there's a ring with
<v Speaker 2>this guy's with this engrave like I should present this
<v Speaker 2>to Sam see if he has something to say, or
<v Speaker 2>one of my favorite puzzles in terms of like, like
<v Speaker 2>I said, this gaming really tries to push you to
<v Speaker 2>connect dots and using your eyes and ears, like whether
<v Speaker 2>NBC's are behaving a certain way or even if they
<v Speaker 2>have something around them, where like there was one lady
<v Speaker 2>I found at a ground who's taking care of this
<v Speaker 2>baby that is like starving, and she's like, man, I
<v Speaker 2>really need some milk, but I can't go up to
<v Speaker 2>the surface because you know, the the invading faction has
<v Speaker 2>taken over to town and I if they see me,
<v Speaker 2>I'm dead. So it's like, man, it'd be great if
<v Speaker 2>you know, here's some empty bottles. Can you get me
<v Speaker 2>some milk? And at first you're like, the hell am
<v Speaker 2>I gonna get milk? And I'm going around like obvious places,
<v Speaker 2>like I know there's like a bombed out grocery store.
<v Speaker 2>Maybe I can get in there or something. It's like, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>that's not it. And I went like probably like a
<v Speaker 2>couple hours before I could figure out what to do
<v Speaker 2>with this, and it you know, when I was spoiling
<v Speaker 2>too much. But there was a character i'd met early
<v Speaker 2>on that has no connection to this woman, and this
<v Speaker 2>was like a leap of faith in my I went
<v Speaker 2>to see him because there's certain character will visit multiple times,
<v Speaker 2>and I just remember seeing in his farm that there
<v Speaker 2>was a single cow just in the background. It's not highlighted,
<v Speaker 2>it's not prominent at all. You wouldn't even notice unless
<v Speaker 2>you really, like even I should run by and you're.
<v Speaker 3>Like, and I'm thinking, like would this cows have milk?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? And I'm thinking like with this, and I was like,
<v Speaker 2>would this work because like it's like that cow has
<v Speaker 2>not been a factor at all. It's just there like
<v Speaker 2>a set dressing as far as I can tell. And again,
<v Speaker 2>I was like, I'm just gonna present the bottles to him,
<v Speaker 2>cause like, like it would be cool if this worked.
<v Speaker 2>And then sure enough he was like, oh, yeah, you know,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I have a cow you want to use that?
<v Speaker 2>And I was like, Oh, that's so cool that that work.
<v Speaker 2>Like I just like just visually, like again, this character
<v Speaker 2>has his own completely different little like questline and problems,
<v Speaker 2>and just the fact that it was like if you
<v Speaker 2>just remember certain things about character around him, that is
<v Speaker 2>all fair game for things. And there's multiple instances of
<v Speaker 2>puzzles that like if you just remember things that you see,
<v Speaker 2>you can piece together and it never like what this
<v Speaker 2>game does well is like nothing ever veeers into being
<v Speaker 2>up too s or like like I've never solved anything.
<v Speaker 2>I was like, oh, I how I've gotten that, Like
<v Speaker 2>it's lucky that I got that. Like everything I had
<v Speaker 2>made sense. You always had some piece of evidence on
<v Speaker 2>you that like nudge you towards something, and then it
<v Speaker 2>left the up to you to kind of make the
<v Speaker 2>mental leap of faith. And the puzzles whether arrange from
<v Speaker 2>like finding the keys to open doors, finding a correct
<v Speaker 2>sequence to open a like a big puzzle, or it's
<v Speaker 2>got like Zelda style dungeons too, where you're going through
<v Speaker 2>these dungeons and you're doing kind of like Zelda like
<v Speaker 2>elaborate like Zelda puzzles. Basically, yeah, like I said, the
<v Speaker 2>puzzle solving in this game is super well, down to
<v Speaker 2>the point where like I wanted to find everything, like
<v Speaker 2>everything in this game to see like what it unlocks.
<v Speaker 2>And also the lore I think is interesting. You're finding
<v Speaker 2>all these cool lore notes, You're finding these relics that
<v Speaker 2>have like cool like just backstories about just the way
<v Speaker 2>this Country works and that's good because I think the
<v Speaker 2>war is more interesting than the plot itself, which is fine,
<v Speaker 2>but this was another sticking point in my review. The
<v Speaker 2>plot it like Remy is an interesting character, like he's
<v Speaker 2>very I was talking to Wesley about this actually, and
<v Speaker 2>I said, he's kind of in the Aiden Pierce camp
<v Speaker 2>from Watchdogs. But then to give you an idea of
<v Speaker 2>like what kind of character like he's he's probably like
<v Speaker 2>a wrung above Aidan Pierce, but he's very much into
<v Speaker 2>like I'm a gruff guy about this, and they try
<v Speaker 2>to contextualize in the plot of being like, oh, apparently
<v Speaker 2>he is a classified sociopath so he can't feel things,
<v Speaker 2>but like the story never does anything interesting with that.
<v Speaker 2>It just kind of felt like an excuse for like
<v Speaker 2>why he's so dull and doesn't maybe have the greatest
<v Speaker 2>range of reactions to things. And then the ending is
<v Speaker 2>a bit flat, like like it's the story's kind of
<v Speaker 2>told in media eres, where like you started the end
<v Speaker 2>game with him being captured and interrogated and he's sort
<v Speaker 2>of like recounting the adventure to his captor along the way,
<v Speaker 2>which is funny because when you die in the game
<v Speaker 2>the the person that has captured him kind of does
<v Speaker 2>the thing of like, okay, we both know you didn't die,
<v Speaker 2>why don't you take it from the top.
<v Speaker 3>And the Dragon Age two type thing.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, But the character that they set
<v Speaker 2>up as the like ostensibly the main villain, it winds
<v Speaker 2>up not really going anywhere and kind of gets we'll
<v Speaker 2>say paid off if that's the word you want to use,
<v Speaker 2>in a in a not great way where it winds
<v Speaker 2>he winds up not mattering nearly as much as it
<v Speaker 2>seems like he does. So it's it's weird because there's
<v Speaker 2>like there's no other real antagonist in the game outside
<v Speaker 2>of this sort of like prophesied calamity that you're trying
<v Speaker 2>to stop. So yeah, I wish the stories what's told better,
<v Speaker 2>But I think everything else from like the like I said,
<v Speaker 2>the investigation of stuff, like just the cool blend of
<v Speaker 2>like old school adventure style character interactions with the sort
<v Speaker 2>of just non guided puzzle solving and just getting to
<v Speaker 2>explore this very fascinating world and constantly finding interesting clues
<v Speaker 2>and just the exercise of trying to put things together.
<v Speaker 2>That stuff is really really fun. And I think this
<v Speaker 2>game has a really strong foundation that I hope it
<v Speaker 2>gets a follow up in some way, Like if this
<v Speaker 2>game was as it was, but the combat was better,
<v Speaker 2>it would probably be a nine.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, interesting. Yeah, I've been craving a good puzzle them
<v Speaker 3>up since Blueprints, and this is sounding like it might
<v Speaker 3>tide me over for a bit.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I want to get back in there and clean
<v Speaker 2>up the puzzles that I kind of like.
<v Speaker 4>I'm much more interested now.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, after this conversation, Like I I honestly feel like
<v Speaker 1>they should like just like post a bunch of like
<v Speaker 1>not a Soul's like, because I even looked at the
<v Speaker 1>Steam reviews and the amount of Steam reviews that were like, one,
<v Speaker 1>this isn't a Soul's like.
<v Speaker 4>Like I think like a lot.
<v Speaker 2>Of agree, like I wanted a Soul's like and it's not.
<v Speaker 1>No, no, just like that was like a huge talking
<v Speaker 1>point on the Steam forums or the Steam Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I think the previous cycle when I went out there
<v Speaker 2>and wrote my preview, at least to me when I
<v Speaker 2>asked them, because I knew we interviewed them after we
<v Speaker 2>played it, so I knew it wasn't and I asked
<v Speaker 2>them about that, and I made it clear in my
<v Speaker 2>preview that it was not a Soul's Like, and I
<v Speaker 2>would imagine other media would have two because that that
<v Speaker 2>was just such a broad assumption of the game.
<v Speaker 3>I think it's a case of souls likes are so prevalent,
<v Speaker 3>especially third person action RPG games that I mean, there
<v Speaker 3>was a lot of talk of it, I feel like
<v Speaker 3>recently maybe around Opening Night Live and some other stuff,
<v Speaker 3>where it was just like, here's a Soul's like, here's
<v Speaker 3>a Soul's like, and I you think there's an element
<v Speaker 3>of Now we start to see games that look a
<v Speaker 3>certain way, that have a certain camera angle, that maybe
<v Speaker 3>have action RPG third person combat and go like it's
<v Speaker 3>another souls like, And I don't know, that's that's probably
<v Speaker 3>just a bad misconception to have, even though I feel
<v Speaker 3>like it does often pan out to be his soles Like.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, not only is it not a souls like, but
<v Speaker 2>it's not overly difficult either, right, combat like. It has
<v Speaker 2>its moments, but it's not as someone that loves souls like,
<v Speaker 2>it does not veer into that territory at all in
<v Speaker 2>terms of difficulty.
<v Speaker 3>You're you're singing all my tunes right now, this is
<v Speaker 3>great love, This.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I think people should check it out, like if
<v Speaker 2>you want, Like it's one of the I think it's
<v Speaker 2>gonna be one of those like hidden gems of the year,
<v Speaker 2>you know, like maybe not in the upper echelon of
<v Speaker 2>like a Clare Obscure or you know, a Metal Gear
<v Speaker 2>or Death Stranding, but like it's gonna be one of
<v Speaker 2>those we talk about and like, remember how is Us?
<v Speaker 2>That was a cool thing, you know, like there were
<v Speaker 2>some cool stuff in there Like this, it feels like
<v Speaker 2>destined for cult classic status.
<v Speaker 4>Honestly, all right, I wish listed it while you were
<v Speaker 4>talking about it. I'm gonna check it out. It seems
<v Speaker 4>pretty interesting.
<v Speaker 1>Uh well, I think that's a that's a show for
<v Speaker 1>this week, guys, Marcus Eric thinks for joining me. Folks
<v Speaker 1>out there, if you want to follow these two guys,
<v Speaker 1>follow Marcus at Marcus Stewart seven on Blue Sky. You
<v Speaker 1>can follow Eric at c Mossy on Blue Sky. You
<v Speaker 1>can follow me at It's a van Aken either there. Honestly,
<v Speaker 1>I fel like I'm more active on Instagram these days.
<v Speaker 1>I'm I'm liking the stories I you know, that's how
<v Speaker 1>I live my life.
<v Speaker 2>One story is that like the modern version of like
<v Speaker 2>I gotta go watch my stories.
<v Speaker 3>I was about to say, and sliding into his like
<v Speaker 3>late stage life area. Oh, it's like, go watch my
<v Speaker 3>stories now. My stories are.
<v Speaker 1>Exactly but also follow game Informer while you're there. If
<v Speaker 1>you want to keep up with what we got going
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<v Speaker 1>I think that's it for the show this week.