World of Warcraft: Midnight Cover Story + Steam Replay 2025

<v Speaker 1>Hey, everyone, Welcome back to the Game Informer Show, a
<v Speaker 1>weekly podcast covering the video game industry. Join us every
<v Speaker 1>Friday for discussion about the latest gaming news, reviews, and
<v Speaker 1>exclusive reveals, alongside Game Informer staff and special guests from
<v Speaker 1>around the industry. I'm one of your hosts today, Alex
<v Speaker 1>van Aiken. Today I'm joined by Marcus Stewart.
<v Speaker 2>Hey to Marcus.
<v Speaker 3>Hey, I'm back from the Game Awards and they didn't
<v Speaker 3>give me an award. I, oh, yeah, you were supposed to.
<v Speaker 2>That's what you were going out there for.
<v Speaker 3>I thought that's what Keighley told me when I hung
<v Speaker 3>out with him in Japan. He promised me a game award,
<v Speaker 3>and when I approached him, he just kind of like
<v Speaker 3>backed away and acted like he didn't know me.
<v Speaker 2>It was weird, huh.
<v Speaker 1>They were also supposed to do an orchestral arrangement of
<v Speaker 1>the Game Informer Show intro music, and I noticed that
<v Speaker 1>wasn't in the show proper. I wasn't sure if that
<v Speaker 1>was in the pre show and I missed it or
<v Speaker 1>a special you know audience on nothing.
<v Speaker 2>Nothing.
<v Speaker 3>No. I blame this piggy, honestly, I think.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Yeah, there was a lot of drama.
<v Speaker 3>A lot of drama. I was I saw some stuff backstage.
<v Speaker 3>I can't. I don't know if I'm at liberty to
<v Speaker 3>say between the two of these.
<v Speaker 2>But is that the stuff that was on TMZ?
<v Speaker 3>Oh?
<v Speaker 2>Something different?
<v Speaker 3>Well, you know, then maybe you already know if you're
<v Speaker 3>referencing TMZ.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, it just what does TMZ stand for? Too many
<v Speaker 4>bit's zany?
<v Speaker 2>Yes?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah? Actually? What?
<v Speaker 2>Maybe?
<v Speaker 3>What does I just realized? I don't Actually, I.
<v Speaker 2>Guess I just told you. Charles Hart, Hello, how are you?
<v Speaker 4>I'm I'm doing better now that I know that TMZ
<v Speaker 4>stands for thirty mile zone TMS.
<v Speaker 2>Do you have the official name? Are you looking it up?
<v Speaker 4>That's yeah, thirty mile zone, I know, really yeah. Historically,
<v Speaker 4>using the film and television industry to refer to the
<v Speaker 4>so called studio zone, an area with a thirty mile
<v Speaker 4>radio centered on the intersection of Beverly Boulevard in Los
<v Speaker 4>Cienaga Boulevard, Los Angeles, is that can call the studio
<v Speaker 4>zone because the number of film and television studos within it. So,
<v Speaker 4>I guess because it's like celebrity news, specifically Hollywood news,
<v Speaker 4>the thirty mile zone would be like the area that
<v Speaker 4>they would do.
<v Speaker 3>Therefore, that sounds confusing if you work in the industry,
<v Speaker 3>like if you're trying, like if you live in LA
<v Speaker 3>or something, You're like, I'll meet you by the TMZ
<v Speaker 3>and then people are like, what you're talking to TMZ?
<v Speaker 3>Like no, no, no, the old one, the one that
<v Speaker 3>you know.
<v Speaker 4>It's also you wouldn't meet someone by that's thirty miles zone,
<v Speaker 4>so that's.
<v Speaker 3>Like a big area.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I mean, like, I meet you in the Manhattan.
<v Speaker 1>That's my favorite call diuty word or called didty mode.
<v Speaker 1>And I know that people. We'ven get a lot of
<v Speaker 1>comments lately on YouTube people don't like the word association jokes.
<v Speaker 1>And I say to those people, two damn bad, you know,
<v Speaker 1>two damn bad.
<v Speaker 3>That's all we have, guys. I'm sorry, that's that's it.
<v Speaker 2>That's what we have.
<v Speaker 1>We have sweet treats, that's the and we got word
<v Speaker 1>association jokes.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, our comedic ceiling.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, we have sweet treats.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I've got a Coke zero vanilla off Okay.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, but that's not for them, that's just like us.
<v Speaker 3>You're saying for the class.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, right, did you ever have a teacher that actually
<v Speaker 2>did that?
<v Speaker 3>Oh? Like the did you bring food all you out?
<v Speaker 3>I mean I class because I was I was a
<v Speaker 3>very good kid. But I have seen I've seen it
<v Speaker 3>happened to less good kids that brought food in. We
<v Speaker 3>were like, I'm trying, Oh did you actually have to
<v Speaker 3>like did they take it away and make you share
<v Speaker 3>or did they just know?
<v Speaker 2>But I was like publicly shamed and I didn't like that.
<v Speaker 3>What'd you bring?
<v Speaker 2>It's just chips?
<v Speaker 3>I mean, chips are class, that's what It's always chips.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, there's always chips Son chips, Yeah, which is.
<v Speaker 3>Weird because that's like the loudest thing you could eat. Like,
<v Speaker 3>it's not really good for sneaking, which is the idea
<v Speaker 3>of bringing food in class. And you're like, I'm going
<v Speaker 3>to open this bag, which makes a lot of noise,
<v Speaker 3>and then the every time I bite into this is
<v Speaker 3>going to sound like like stepping on glass. So I
<v Speaker 3>never understood why so many people tried to sneak, is
<v Speaker 3>like there's so many there's so much more QUI I do.
<v Speaker 1>Just say it's a dumb rule, and people want to
<v Speaker 1>snack while they learn, they should be able to have
<v Speaker 1>a snack.
<v Speaker 3>I wonder if it's still a thing in school, like
<v Speaker 3>his food still banned.
<v Speaker 4>Probably depends on the Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Listeners, but I think it was a free to email us. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>but I think it's also as a game offumer dot com.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. I think it's also a cleaniness concern because like,
<v Speaker 3>some kids are gross and they don't want people leaving
<v Speaker 3>food and getting roaches and rats and classrooms and stuff.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, well they're kids. There's gonna be roaches anyways.
<v Speaker 4>There.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, they all look like Pigpin from Peanuts.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, all right, Well let's get into the show proper.
<v Speaker 1>We're gonna be talking about Marcus's trip to the Game Awards.
<v Speaker 1>We're gonna be getting into our Steam replays, which is like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, similar concept like Spotify wrapped. If you have
<v Speaker 1>a Steam account, you can get your Steam replay from
<v Speaker 1>the year. We're gonna be talking a bit about death
<v Speaker 1>Howl and Dogpile. It's Charles, and then then we're gonna
<v Speaker 1>be later on getting into our World of Warcraft Midnight
<v Speaker 1>cover story. Charles and I visited Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine,
<v Speaker 1>California during November, and you know, we can finally talk
<v Speaker 1>about what we learned, and that cover story is live
<v Speaker 1>if you want to go read it yourself, go to
<v Speaker 1>GameInformer dot com slash Wow Midnight and that's the coverage
<v Speaker 1>hub for everything that's in the issue. So if you
<v Speaker 1>have a digital subscription or print. If you have a
<v Speaker 1>print subscription, you are automatically have one, and uh yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you can go and go and check out all the stories,
<v Speaker 1>or you can wait for it to get to your
<v Speaker 1>mailbox or on newsstands in January. So yeah, Game in
<v Speaker 1>Former Magazine issue. That's three seventy four World of Warcraft
<v Speaker 1>coming January twenty twenty six. I think that's the official
<v Speaker 1>publication date. But of course if you have a digital subscription,
<v Speaker 1>you get early access to it.
<v Speaker 4>Cool.
<v Speaker 1>Well, let's get into the show for Opper Marcus. How
<v Speaker 1>was La speaking of? You were in the TMZ zone
<v Speaker 1>the TMZ.
<v Speaker 3>We're in the TMZ I guess I I am TMC reporting. Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>So this was my first ever trip to the Game
<v Speaker 3>Awards Live. I've gone to some of the other killy events,
<v Speaker 3>like I've done SGF, I've done Opening Night Live games Com.
<v Speaker 3>This was like the last one. So I punched that
<v Speaker 3>last hole and I think I'm do like some sort
<v Speaker 3>of like discount now. I turned in my card right,
<v Speaker 3>and I get like fifty percent off ticket. I believe
<v Speaker 3>that sounds like yeah, but it was. It was cool,
<v Speaker 3>it was getting in was a bit of a pain.
<v Speaker 3>Like the event itself was fun and long, very long.
<v Speaker 3>They're they're always long, and it felt longer being there
<v Speaker 3>in person for reasons I'll get into, but I will say,
<v Speaker 3>neither of you have been to the Game Awards live, right.
<v Speaker 2>I haven't been.
<v Speaker 3>A yeah. I was like, that's right, you have, Alex,
<v Speaker 3>I have not. It was some rough things to learn.
<v Speaker 3>So for one, the line to get in was like
<v Speaker 3>really unorganized where there was just multiple lines that are
<v Speaker 3>I guess all the same line. But then I asked,
<v Speaker 3>I didn't know if my ticket was differently was different
<v Speaker 3>just because I received it as press versus buying it,
<v Speaker 3>And so I asked. I remember I went up there
<v Speaker 3>and I got there early, and I asked a person
<v Speaker 3>that was like the line police, and I was like, Hey,
<v Speaker 3>is there one line or are there different lines? Does
<v Speaker 3>it matter like ticket wise, like just trying to get
<v Speaker 3>the four one be like, I don't want to commit
<v Speaker 3>to this line if I'm not supposed to be in
<v Speaker 3>this line, and she's like, no, it's all the same line,
<v Speaker 3>and I'm like, okay, so I said, in the line
<v Speaker 3>for a very long time, it's not really moving. They're
<v Speaker 3>slowly starting to file people into the building. And then
<v Speaker 3>I would say, after about like thirty minutes of line occupation,
<v Speaker 3>I got to like the front of a line, and
<v Speaker 3>they start checking the tickets as you're in line, giving
<v Speaker 3>you wristbands so that you're just good to go when
<v Speaker 3>you get in. And then the moment she scans my ticket,
<v Speaker 3>she's like, you're not supposed to be in this line.
<v Speaker 3>And I was like, a class I asked you that, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>and she's like, no, no, no, you got because you didn't.
<v Speaker 3>This was like I forgot what the the criteria was
<v Speaker 3>like somethinking about purchase versus not purchable, like you need
<v Speaker 3>to go to the like directly into the entrance. I
<v Speaker 3>was like, all right, here we go. Also, I think
<v Speaker 3>this person was a questionable moral character because before this,
<v Speaker 3>as I was moving in the up the line, there
<v Speaker 3>was a gentleman who was running past. I looked like
<v Speaker 3>he was trying to get somewhere into the game awards.
<v Speaker 3>And as he was running like she was, I was
<v Speaker 3>following her because she was escorting us, like our section
<v Speaker 3>of the line forward, and I was in the front.
<v Speaker 3>And as this guy runs past us, his room key,
<v Speaker 3>his hotel room key falls out of his pocket and
<v Speaker 3>she's like a good two feet in front of me,
<v Speaker 3>and I noticed she sees it, so I'm kind of
<v Speaker 3>expecting her to kind of bend down and pick it
<v Speaker 3>up and be like, oh, sir, but she doesn't, so
<v Speaker 3>then I have to go get it. And then she
<v Speaker 3>looks at me and says, oh, I think that's that guy,
<v Speaker 3>and I'm like, well, in my headline, you will clearly.
<v Speaker 2>Have to We all saw what happened.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and then I had to chase this guy down
<v Speaker 3>and be like, hey, excuse me, sir, and give it
<v Speaker 3>back to him. And I was just kind of like, well,
<v Speaker 3>I don't know why you didn't do that. You you
<v Speaker 3>had your chance, and I had to step up.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, I had to step up.
<v Speaker 3>I had to do my good deed for the day.
<v Speaker 3>And my payment was getting to stand in another line
<v Speaker 3>because I was told this line was okay. But anyways,
<v Speaker 3>and then also, and this is important for this story,
<v Speaker 3>I was very thirsty because I kind of had to
<v Speaker 3>I had to change hotels right before this, and.
<v Speaker 2>I know there's no concessions in that line.
<v Speaker 3>No, and there's concessions inside, but they may as well
<v Speaker 3>be useless. And I'll explain why because I so, I'm
<v Speaker 3>like thirsty, and I was like, oh, I'm waiting to
<v Speaker 3>get inside to get a drink. But then I had
<v Speaker 3>since I got shipped through another line, and the second
<v Speaker 3>line was right next to the Starbucks as in La Live.
<v Speaker 3>I'm sure you know of it, Alex. So I'm like, oh,
<v Speaker 3>I'll just run in there real quick because the line's
<v Speaker 3>literally out the door anyway. So I wait in a
<v Speaker 3>very long Starbucks line get a bottle of water. By
<v Speaker 3>the time I come back, the line has like dissipated,
<v Speaker 3>so I can kind of just walk inside and it's great.
<v Speaker 3>I unscrew this cap once take a sip, and as
<v Speaker 3>I'm going through the uh, the security, the lady's like,
<v Speaker 3>you didn't just open that bottle of water, did you?
<v Speaker 3>And I'm like, I mean yeah, because I took a
<v Speaker 3>sip and she's like, oh, you can't bring that in here.
<v Speaker 3>And I asked her, like why, what's wrong with it?
<v Speaker 3>And she's like, we just they don't allow open drinks
<v Speaker 3>in here. And I was like, I literally just opened it,
<v Speaker 3>Like you can't even tell that I drank it. That's
<v Speaker 3>how small of a sip. Yeah, And she's like, I
<v Speaker 3>can't let you in, so I had to throw it
<v Speaker 3>away and I this is like a good four dollar
<v Speaker 3>water and I'm still very thirsty. It's like I took
<v Speaker 3>one sip and then immediately.
<v Speaker 2>It almost makes it worse, like you got teased with
<v Speaker 2>the water.
<v Speaker 3>And yeah, and then I'm just looking at it sit
<v Speaker 3>on top of the trash pile, like this perfectly full
<v Speaker 3>like Ethos water bottle. So I get it.
<v Speaker 2>I want to chucked it, rucked it in front of her.
<v Speaker 3>Well, here's the thing, because like I heard stories of
<v Speaker 3>the Game Wars and you can attest to this two
<v Speaker 3>Alex is that they're very strict about bathroom breaks, Like
<v Speaker 3>you you can't just come and go during the show,
<v Speaker 3>Like if you get up during the show and go
<v Speaker 3>to the bathroom, depending on what's going on, like if
<v Speaker 3>there's anything happening in terms of a trailer or someone
<v Speaker 3>on stage talking, they the ushers won't let you back
<v Speaker 3>to your seat. They hold everyone in like the aisle
<v Speaker 3>and it's not till the excuse me, the ad breaks
<v Speaker 3>that they let everyone sit back down because apparently, I
<v Speaker 3>guess they don't like maybe the visuals of seeing people
<v Speaker 3>moving about up and down the aisles, even though I
<v Speaker 3>feel like a lot of the time when I watched
<v Speaker 3>the broadcast, the camera is almost like ninety percent always
<v Speaker 3>on the stage or on Jeff, Like, there aren't too
<v Speaker 3>many like crowdshots, and if they are, they're like centralized
<v Speaker 3>on one individual, not like look at everyone here, and
<v Speaker 3>so like because of that, I didn't really shots.
<v Speaker 2>They probably would.
<v Speaker 1>Really there's a big crane shots that will sometimes show
<v Speaker 1>you a lot of the theater and then just when
<v Speaker 1>Jeff soft to the side doing Muppet bits, you can see.
<v Speaker 2>The crowd behind him. Usually, Yeah, but it's probably.
<v Speaker 1>Just like a wide sweeping policy, so they I think
<v Speaker 1>their face is covered.
<v Speaker 4>It's pretty common, like theater rule. This is kind of
<v Speaker 4>a weird event for it, But like, I don't know
<v Speaker 4>if you've ever been to I went to like the
<v Speaker 4>Ballet the other weekend, and that's the thing of like
<v Speaker 4>you can't exit and re enter unless it's like the intermission.
<v Speaker 3>Really, I mean, I guess, I guess I get the
<v Speaker 3>mighty you don't want to disturb people. But I the
<v Speaker 3>live events I go to regularly are like wrestling shows
<v Speaker 3>and they don't care. Like you watch Monday Night Raw,
<v Speaker 3>You'll see like crowdshots, you'll see people moving up and down.
<v Speaker 3>So I'm like, yeah, like is a billion dollar company
<v Speaker 3>and they don't care. So I don't know if you guys,
<v Speaker 3>But anyways, that all that all was standing. That was
<v Speaker 3>my reason of like, I don't want to just chuck
<v Speaker 3>this because I was trying to like be very conservative
<v Speaker 3>with my water intakes. I don't want to leave and
<v Speaker 3>miss something. Uh. So I get inside, I'm you know,
<v Speaker 3>it's packed with people. I'm running into a lot of friends,
<v Speaker 3>and I actually ran into, uh some of the Obsidian
<v Speaker 3>folks who I worked with the over Wild's cover story,
<v Speaker 3>like almost immediately, so caught up with them. I ran
<v Speaker 3>into Jonathan Blow, and I wanted to introduce myself because
<v Speaker 3>I had done the order of preaking star in like
<v Speaker 3>I interviewed him about a week prior to the events.
<v Speaker 3>I was gonna introduce. I was like, oh, you know,
<v Speaker 3>it's good to meet you in person, but he was
<v Speaker 3>he was on the phone, probably quadruple checking like it
<v Speaker 3>is the trailer good is the trailer. Good right? Is good?
<v Speaker 3>Is everything? Okay? Steam Page is gonna go live? Okay,
<v Speaker 3>probably that kind of stuff. But they have like a
<v Speaker 3>concession's store in there, and I wait in line for
<v Speaker 3>like a long line to get another bottle of water
<v Speaker 3>to replace the one I just lost. I go through,
<v Speaker 3>I buy it. It's a very expensive bottle of water,
<v Speaker 3>like I think it's like it was like twice the
<v Speaker 3>price as the one I got at Starbucks. I guess
<v Speaker 3>because of theater inflation. And so I'm like, great, I
<v Speaker 3>open it up. I'd take again, just a little slip
<v Speaker 3>because I'm trying to, you know, kind of space out
<v Speaker 3>my my SIPs. I go to my seat and as
<v Speaker 3>I'm about to sit down because I'm like towards the
<v Speaker 3>middle front, this woman, one of the ushers, goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
<v Speaker 3>You can't bring that in here, and I was like,
<v Speaker 3>I can't. And I see like there's cup holders on
<v Speaker 3>all the seats, Like what are these four? She's like,
<v Speaker 3>you can't have drinks in the theater, and I'm like
<v Speaker 3>but I just thought, like I'm just like just dumbfounded
<v Speaker 3>at this point. And then also I.
<v Speaker 5>Saw there there's one shape shifting woman that told you
<v Speaker 5>to get in the wrong line and then made you
<v Speaker 5>throw away two water bottles.
<v Speaker 4>She's just like running on the theater.
<v Speaker 3>I like to think it's just the three three identical women,
<v Speaker 3>like they're like Nurse Joy from Pokemon. But yeah, so
<v Speaker 3>then I had to throw that one away because the
<v Speaker 3>alternative was chuck it all now and then have a
<v Speaker 3>full bladder very soon, or just tough it out for
<v Speaker 3>three hours. And I chose the tough it out for
<v Speaker 3>three hours because I didn't want to ge. I didn't
<v Speaker 3>want to miss any of the reveals. There were a
<v Speaker 3>lot of them. I listened to last week's show. You
<v Speaker 3>guys went through most of them, so I won't, you know,
<v Speaker 3>regurgitate all that here. But being their live was it
<v Speaker 3>was like a fun experience. I mean, it's it's always
<v Speaker 3>fun to be in a room surrounded with like in
<v Speaker 3>that atmosphere. It was also quite revealing because I was
<v Speaker 3>sitting directly, like directly behind the production area, so I
<v Speaker 3>could see all the screens and all the like pretty much.
<v Speaker 3>I could just I could see how the sausage was made,
<v Speaker 3>which I kind of almost wish I had it because
<v Speaker 3>I had the startling realization that all of the stage
<v Speaker 3>banter is all scripted. Oh yeah, I could, but like
<v Speaker 3>I wish I understood for some stuff. But even the
<v Speaker 3>stuff that seems off the cuff, I would see like
<v Speaker 3>a guy's screen just like word for word, just telepropt
<v Speaker 3>the scroll, like like when Jeffrey Wright was up there
<v Speaker 3>with his son, like their whole little like, oh dad,
<v Speaker 3>I'm better than you know. I forgot what their bit was,
<v Speaker 3>but that was all like word for word smoke and
<v Speaker 3>I was like, no, no, that was the first speech.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, I'm not going to name names. I have been
<v Speaker 1>in that room in past years, and I've been multiple
<v Speaker 1>I've been many years, so you won't be able to
<v Speaker 1>pin down which one it was. But I've been in
<v Speaker 1>that room before where somebody got emotional on stage and
<v Speaker 1>there was like a part in the script.
<v Speaker 4>I know exactly what you're talking about.
<v Speaker 2>I think I have, and it's it.
<v Speaker 1>It was the wildest thing I've ever seen because it
<v Speaker 1>was like I forget what they said. Let's say they
<v Speaker 1>let's pretend they said like oh I'm choking up or
<v Speaker 1>something like that was in on this teleprompter, and I
<v Speaker 1>was like, this is maniacal. This is this is devilish, manipulative.
<v Speaker 3>It didn't have a prompt be like cry now.
<v Speaker 2>We were like, no, it didn't go that far.
<v Speaker 1>But it was like, I was surprised that how much
<v Speaker 1>was on there because I was thinking I was watching
<v Speaker 1>a purely genuine moment and the there were emotions that
<v Speaker 1>obviously were real, but also part of it that I
<v Speaker 1>thought was genuine was definitely on the script.
<v Speaker 3>And I should think I should quickly clarify that this
<v Speaker 3>only applies to like the presenters. The acceptance speeches were
<v Speaker 3>all off the cuff.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I didn't.
<v Speaker 3>I was checking, and there was no teleprompter for the
<v Speaker 3>acceptance speeches. It was just the presenters or just whoever
<v Speaker 3>wasn't there to get it an award if you're up
<v Speaker 3>here to sell something or do something. Yeah, yeah, except
<v Speaker 3>for maybe the street Fighter bit, because that was just chaos.
<v Speaker 4>Actually, yeah that if that was scripted, I would have
<v Speaker 4>been shocked, like the degree to it.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I don't know if it was. If they were,
<v Speaker 3>they they decided there's too many of us, what are
<v Speaker 3>you gonna do.
<v Speaker 4>We're gonna say brackets make a dig at Mortal Kombat cast. Yeah, right,
<v Speaker 4>I I do think that's why there's some that some
<v Speaker 4>of the presenters when they're actors, it just feels more
<v Speaker 4>natural because they are literally reading off a script, like
<v Speaker 4>there's not there's no room for the I don't know,
<v Speaker 4>I just remember the Sometimes a developer will come up
<v Speaker 4>and they'll try to do their back and forth. You
<v Speaker 4>can tell it's kind of stiff. They're like in business
<v Speaker 4>presentation mode. And then I remember, like the Warframe people.
<v Speaker 4>I don't think they're actors, but I remember when they
<v Speaker 4>were like introducing the update to the game, being like, Oh,
<v Speaker 4>they seem like they've done this before in a way
<v Speaker 4>that like they're reading off a script, but they're comfortable
<v Speaker 4>and like loose, which is interesting.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it was. It was cool, I mean I was.
<v Speaker 3>It was weird seeing that stuff and also maybe the
<v Speaker 3>most horrifying thing. I saw something that I've tried to
<v Speaker 3>go my entire life without seeing, and unfortunately the Game
<v Speaker 3>Awards was the first place to to expose it to me.
<v Speaker 3>But from my vantage point during all the Muppet bits,
<v Speaker 3>I could see the actual puppeteers clearly, and I hated it.
<v Speaker 3>As a lifetime Muppets fan, I have somehow I'd gone
<v Speaker 3>out of my way, Like.
<v Speaker 2>I don't even if you thought that they were real,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I.
<v Speaker 3>Really did, Alex, I really really did. I thought Miss Pit.
<v Speaker 3>I thought just that Jim Hansen was just some sort
<v Speaker 3>of sorcerer. But like even I even have a hard
<v Speaker 3>time with like the like the Pines scenes documentaries. It's
<v Speaker 3>like I don't want to see them like as puppets.
<v Speaker 3>I just want to I don't want to see anything
<v Speaker 3>below their like chest, like yeah, or the times when
<v Speaker 3>they do show the whole body, it's just like their
<v Speaker 3>legs and you don't see the arm or anything. But yeah,
<v Speaker 3>like I could see I was like directly behind more
<v Speaker 3>or less where Jeff was standing, and I could see
<v Speaker 3>the person playing Miss Piggy, and I had to look away.
<v Speaker 3>I had to avert my virgin eyes to the screen
<v Speaker 3>that had the the the televised broadcast. And I'm just
<v Speaker 3>gonna watch that for all them up at bits because
<v Speaker 3>it's not it's just it's not Marcus at the game.
<v Speaker 4>Glad to know that some for someone else, somehow. The
<v Speaker 4>Jeff Keeley Miss Piggy interactions were more disturbing.
<v Speaker 3>The song was fun. People were clapping any rana and.
<v Speaker 4>Song was great song is what I expect from the Muppets. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>it's like yeah, yeah, yeaman.
<v Speaker 3>But it was cool, like the wild stuff with like
<v Speaker 3>the I thought this the use of stage kind of
<v Speaker 3>like props or performances like wires. This year, like Jeff
<v Speaker 3>discovered wires and like what if you just hang people
<v Speaker 3>from ceilings during.
<v Speaker 2>Like when the Divinity, Yes, stuff happened.
<v Speaker 3>That was funny because like, so I was near the
<v Speaker 3>aisle and I saw all the performers dressed up in
<v Speaker 3>the like villagery outfits like on standby before for a
<v Speaker 3>while before they went out there. So I was like, Oh,
<v Speaker 3>somethings about to happen, what this is about? And you know,
<v Speaker 3>they did a little marshal to ring and I also
<v Speaker 3>saw the wires hanging, but I didn't realize it were
<v Speaker 3>like for people and then yeah, they you know, hook
<v Speaker 3>them up and then they start raising them. And for
<v Speaker 3>me it was interesting because I had just seen like
<v Speaker 3>for my birthday a month prior, I had gone to
<v Speaker 3>my first CIRT day lay show, and there's a lot
<v Speaker 3>of like people flying around on wires. So there was
<v Speaker 3>a bit of like, oh, this is this again, you know,
<v Speaker 3>not nearly as like impressive, but still like, oh man,
<v Speaker 3>it's just people angling in front of me, and man,
<v Speaker 3>I hope nothing goes wrong, but it was cool. The
<v Speaker 3>coolest one though, was the control trailer, Like I don't
<v Speaker 3>know how much of it they I still haven't really
<v Speaker 3>watched the broadcast version of the show, but like the
<v Speaker 3>opening where they just have the big physical like cell
<v Speaker 3>for for Jesse's brother, and then they have the performer
<v Speaker 3>on wire just like lowering into the cell as the
<v Speaker 3>trailer starts, and they're like, Oh, this is a cool
<v Speaker 3>way to start this trailer. Like I don't know how
<v Speaker 3>much of this people are homer seeing or if they're
<v Speaker 3>just cutting to the footage or not, but like I
<v Speaker 3>saw the whole time. I was like, Oh, this is
<v Speaker 3>the coole start to this. And then he's just in
<v Speaker 3>there for like most of the trailer, just sitting there
<v Speaker 3>like you know, facing like back to us, and I
<v Speaker 3>don't know, I thought it was.
<v Speaker 2>Like a real screening the TV.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. I just had like a really like like a
<v Speaker 3>theatrical touch to this like game trailer that I appreciated.
<v Speaker 3>But yeah, I mean in terms of stuff that got
<v Speaker 3>the big reactions, and I again I don't know how
<v Speaker 3>much of this came through to broadcast, but like the
<v Speaker 3>Divinity trailer, Oh my god, Yeah, I was sitting next
<v Speaker 3>to uh to Ryan McCaffrey from from IGN, and we
<v Speaker 3>turned to each other and we're just like Jesus Christ,
<v Speaker 3>like like like what is happening here? And again this
<v Speaker 3>and as people are dangly in front of us two.
<v Speaker 4>Where people are people like making noise when that's happening
<v Speaker 4>like ah, or like like what is the yeah people
<v Speaker 4>do to.
<v Speaker 3>Like I mean this happens every sort of like game stricken,
<v Speaker 3>but there's always the like who like you know, there's
<v Speaker 3>always a lot of those from some somewhere in the
<v Speaker 3>crowd or.
<v Speaker 4>When you're watching the skin boiling and the flesh being
<v Speaker 4>there was there audible discomfort.
<v Speaker 1>I mean there was like a who guy really loved
<v Speaker 1>the on screen orgy.
<v Speaker 3>I mean there's there was like kind of like the
<v Speaker 3>like gas not gas, but kind of like the crowd
<v Speaker 3>rise like the whoa like people just going. So it
<v Speaker 3>was like a lot of like probably like visceral reactions
<v Speaker 3>from like especially the more kind of like which is good.
<v Speaker 3>The general audience that was there, who were like mostly
<v Speaker 3>behind me. I will say when the street fighter bit
<v Speaker 3>uh cappened and Cody Roads and Roman Reigns came out.
<v Speaker 3>All the wrestling fans made themselves known immediately as soon
<v Speaker 3>as Cody started talking, like a guy probably like two
<v Speaker 3>rows behind me screw. Oh did you hear that? That
<v Speaker 3>was that guy? Yeah, he was like two rows behind me,
<v Speaker 3>and I was just like, who's that? And then when
<v Speaker 3>Roman started talking, several people stood up and threw the
<v Speaker 3>ones up, which if in w W, that's like the
<v Speaker 3>thing you acknowledge him by throwing up the ones, and
<v Speaker 3>then I think you did it. Yeah, that's a little
<v Speaker 3>door here. That's like, that's like asking that you want
<v Speaker 3>to check when you're at a restaurant. Excuse me, can
<v Speaker 3>I get the bill? Please? So that was fun. The
<v Speaker 3>Resident Evil tray like the Leon reveal, that got one
<v Speaker 3>of the loudest reactions, like people went nuts for that,
<v Speaker 3>which I thought was interesting because I had kind of
<v Speaker 3>been leaked or had been totally leaked, so I was like,
<v Speaker 3>maybe most of the people in this room just weren't
<v Speaker 3>privy to that, but I was kind of surprised that
<v Speaker 3>it got like the raw reaction, like as if it
<v Speaker 3>was a complete surprise. So that was a good one. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>the Star Wars like the Fate of the Old Republic
<v Speaker 3>that got a huge pop too.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, and but.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, overall, like it was a good I thought it
<v Speaker 3>was a good show. It's it's long.
<v Speaker 1>Especially what was the reaction for High Guard, which was
<v Speaker 1>like the last game they showed off.
<v Speaker 3>It was like it wasn't like crazy, but it wasn't
<v Speaker 3>like that. I've seen that that game's gotten some or
<v Speaker 3>it's getting some negative sort of flack around it because
<v Speaker 3>it's like like people are like, oh, here comes another concord. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>People people write stuff off way too quickly.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and I do.
<v Speaker 1>I do the same thing for some games, but like
<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna at least give it a shot. Doesn't look
<v Speaker 1>like it's exactly my thing. I don't really love, Like
<v Speaker 1>the theme was kind of a little weird to me.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I think. I think with all the build up,
<v Speaker 3>like Jeff's whole speech about like this is yeah, respond
<v Speaker 3>diff they've worked on this in secret until now, and
<v Speaker 3>it's coming out sooner than you think. You know, he
<v Speaker 3>does the like the you know when he does the
<v Speaker 3>review now he's almost about to break out in tears
<v Speaker 3>where he's like I'm so honored to be the one
<v Speaker 3>to do this. Yeah, like yeah, yeah, and it's the
<v Speaker 3>last thing too. I think if this wasn't the last thing,
<v Speaker 3>it wouldn't be crapped on nearly as much like if
<v Speaker 3>Star Wars was last.
<v Speaker 1>Like I forgot he did that whole speech because it's
<v Speaker 1>it sounds like he's setting up like, oh, oh a
<v Speaker 1>titan Fall Spiritual successor.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, well I knew.
<v Speaker 3>That because he said it was a new studio with
<v Speaker 3>X response.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I was thinking, yeah, I was thinking, oh, you know,
<v Speaker 1>Spiritual Successor.
<v Speaker 2>You know they're going to be mechs and stuff.
<v Speaker 3>Oh oh, like a non tighten all I got saying I.
<v Speaker 2>Thought they're making a new titan Fall since respawn.
<v Speaker 3>Wall gotcha, Yeah, I'm.
<v Speaker 2>That's that's kind of what his speech was setting up,
<v Speaker 2>I felt like.
<v Speaker 3>But I didn't get the sense though in the in
<v Speaker 3>the arena, like it didn't feel like nearly a cynical
<v Speaker 3>in arena like maybe the most I think the thing
<v Speaker 3>that set that turned people off was the immediate reveal
<v Speaker 3>of that character and his weird hairstyle, where we're just like, oh,
<v Speaker 3>that's the guy we're playing. Before he kind of understood
<v Speaker 3>what the gamer like that's a I don't know that
<v Speaker 3>that's not the most appealing looking character models to hair.
<v Speaker 3>But yeah, I mean it seemed fine and I'll play
<v Speaker 3>it like I again, will reserve judgment until I play it.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, yeah, yeah, but.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it was a fun trip. It was fun to
<v Speaker 3>run into people and catch up with so many you know,
<v Speaker 3>friends and peers. I was at a Larry And party
<v Speaker 3>after the show and a lot of the Clare Upskier
<v Speaker 3>team came in, which they were the easiest to spot
<v Speaker 3>because they all have the mind outfits. Like I was
<v Speaker 3>in a restaurant afterwards and a few of them came in.
<v Speaker 3>But yeah, at the Larry And party later, a bunch
<v Speaker 3>of them showed up and everyone gave them like standing
<v Speaker 3>ovation for you know, like congratulations, and it was like
<v Speaker 3>they were like taking a back by down. It's really sweet.
<v Speaker 3>Ben Starr was there. I wanted to say high Did
<v Speaker 3>you say hi? No? He was busy. He we just
<v Speaker 3>I moved out of his way at one point, if
<v Speaker 3>that counts as he needed.
<v Speaker 4>It's such a funny accent. It was like years when
<v Speaker 4>I was like, you know, one time at a party
<v Speaker 4>I moved out of Ben's.
<v Speaker 3>I was having a very nice conversation with Jan Ochoa
<v Speaker 3>from Giant Bomb, and then at one point Ben Starr
<v Speaker 3>needed to get past us and we were in his way,
<v Speaker 3>so I told Jan because Jan was his back was
<v Speaker 3>to then, so I said, jam Ben stars trying to
<v Speaker 3>get by, and then we side stepped him and he
<v Speaker 3>said thank.
<v Speaker 2>You, thank you.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Yeah. Jennifer English was there too. Matt Mercer popped
<v Speaker 3>in for a spell. But yeah, like I said, it
<v Speaker 3>was it was fun to go to see a bunch
<v Speaker 3>of people. And I was there for other things too,
<v Speaker 3>like other sort of like smaller demo events that were happening,
<v Speaker 3>like the day before the day of played a couple
<v Speaker 3>of games I'd like to touch on, one of which
<v Speaker 3>was Beach Drove.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, yeah, yeah, you guess familiar with real or was
<v Speaker 4>it before that?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah? I was known before that, but I maybe Data
<v Speaker 3>Dance was maybe the first, like really big showing. But
<v Speaker 3>I went to a a demo session for that and
<v Speaker 3>played about an hour of it. It's a kind of
<v Speaker 3>cozy cooking game but also a like card based roguelike
<v Speaker 3>where you play as this like anthropomorphic kind of like
<v Speaker 3>fox Chef, who is like as far as cans like
<v Speaker 3>running a restaurant and you're building up this town and
<v Speaker 3>it's got a bit of it's got a bit of
<v Speaker 3>a day of the diver structure where it like your
<v Speaker 3>days are segmented, where a portion of the day is
<v Speaker 3>preparing ingredients, like preparing to open the restaurant. You're like
<v Speaker 3>going around town. You're you're buying ingredients or growing crops
<v Speaker 3>at some point. And then you have the opening the restaurant.
<v Speaker 3>You're running it where you're creating dishes and you have
<v Speaker 3>to appeal to patron's different taste and try to like
<v Speaker 3>you know, not screw up any dishes. And I like
<v Speaker 3>this part is all the cooking men a game. All
<v Speaker 3>the cooking we're like fun mini games where like oh,
<v Speaker 3>you're chopping the keras, you gotta like it's almost like
<v Speaker 3>a guitar hero esque like like no notes coming down
<v Speaker 3>the line and you gotta like hit it in the
<v Speaker 3>rhythm and sink. And it was like decently challenging to
<v Speaker 3>where it felt engaging or like to boil food. It
<v Speaker 3>was like this. It was almost like a shoot the
<v Speaker 3>hoop style. Then again, like you know, like when you
<v Speaker 3>shoot the hoops in arcades. It's kind of like that
<v Speaker 3>where you like there's like three basket or three pots
<v Speaker 3>of water, and depending on how long you hold the
<v Speaker 3>button down that comes to the or determines the trajectory
<v Speaker 3>of the food you're throwing in. And then they tell
<v Speaker 3>you which pots you need to throw it in, so
<v Speaker 3>you're like, Okay, I need to throw it in the
<v Speaker 3>closest pots, so I don't want to hold it down
<v Speaker 3>too long, so I need like a little baby throw
<v Speaker 3>versus longer throw for the last pot. Also, that's a
<v Speaker 3>terrible way to cook food. You should probably already if
<v Speaker 3>it's boiling, and even if.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, maybe it's overcooked, yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Maybe a little bit. Yeah, but yeah, I don't recommend
<v Speaker 3>shooting your your food into boiling pots of water. Don't
<v Speaker 3>do it. But then after the restaurant closes is the
<v Speaker 3>roguelike part where you play where you don't play as
<v Speaker 3>the chef, which you play is one of his buddies
<v Speaker 3>or different buddies, and they sort of like almost in
<v Speaker 3>media reds, they kind of like recount their trip to
<v Speaker 3>get like ingredients for you, where they're like, oh, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I went out to a cave today and this is
<v Speaker 3>what happened, and then unfolds is this like cool puppet
<v Speaker 3>show where you're just playing like little Wooden Standys as
<v Speaker 3>the character, and then you're just walking down the line
<v Speaker 3>or you know, puppeting down the line, whatever you want
<v Speaker 3>to call it, and you're just running into enemies and
<v Speaker 3>then you're battling them in these like card turn based
<v Speaker 3>card battles where you're matching card synergies and are all
<v Speaker 3>like I believe, like types of food or ingredients, but
<v Speaker 3>it's all about like trying to find flavor synergies based
<v Speaker 3>on the enemies that you're fighting, where like if this
<v Speaker 3>person has a certain car and they're all like color coded,
<v Speaker 3>then it's like, okay, do I have a card that
<v Speaker 3>has like that either enhances my cards based on like
<v Speaker 3>a flavor profile, or does it like I guess, like
<v Speaker 3>directly beat one of their cards, and you know the
<v Speaker 3>cards are like a numerical value of like, well, my
<v Speaker 3>numbers higher, so I can I should be able to
<v Speaker 3>get over this. But this guy has a card that
<v Speaker 3>I don't have, like a a a flavor or type
<v Speaker 3>of card that is like emphatical to that one, so
<v Speaker 3>I either have the discard or take a hit.
<v Speaker 4>But it was pretty fun, like the kinds of flavors
<v Speaker 4>would be. Is it just like spicy or sweet or
<v Speaker 4>is it like.
<v Speaker 3>I think it's said, I forget if they're named. I
<v Speaker 3>know there's like there's like a reference guy that you
<v Speaker 3>can pull up that kind of shows you like almost
<v Speaker 3>like rock Peper, so like this beats this, this, this,
<v Speaker 3>these flavors go together. These already in the sort of
<v Speaker 3>like the paths of Enhancement or whatnot. But yeah, it's
<v Speaker 3>it's it's like pretty it's like pretty good. Like it's
<v Speaker 3>it's decent. There's like some decent strategy involved. I don't
<v Speaker 3>know how much it involves. I was playing like the
<v Speaker 3>second the second like day two pretty much. So it's
<v Speaker 3>like like just afted the tutorial, which I think the
<v Speaker 3>Steam demo that's out now. I think it's like the
<v Speaker 3>first two or three days, so you'll be able to
<v Speaker 3>play the section that I played with. Yeah, it came
<v Speaker 3>out during Day to devs if I remember correctly. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>but it seems fun, like it's got like a nice
<v Speaker 3>little kind of like almost like DreamWorks the art direction.
<v Speaker 3>It's got like a cozy five to it. I would
<v Speaker 3>I would mess around with it some more, but uh, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>that's supposed to come out sometime next year. And then
<v Speaker 3>the other game I played that was maybe a bit
<v Speaker 3>of a surprise in terms of how much I liked
<v Speaker 3>it was Damon and Baby. Have you guys heard of this?
<v Speaker 2>This is the I've heard of it?
<v Speaker 3>Yes, yeah, so this is the Arc System Works game.
<v Speaker 3>You know. Arc system probably best known for fighting games
<v Speaker 3>like Dragon Ball Fighters and Guilty Gear and Marvel Token
<v Speaker 3>next year. But this is a this is a like
<v Speaker 3>isommetric or like bullet hell game where you play as
<v Speaker 3>a demon who somehow becomes like demonically attached to a
<v Speaker 3>human child. And despite it being called Damon and Baby,
<v Speaker 3>the baby in question is a little bit more of
<v Speaker 3>a toddler. Is like, she looks like she's maybe like
<v Speaker 3>two years old just in terms of just her size,
<v Speaker 3>and she's got a full heat of hair and stuff.
<v Speaker 3>But regardless, she's she's a young a young person cannot
<v Speaker 3>speak very well. And Damon and toddler maybe we should
<v Speaker 3>call it. But basically, for whatever reason, this demon has
<v Speaker 3>like a is like demonically like almost like like a contract,
<v Speaker 3>like you are bound to this human no matter what,
<v Speaker 3>and he's not happy about it, and like the baby's
<v Speaker 3>like on your back and you're just exploring at least
<v Speaker 3>the section I played, like I played a toy. We're
<v Speaker 3>fighting in like hell or the underworld, and then eventually
<v Speaker 3>going back to the surface. And what I like about
<v Speaker 3>the game is that like it's an isometric bullet hell
<v Speaker 3>game kind of like twin stick shooter, where you get
<v Speaker 3>a bunch of different guns. You got like machine guns, handguns, shotguns,
<v Speaker 3>and you're just fighting these enemies at all fire back
<v Speaker 3>at you with like kind of like bullet hell style patterns,
<v Speaker 3>like a lot of spread shots and and like line
<v Speaker 3>shots that you're dodging. But it feels really good. Like
<v Speaker 3>one thing, I like how destructible it is. Like the
<v Speaker 3>second level I played that was I don't know how
<v Speaker 3>deep in the game it was, but I was going
<v Speaker 3>through like a like a mansion like on on like
<v Speaker 3>in the real world, and I was trying to the
<v Speaker 3>mission I had to find some like the Lord of
<v Speaker 3>the manor who was locked up somewhere, but he was
<v Speaker 3>behind a bunch of locked doors. And it became this
<v Speaker 3>kind of like surprising exercise of like almost like a
<v Speaker 3>survi well maybe not survival horror game, but just the
<v Speaker 3>the extras, like oh I need to find keys to
<v Speaker 3>get through these various sores. Okay, where do I find
<v Speaker 3>these keys? I need to explore all these rooms, and
<v Speaker 3>like a lot of the rooms the enemies were like
<v Speaker 3>possessed objects, so I would like walk into a room
<v Speaker 3>and then like the cabinet would start attacking me. Or
<v Speaker 3>there were like these dolls behind glass cases where if
<v Speaker 3>you accidentally shot them and broke them, the dolls would
<v Speaker 3>come to life and sprout these like long like spider
<v Speaker 3>arms and then just start like rushing you. And it
<v Speaker 3>sounds scary, but like it's got a really cute like
<v Speaker 3>arc direction, and it's not like a really big sense
<v Speaker 3>of humor. Like honestly, the humor reminds me a lot
<v Speaker 3>of the Diskaya series, which fits the sort of like
<v Speaker 3>underworld theme. Yeah yeah, like what if demons were funny
<v Speaker 3>kind of a thing. But yeah, it's it's so you're
<v Speaker 3>like blasting through all these environments. It feels like the
<v Speaker 3>shooting feels pretty good. You're finding Ammo like constantly, so
<v Speaker 3>it's like encouraging, like no, just go in there and
<v Speaker 3>just blow everything up, and it's like fun and it's
<v Speaker 3>like satisfying in that, like I just want to blow
<v Speaker 3>away everything. I like all the guns. There's different types
<v Speaker 3>of guns too, like they all have like different properties
<v Speaker 3>of like oh, here's like three different machine guns, but
<v Speaker 3>maybe one of them heals you, or maybe this other
<v Speaker 3>one shoots a little slower but has more power. Like
<v Speaker 3>you're kind of weighing different stats as you're picking them up,
<v Speaker 3>and you're also finding food and ingredients because you can
<v Speaker 3>cook dishes that heal you and give you all these
<v Speaker 3>different buffs. And you're also like there's like fun secrets
<v Speaker 3>you can find, and even puzzles like I found like
<v Speaker 3>all on the way, I'm like finding memos and then
<v Speaker 3>I need to use those memos for a like combination
<v Speaker 3>lock to access an important area. And again it was like,
<v Speaker 3>surprisingly it was survival horrory in that kind of like
<v Speaker 3>at least in the style of puzzle reminded me of
<v Speaker 3>that like a Resident for or something like that, which
<v Speaker 3>again I didn't expect in a game that I just
<v Speaker 3>thought would be like, oh, you just go in a
<v Speaker 3>room and just blast everybody. But yeah, it's it's cool
<v Speaker 3>like it was. It was it's still very early, like
<v Speaker 3>the the pr was letting me know, like, yeah, this
<v Speaker 3>build is like this isn't even like a demo build.
<v Speaker 3>This is just like an internal building we put together,
<v Speaker 3>so it's it's going to be a minute. So it
<v Speaker 3>was a little rough in spots, but even then I
<v Speaker 3>had so much fun with it. And honestly, the whole
<v Speaker 3>time I was thinking and maybe because I was playing
<v Speaker 3>on PC, but I was playing on steam Deck. Like
<v Speaker 3>they didn't have any regular controllers, so they just had
<v Speaker 3>a steam Deck set up so you can either look
<v Speaker 3>at the monitor or you can just look down at
<v Speaker 3>the steam Deck screen. But yeah, it was like, oh,
<v Speaker 3>this feels like a good handheld game. Like honestly, like
<v Speaker 3>just the fun little twinstic shooter are going around. It's
<v Speaker 3>got like a goofy fun art style, just blasting everything.
<v Speaker 3>Like I could picture myself just laying a bed just
<v Speaker 3>running through this. And some of the like dialogue and
<v Speaker 3>conversations I was encountered are like, oh, there's like a
<v Speaker 3>charm to this. So yeah, this game was like kind
<v Speaker 3>of on my radar just because it was like a
<v Speaker 3>weird thing coming from Arcsist. But now it's like, oh,
<v Speaker 3>i I'm actively like looking forward to this now, and
<v Speaker 3>that's also supposed to come out next year, so Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>that's uh Damon and Baby.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that one looks cool. I really liked the art style.
<v Speaker 1>There's like a nice bloom to everything a little bit,
<v Speaker 1>at least on the surface areas, and like like that
<v Speaker 1>there's like a dusty town that they're running through and
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, I like the setting.
<v Speaker 2>It looks cool. I want to check it out. Also,
<v Speaker 2>I haven't played a twenty six shooter in a while,
<v Speaker 2>so me neither.
<v Speaker 3>Actually, I trying to think, like I feel like that
<v Speaker 3>was they were like in vogue during like the early
<v Speaker 3>Xbox Live Arcade days, maybe like with Geometry Wars and
<v Speaker 3>like for Start as HD, and it felt like yeah,
<v Speaker 3>like or like what was the the zombie one that
<v Speaker 3>they did, like two of them for like p S
<v Speaker 3>three Dead Dead something. I mean, you could play co Op.
<v Speaker 3>I know the word you're talking about, dead Side. No,
<v Speaker 3>this is gonna bother me. I used to play a
<v Speaker 3>lot of it with my friends on PS.
<v Speaker 2>I know exactly what you're talking about. I can see
<v Speaker 2>the cover.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, let us know in the comments if you remember,
<v Speaker 3>unless I scream it out later on the show. But yeah,
<v Speaker 3>it was, like like you said, it felt like a
<v Speaker 3>fun throw about, like yeah, I feel like I don't
<v Speaker 3>play a lot of these anymore. This is this seems
<v Speaker 3>like this could be a good one.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah that's dead Ops, that sounds right. No, that's not
<v Speaker 2>okay songs right, you're thinking wrong.
<v Speaker 3>I'm thinking of something different when I hear it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's fair.
<v Speaker 1>Uh well cool, Well that's a bit about the Game Awards.
<v Speaker 1>Cool that you got to go in person and uh,
<v Speaker 1>you know, shake some hands, play some games, move out of.
<v Speaker 3>People's way, get out of the way of important people.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I thought we would shift gears for a second
<v Speaker 1>and get into our Steam replays. Uh and I you know,
<v Speaker 1>I I predominantly play on Steam.
<v Speaker 2>Uh so I don't.
<v Speaker 1>I'm curious to see, like how ours compares to each other,
<v Speaker 1>because I know probably Marcus, you're the next in line
<v Speaker 1>line in terms of like Steam usage, I would think, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and then Charles you kind of dabble and Steam here
<v Speaker 1>and there.
<v Speaker 4>I'm more, Yeah, I'll play something on Steam. Deck is
<v Speaker 4>usually my thing. So yeah, so it's not like my
<v Speaker 4>primary platform if it's like a big new game, but
<v Speaker 4>if it's like an indie thing, I'll pick it on.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, well I guess I'll start These are these are cool.
<v Speaker 1>I also got a Discord one Discord randomly gave me
<v Speaker 1>a replay as well. Is there because I yeah, actually, okay,
<v Speaker 1>because I play a lot of games that aren't on Steam,
<v Speaker 1>a lot of other PC like I play a lot
<v Speaker 1>in Battlenet, and I play a fair mountain etic game store,
<v Speaker 1>and Discord kind of has all of them. And it
<v Speaker 1>says your favorite games. You played seventy one games this year.
<v Speaker 1>These were your favorites Number one with eighty four sessions
<v Speaker 1>logged League of Legends.
<v Speaker 4>Oh congrass, you did.
<v Speaker 2>It, yeah, and this was.
<v Speaker 1>I posted this win December fifth, So I'm probably close
<v Speaker 1>to one hundred now because I've played a lot of
<v Speaker 1>League this month, So one hundred sessions will say or
<v Speaker 1>so of League this year. It says I put in
<v Speaker 1>thirty one Fortnite sessions, which is more than I thought
<v Speaker 1>I did this year. Honestly, maybe I played at the
<v Speaker 1>beginning of the year. I usually get back in around
<v Speaker 1>the holidays and then I'm out again. Twenty three sessions
<v Speaker 1>of World of Warcraft, but then another fourteen sessions of
<v Speaker 1>World of Warcraft Classic, So what is that? Thirty seven
<v Speaker 1>sessions of Wow, and then Deadlock with fifteen sessions.
<v Speaker 3>That's the Valve game, right, Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>It's the Valve Mobile. Eric and I have talked about
<v Speaker 1>it a few times this year on the show. That's
<v Speaker 1>my Discord one.
<v Speaker 3>But let's get into the scene replay well real quick
<v Speaker 3>for Discord. Do you guys want to know who my
<v Speaker 3>two most called people are?
<v Speaker 2>Like, oh, did you do it? Okay, yeah, I want
<v Speaker 2>to Yeah, it's it's YouTube.
<v Speaker 4>Really, that's so funny.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, like Charles, You're my most it said Charles hard
<v Speaker 3>is the person I've spent the most time on Discord
<v Speaker 3>calls with, which makes sense because.
<v Speaker 2>Of replay replay.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and then you were number two, Alex, and I
<v Speaker 3>forgot who number three was, but it was probably another coworker,
<v Speaker 3>which makes sense. It let be use Discord a lot
<v Speaker 3>for the podcast and Kyle probably it probably was Kyle.
<v Speaker 2>If not, we'll give it to him.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, but yeah, it was like oh, and I was like, oh, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I guess that makes sense because like, yeah, I use
<v Speaker 3>Discord with my friends, but we're like when we don't
<v Speaker 3>do video, we're just like on a call call and
<v Speaker 3>we're not you know, just the sheer amount of hours
<v Speaker 3>as they come close to what we do for just
<v Speaker 3>you know, our work stuff. Yeah, work projects. I was like, so,
<v Speaker 3>congrats to you, Charles and Alex. You did it. Thank
<v Speaker 3>you in a second, you know, I look forward. We'll
<v Speaker 3>see if that changes this year. Maybe Alex you can
<v Speaker 3>overtake Charles.
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna try.
<v Speaker 4>I'm really gonna replay.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah about a replay.
<v Speaker 2>All start a new series with Marcus, do it?
<v Speaker 3>Wow?
<v Speaker 2>Because we all have so much, so much room on
<v Speaker 2>our plates.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I've been looking for front of the project. This year.
<v Speaker 1>You played a lot of new games, unlocked quite a
<v Speaker 1>few achievements. It says I played fifty nine games, which
<v Speaker 1>is one fewer.
<v Speaker 2>Than last year.
<v Speaker 3>Wow.
<v Speaker 1>Forty nine of those were new games. Five of those
<v Speaker 1>were play tests. I unlocked two hundred and fifty four achievements,
<v Speaker 1>which I feel like isn't a ton, But I did
<v Speaker 1>get twenty seven rare achievements. Interesting, I played seventy five
<v Speaker 1>percent with keyboard and mouse.
<v Speaker 2>And then.
<v Speaker 1>How you compare stack your year against the rest of
<v Speaker 1>the Steam community. Wow, I'm I'm blowing them away, so
<v Speaker 1>the average away.
<v Speaker 4>I'm past all these medians also, and I don't I
<v Speaker 4>guess I used Steve a decent amount. But I thought
<v Speaker 4>it was funny that, like, is it just a bunch
<v Speaker 4>of inactive accounts? Am I am? I more of a
<v Speaker 4>gamer than I thought I was.
<v Speaker 3>I don't know if it's just like, especially for our jobs,
<v Speaker 3>a sheer amount of like we get a lot of
<v Speaker 3>PC codes, you know to play for check this game? Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>or like or just yeah you said downloading Steave demos
<v Speaker 3>that she checks the foul so that that's probably what
<v Speaker 3>it is.
<v Speaker 1>If I had the guess, yeah, I figure I'll just
<v Speaker 1>go through mine and then we can just go through
<v Speaker 1>each each other's.
<v Speaker 2>Let's see. Yeah, eighty four percent new releases.
<v Speaker 4>Can I ask what your longest gaming was?
<v Speaker 1>Yes, I'm going to get to that. I have to
<v Speaker 1>find it. It is on here though, Uh you are
<v Speaker 1>what you play. The spider graph shows the kind of
<v Speaker 1>games you spent the most time in twenty twenty five.
<v Speaker 1>My pie chart is honestly, my pie chart is almost
<v Speaker 1>full in every direction.
<v Speaker 3>Not quite. It's like when you say, everybody out on
<v Speaker 3>a mission and dispatch.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so ask and I guess.
<v Speaker 4>Can I guess what it is?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? Well, there are multiple there are multiple tags. These
<v Speaker 2>are like the Steam tags.
<v Speaker 4>I would I would guess Actually, yeah, no, I'm just
<v Speaker 4>gonna guess first person shooter is one of yours.
<v Speaker 1>No extraction shooters on there, they're more specific. How about
<v Speaker 1>I tell you, how about I tell you my graph
<v Speaker 1>what's on there, and you can tell me which direction
<v Speaker 1>you think it is.
<v Speaker 4>Well, you just said it was kind of all you
<v Speaker 4>do it? Do it for Marcus?
<v Speaker 1>Okay, Extraction Shooter, Mobile Destruction, Soul's Life, party game, Hunting, hunting.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know what that fire up like a cabellas
<v Speaker 1>this year definitely.
<v Speaker 4>Not so wait, what are we just doing like deer
<v Speaker 4>hunting simulators whatever? Reason not?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, all right, I don't know what the hunting things from,
<v Speaker 1>but it's some game I played.
<v Speaker 2>I guess had that on a tag because you can
<v Speaker 2>add like dozens.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, my my gra I'll just tell you my graph
<v Speaker 1>is just like maxed out all the way like touching
<v Speaker 1>the confines of the graph in Extraction Shooter or Mobile
<v Speaker 1>Destruction and Souls like then it kind of comes back
<v Speaker 1>to like the middle area for party game, and then
<v Speaker 1>hunting game is just kind of like I think hunting
<v Speaker 1>just I don't know there's even like there's not a
<v Speaker 1>point either going towards hunting. It's like party game is
<v Speaker 1>cutting across hunting to get the extraction shooter.
<v Speaker 2>It's very weird.
<v Speaker 1>I had fourteen new friends at popular screenshot shared eight.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, this is dumb.
<v Speaker 1>Let's take a closer look at your top played games. Blueprints,
<v Speaker 1>how many of your runs are ruined by the archives?
<v Speaker 1>Twelve percent of total playtime seventeen sessions, eight day streak,
<v Speaker 1>and I started it this year. My ninety six percent
<v Speaker 1>of my playtime in Blueprints was in April, which tracks deadlock.
<v Speaker 1>The baroness is always looking for new guests. Deadlock is
<v Speaker 1>ten percent of my total playtime twenty six sessions played.
<v Speaker 1>I had a six day streak. I played thirty three
<v Speaker 1>percent of that in August, and then September was sixty
<v Speaker 1>seven percent. Arc Raiders ten percent of my playtime nineteen
<v Speaker 1>sessions six day streak, seventeen percent in October eighty three,
<v Speaker 1>in November the finals. Another inmbark game, fifteen percent of
<v Speaker 1>your playtime in the finals was in January, forty seven
<v Speaker 1>percent was in March. That was definitely a new season
<v Speaker 1>a little bit in.
<v Speaker 4>July that Blueprints was your number one, but doesn't seem
<v Speaker 4>to be reflected on your chart at all.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I don't get that. Yeah, it's not in my
<v Speaker 2>puzzle like no puzzle games. Yeah, yeah, so I don't know.
<v Speaker 3>And Blueprints is an extraction shooter. That's why you have
<v Speaker 3>to extract knowledge each day.
<v Speaker 1>I had twenty two sessions of the finals. Almost all
<v Speaker 1>those would be with Leo Vader Elden Ring Night ringing
<v Speaker 1>six percent of my total playtime eleven sessions, seven day
<v Speaker 1>streak that was in May. Playtime by month, interesting. I
<v Speaker 1>had a lot of playtime in April. That was the
<v Speaker 1>biggest month of gaming for me.
<v Speaker 3>We were coming back too, like we were in the
<v Speaker 3>midst of our.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I think I think we were. Probably I was.
<v Speaker 2>I was energized.
<v Speaker 1>You know, sixty three games played on PC, eight on
<v Speaker 1>steam Deck. I'm surprised it's not more. But of Blueprints,
<v Speaker 1>I played on steam Deck, thirty percent of ballocks Pit
<v Speaker 1>I played on Steam Deck, and Citizens Sleeper, Cyberpunk and
<v Speaker 1>Everybody's Hot Chop Golf, anything else interesting? No, oh, you're
<v Speaker 1>asking about my streak, Charles. My daily longest daily streak
<v Speaker 1>was eleven days.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, is that normal?
<v Speaker 2>That's pretty I beat yours.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I also did.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I have a life. What can I say, I
<v Speaker 2>got things to do. It was probably it was probably
<v Speaker 2>another launcher. I was playing League of Legends.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I assume it was a review. Like I probably
<v Speaker 3>had a review that I had to do on Steam.
<v Speaker 3>I had today.
<v Speaker 4>I had Baby Steps Hades to consume, me.
<v Speaker 3>Back to review.
<v Speaker 4>So I would bet that was. My streak was thirteen.
<v Speaker 3>Days okay, yeah, line was longer than that.
<v Speaker 1>It tells you what you played during them. My my
<v Speaker 1>streak was May twenty second through June second. During this time,
<v Speaker 1>you played four different games, skin Deep Expedition thirty three,
<v Speaker 1>Elden Ring, Night Rain, and split Gate Arena reloaded. And
<v Speaker 1>then they get into a really and they have a
<v Speaker 1>cool I'm not going to go through all of it.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not gonna go through it at all at all. Actually,
<v Speaker 1>but they give you like a whole breakdown of every
<v Speaker 1>game you played throughout the year.
<v Speaker 2>In a month by month timeline.
<v Speaker 1>There's really not a ton of super interesting picks other
<v Speaker 1>than I forgot hyper Light Breaker came out.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah this year.
<v Speaker 3>That was January.
<v Speaker 4>Poor game.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, poor game. Eternal strands about that one.
<v Speaker 3>It was also January or February.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that.
<v Speaker 4>Was one that we were like maybe gonna do for
<v Speaker 4>our comeback review. Right, Yeah, I don't think we got
<v Speaker 4>to March.
<v Speaker 1>I played a lot of mind Over Magic, which is
<v Speaker 1>a colony sim like almost like Fallout Shelter style, but
<v Speaker 1>you're running a magic academy. I played That made up
<v Speaker 1>twenty seven percent of my playtime in March, with the
<v Speaker 1>finals being at forty three. Uh oh, Door Kickers too interesting,
<v Speaker 1>Ruin Escaped Dragon Wilds I forgot that came out this year.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, well.
<v Speaker 3>Like yeah, I lost an early access this year.
<v Speaker 4>I do want to move to ours real quick.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Please, Also, Alex, I know you had a hard out.
<v Speaker 4>I don't know how close we are did that.
<v Speaker 2>We're okay, we can keep going.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, cool, I'll run through some of mine real quick.
<v Speaker 4>I don't need to hit all the things. But I
<v Speaker 4>had twenty seven games played this year, which is nine
<v Speaker 4>more than last year.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's good.
<v Speaker 4>Roman Raids. Yeah. My most played game was also Blueprints,
<v Speaker 4>twenty two sessions, seventeen percent of my playtime, eighty four
<v Speaker 4>percent in April and then sixteen percent in November because
<v Speaker 4>the listen and I started up a new save go
<v Speaker 4>to it my number.
<v Speaker 1>Two You had more more sessions, so many more sessions.
<v Speaker 1>I forgot you picked it back up?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, yeah.
<v Speaker 4>I also would play that game for like nine straight
<v Speaker 4>hours and it would just like anyways, second most played game,
<v Speaker 4>Monster Trained two, which is one of my Yeah that's
<v Speaker 4>gonna be. I think we're doing like a bunch of
<v Speaker 4>end of year articles about like games we want to recommend,
<v Speaker 4>and that this is one that, like, I feel like,
<v Speaker 4>is so much better than a lot of people. It
<v Speaker 4>kind of went under the radar for a lot of people,
<v Speaker 4>but it's just such an awesome game. And I played
<v Speaker 4>a lot for the review, but I played before and
<v Speaker 4>after that also because it's great. And then my third
<v Speaker 4>most played game is Done and Ron but two Goodbye Despair,
<v Speaker 4>Oh all in January. This is like a perfect game
<v Speaker 4>for when you're unemployed because it's so long you just
<v Speaker 4>kind of have to sit through a lot of dialog,
<v Speaker 4>and it was just like the kind of thing where
<v Speaker 4>I would wake up clock into Dog and romp with
<v Speaker 4>two and then play it for six to eight hours
<v Speaker 4>in a day or whatever.
<v Speaker 2>What was your graph? What you played?
<v Speaker 3>Like?
<v Speaker 2>Your tags?
<v Speaker 3>Oh?
<v Speaker 4>My tags?
<v Speaker 3>Uh?
<v Speaker 4>Roguelike deck Builder and deck Building are both maxed out,
<v Speaker 4>and then walking simulator is pretty high and then fast
<v Speaker 4>paced which is interesting, and then hand drawn for you No,
<v Speaker 4>no hunting that is nothing to do with blueprints. Would
<v Speaker 4>you say in market.
<v Speaker 3>That said you gotta get your hunting stat up?
<v Speaker 4>I clearly do.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>And then my next one is Death Howl, which'll talk
<v Speaker 4>about later on the podcast, and then Baby Steps, which
<v Speaker 4>I had to review, which I suffered through, which is fine.
<v Speaker 3>Uh.
<v Speaker 4>And then I'm I'm actually sixty five percent steam Deck,
<v Speaker 4>thirty five percent Windows, which surprised me. I guess I've
<v Speaker 4>been playing more Windows for Death Howl and played Root
<v Speaker 4>Trees are Dead on the cup a lot because it's
<v Speaker 4>used with the keyboard and a mouse and that and
<v Speaker 4>my longest street was actually in April. It was Blueprints,
<v Speaker 4>Haste Arco and Monster Trained two.
<v Speaker 2>Oh Haste, Yeah is good?
<v Speaker 4>Uh Marcus, what about you?
<v Speaker 3>All right, kiddos, buckle up because I've had thirty nine
<v Speaker 3>games that's played this year, which apparently nine games fewer
<v Speaker 3>than last year. Let's see, I'm fifty four percent with
<v Speaker 3>a controller, forty six percent keyboard and mouse, which is
<v Speaker 3>more than I would have thought because I am not
<v Speaker 3>a I guarantee that's more like it's less keyboard and
<v Speaker 3>more mouse, because I played a lot of point click
<v Speaker 3>games this year because I'm not sure I am not
<v Speaker 3>a mouse and keyboard person at all. I plug in
<v Speaker 3>a controller whenever I can. And then my three most
<v Speaker 3>played games. Number one, to no surprise, Eugo Master Duel.
<v Speaker 3>That has been my number one. That's my number one
<v Speaker 3>plates the since that game came out. It's a bit
<v Speaker 3>on the street. It's like up twenty percent of my playtime.
<v Speaker 3>Second place, The Root Trees Are Dead really back in January.
<v Speaker 3>I mean I put a lot of time today game,
<v Speaker 3>and there are a lot of periods where you can
<v Speaker 3>attest it to charge where you're just staring at the
<v Speaker 3>screen and nothing happens for like hours because you're trying
<v Speaker 3>to figure something out, so that I probably inflates the
<v Speaker 3>playtime too. And then number three was Loreline the Laser Eyes,
<v Speaker 3>which I started in twenty twenty four but I didn't
<v Speaker 3>finish until the beginning of this year. But I still
<v Speaker 3>put in a lot of time this year. And that's
<v Speaker 3>another game where you're staring at things for long periods
<v Speaker 3>and nothing's happening as you try to figure out this stuff.
<v Speaker 3>So I was not surprised to see those last two
<v Speaker 3>crack the top. Let's see here, I had My longest
<v Speaker 3>play streak was eighteen days.
<v Speaker 2>Whoa gamer?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, sorry, just real gamer over here?
<v Speaker 4>Whoa gamer?
<v Speaker 3>Let's see fifty eight percent of my games or new
<v Speaker 3>releases in terms of my like tags on a little
<v Speaker 3>circle chart thing. It's it's a lot more clear. So
<v Speaker 3>the ones that are maxed out are Metroidvan and turn
<v Speaker 3>based Tactics.
<v Speaker 2>Oh so turn based tactics.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I'm trying to think of what I played, Like
<v Speaker 3>metro Mania I could get because I played, Yeah, and
<v Speaker 3>I played Possessors for review on Steam. I played I
<v Speaker 3>finished Nine Souls this year, which was again I hold
<v Speaker 3>over from twenty twenty four. And then also I played
<v Speaker 3>inter Magnolia Bloom in the Mist, which I reveive was
<v Speaker 3>one of the first reviews when we came back because
<v Speaker 3>that when we came back, Yeah, that was like a
<v Speaker 3>February release too.
<v Speaker 2>I have a question for you.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I've heard some people say that Nine Souls is
<v Speaker 1>harder than Silk Song.
<v Speaker 4>We do agree with that. Interesting, I have I played
<v Speaker 4>a lot more of Nine Souls than I did of
<v Speaker 4>Silk Song, and I I don't know if I would
<v Speaker 4>say it's harder, but I found it a lot less
<v Speaker 4>frustrating because the Nine Souls you have a lot more tools.
<v Speaker 4>Do you have a lot maybe maybe at the end
<v Speaker 4>of the game, like it's more comparable. But Nine Souls
<v Speaker 4>was a lot easier for me personally to get through.
<v Speaker 3>Nine Souls is it's easier to Charles's point, in a
<v Speaker 3>sense that sort of equipping things, it's not as restrictive
<v Speaker 3>as Hollow I is, where you really have to make
<v Speaker 3>some hard choices about your loto. Nine Souls is a
<v Speaker 3>little bit more flexible, like you can you can just
<v Speaker 3>hold on to things more. And but like in terms
<v Speaker 3>of the combat, it's it's because it's pretty much like
<v Speaker 3>it's like two D Secaro. It's like very very heavy
<v Speaker 3>and actually.
<v Speaker 4>Better at parrying than Silk Songs, just like avoiding kind of.
<v Speaker 3>They're both tough games, and I think they're both great.
<v Speaker 3>Like Nine Soles is a gem from last year that
<v Speaker 3>more people should play. I think it's a great game
<v Speaker 3>and I I and I actually interviewed the team for
<v Speaker 3>a Future a while back where I talked to him
<v Speaker 3>about this game before it came out. But yeah, I
<v Speaker 3>don't know. I think, yeah, if you like hard metro
<v Speaker 3>vanias I guess to go for for sure movie, you
<v Speaker 3>throw blasphemous in there too. But yeah, so like those
<v Speaker 3>are in there. Let's see what else are we looking at.
<v Speaker 3>Let's see, I'm just scrolling down stats trying to find
<v Speaker 3>something interesting here.
<v Speaker 2>Let's see what's your playtime by month?
<v Speaker 3>I just got there. Good, my playtime by month? So
<v Speaker 3>my number one is January, which makes sense because I
<v Speaker 3>was unemployed and have more time and also reached.
<v Speaker 2>January was my the January and June.
<v Speaker 1>Uh, three percent of this year's playtime was in June
<v Speaker 1>and four percent of this year's playtime was in January.
<v Speaker 1>I might have been playing on other platforms and stuff
<v Speaker 1>during those months.
<v Speaker 4>Or actually those are those high for you, Alex?
<v Speaker 2>Or is that those are my lows?
<v Speaker 4>Okay?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah? Oh you know what I just in June, I
<v Speaker 3>just realized that most of my January playtime was not
<v Speaker 3>Route traf. I forgot. I didn't play Route Trees until
<v Speaker 3>early March. So like it was Lorale, it was. It
<v Speaker 3>was the carryover of Lowerlei and then Nine Souls and
<v Speaker 3>then also you know Yu gi Oh's and all of
<v Speaker 3>these and then but yeah, my second most is actually
<v Speaker 3>October because of Yugio Masterdool and then also let's see Possessions,
<v Speaker 3>which I have to play for review, and also a
<v Speaker 3>lot of Mugenics because I was playing a build of
<v Speaker 3>that game for the big feature radio of Eugenics. Yeah
<v Speaker 3>and yeah, and that build was more or less like
<v Speaker 3>I think Edmund McMillan's tim He's like, this is more
<v Speaker 3>or less the finished game because they're just in the
<v Speaker 3>polishing phase at this point, so I could there's a
<v Speaker 3>lot of game in that. And then my third most
<v Speaker 3>played month is March, which had root trees taking up
<v Speaker 3>the bulk of it, and then like inder lilies and stuff.
<v Speaker 3>But yeah, and like I said, everything was like, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>you play a lot with a controller, you weak PC person.
<v Speaker 1>You said your longest streak was how many days eighteen eighteen?
<v Speaker 3>Baby?
<v Speaker 2>Which games were in that?
<v Speaker 3>How do I see that?
<v Speaker 2>Do you have to click into it or if you
<v Speaker 2>keep scrolling down?
<v Speaker 3>Okay at the bottom, yeah, oh here it is okay,
<v Speaker 3>so long as daily three eighteen. So for from Tuesday
<v Speaker 3>March eleven to Saturday, March ninth, and I played five
<v Speaker 3>different games. They were Yugio Master Duel Spilled, which is
<v Speaker 3>a really fun, cool little way in the game. Recommend
<v Speaker 3>Intero Magnolia the Root Trees are Dead. And the demo
<v Speaker 3>for Once Upon the Puppet It was like a puppet
<v Speaker 3>puppet platform and it kind of reminded me a lot
<v Speaker 3>of Do you guys remember Puppeteer for PS three? Remember
<v Speaker 3>that game? I think it was I think it was
<v Speaker 3>Japan's studio that made it. It had like kind of
<v Speaker 3>that vibe a little bit aesthetically at least. But yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I played a demo for that, I believe, actually, I
<v Speaker 3>think because that was when we were just starting to
<v Speaker 3>start back up, and I think our pr sent me
<v Speaker 3>a bill to my personal email just to be hey,
<v Speaker 3>you want to check it out? So yeah, I actually
<v Speaker 3>forgot about it until I saw it here.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, well cool, that's fun. I like that. So
<v Speaker 2>we got to go through that.
<v Speaker 3>So who's the best them? Gamer?
<v Speaker 2>Is it?
<v Speaker 3>Is it you? Alex? Are you the best?
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, Marcus, I feel like you are you
<v Speaker 1>the steamiest. Maybe I'm the steamiest, but.
<v Speaker 4>I'm glad I'm not the steamiest. I don't like that.
<v Speaker 4>That's that's I just do for us it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, I'll take that. I'll take the steamiest award.
<v Speaker 1>That's fine by me. I can hold that badge. I
<v Speaker 1>can wear it well. Before we take an ad break
<v Speaker 1>and get into our Midnight World of Warcraft Midnight cover story,
<v Speaker 1>I do want to toss to you Charles, to chat
<v Speaker 1>about two games. Even playing two recent games, death Howl
<v Speaker 1>and Donk Pile.
<v Speaker 3>They sound like they're the same games. They sound vaguely,
<v Speaker 3>they're so different.
<v Speaker 4>It's hilarious different there. So death Howl is interesting. I'm
<v Speaker 4>reviewing it. It's taking forever because it's a big game,
<v Speaker 4>and that's fine. It was kind of a last minute
<v Speaker 4>agreeing to do. But I if I had a one
<v Speaker 4>pager for every time I started reviewing a game and
<v Speaker 4>ended up being like forty hours long, I could write
<v Speaker 4>a whole freaking issue game. I tell you, I'm thirty
<v Speaker 4>hour is in right now. I have beaten three of
<v Speaker 4>the four main areas. I'm like halfway through the fourth,
<v Speaker 4>and then there's like a final kind of boss area,
<v Speaker 4>I think. But it is a Soul's like deck builder,
<v Speaker 4>so it is. It's not a roguelike deck builder. It's
<v Speaker 4>a souls like deck builder, So there's like bonfires where
<v Speaker 4>you heal and it's kind of like an open ish
<v Speaker 4>world and the enemies will respawn at different places, and
<v Speaker 4>it's hard and it's really it's like a very I
<v Speaker 4>kind of didn't love it at first, and it grew
<v Speaker 4>on me a lot, which I think is a lot
<v Speaker 4>of Souls games as you start out and you're like,
<v Speaker 4>this is so hard that it's mean, and then eventually
<v Speaker 4>you like it clicks for you and it starts getting
<v Speaker 4>I don't know better. That's kind of my arc with
<v Speaker 4>a lot of really hard games. But it's like a
<v Speaker 4>grid based combat and you have a deck of cards
<v Speaker 4>that changes over time, and the whole main mechanic is
<v Speaker 4>that each card has like a realm, so there's different
<v Speaker 4>parts of the spirit world that you're exploring and cards
<v Speaker 4>are tied to certain realms, and depending on what realm
<v Speaker 4>you're in, those cars will be like normal cost or more.
<v Speaker 3>So.
<v Speaker 4>There's like realmless cards, which are like your base cards
<v Speaker 4>that any deck can use, but depending on where you are,
<v Speaker 4>it'll kind of lock you into certain play styles and
<v Speaker 4>like certain cards, you can unlock an upgrade if you're
<v Speaker 4>using a realm of a card in a different realm,
<v Speaker 4>it costs one more, which is like prohibitively expensive. Most
<v Speaker 4>of the time, there's like no reason to use a
<v Speaker 4>card not the realm. So it's it's a fun game
<v Speaker 4>in that, like I've been playing it for this long,
<v Speaker 4>but it still kind of feels fresh because every time
<v Speaker 4>you start in a new area, it's like, well, this area,
<v Speaker 4>all the cards are built around block, so you'll get
<v Speaker 4>a lot of block and that'll make this do more
<v Speaker 4>damage and they'll make this cost less or whatever. My
<v Speaker 4>favorite area was based on like movement, so it's like
<v Speaker 4>the more that you moved on the grid, which usually
<v Speaker 4>takes up like when your action points, the more like
<v Speaker 4>damage you'll do or the more things will cost less. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>And it's just really it's a really fun arc to
<v Speaker 4>start out and be like, oh, I just have like
<v Speaker 4>my plane cards again, that's annoying. And then as you
<v Speaker 4>slowly unlock new cards, you like literally build a new
<v Speaker 4>deck in the way that you like, and so I
<v Speaker 4>enjoy that. Like loop Esthetically, it has like a very
<v Speaker 4>very specific atmosphere. It's like pixelated. I think I want
<v Speaker 4>to say it takes place in like h this is
<v Speaker 4>like kind of caveman Ish times and it's a Danish developer,
<v Speaker 4>so it's this like old European kind of folk tale style,
<v Speaker 4>and you're playing as a mother who's like chased her
<v Speaker 4>son into the after life because I presumably he died
<v Speaker 4>or he's gone into this spirit world. She's trying to
<v Speaker 4>get him back. So it's a story about grief. She
<v Speaker 4>interacts with a lot of these like big, larger than
<v Speaker 4>life spirits and kind of like learns life lessons, but
<v Speaker 4>she's very angry and upset. And then just the fact
<v Speaker 4>that the combat is so hard kind of like fits
<v Speaker 4>into the whole vibe of everything. But yeah, and it's
<v Speaker 4>a game that it's called death Howl because when you
<v Speaker 4>kill someone, you get a death howel it's essentially the
<v Speaker 4>same way as naming the game Dark Souls, because you
<v Speaker 4>kill someone, you get souls. But you spend death howls
<v Speaker 4>either to like level up your main experience, which you
<v Speaker 4>can get you likabilities, and that's also locked to the
<v Speaker 4>specific realms. So in the movement one, for example, if
<v Speaker 4>you use up enough stuff, you can unlock a like
<v Speaker 4>a meter to fill up that does a bunch of damage,
<v Speaker 4>and like a T shape that goes up from your
<v Speaker 4>character versus another one might give you more like man,
<v Speaker 4>another one might give you more help, et cetera. Sure, yeah,
<v Speaker 4>So there is an element that's nice and that is
<v Speaker 4>like a dark soul's which as hard as dark souls is,
<v Speaker 4>one of the nice things about like an RPG that's
<v Speaker 4>being a soul's like is if you're ever having too
<v Speaker 4>much trouble, you can stop fighting that boss and go
<v Speaker 4>grind on some enemies and like level up a bit,
<v Speaker 4>make yourself do more damage, get more health than.
<v Speaker 3>Also, I'm going to change your phrasing. You want to
<v Speaker 3>go kill some enemies, not grind on them.
<v Speaker 4>Sure, grind by game. Yeah, in this game you can
<v Speaker 4>do that. Also, if you're having a hard time in
<v Speaker 4>a certain spot, it's like, stop doing that, go somewhere else,
<v Speaker 4>level up more or unlock more cards, and you'll be
<v Speaker 4>surprised by like how big of a difference it makes
<v Speaker 4>when you have more like totems, which are like little
<v Speaker 4>things you can equip that give you like passive abilities
<v Speaker 4>and stuff. So it's like a big game. I think
<v Speaker 4>it's definitely like it's such an annoying thing to say
<v Speaker 4>this when you're reviewing games. Like, either you're gonna like
<v Speaker 4>it or you're not gonna like it. But it is
<v Speaker 4>very much that type of thing where it's like kind
<v Speaker 4>of an acquired taste. It'll be too hard for some people,
<v Speaker 4>but a lot of people really click with it. I'm
<v Speaker 4>enjoying it, and I think it's definitely definitely worth checking out.
<v Speaker 4>It came out like two weeks ago. I believe it's
<v Speaker 4>on game Pass, So if you're interested in playing it,
<v Speaker 4>I would recommend it.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, this is the Outer Zone. Who did the last
<v Speaker 3>game before this was Taught or Scanners? Mind Scanners?
<v Speaker 2>What? I haven't heard of that.
<v Speaker 3>Twenty one game. I never played it, but I remember
<v Speaker 3>I remember. Yeah, look, it's got a similar art direction,
<v Speaker 3>but more sci fi.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, yeah, yeah tracks.
<v Speaker 2>I really do like the pixel art.
<v Speaker 4>It's beautiful, and the music is good. It's very very vibe.
<v Speaker 4>But it's also a good game to like. Like I
<v Speaker 4>I've for a lot of my playtime, I'll have it
<v Speaker 4>muted and I'll have like I'm watching something on the
<v Speaker 4>other monitor, like it's something to just kind of like
<v Speaker 4>take up time and play, and I kind.
<v Speaker 3>Of just like that.
<v Speaker 4>It's just a big long adventure. You can kind of
<v Speaker 4>sit through for a while.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Hell yeah.
<v Speaker 4>The other game I've been playing it is called dog Pile,
<v Speaker 4>so different.
<v Speaker 2>It was.
<v Speaker 4>I don't know if it was revealed during Day of devs.
<v Speaker 4>I believe it was, but it was also shadow dropped
<v Speaker 4>during day of the devs. It was a game that
<v Speaker 4>like came out very suddenly made by the developers of Gubbins.
<v Speaker 1>Game.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, and then they're partner with another developer and they've
<v Speaker 4>like they portmanteaud their two developers to be called foot Games.
<v Speaker 4>I can't remember what.
<v Speaker 3>Like the two. I think one of the most games
<v Speaker 3>or foot games is the combination.
<v Speaker 4>Foot is the Portmanteau. Yeah, that's when they combined.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Anyways, this is a if you've played like sweek a game,
<v Speaker 4>which was like a big popular game last year. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>just one of those games where you're just dropping stuff.
<v Speaker 4>Dogpile is sweek a game, except it has like roguelike
<v Speaker 4>cards system.
<v Speaker 1>So that's what makes it interesting to me. So what
<v Speaker 1>does that look like that combination?
<v Speaker 4>You start off and you have a deck of cards,
<v Speaker 4>and your base cards they're like numbered the way that
<v Speaker 4>like playing cards are. So it's aces are low of
<v Speaker 4>ace two, three, four, et cetera. Combine two aces, it
<v Speaker 4>gets to two combined two as you get a three,
<v Speaker 4>And all these numbers are represented as dogs, so like
<v Speaker 4>an ace is a little chihuahuah that's all balled up, okay,
<v Speaker 4>and I think a two is like a fluffy Pomeranian
<v Speaker 4>that type of thing. So that's the basic game plays.
<v Speaker 4>You're combining them. But then also as you're going along,
<v Speaker 4>you're adding like modifiers to your cards. So like Barkie
<v Speaker 4>would be one that like makes dog bark and they
<v Speaker 4>will like bark and all the dogs around them will
<v Speaker 4>be like repelled backwards. So sometimes it's cool to like
<v Speaker 4>drop a barkie dog in the middle of something where
<v Speaker 4>you don't make space, yeah, and it'll will kind of
<v Speaker 4>like shuffle them.
<v Speaker 2>All around, ah okay, yeah.
<v Speaker 4>And then it'll just be good. It's just good to
<v Speaker 4>get kind of movement. And then they'll have they can
<v Speaker 4>have negative traits, so there's one where it's created where
<v Speaker 4>they'll kind of be covered in like a blue ring,
<v Speaker 4>and then it can't bond with other dogs, even if
<v Speaker 4>they're the same number, until like a certain number rounds passes.
<v Speaker 2>That's sad.
<v Speaker 4>It is sad. And then the farther you go. The
<v Speaker 4>goal is that whenever you bond two dogs, you get bones,
<v Speaker 4>which is just kind of like experience, and you just
<v Speaker 4>have different milestones of how many bones you need to
<v Speaker 4>get in order to progress further. So at first it's like,
<v Speaker 4>get like a hundred bones, and that's pretty easy, and
<v Speaker 4>then it gets higher and higher and just demands you
<v Speaker 4>to make bigger matches with dogs, until eventually it fills
<v Speaker 4>up too high and you can't match them anymore, and
<v Speaker 4>then you have to restart. Pretty simple game. I think
<v Speaker 4>it's just on Steam right now, but it's the kind
<v Speaker 4>of thing that I really wish it was a mobile
<v Speaker 4>game because it worked really well on mobiles.
<v Speaker 3>The closest thing.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, yeah, yeah, and this is when I've just been
<v Speaker 4>playing on desktop. But yeah, it's it's like super chill,
<v Speaker 4>super casual game. I showed. I showed it the the
<v Speaker 4>It was breaking the rules, but it was fine. I
<v Speaker 4>showed a list of my fiance the pre brief trailer
<v Speaker 4>for dog Pile.
<v Speaker 2>You showed your fiance a pre briefed, embargoed trailer.
<v Speaker 4>I did because I knew she would like it and
<v Speaker 4>you should, I'll have your job. But she was like
<v Speaker 4>and it's out today. And I was like, well, it's
<v Speaker 4>not out today, it'll be out when the thing comes out.
<v Speaker 4>And she was like oh yeah, and she was like devastated.
<v Speaker 4>She really wanted to play it. Day it came out,
<v Speaker 4>I posted about I did like a whole round up
<v Speaker 4>of things, and I said, like, this game looks really
<v Speaker 4>good and I want to play it. Dog Pile PR
<v Speaker 4>reached out to me and they were like, hey, we're
<v Speaker 4>glad that you were interested in the game. Here's a
<v Speaker 4>code for it. And I was like, oh awesome. And
<v Speaker 4>I was like, and while I have you just as
<v Speaker 4>a funny story, because you know, developers like it with
<v Speaker 4>people like their games. I showed the trailer to my
<v Speaker 4>partner and she was really excited about it, but she
<v Speaker 4>was mad that she can play it. And then they
<v Speaker 4>sent her a code.
<v Speaker 2>I was like, Oh, they're going to say they canceled
<v Speaker 2>your your Steam code. They're like that's not allowed.
<v Speaker 3>Allowed.
<v Speaker 4>No, they were like they're like, oh, that's so glad
<v Speaker 4>that she wants to here's a code for her. Also,
<v Speaker 4>so we have matching Dogpile codes. Yeah, so shout out
<v Speaker 4>to that PR company. But also the game is good
<v Speaker 4>and worth checking. Out. I think it's like ten bucks
<v Speaker 4>on Steam right now.
<v Speaker 3>Not even that it's actually hours on sale currently for
<v Speaker 3>the I get, I assume for the winter sale, it's
<v Speaker 3>only seven dollars six nine nine.
<v Speaker 4>Oh heck.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. I like the art style. It's got a very
<v Speaker 3>like twenty tens Cartoon Network vibe. Yeah, it seems like, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>like it's like in the vein of something like an
<v Speaker 3>Adventure time or like an Uncle Grandpa. It would have
<v Speaker 3>come out in between those two.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, kind of annle that'll that'll pull out of people.
<v Speaker 4>It's kind of kind of an Uncle Grandpa aesthetic.
<v Speaker 3>Everybody does a Cartoon Network show.
<v Speaker 4>It has a lot of You can go into the
<v Speaker 4>settings and change like the color pallet of the background
<v Speaker 4>if you want to. So I have mine on kind
<v Speaker 4>of like a ink bubblegum pop kind of vibe. You cool,
<v Speaker 4>change change it to just match your aesthetic. It's just fun.
<v Speaker 2>That rules.
<v Speaker 1>Well, we're going to take a quick ad break and
<v Speaker 1>then we're going to come back and chat through our
<v Speaker 1>cover story trip for World of Warcraft midnight, and then
<v Speaker 1>we'll be out of here. So we'll be right back
<v Speaker 1>right after this. Welcome back to the Game Informer show
<v Speaker 1>it's time to dive in to our World of Warcraft
<v Speaker 1>cover story that I wrote. Charles and I visited Blizzard
<v Speaker 1>in early to mid November and we were there for
<v Speaker 1>a couple of days. Charles wrote a really great retrospective
<v Speaker 1>that if you are you haven't played well before, and
<v Speaker 1>you're you know, you're interested because of this this cover story,
<v Speaker 1>you know there's a great that's a great primer for like,
<v Speaker 1>here's what's been up with this game for the last
<v Speaker 1>twenty one years. And so then that goes into my
<v Speaker 1>twelve page cover story, which is about the new expansion
<v Speaker 1>that's coming out March second. But I think point being
<v Speaker 1>like now is a great time to get into Wow.
<v Speaker 1>Even though this is the second game in a trilogy
<v Speaker 1>for Wow. Wow is currently in the world Soul Saga,
<v Speaker 1>which is a trilogy of three expansions, the War within Midnight,
<v Speaker 1>which is what our cover story is about, and then
<v Speaker 1>the Last Titan, and then Wow will still continue after
<v Speaker 1>this trilogy concludes, but they're trying to tell stories over
<v Speaker 1>three expansions. It gives them more breathing room for like
<v Speaker 1>character development and kind of planning seeds and paying them
<v Speaker 1>off later. It's it's it's working well so far. I
<v Speaker 1>think the War Within was a great expansion. I actually
<v Speaker 1>recently finished it myself and has probably my favorite ward
<v Speaker 1>of Warcraft Zone in a very long time. And how
<v Speaker 1>a Fall that place is awesome. But Midnight is kind
<v Speaker 1>of the expansion is kind of like picking up mid Conflict.
<v Speaker 1>There's like this really bad There's there's a villain named
<v Speaker 1>Zalatat who actually players have known about for secretly for
<v Speaker 1>like ten years now. It was a in the Legion expansion,
<v Speaker 1>which came out in what twenty sixteen or so, I
<v Speaker 1>don't quite remember. Let me look at Charles's retrospective.
<v Speaker 3>Charles, do you remember from writing a retrospective when Legion
<v Speaker 3>came out?
<v Speaker 4>Trying to remember so lych King was twenty two thousand
<v Speaker 4>and eight, twenty eight, and then twenty.
<v Speaker 1>Ten was like two years missing the panderia, So maybe
<v Speaker 1>it was twenty fourteen Legion.
<v Speaker 4>That sounds right, Well, no, because there was Warlads a
<v Speaker 4>Drainer in twenty fourteen, so no.
<v Speaker 1>Shoot, you're right, yeah, okay, yeah, I've been I've I've
<v Speaker 1>retained it. You have it an elaborate test impromptu gi
<v Speaker 1>auto know, Okay, I was right.
<v Speaker 2>It was twenty sixteen.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, there's just so there's a lot of expansions. But
<v Speaker 1>this this bad guy, it was actually a weapon, was
<v Speaker 1>trapped inside of a weapon that priest players used during
<v Speaker 1>the events of that expansion. Now a decade later, what
<v Speaker 1>kind of that bad guy's been released? It was a
<v Speaker 1>dagger called Zalatat and it would actually speak to you,
<v Speaker 1>like you could tell there was something trapped inside of it.
<v Speaker 1>And now ten years later that that that villain is
<v Speaker 1>like in human form and is like, you know, trying
<v Speaker 1>to do a lot of bad things and it's up
<v Speaker 1>to the heroes of Azrath to beat them. But in
<v Speaker 1>many ways, this expansion is re is analyzing a lot
<v Speaker 1>of long held systems in the game, simplifying a lot
<v Speaker 1>of things, reworking mini systems, as well as introducing big
<v Speaker 1>features like player housing, which has been a long requested
<v Speaker 1>feature and is really kind of a brand new reward.
<v Speaker 2>Vector for players.
<v Speaker 1>It is, and it's also reinvigorating old content. And so
<v Speaker 1>let's say you you get a house, which is very
<v Speaker 1>simple and wow. Now and if you it's like this
<v Speaker 1>feature is out already. So if you pre ordered Midnight,
<v Speaker 1>you have access early access to housing, and so I've
<v Speaker 1>done that. I've I've been working on my house. And
<v Speaker 1>in order to like craft equipment and stuff, you have
<v Speaker 1>to use professions. And they're like kind of reinvigorating a
<v Speaker 1>lot of old professions that have long been dormant because
<v Speaker 1>you know, they're tied to old expansions that aren't really
<v Speaker 1>relevant power level wise anymore. You're not really going back
<v Speaker 1>and using those professions when the new expansion is where
<v Speaker 1>you get all the gear that you actually need for
<v Speaker 1>current stuff. And so this is a really clever way
<v Speaker 1>I thought for them to kind of, you know, give
<v Speaker 1>incentive to go and check out those old zones, those
<v Speaker 1>old professions, and you can like make furniture with them,
<v Speaker 1>and you can make furniture and sell it to other players.
<v Speaker 2>It's a really cool system.
<v Speaker 1>And housing furniture housing decor is what like it's actually called.
<v Speaker 3>Uh.
<v Speaker 2>You get those.
<v Speaker 1>Rewards via quests and dungeons and raids and all sorts
<v Speaker 1>of So that's why what I mean when I say
<v Speaker 1>it's like a new reward vector in the way that like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>gold is a reward vector, Like I get gold from
<v Speaker 1>doing this and that and this and that, and housing
<v Speaker 1>decor is like a new kind of wide ranging universal
<v Speaker 1>reward that you see and all sorts of content and
<v Speaker 1>it's really exciting and it's a great housing.
<v Speaker 3>As someone that has never played Wow, excuse me if
<v Speaker 3>I'm gonna ask a dumb question, but housing, that's like
<v Speaker 3>I've never been in a game until now.
<v Speaker 2>Correct.
<v Speaker 3>Yep, that's kind of surprising to me. I don't know
<v Speaker 3>what I think of just what Wow is and how
<v Speaker 3>long it's been around. That sounds like something that would
<v Speaker 3>have already happened.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I had what would they call North uh Strong.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, there was like a whole base building sort of.
<v Speaker 2>It was not very well implemented.
<v Speaker 4>It's not the same thing at all, but I think
<v Speaker 4>that would be like in there in someone's head, they
<v Speaker 4>maybe were like, this is the finally we're getting houses
<v Speaker 4>in Wow. And it was that which was kind of
<v Speaker 4>a disappointing feature. So now years later they're like, let's
<v Speaker 4>let's make it good.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And these are like in instance, neighborhoods where like
<v Speaker 1>your neighbor will always be your neighbor unless one of
<v Speaker 1>you decides to leave the neighborhood and go to a
<v Speaker 1>different one.
<v Speaker 2>It's a very cool system.
<v Speaker 3>Or other players your neighbors. Yes, that's Steve Money.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, So each neighborhood has fifty five housing plots on it,
<v Speaker 1>and so you could do a private neighborhood where.
<v Speaker 3>It's you and your friends, data community.
<v Speaker 1>You could, Yeah, you could do a guild one. I'm
<v Speaker 1>in a guild uh neighborhood, and so a lot of
<v Speaker 1>my guild mates Red Valentine for instance, is and Mick
<v Speaker 1>Abrasom or two of my neighbors.
<v Speaker 3>You have to invite people into this, I assume, like.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, so it's more of a private neighborhood.
<v Speaker 4>You could theoretically for that.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, player housing has been a really great success
<v Speaker 1>so far. I've loved being on the reddit and just
<v Speaker 1>seeing people share their creations. There's some wildly inspiring houses
<v Speaker 1>that people have made already. But Midnight is also bringing,
<v Speaker 1>you know, they're reinvigorating, reimagining the Blood Elf Homeland of.
<v Speaker 2>Kelp A Loss.
<v Speaker 1>It's uh, this was a zone that was made back
<v Speaker 1>in uh the Burning Crusade in two thousand and six,
<v Speaker 1>and it is now, you know what, nearly twenty years later.
<v Speaker 1>They're coming back to it and they are redoing all
<v Speaker 1>of it and reworking it and they're showing what has
<v Speaker 1>this city looked like now that it has gotten more
<v Speaker 1>resources and had the chance to heal, because part of
<v Speaker 1>the story back in two thousand and six was this
<v Speaker 1>is like a scarred land. The Lych king Arthurs had
<v Speaker 1>previously invaded this area and so there was a lot
<v Speaker 1>of like remnants of you know, like desolation and war.
<v Speaker 1>And now what does this look like now that you know,
<v Speaker 1>so many years have passed and it's had a chance
<v Speaker 1>to heal. And it also is serving as the sort
<v Speaker 1>of staging grounds for the kickoff of the Midnight expansion
<v Speaker 1>because in Calthalas, Silverman City is the capital and it
<v Speaker 1>is home to the sun Well, which is like a
<v Speaker 1>very it's like a magical fount that essentially connects to
<v Speaker 1>the primordial energy of Azarroth the planet, and that's like
<v Speaker 1>a big subject of the War Within and the world
<v Speaker 1>Soul saga. It's about Azarroth that has a soul essentially
<v Speaker 1>and like it is it is kind of being, it's
<v Speaker 1>in jeopardy, and so there's all there's a lot of
<v Speaker 1>story about that. But this new reinvigorated zone is like
<v Speaker 1>the subject of one of the main focuses of the
<v Speaker 1>next expansion. So we got a really great uh, we've
<v Speaker 1>got a really great insight into what the process was like.
<v Speaker 1>You know, one of the interesting things that Maria Hamilton said,
<v Speaker 1>who is in charge of content of Wow, so she's
<v Speaker 1>in charge of the quest team, Uh, anything that kind
<v Speaker 1>of like touches.
<v Speaker 2>The world of Wow.
<v Speaker 1>I talked to her and Gabriel Gonzalez, who is uh
<v Speaker 1>leads the art team on Midnight.
<v Speaker 2>And.
<v Speaker 1>You know, it's interesting they were Maria was saying, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>one thing one of the concerdnedation considerations we've had to
<v Speaker 1>do and remaking the zone is, you know, our standards
<v Speaker 1>for making environments has changed a lot in twenty years.
<v Speaker 2>As a team.
<v Speaker 1>You know where back in the old days, you would
<v Speaker 1>have flat land and then it would essentially just butt
<v Speaker 1>up to a mountain, and you know that was that
<v Speaker 1>was the standard. But now we have internal procedures where like, no,
<v Speaker 1>if we're going from flat ground to a mountain, we
<v Speaker 1>need to have a series of hill foothills that naturally
<v Speaker 1>lead up to the mountain. And like all of these
<v Speaker 1>considerations to make it a more natural feeling location.
<v Speaker 2>I thought it was really interesting. So we have a
<v Speaker 2>lot of.
<v Speaker 1>Insights into that and sort of what it was like
<v Speaker 1>revisiting this old you know, but I would say beloved
<v Speaker 1>location for Horde players and making it something where both
<v Speaker 1>Hoard an Alliance players are going to go to at midnight.
<v Speaker 1>We also chatted about new new class changes to like
<v Speaker 1>the Demon Hunter and like the Devourer class, and just
<v Speaker 1>like Blizzard's philosophy on like you know, in their in
<v Speaker 1>their opinion of Paul Cubitt, who is their associate game director,
<v Speaker 1>he's like, there's nothing more exciting that we can do
<v Speaker 1>for World of Warcraft than to introduce new class fantasies,
<v Speaker 1>whether that's through a rework or an additional specialization. People
<v Speaker 1>have played Diablo, you know, it's similar to how like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, a Diablo class you could be a Druid,
<v Speaker 1>but you could specialize in you know, three or four
<v Speaker 1>different sort of like build types like you don't you
<v Speaker 1>could be a Druid that doesn't transform.
<v Speaker 2>Into a bear at all.
<v Speaker 1>In Diablo, you could just be yeah, right, you could
<v Speaker 1>be somebody who's more of like you know, they summon
<v Speaker 1>companions and they you they wield and morph the earth.
<v Speaker 1>Similar concept in Wow, where you know, everyone can be
<v Speaker 1>a mage if they want but are you going to
<v Speaker 1>be a frost mage or fire mage an arcane mage?
<v Speaker 1>And within those there are even other specializations and choices
<v Speaker 1>you have to make within those like kind of make
<v Speaker 1>the class and the character unique to you. And you
<v Speaker 1>know they they are introducing another specialization to this demon
<v Speaker 1>Hunter class and it's all about like you have this
<v Speaker 1>uh scythe that you're kind of like jumping in and
<v Speaker 1>out of melee combat with. So you're like jumping in,
<v Speaker 1>cyfing people, jumping out, using like void abilities and it's
<v Speaker 1>like this really dynamic class where you're like in and out,
<v Speaker 1>in and out and like, uh, you know when you're
<v Speaker 1>jumping in, you're using certain abilities to then trigger to
<v Speaker 1>unlock other abilities in your rotation.
<v Speaker 2>Uh.
<v Speaker 1>Very like feels like very like combo heavy sort of
<v Speaker 1>and seems really exciting. We gotta we got we talked
<v Speaker 1>about you know, there's new Allied races coming. If you
<v Speaker 1>don't know what that is, I realize like a lot
<v Speaker 1>of our audience probably doesn't play WOW. A lot of
<v Speaker 1>the core game and former audience. I know there's definitely
<v Speaker 1>people out there who are are excited and and and
<v Speaker 1>our wold players, but forgive me if I am if
<v Speaker 1>I'm over explaining, but I.
<v Speaker 4>Can also uh just real quick talk about the four
<v Speaker 4>new players someone like me who has hidden wow at
<v Speaker 4>all that One of the things they're talking about adding
<v Speaker 4>is a feature called lore Walking, which is a I
<v Speaker 4>don't know if this this is already in the war Within.
<v Speaker 1>This has been in the game since okay, war Within,
<v Speaker 1>I think the last expansion, but.
<v Speaker 4>It is a feature that basically lets you experience past
<v Speaker 4>expansions and get yourself caught up on the story and
<v Speaker 4>kind of get like a head start on some of
<v Speaker 4>the like gear and leveling stuff. Just be like, if
<v Speaker 4>you if you don't know, this is the middle of
<v Speaker 4>a you know, three expansion arc. So here's what you
<v Speaker 4>need to know. It's an abbreviated version of the story essentially,
<v Speaker 4>and now you're.
<v Speaker 2>Up to speed and stuff and gotten gear.
<v Speaker 3>Is this like how does that? I'm trying to wrap
<v Speaker 3>my mind right, It's it's sort of like like you
<v Speaker 3>just run through an expansion, like in a bridge version
<v Speaker 3>of an expansion, Like do you play so.
<v Speaker 1>You'll go and talk to you'll go once you make
<v Speaker 1>your character and get out of the starting zone. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you're automatically taken to if your warde, you go to Orgramar.
<v Speaker 2>If you're Alliance I really, they send you to Stormland
<v Speaker 2>and there are there are, there's an NPC in each
<v Speaker 2>of those cities.
<v Speaker 1>You go and talk to them and then you can
<v Speaker 1>pick you know, they have lore walking for all sorts
<v Speaker 1>of things. So one example they gave us was, oh,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know much about the elves and Wow, let
<v Speaker 1>me do an elf lore walking and it will show you.
<v Speaker 1>It will take you through a series of like custom
<v Speaker 1>sort of like shambled together quests of like here's what
<v Speaker 1>you need to know about elves, and you're like actually
<v Speaker 1>playing through these quests and these moments in Wow's history,
<v Speaker 1>but in sort of like an instanced kind of version.
<v Speaker 1>It's like and same thing with what Charles is talking about.
<v Speaker 1>There's a war within recap where it's like it's an
<v Speaker 1>abridged version of the expansion, and so it'll like pick
<v Speaker 1>and choose the most important pieces that you need to
<v Speaker 1>know as a player and run you through them. And
<v Speaker 1>it's a like, like I said, it's a bridge, it's
<v Speaker 1>much shorter, but meanwhile you're getting this story while also
<v Speaker 1>you're getting the rewards from those quests and you're leveling
<v Speaker 1>up and the ideas that you can get caught up
<v Speaker 1>the speed and enjoy current Wow while also having the
<v Speaker 1>chance to like fill in your knowledge on these various
<v Speaker 1>subjects good or expansions.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, because it's been around, you know, twenty years, Like
<v Speaker 4>there's a lot of stuff to get cut up on
<v Speaker 4>if you were trying to join now. And I think
<v Speaker 4>that was another thing that was fun about just all
<v Speaker 4>our conversations with the developers of their talking about kind
<v Speaker 4>of like their collective arc, specifically post Shadow Lands, of
<v Speaker 4>being like, what what do players want from this game,
<v Speaker 4>Like we're making it for them. We need to be
<v Speaker 4>on the same page about.
<v Speaker 2>Like our shadow Lands count in twenty twenty for reference.
<v Speaker 4>And is not not popular expansion despite being like I
<v Speaker 4>think during COVID a lot of people were playing Wow,
<v Speaker 4>but that specific content was not like people were fans of.
<v Speaker 4>So it's interesting to hear them be like these are
<v Speaker 4>people want to make you know multiple characters and do
<v Speaker 4>lots of stuff with them. People wanted to get caught
<v Speaker 4>up and play with their friends as soon as possible,
<v Speaker 4>and kind of instead of being like this is the
<v Speaker 4>way world of Warcraft is, and you're going to play
<v Speaker 4>the way that we've designed it kind of like meeting
<v Speaker 4>people in the middle more and being like, we should
<v Speaker 4>be more welcoming to people, we should be doing this
<v Speaker 4>X y Z. And it's just cool to hear them
<v Speaker 4>talk about that. I'm hoping that when you Know Midnight
<v Speaker 4>comes out, players feel like they have executed it well enough.
<v Speaker 4>But it's it's all promising sounding to me.
<v Speaker 3>That's good. Like I again, I've never played Wow. The
<v Speaker 3>most Wow gameplay I've ever seen was that South Park
<v Speaker 3>episode from twenty years ago.
<v Speaker 4>Of course, yeah, a lot of the developers were like
<v Speaker 4>and that was a big deal that self, but like
<v Speaker 4>it it's a significant moment for them as well.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I kind of made it like a household name.
<v Speaker 3>That's that's when I really understood. That's when I because
<v Speaker 3>I had heard a while before that episode, but that's
<v Speaker 3>when I like really grasped how popular it was was
<v Speaker 3>that South Park would dedicate a whole episode to it
<v Speaker 3>like an engine too. It's like, oh man, this is big.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, I secretly want to do a replay series
<v Speaker 2>of Ward of Warcraft and convince several of my coworkers
<v Speaker 2>to play, and.
<v Speaker 3>Even like, unless it's like a one off replay or
<v Speaker 3>super replays. This sounds that the latter sounds like super replay.
<v Speaker 1>So just forever, just never no, no, just like like
<v Speaker 1>will beat, we'll beat, We'll pick the expansion, will beat it?
<v Speaker 3>Like you would have to be I mean, I guess
<v Speaker 3>we would trust you. I would if we did that.
<v Speaker 3>I would like to hop bongs like wow is probably
<v Speaker 3>there's others, but I think it might be the biggest
<v Speaker 3>game I've never played, or like like the most important
<v Speaker 3>game that I've just never touched whatsoever, just because I
<v Speaker 3>didn't grow up a PC gamer, so I have no
<v Speaker 3>affinity for a Blizzard from like a personal level, like
<v Speaker 3>I got him with Blizzard. The only Blizzer games I
<v Speaker 3>played were Diablo three four and og Overwatch and that's it.
<v Speaker 3>And that's like much later in my life. And I
<v Speaker 3>almost felt like when I did the Bliger Tour last year,
<v Speaker 3>like I visited them for the Diabolo for it was
<v Speaker 3>a Vessel Hatred expansion and they give you the big
<v Speaker 3>tour and stuff, and I almost felt like like a
<v Speaker 3>fraud being there has his reverence for Blizzard, and I
<v Speaker 3>respect the hell out of Blacher, like I recognize how
<v Speaker 3>important they are but you know, I don't have the
<v Speaker 3>like personal like this is my childhood. This is like
<v Speaker 3>a or guy, I know who that is. I'm just like, oh,
<v Speaker 3>I know Tracer. That's cool. See that Tracer's statue. She's
<v Speaker 3>one of my favorites. Did you guys get the Blucherd
<v Speaker 3>Tour by the way, or either of you been the Blizzard.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yes, this is the first time, so you never
<v Speaker 1>got it, was Alex, No, I haven't had the chance.
<v Speaker 3>Cool for you?
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah it was because while is my favorite game.
<v Speaker 1>I mean I grew up playing Warcraft and Warcraft two
<v Speaker 1>and StarCraft, and I love Overwatch, and I played casually
<v Speaker 1>the diabolo games, like every Diabolo game very casually. So yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it was like a big It was a big deal
<v Speaker 1>for me. Did you just like for anybody though, Like
<v Speaker 1>it's it's an impressive place, I think.
<v Speaker 3>Did they give you guys the full campus tour?
<v Speaker 4>Yeah? They have like they have their own if for
<v Speaker 4>the listeners who have not been to Blizzard campus, presumably
<v Speaker 4>they have like their own Starbucks there with a secret
<v Speaker 4>menu of Blizzard themed drinks.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah it crazy. I wasn't able to get one and
<v Speaker 3>have time to get one. I kind of wish I
<v Speaker 3>had one.
<v Speaker 4>We did which we went twice.
<v Speaker 3>What was good? How did you get?
<v Speaker 4>The really good one was the Flappuccino, Yeah, which is
<v Speaker 4>themed after the World Warcraft dragon Flight. But it's like, uh,
<v Speaker 4>I have to look.
<v Speaker 2>Up the flavors passion for it's interesting almond or something.
<v Speaker 4>It was almost like brown sugar like it wasn't super fruity.
<v Speaker 4>It was just really good.
<v Speaker 3>So you're naming so many different ingred.
<v Speaker 4>It didn't look good to me on the page. And
<v Speaker 4>then our PR guy was like, this is our face.
<v Speaker 4>This is my favorite one. I was like, okay, I'll
<v Speaker 4>try it, and then I was like, oh, yeah, this
<v Speaker 4>is busted. But yeah. Other than that, there's they have
<v Speaker 4>like they have a library there, board games and video
<v Speaker 4>games books. They have you know, gyms and that sort
<v Speaker 4>of thing. It's it's it was a fancy like tech
<v Speaker 4>level office, you know, like they've they've got oh we get.
<v Speaker 2>We can get massages, uh you know once a week
<v Speaker 2>in this room.
<v Speaker 3>And that kind of we get massages from Diablo in here.
<v Speaker 3>And it's just like a person dressed big demon.
<v Speaker 2>Dress cane exactly.
<v Speaker 3>Wait, I can name Blizzard Carrot. There's a Karrigan, right, StarCraft, Caragan,
<v Speaker 3>that's a StarCraft person, right, yeah, Caragan. Yeah, Okay, I
<v Speaker 3>read Jason Tryer Blizzard book. That's a very good book
<v Speaker 3>there there. Yeah. Yeah. Stuff.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>But for the people who do know wow and want
<v Speaker 1>to learn more, please consider going to pick up a
<v Speaker 1>game Former subscription Game Informer dot Com slash subscribe. This
<v Speaker 1>is a I've I've been hesitant to show off the
<v Speaker 1>cover of this because this is a samp.
<v Speaker 2>This is not the U like the finished put product.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, this is a test run so on on other people.
<v Speaker 1>I mean the cover story is, the art is gorgeous,
<v Speaker 1>but on the actual uh like production version, the one
<v Speaker 1>that people are going to get at the store.
<v Speaker 2>This gold Game Informer logo.
<v Speaker 1>We kind of simulated it here for our purposes, but
<v Speaker 1>it is a like metallic gold spot ink color, and
<v Speaker 1>so it's like shiny I r L. Where are like
<v Speaker 1>test versions they are not shiny.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's like for for TCG fans or GEO fans,
<v Speaker 3>like getting an ultra rare Yu gi O card, you know,
<v Speaker 3>get the gold.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Is this is this an named characters or is this
<v Speaker 3>like a.
<v Speaker 1>Just no, no, there's this is just a blood off
<v Speaker 1>character going into their Horde style neighborhood.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, yeah, this is the neighbors.
<v Speaker 3>Just there's an or on a motorcycle.
<v Speaker 1>I want to know more about Goblin. They're on a
<v Speaker 1>Mechano Hog. That's a mountains getting engineers called Mechano Hog.
<v Speaker 4>Marcus. There was a for at the Blizzard office for uh, Alex,
<v Speaker 4>remind me what the the under undermine undermine they there
<v Speaker 4>was some YouTubers that make cars and they made a
<v Speaker 4>car from this Undermine update for World of Warcraft that
<v Speaker 4>is parked in the the Blizzard parking garage.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, it's actually driving.
<v Speaker 3>Okay. They're like a West Coast Choppers, kind of like
<v Speaker 3>Channel Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, yeah, I guess yeah. And it looked it looked
<v Speaker 4>like blocking and cartoonian like Blizzard style.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, very cool. But yeah.
<v Speaker 1>This issue is also twenty five percent bigger. It has
<v Speaker 1>twenty five more percent more pages.
<v Speaker 3>I should say that with two c's.
<v Speaker 1>It's thick, and it's to celebrate our end of year,
<v Speaker 1>all of our end of year content. So this is
<v Speaker 1>our special end of year issue. At the end of
<v Speaker 1>each year, you're going to get a bigger magazine that
<v Speaker 1>has special treatment. In this case, we went with the
<v Speaker 1>metallic gold logo spot ink treatment, and we've got our
<v Speaker 1>top ten games of twenty twenty five in here. We've
<v Speaker 1>got our Best and Brightest, which is our end of
<v Speaker 1>year awards and editor picks. We've got our individual personal
<v Speaker 1>top tens in there, the best board games of twenty
<v Speaker 1>twenty five. We've got a huge, really cool feature from
<v Speaker 1>Brian Shay in here called I think you called it
<v Speaker 1>The Soul of Souls, like right, yeah, uh, and it's yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's it's a look back at how the genre rose
<v Speaker 1>to prominence. He's got quotes in here from I believe
<v Speaker 1>Miyazaki as well as several other prolific uh dark.
<v Speaker 3>Soul yeahs, like the developers.
<v Speaker 2>The team.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. He also did a feature correct me if I'm
<v Speaker 1>wrong on was it Fallout? Fallout to the point where
<v Speaker 1>like we we also got new details about like status
<v Speaker 1>updates on the Elder Scroll six. Yeah, that's in here
<v Speaker 1>as well. It's a really great book, uh, Like I said, bigger,
<v Speaker 1>way more pages, and we've got our typical reviews and
<v Speaker 1>previews and stuff in here too. But really we wanted
<v Speaker 1>to be a celebration of the end of the year
<v Speaker 1>and celebration of twenty twenty five in games, it was
<v Speaker 1>a big year for US Game Informer coming back. So
<v Speaker 1>this issue you can get early digital access Gaminformer dot
<v Speaker 1>com slash subscribe. If you do already have digital access,
<v Speaker 1>you can read the cover story early by going to
<v Speaker 1>Gaminformer dot com slash Wow Midnight. That I'll get you
<v Speaker 1>digital access to all of the stories in this book.
<v Speaker 1>Of course, if you want to wait for the proper
<v Speaker 1>print magazine to come to your mailbox, that will be
<v Speaker 1>arriving in uh I think mid January, as well as
<v Speaker 1>on newsstands around the world.
<v Speaker 2>Uh in that time that same that same time window.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, really excited about this book. Uh, really stoked.
<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna have a bunch of features on uh World
<v Speaker 1>of Warcraft Midnight as well as uh, you know other
<v Speaker 1>other I I really took the chance and took the
<v Speaker 1>opportunity to ask the questions I've wanted to ask about
<v Speaker 1>Wow for a very long time, and so I think
<v Speaker 1>those will make some good breakout stories.
<v Speaker 3>You know.
<v Speaker 1>I asked about like theorized classes that that fans have
<v Speaker 1>wanted for years and if those have been considered or not.
<v Speaker 2>That kind of stuff. Just no, but but that would
<v Speaker 2>be cool.
<v Speaker 1>We're going to talk about got a couple of exclusives
<v Speaker 1>going up on like what North End is going to,
<v Speaker 1>the kind of the philosophy of going into North Rand,
<v Speaker 1>and the Last Titan, which is the expansion after this one.
<v Speaker 1>No necessarily concrete details, but I really I thought a
<v Speaker 1>fascinating conversation about the considerations of returning to arguably World
<v Speaker 1>of Warcraft's most iconic location in North Rend, which was
<v Speaker 1>the subject of the Wrath the lych King expansion in
<v Speaker 1>two thousand and eight. Arguably wows, I mean, it was
<v Speaker 1>at its peak at numeratime, numerical peak.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and then and.
<v Speaker 1>In the Last Titan, we're going to be returning to
<v Speaker 1>that place. So I took the opportunity to ask them
<v Speaker 1>about what they're considering when they go back to that
<v Speaker 1>kind of space. So we'll have online articles on GameInformer
<v Speaker 1>dot com, as well as videos on YouTube dot com
<v Speaker 1>Slash Game Informer. But fellows anything else before we before
<v Speaker 1>we get out of here, I don't know.
<v Speaker 3>Tune in to the super replay. That's still a thing
<v Speaker 3>that's happening.
<v Speaker 4>That's true, we're hoping to finish it.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, by the time you're listening to this holidays, it
<v Speaker 3>might be done or might still be going.
<v Speaker 2>We are Twitch dot TV Slash Game Informer.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, we are at the end. We're we've been at
<v Speaker 3>the end for a while, but we're like knee deep
<v Speaker 3>in the end. We're hoping to see if we can
<v Speaker 3>get it done before the before we go on our
<v Speaker 3>holiday break. So we're actually going to do like a
<v Speaker 3>longer stream, or we would have already done probably by
<v Speaker 3>the time you listen to this. So you can tune
<v Speaker 3>in Twitch up Colm or TV whatever Slash Game Informer.
<v Speaker 3>And also it's on our YouTube channel. It's there too.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, go watch it and I'll say, Marcus Lilties, I
<v Speaker 4>have a surprise to reveal to you, and we do
<v Speaker 4>that stream. Oh oh okay, so that'll that'll be a
<v Speaker 4>little teaser. I was like, should I tell him now?
<v Speaker 4>He's like no, oh wait, oh wait.
<v Speaker 2>Wait, I hope it's an announcement of an announcement.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, oh yeah. You do work in the game industry,
<v Speaker 3>don't you.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, this is the full CGI teaser that just says
<v Speaker 4>Friday on it and then yeah we'll actually get gameplay.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Well cool.
<v Speaker 1>Thanks everyone for listening for watching this episode. Be sure
<v Speaker 1>to follow Marcus here at Marcus Stewart seven on Blue Sky.
<v Speaker 1>You can follow Charles Heart at Chuck Duck three six five,
<v Speaker 1>and you can follow me at It's man Akin on
<v Speaker 1>Blue Sky. And actually I am using Instagram more than
<v Speaker 1>any of those places, so if you're on there, feel
<v Speaker 1>free to follow. But that'll do it for the week.
<v Speaker 1>We'll see you in next week. We're gonna have a
<v Speaker 1>bit of a different episode for our holidays. I think
<v Speaker 1>we're gonna be chatting through our top ten lists for
<v Speaker 1>the year, which would be a lot of fun, so.
<v Speaker 2>Stay tuned for that. Be well, be safe and happy holidays. Goodbye,