Cyberpunk's Director talks Phantom Liberty, redemption arcs and Cyberpunk 2 | Friends Per Second #30

oh I remember when that song first came out oh God every every High School dance and or graduation yes absolutely every graduation wait what's up hello and welcome to friends for second the podcast it's episode 30 we made it yeah I am free 30. this is per that's second that's um podcast and that's Tamar Hussein games they let me out again I imagine myself like the hand in Evil Dead yes the visual of one the behavior of the other yeah exactly yeah that's what I like we're all we're all together in person because we're playing some games behind the scenes we got a lot of stuff to talk about uh and we just all wanted to see each other yeah that's nice yeah it's good to see you good L.A man it's it's the tacos are good I'm not gonna lie I don't love La not my favorite place but there's cool people here you know get to hang out it's good I mean I'd like to go to San Fran at some point come Santa Monica of course that's true I think the reason why you don't like La Ralphs because I'm always just in downtown crypto Arena sucks man like hotels he gave me like three or four days I could I could show you great prices no I actually would love to do that at some point because I've been to L.A I think maybe 15 times now and I don't believe I've ever left this area actually one time I went to Santa Monica that is it that is it Gerard's office yeah for that again that was just going to a building yeah yeah we had in and out like we didn't get to go and that's good by the way yeah [Applause] that's right that's right you got to get that Curry before you go yeah man yeah you should come to San Francisco though I will wonderful yeah yeah yeah one day one day well we have a lot to talk about uh in terms of even stuff we've seen here in Los Angeles proper we're not even talking about on this episode we're going to talk about the next one so that's good yeah awesome I'm so excited yeah which one was it again the one that we can't do it the one that shall not be named we're here for three games and we're allowed to talk about two of them we can say is Spider-Man and Final Fantasy VII rebirth yes uh and then there's a third one which will actually be yeah as Jackson in the in the future episodes we can't say what it is now but we did play it and we can talk about it later so but we got a bunch uh so we're gonna kick it right off with uh an interview we're talking to Gabe amantangelo who is the game director of cyberpunk phantom Liberty yeah that's pretty big so we have a lot to talk about so let's just kick to that right now Gabe thank you so much for joining us I am curious about your background uh where did you start in gaming and what led you to CD projekt Red oh my background my background's in my background it's a very cool background by the way it's very seriously and we're commenting on those old racks and that's how they used to sell Comics back in the day and it's just it's not like that anymore but it's it was good times [Laughter] I love it I love it hell yeah dude [Music] um yeah I mean I've got how important back do I go I mean my first job in industry was on this game of Dark Age of Camelot and uh Warhammer so that's like 18 20 years ago now a long time right um and uh and I mean what got me into it was playing like I would say these are like my biggest influences games up here I put up here Ultima four because it was like the first one that came out that was like What if RPGs weren't just about killing monsters what if there was something else to it what if there was moral choice in it then this one like affected me as a 10 year old I was like whoa mind expanded I'm into this I like this and this one starflight starflight 2 exploration it was the first one that just like captured the imagination of like it was just a big universe to explore diplomacy with aliens finding planets you know and like getting resources putting your crew together that kind of stuff but yeah so I mean I I apologize it just happens to be because of my background so that's cool I got into that there but yeah so about 20 years ago in game development uh BioWare EA for for the vast majority of time um set up a company in between uh as well as uh work with CCP and freelance with a couple of others for a while and then um uh CD project red reached out and said hey what do you think about moving to Poland I asked my my partner and she was like she was like that sounds great right in the middle of Europe and we could travel it'll be awesome and then we would move January 2020. oh no I'm gonna say travel with all your free time that you'll have while working in game Dem and then obviously just compounded by yes pandemic kids that's that's great timing well yeah so that's the that's the the quick version there so so question why so like why do you think uh city project red might have tapped you on the shoulder I mean it's not just like they were scrolling scrolling through Linkedin they're like oh that's an interesting name I'll call this guy like how did that connection happen well maybe it was an interesting name too right yeah it is I mean it is I like it it's good thank you where they say they share quite a quite a kind of history and there's a lot of people that know each other back and forth recommendations that kind of stuff yeah and so when they typed you up specifically it was full like was it for DLC or were you kind of coming in the end of uh 2077 help them out well so it was at first and I can only say so much but it was at first for for another project another big project um you know RPG storytelling other aspects to it um related to cyberpunk and you can crawl the inner website and then uh as cyberpunk 2077 was going on it was like hey can you help with this topic that topic I came in as a creative director and I was helpful with a bunch of miscellaneous topics so to speak and kind of getting to know the team and trying to help close some things and then yeah shortly after launch they sat me down they're like what do you think about I'm taking over and I'm like well thank you um and I definitely am interested in this I you know but I'm going to need support for sure turn this around and I want to know a bit about the commitment for turning around and it's like we want to turn this around we want to do whatever it takes and yes you'll get the support you need and of course I'm abbreviating the conversation and I'm like let's do this let's do this so so they asked you to come on board before launch and then they appointed you to this essentially head of the franchise creative director of all of cyberpunk after launch with the remit to basically fix it right uh did you have any kind of reservations in that moment looking at looking at everything that was going on because there was a lot going on man I don't know if you were on the internet at that time but people were really talking about cyberpunk they were they were they were indeed um well I'm I'm a Believer like uh and I believed in uh you know what city project red stood for I got to know the team I knew the the circumstances but I also saw the you know just the the talent there and I believed we could do this and so I was I mean sure there was like wow this is going to be a challenge we got work to do but I believe we could do it so that's ultimately so with you jumping in and heading up a team how do you even start the process of setting up or outlining how to quote unquote fix certain things is it like you just write it all down on a piece of paper and say we're gonna do this how do you even begin well I mean somewhat of a some of it's like organic but I mean like I I think back to it and you know I had uh meetings with each different area kind of sit Downs amas if you will uh back and forth that kind of stuff just kind of getting a temperature and figuring out like what's going on in each of the areas triangulating that with kind of my instincts and kind of vision of things that I would see that I wanted to do um it's just a lot of conversations at the beginning and kind of uh collaboration back and forth um and it's like I'm trying to I mean because you know game development's complex it's not easy and I'm trying to figure out how to kind of abbreviate this but the beginning is kind of sitting down and talking and hearing it out and then just based on you know experience of having been through stuff like this before I knew certain areas to like go to and be like okay so what are our capabilities here um could we do this let's talk about that so on and so forth so well cross-reference of experience with kind of just like open conversations with a lot of people then ultimately me and the directors we got kind of a plan and we bounced back and forth an idea on how to execute it and then we start to execute it and it's about opening and you know some of the stuff sounds certainly cliche but it's about opening lines of communication and figuring out where lines of communication are breaking down where do we need to to fix it so you can see sort of on the line like hey something's not working here on the line and do they know how to elevate that so that Gabe knows so that the the directors that report to me know that kind of stuff so it's laying that kind of groundwork a lot of that and that kind of let's say first six months um in addition to the obvious things of like oh this needs to get fixed or this needs to get addressed but it's laying a lot of that groundwork and I'm sure you all have heard the red the transformation right this was all part of the transformation so we also have consultants in that help with this help monitor it um so on and so forth that answer your question Jake yeah yeah so piggybacking off that then because obviously the game launched there was then a huge update Journey that began right and that is sort of almost culminating now with update 2.0 which we'll talk about soon but what would you say are the major changes because I think there's been a lot right and I just want to uh not even I'm fully across it but what have been the major changes that have occurred to the game prior to update 2.0 that have improved it like what are the major buckets that we're talking about here well um we did a lot of kind of foundational work that we're able to capitalize on and grow in 2.0 but I would say the spirit of the changes certainly was like um you know streaming assets and and stability things you know at a foundational level and then on a kind of design game level it was making the the world feel more alive like and and the foundational we laid a lot of groundwork for that like in one point five you saw that we had some more stuff with like how the crowds work some living City type things and of course in 2.0 you can see that grow with obviously the the AI improvements the the police system a lot of the dynamic events that happen in the world so it was kind of like it wasn't none of those updates were were isolated right it was all like we had this kind of more or less this like long-term plan of a thing we wanted to get to and these were the Beats uh along the way but it was to capitalize on the the kind of all the potential that lived in the world and and to me like a very important thing you know open world RPGs is when you've got these stories that um that are you know um well crafted part of getting into the story is being able to get immersed into the world like it all kind of complements each other right and so that was a big Focus was just the believability believability was like a key word and sort of the um all the iterations and the focus I was like make this believable believability is this how things would react is this is this expectations right like when you when you think about the dark future night City what are some of the expectations of if I do this action what's the reaction right so believability so you get that immersion so you don't have those those moments that kind of take you out which then compromises you being able to fully experience the story and the characters and so that was the kind of the spirit of I would say pretty much everything from the abilities of being like okay what is like my expectation when I come to this on how I would play like if I had cyborg what's some of my expectations what's that and if if that gets interrupted subconsciously it affects your believability in your conversations with Pan Am like and it's like it's one of those things that subtext that you just kind of like over time you see those things get disconnected and you try to bring it all together I'm talking I'm I'm just kind of rambling now and talking about right exactly that's exactly what we are totally totally really appreciate that so so Gabe uh I am someone who's had only a subtle limited time with uh cyberpunk but I was also one of those people that saw Edge Runners on Netflix and like lost my mind and got so into the game that it made me go back in and throw another 10 to 12 hours into it um what was it like for a senior project red to see that kind of surge of an engagement kind of sweep through all what you guys are working on considering that you know you had that launch and now you're here working on 2.0 then suddenly boom Netflix show you guys kind of got that the wind back in your sales if you will well as you can imagine of course the team was very happy about it yeah it was exciting it was great it was a great morale boost and it kind of um validated with what I think most of us believed in as we're working you know I mentioned earlier a Believer like like just kind of feel it a lot of potential with this IP you know more stuff to go with it and it kind of validated that on just like the stories that there are to be told and the um and just how it resonates um you know from the the colorful cyberpunk to the to the Noir aspects and the and then the modernization of it all like there's just so much so much fun to be had and so yeah it was a it was certainly a moral boost and it was exciting for sure no doubt about it yeah yeah was it a surprise just how successful Adriana's was we like did you did you actually see Edge Runners before it aired oh you did okay and was the people in the studio where they're like oh this is going to be massive or did it really knock you over just how much people took to that well I knew all along [Laughter] no I mean I you know uh you know several the writers at at the company worked on it I saw some of the screenplays I saw some of the the early screenings that kind of stuff um and certainly it was like some of the story elements there were some of the story elements even I remember in cyberpunk 2077 that we wanted to get some of those story elements in and some of it was captured there um you know some aspects of like cyberware for example was captured there a bit better than some of the stories there so for sure like I think we were all believers in the potential of that those story lines those themes um and then seeing it come to life um I think we were cautiously optimistic I guess is the best way to put it like you know there was the obviously the like oh you know all the stuff that happened but at the same time like yeah this is really cool and let's see what happens and then when it happened obviously we're like yeah we knew all along so then you took that momentum into you know seeing you know a grander reveal of phantom Liberty Idris Elba being in it um I remember so in summer game Fest this year I took a cyberpunk appointment it was like a 90 minute Hands-On and we were just like oh it's just gonna be Phantom Liberty and then it felt like you guys really buried the lead because Papa was literally like oh by the way we've kind of overhauled a hell of a lot of the game so can you talk about like the decision to going up to 2.0 um what did you what did you decide on what was going to be overhauled what was not going to be overhauled and what was the kind of approach to presenting it because we wary about over-promising or was it just more of a you know this is a cool thing we just want to talk about it but we'll be cool about it yeah so I mean um okay let me unpack that so that was a long question I'm sorry yeah no worries don't worry so um yeah so as we were approaching uh Phantom Liberty we were thinking of it as like a sequel so to speak as in like if we were to do you know cyberpunk 2077 from the ground up how would we want uh players to experience obviously it's a different story and some different themes in Dogtown but how do we want them to experience the world and the story and the gigs versus main quest versus interaction in the world and we took a look at that and we saw you know there were some gaps in like the the foundational elements in the game and then we're like okay well we want to fill those gaps and that fills it for the game as a whole because Phantom Liberty takes place in the midst of cyberpunk 2077 story right and um and so yeah I mean that field some of the 2.0 to to answer your question there um in addition to like kind of how it was answering before uh just wanting to make sure we round out all the immersive stuff and make sure sure there's no those those gaps you know the believability is maintained with the expectations and and whatnot and then of course just filling in like uh potential right like anything that we saw that was like oh this is unique to night City or or the IP and filling in potential so that was kind of the philosophy behind the things that field 2.0 um and I mean I've said this in past interviews but I can I can reiterate it you know it's like when you come to the game and you're thinking about the dark future what are the ways that you would play as a cyberpunk and so it's like that it was was a big part of like we're like okay well you can't necessarily like you know really feel strong enough with your gorilla arms so let's get some more actions in with that right you can't feel you can't block bullets with your blade you can't like bring out like the trailer moments of bringing out your katana blade on the on the on the bike right like it's like these are the things that you know you get excited about when you see the trailers or just even when you don't see these friends when you just think about the genre and so all of this fueled kind of the the the sort of uh the boxes to tick for 2.0 as well does that answer your question yeah yeah for sure yeah well I mean kind of related to that thing so there's quite a bit in 2.0 there's uh there's improvements to AI there's a new police system there's vehicle combat um there's a complete reworking of the perk system um there's probably some other stuff that I'm that I'm missing right so there's a lot my question to you is do you feel as though all of these improvements make cyberpunk the game that was initially promised in those early you know in the reveal in the previous cycles and whatever else or do you feel as though there is still a gap between what cyberpunk was meant to be and what it now is with 2.0 um well I mean you know because as we said at the beginning interview I wasn't there at the very beginning so so some of it is just me kind of you know like what I would want to see in this genre and like just as a fan like as a you know Blade Runner telestorian fan like just as a fan so um that fueled a lot of the the drive and obviously with um you know collaborating with my directors and everyone else and kind of what they wanted to see in there and so there's just that Primal tribe of what you want to see in the genre like and I don't know that it was and and certainly there was beats that was like oh there's a there's a trailer from in the past where it's like um and I I forget that I think it's the caliburn or whatever where the where the the uh the doors come up and then you can like shoot outside of it right and I remember we had this Dev meeting where uh someone presented that to me and said hey look because we've got the um the crystal dome which is the stuff that you can't shoot you know through bullets right and we're like how do how are we gonna do that on the cars that have Crystal dome right and then we're like well I guess we gotta have mounted guns right and so that kind of led us into mounted guns and the missile racks and stuff but then on the caliburn that's kind of a luxury car right it was like well like it having mounted guns like maybe we do the nozzles in the front and we did that on one of the versions but we were just like the door up like in the trailer yes right and so it was like was that a promise you know in some ways you consider what you can say it was a promise but in some ways I don't know that it was necessarily said in cyberpunk 277 you know it's all conservation but at any rate it's just the fun the inspiration the the excitement the fantasy of that and that's what drove us being like and when they presented it I'm like yes let's do this let's figure out how we can do this and you can do that now and I can't wait until I see some individuals because it's not like much like you could imagine in real life if you're trying to like you know uh you know fishtail you know bring up the the sides of your doors and then Precision shot someone that's kind of difficult to pull off so it will be somewhat difficult to pull up but you can you can that's what's really cool right right because when you free aim while you're doing it and then shoot at a gas tank or shoot the tires or something like that or do some head shots while you're doing that and of course to make it a little bit easier on you you can do send a Vistana krasnikov to slow time while doing it so but yeah yeah so it's the fantasy fulfillment that's that's right yeah let's let's start to dive into Phantom Liberty if you don't mind a little bit um I'm gonna start at the very beginning the Booboo Basics the one that everyone the question everyone wants to know Idris Alba how did that come to the conversation why and and thank you [Music] all right on so uh Jose come a short list of actors if you will that we feel that is very much can fill characters that we want to make I mean there's a certain type of brand of characters we like to make at CD project red and in cyberpunk 2077 you know Noir and um you know just really kind of powerful subtle acting right that's sort of like acting in the in in in the uh um concise words and looks and stuff like that right and there was stuff we wanted to do on uh you know Facebook Anderson inner cinematics to kind of just deliver moments just with like looks and stuff like that and it was like it was just like it yourself it was just like yes he was like the top of that that short list so to speak and you know Biz Dev and stuff approached and it was like okay here it is and at the same time there was brainstorming going on about like what might the story be for the expansion um and then we were getting closer and closer to that kind of uh you know cyber spy Thriller theme you know there were steps to get there but at some point there was a super spy right and then you know I don't know chicken or egg as it were just at some point it was like yes this is this is the spot for him and then as time went on you know at the beginning there's ideas for the character and as time goes on and we iterate the character you know um evolves changes a bit kind of stuff and then you know we've got our hopes and dreams on how it might be executed read the character he plays might be executed and then we get in the booth with them and then you know we give you know some of the some of the notes and stuff and then when he starts to deliver it and then make it a little bit even you know more than you imagined I I mean it's just it was just it's just you know I think it's not a cliche but it was just a privilege like it was just so awesome to see um and there was um certainly as we evolved it you know and as you get into these characters and um you iterate like iterate with the narrative team and stuff you you start to kind of like recognize or attach to certain like flaws or characteristics of different characters and then you have these ideas in your mind and then when an actor is powerful as interest like brings it to life I mean it's tugs at them heartstrings and you know again you know no no spoilers spoiler free right spoiler free but yeah there's there's moments and I can't wait for players to experience it there's there's certainly moments there that is like wow it is yeah yeah so you're actually doing the kind of you were there when he was doing the lines and the was he doing mocap he did he did more cat he did um uh uh in the booth but was either nobody was there oh oh remote okay oh I see yes were you like were you watching him on a train like does this or he's like in Japan and he's bossing around actors in LA with like four screens around was that you are you the same so at the beginning like at the at the beginning yes for like coaching him we fit in Direction it goes through to the the person in the booth there goes to him so it was like a telephone game but hearing it and that's the flow of it but then there's so many scenes and it's like I got a team right and so it's like the story director was on some of them the the lead cinematic designer on some of them so it was that kind of thing it was a team working with him yeah right okay so yeah if you actually met interest in person then yeah cool he seems like a good bloke I saw that interview with IGN where they put to him the whole sex mod thing he got a twinkle in his eye during that whole thing he really likes it he loved it where did this obviously there's a bunch of D and Idris has is it impulse like a radio station I know he's a big DJ did that idea come from your side or from his side how did that come about you know to be honest I think it was um I don't I would I don't know I don't know it was kind of just like I I think it was at this it was just in a conversation at the same time with Biz Dev and I'm not sure which way it went but when it came to my door of like hey can we put a radio station can we you know can we do this in the game I was like yes absolutely let's do this that's awesome let's have it but I was like I was like but I want to make sure and I was just like let's make sure he's not like a like a DJ I don't want to hear Reed's voice in two locations and so yeah so we avoided that but yeah that was my caveat to it but yeah so obviously this is a spy Thriller this time around which is I mean cyberpunk has definitely got some Thriller undertones to it like the base game I mean but this obviously is taking it to a whole new level what was the sort of Desire around that like how did that why was this chosen as the story and what were the kind of major things you were hoping to hit on when you when you pursued something like this well I mean the IP there's a you know it's a big world and there's a lot of stuff going on in the in the IP um like on a global scale the global politics and everything of it um which was a big you know inspiration for the the you know the tabletop RPG and stuff and so I wanna you know we wanted to touch on the themes a bit um and whether or not it was just going to be like Thriller with introducing some new big characters or it becoming spy Thriller I I don't it happens somewhere along the line as we're going through the iterative process of like the the the foundation story and then when it hit it was just like oh wait there's a lot of cool fun gameplay scenarios you can put the player in right and you've got the the the cyberpunk technology so you can really have a lot of fun with this and so it kind of just hit in our kind of iterative cycle it wasn't at the very beginning it wasn't like let's do for the expansion of cyber spy Thriller it was more of like let's do something that and I'm trying to figure out how to keep this fully spoiler free so well let's do something that kind of rolls in and can incorporate but introduces V to some you know uh and and a player to um you know new aspects of the IP like the larger World a little bit right and I think that was like kind of the beginning of it um and then and then it was like okay um because you know I mean you want to be a legend right in the and I'm this is not spoiling anything but it's like you know you're a Murph right like and it's like and so it's like big players right and so we were thinking along big players around big IP and then it kind of somewhere along the line and just clicked I'm like oh cyberpunk technology Thriller you know and then and then it just started rolling it just started rolling like oh we can put them in this situation in this situation in this situation and you can think of all the um and we could do it you know some of the stuff might be uh um Trope for the for the genre for the Spy genre but we could do it with our flavor and we can put it with this kind of character Dynamic right and so it just it just started flowing and it was like yeah I think we got something there let's go with it I mean the one the one moment that at least in what I've played so far that really stuck out in terms of like nailing that genre is the party sequence um again try not to spoil too much because it's really cool um but like uh I just really enjoyed like the fact that it's one of those missions where you take your time to set it up and like there's key kind of bond influences in there can you talk a little bit about how that mission came together and how you balance you know the slow kind of you know the anticipation of the approach and then the actual uh like event itself yeah um and again I'm trying to figure out how to do it without spoiling but certainly you mentioned Bond and and that was what I was saying I was like I was like listen like remember because you know um the times when like Bond just suddenly like you're in the middle of this like you know you got the [ __ ] I was about to say some words of my spoil some things you know what I was about to say yeah you're doing like the uh you know behind the scenes in the back in the hallways you know text stuff if you will and then you just like smoothly go into the park right and it's like and it Bond's just so cool right and it's like I wanted players to experience that moment and of course if they were like a bit Brash about it of course Reed was your Mentor you're you're you know you're in training you're aging and training so there's some commentary some coaching so I wanted that feeling there because that's also part of the story arc and everything with with read right so it's like I wanted that um that aspect of it and then we were like shoot this is so difficult to spoil you're doing great you're doing great because yes because there's certain beats as you said that happen there and then it was all like okay these are all the different things we want to happen but let's back these up so that we can leave some room and time for that and then and then and then when we're like okay we want some more stuff for the because I'm not sure everything you found because there's a lot of let's say Easter eggs in there to find um and so and so we're like you know in the the quest designers and stuff they just went to town and they were coming up with all this really inspired stuff of different activities and things you can do in the party in these like moments that just evoke that feeling um and so because we had all that it gave us room for the pacing to hit with that fam when this shoot is that too much of a spoiler but to hit with with that hap when when the stuff happens yeah and then of course and then of course we've got this major production that happens in there that kind of puts it as an offset and then another thing and then another thing and then another it's so difficult about smoking it's really cool it wasn't like I know you you worked at BioWare but you know like having the the ball in Dragon Age Inquisition like it is the moment that people remember so I was kind of it is I always I always love it in a game where you have like that moment and you kind of just get like a little bit of time to I don't know like explore the world and hear more stories in it and also one of the favorite things my favorite things about cyberpunk is the names of all your quests named after songs and there are some very good ones in the DLC that I won't spoil but um but uh no they are very good what you mentioned they're just taking a beat to kind of get into the characters we try to do that a few times and that's certainly one of them but there's also all the like the the bond Inspire aspects of it too but uh taking beats and there's a few other moments hopefully experienced in the expansion where it's like you take a Beat from the fast action and sometimes it's sometimes it's out of necessity but other times it is out of your option to kind of really explore and dive in and get to know some of the other characters more I was gonna say in terms of other characters obviously Solomon Reed is you know he's he's the main guy it's Idris Elba but I've been really enjoying like I didn't expect to spend so much time learning about Alex for example or Songbird or even Myers and so I mean what's it like you know bringing more characters to the plate but also kind of keeping it um you know keeping it within a limit so it's not you know spilling out too much and kind of keeping the story focused yeah yeah well what's your question like um where's that I mean where's the line but also I mean like how do you decide if you're looking at the Spy genre or the Thriller genre like or that particular roles that you want these characters to play or do you want them to have a little bit more Shades of Gray well certainly gray everything's gray like you know life you know it's gray nothing's black and white right there's always something to dive in a little bit and and just ask another question about oh you think that's all black or that's all white what about this right and that's that's the way we explore that and with the characters as well um as far as the cast of characters there I mean we want it to have you know because it's like a a spy cell for example right you know and the famous Robert Redford movie uh back in the day is like a big inspiration right but at a certain point it's like too many characters right like and so it's like what's the right amount for getting to know them and in depth and that that just comes with iteration on paper a lot of it actually and then maybe some some more with the like oh maybe we got one too many characters or maybe one of the characters we have we haven't get into enough and then we add some scenes and in fact that did happen like we added a couple scenes for example with with Alex and you get to know Alex because as we did one of the playthroughs we're like oh we want we want the players to get to know a bit more about Alex and so there's a few of those scenes that we we weaved into the story there at these moments you can have these beats with our yeah and again um you know I don't want to say what they are but yeah um I think one of the things that the base game was criticized for is um how impactful your choices were because sometimes they were often they weren't and so I wondered how do you feel Phantom Liberty hand handles this part of the equation do you feel as though choice is a more important part of the overall package here are your choices more felt or is it more in line or similar to what you experienced in the base game so have you all um fully have you finished it yet or no no I haven't finished it but I know something so what I would say is that we we took like the feedback and we tried to address it in a hopefully you know meaningful way and I gotta just leave it for people to discover and I can't like really say more than that without spoiling stuff it's tough but um yeah I mean I you know an RPG a big part of it the fun of it is about the choice right like you want to have the depth in in the characters and the stuff so you don't want too much choices that it's all shallow and it's about striking that balance right um and so we tried some new things some iterations if you will in Phantom Liberty and and just yeah you sound quietly confident though you know so that's that's encouraging the part that I'm I'm confident about is that we did take a we we leaned into it we we made us we took a start about it right like for everyone else to decide but yes we we it's it was uh in our hearts we wanted to do it we did we got a plan and we did execute on something and I I hope uh you enjoy it I guess yeah we're gonna put us some wow so uh Phantom Liberty is uh is is shipping this week right and at that point your attention will turn to the future of the cyberpunk franchise and I'm not sure if we've clarified it at this earlier yeah that's right you travel travel through Europe as you've always planned to yeah um but so at that point and we I don't think we've said this yet but you're actually the director of cyberpunk 2. yes so what was it like so was it kind of a foregone conclusion like based upon when you initially got elevated to this position earlier was it a foregone conclusion that you would be the director of the sequel how did it go in that conversation with city project red did you have any again misgivings about you know continuing on with this franchise after this massive Journey like what was it like to get tapped on the shoulder for that sort of opportunity so as far as foreground conclusion you have to ask my boss I um but uh as far as like my um like uh desire to like yeah I mean um I mean part of the reason that we picked up our lives and moved to Poland is because I'm a Believer in CD project red like there's not many companies that do these kind of things out there anymore right and it's like and I open world RPGs story driven make you make you think about relationships about the world make you cry like these are the things I like to do um and so and then as far as the Cyber foam genre a huge fan of it for the longest time so that as well you know so it was like yeah and then and then as I got to know the team in in 2020 and then obviously ever since I was just like this is there's something there's something special this is a team you know and so it's like yeah my I had that desire but you know certainly I was fully focused on Phantom Liberty like I wanted like Phantom Liberty to be um you know all that it could be um and the uh and us to have fun with it but um I don't know when it happened exactly it was somewhere between it wasn't just like at the end like oh by the way yeah and then it was like yeah and then and then obviously um I think it was at uh the non-e3 E3 where some individuals started to ask me and then it got out there but yeah you're right yeah so the sequel is a new studio being set up in Boston um you know kind of building a new studio like how many folks from Poland are coming over versus how many are you looking to hire within the US and like you know is it is it scary to set up something on top of just you know making another massive AAA game in a new engine as well yeah yeah yeah that's that's a hell of a thing like new studio new engine sequel to you know one of the biggest cinematic RPGs ever there's got to be a bit scary right yeah yeah well no it's not scary um I I mean I guess it should be I don't know I don't get scared I get excited you know you know I guess I like challenges and as far as like yeah most of the directors that report to me are coming out and we're setting it up all together so we got a good cast from from city project red um going out there to start CD project red North America um and yeah it's like we want to do multiple big titles at a time and you know being able to access the best talent around the world uh on both continents is just all part of growing the company right um and uh yeah I mean I I don't know what else to say about it it's exciting and it's gonna be it's gonna be fun and and I feel confident in in the team and us being able to do it uh will there be challenges yes of course like every game I've ever worked on and all my friends that are industry that worked on there's always challenges there's always unexpected things to happen but that's just kind of you kind of almost get used to it and it's just part of like it's just the industry it's just what you got to do right because you know what because at the end it's technology right technology keeps changing so the way you do things are changing right like what's going on with AI what are we gonna do you know that's gonna change all things what I think every day yeah I I actually curious um Boston right that's that's a that's an odd choice in game time right I don't know there's some Game Dev in Boston yeah oh all right okay but used to be but like who's in Boston these days harmonics okay sure and um a couple Indie Studios okay right fair enough fair enough and it's just a cool City yeah okay I've never been uh yeah except for what Fallout I guess that's the only time I've been to Boston so that counts absolutely all right back in the day practice all right yeah so but why question is why why was Boston selected was there any do you have any insight into that Austin's awesome well okay here here's my insight so at first it was like Hey give you know we want to set up a North America studio um and I was like oh okay yeah that you know this you know early earlier conversations this sounds great and it was like and it was like okay we're gonna decide a location and I'm like all right well you know because I lived in Texas before you know Los Angeles now I knew Los Angeles was definitely out of the question like West Coast is out of the question because we wanted East Coast for the time you know because certainly you know Global Studio we're going to be you know there's going to be on cyberpunk 2 there's gonna be plenty of people in Poland working on it Spain that kind of stuff you know the main Hub certainly will be Boston and vice versa right it's we're gonna you know share resources as needed in development um so East Coast was definitely was like okay it's got to be east coast and so taking a look at spots on the east coast and you know honestly I was like oh I guess I guess it's going to be North Carolina I guess it's going to be North Carolina and just to be honest that's what I was I was thinking and then they were like hey what do you think about boss I was like Boston it snows a lot there doesn't it I'm from the south right like it is like it and and my partner was like damn that's gonna be like Terrible Weather I don't know and then we got here and I tell you what like you know because I I visited for paxias then you know I have plenty of friends in New York I've been there plenty of times but I haven't really been in the New England area and it is so Charming here I don't know what other way to put it but it like it really is like just like the you see the inspiration for all the you know literature and stuff and it's like and you know a lot of great colleges out here and it's just like it's just cool Vibes it's just great Vibes and I do think and I don't know this for sure but it does feel more of European than the rest of the U.S it feels like it has sorry Americans it feels like it has history because those buildings are I agree no yeah I mean it's where things kind of started yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah sure that makes sense makes sense and so and so I think certainly the the the uh you know the board and stuff they probably it was just like oh it just fits culture and Vibe wise and so that was a factor as well and yeah cool yeah right um definitely not expecting an answer to this but we've got to try we've got to try go for it cyberpunk two yeah what do you what what do you like what are you pointing at like you have to give us any specifics but like what's like the the broad thing that you might be pointing towards when you think about a sequel to cyberpunk like what's the the you know like what's the the light on the hill for cyberpunk two oh goodness how can I how can I safely answer this I mean you know like big open world RPGs with with characters that you know you can I identify with as well as learn and just kind of expand your horizons on thinking exploring themes um in ways that only the genre can and ways that we like to um I mean this is I'm probably the safest I can do with it we get it we get it we get it it's uh yes but I mean I I guess um kind of wrapping up the conversation um I mean cyberpunk you know it's this is the end of its up this is the end of the cyberpunk 2077 Journey for want to a better term or at least for the first game right because you had the launch you had the updates you had Edge Runner you've got update 2.0 Phantom Liberty is about to ship what would you say is going to be the legacy of cyberpunk one how do you think it will be talked about in years to come hey man um that's a that's a trigger question because it's not up to me to say right and I don't want to like like dick like say this is what I you know because it's it's the fans it's everyone else right I guess I hope it's you know um you know and and I I mentioned this before but you know I hope it's it's certainly had fun be able to get immersed in the world but even no matter how it's talked about my hope is that it it just helps you kind of like think about topics and themes and relationships a little bit differently just open your mind a bit because that's what um at least to me good stories whatever the medium and then certainly there's certain unique ways you can approach it in a game to get you really immersed and then maybe even open your perspective even more and so this is my hope as people experience is that they have fun there's you know they get immersed um and then they also get exposed to other you know things right and um but how have they talked about to be to be decided you know uh you know not not gonna avoid that it was like man that was a cyberpunk you know uh like the genre of fantasy I was able to do what I wanted to do there and and experience that world as I as I expected or the yeah short of uh virtual reality if you uh so or or no we have VR so maybe I was gonna say yeah short of a brain dance that's right yeah awesome okay thank you so much for joining us thank you again it was fun cheers man all right bye-bye bye guys this video is brought to you by nordvpn and we actually have a special offer that allows you to get some free months if you use our special offer code Ralph you're extremely online right how dare you don't be so rude well absolutely please yes you have to be safe you have to have your privacy online so nordvpn is of course a VPN so for those who don't know what this does is it changes your IP address it hides your virtual location and encrypts your connection allowing you to increase your privacy online so there are plenty of vpns out there but nordvpn is just really easy to use you can set it up on multiple devices it's essentially one click you're good to go I have it on my phone I have it on my work machines it's super Zippy it's easy to use they even have lightweight browser extensions and uh the best part for me personally is because I'm like a freak is that nordvpn has a no logs policy so they don't collect your data they don't sell it off or share it or anything like that so that's a really good Plus personally I use VPN for I don't know about you you guys get stuff because you're in America so you get all the stuff on the streaming services but we get like a fraction of it like half the stuff is geoblocked so personally I use vpns for that in Australia it just allows me to sort of tell trick my internet into thinking that I'm In America which means I get access to everything that's on Netflix and Disney plus and yada yada which is nice you see I use like that for the same reason because yeah we get everything in British stuff I want to watch you know is there any good news bake off I want to get bake off early I'm not waiting until like what Friday when it's on Netflix over here I want it on that Tuesday night prime time slot fair enough that's what I use a VPN it's great because you can access from from everywhere and when you are trying to do content tiles content style stuff and access it from different places it's literally like you have a map in front of you and you can click and choose and change your connection to a variety of locations around the world and again if you're not super internet Savvy it is very easy to use and it's safe so we actually have an FPS exclusive offer available you can visit nordvpn.com forward slash friends per second and you will get extra subscription time for free try at risk now with a 30 day money back guarantee thanks to nordvpn for sponsoring this show so Ralph how do you think that interview um I think he uh provided some very uh insightful answers um this was recorded before that well what I had no idea I can't believe that I'm so confused now where am I we are Time Travelers yeah we we are actually recording this bit of the thing before we'd actually spoken to Gabe so we have no idea how the interview went hopefully we ask good questions Binkies crossed for the first time I'm sure he gave good answers so yeah yeah I'm sure I Believe in Us so like at this point we can say that we've been playing cyberpunk yeah for review because we have codes yeah and the review embargo would be up already yeah but I've only played a little bit of it yeah I'm actually doing a freshman okay right you're doing a fresh play through yeah cool how are you doing a fresh play are you doing the whole Danny DeVito the whole the save data yeah yeah because I mean like at this point the game has had so many improvements but also so many bug fixes because I played it back at like pre like the initial embargo review like when on PC when and this is like the troubles the Deep show up lore where everyone's like I'll never trust you again after your cyberpunk review you never even spoke about the bugs I literally heard it was all right a lips again because the PC version was like not as much of a disaster no no but I I have a 12 minute block in my review devoted to bugs and performance they basically say it's not in good shape and if you can afford to wait you should wait because it's in terrible shape but like anyway so the point of all this is to say that um yeah then like it was really booked back then on PC it was still playable and enjoyable and I really enjoyed it for sure but on consoles obviously we when we reviewed it we weren't allowed to play it on console and like that was obviously very bad city project grade specifically we're trying to avoid us talking about the console port and that happened so um it's been a big journey and they gave out codes very early consoles and PC and they gave it very early and so far as I've been playing through it it has been perfect in terms of bugs I'm only a couple of hours in on a fresh playthrough but so far it has been yeah Flawless basically so I started playing it I played not started I restarted playing paying it fairly recently to stream and even then it was it felt solid yeah like there was none of the weird stuff that was there they left uh last gen behind yeah yeah and like a lot of the improvements that they said they were going to make were in effect and it all felt like a good game then it's like the new stuff is just like cherry on top of that and actually as well when we were reviewing it just yesterday we got a patch for dlss 3.5 yes yeah so that's actually another thing that I haven't even tested that yet but I'm really Keen to check out how that works so uh yeah I was playing pretty patch but we saw that patch in action at Gamescom yeah yeah anything you're trying out yeah you're talking about people yeah it looks unreal yeah yeah well I mean because I booted red engine non-real sorry of course I booted it up when they did the path the path tracing update and in like back then it's still like that was a few months ago and it's just absolutely incredible so yeah I think you said yeah I think you said it's one of the best looking open world games I think [Music] new TV's arriving on oh yeah nice welcome to the OLED World we're happy to have you five inches of LGB yeah and like I said the the end the end of stuff makes me want to be a uh the general a ray tracing pervert Yeah and I'm saying it again John digital Foundry we are gonna get Let's Get Digital Foundry on this podcast called out that that little bit from last episode yeah cool well speaking of videos technology [Laughter] [Music] yeah uh but I I've been I've been digging it it's really cool I think it makes pretty good on the promise of that style that like Victorian belt Epoch like type of thing that I was like really wanting um the combat does feel a little better than the demo I know some people have some issues with the demo uh the dodging's a little better it's still pretty unforgiving but I'm also bad at these games naturally so it's hard for me yeah but if you're bad at it and you're enjoying it that's that's a good thing more than ever with with these type of games especially like the the non-from software ones um I found myself with this one pushing through my struggles of just naturally being bad at these games because I wanted to see the next thing I wanted to see the next haunted castle the next weird crazy boss just because like I love the art and I love the designs and the fact that they actually tried to like do the Pinocchio thing somewhat yeah it's cool I mean they take the Pinocchio characters and they make them like Dark Souls NPCs that's it but it's cool and then it lumps a bunch of [ __ ] on in terms of um your legion arm and uh Fable art abilities so there's a lot of customization even though it's not necessarily like you're putting on pieces of armor and doing all this stuff it's all in the move sets and the weapon type stuff and I've been really digging it because you can like get a flamethrower arm you can get uh you can punch mines into the ground which I would like more souls like games to have stuff like that that's really cool um and it's pretty gorgeous yeah there's some there's some weird spots here and there there's definitely like you'll go into a random interior and it'll be a little dead and lifeless but like a lot of those main areas have that whoa holy [ __ ] thing which is that was like the big thing I wanted from those trailers those trap those early trailers I was like there's no way it's gonna be that cool and it mostly is which is nice yeah I think like um it's an interesting game because it is they're very much just doing bloodborne like they're wearing their inspiration on their sleeves they're not being shy about saying and like there's animations that are like one-to-one with blood really yeah almost but it's like but that surely would piss you off on some level right and you're like come on man I don't think I think I've been thinking about this a lot and like there's been a lot of souls likes and I almost universally don't like them um I'm quite even the ones that people like I'm not super into like I know people love Neo sure not for me um like wol long is fine it's not for me um and that's generally how people approach those Souls like games they take the foundation they took they take the core principles or like the the most important design ideas and then build something new around it and I think that is the right way to go but in doing that most of those games Miss so many important elements that aren't those things that are required to make that formula or that framework work really well and so I feel like a lot of the big trap has been people trying to put their own new spin on that core idea in a lot of ways this is a game where it it is technically not doing much with it but I personally look at it and I'm like it's actually really difficult to emulate froms games and gear right because you are essentially being like we're gonna play in their core and the natural inclination is then to make comparisons yeah and when you when I do make the comparisons to bloodborne it's actually pretty favorable on laser piece side like it by sticking so close to what they do they kind of evoke it but then they have enough on top of it to make it its own okay so they do have that kind of like it's not just yes yes you know we have blood board at home kind of it's It's not definitely not Blackboard it doesn't have that like there are it's the thing that I'm most impressed by is the mechanical stuff is something that with enough time and like and most developers can get it right I think like the atmosphere and the feeling of being in those worlds is really tricky to get right and they do it really really well and that whole like you know the puppets are rampaging and like turning against people as being a kind of standing for you know like the the bloodborne stuff or diseases like ravaged everyone it works really well but then from a gameplay side they have looked at that framework I've been like let's use what they had as a foundation what else can we take from other games on our own ideas and put it in this game they've got a bunch of mechanics from sakuro like they have the arm is basically the uh you know the Sakura's arm and um the pacing is really really well done it has the kind of like attack back to recover your health thing yeah which is good um and then they've got their own little twists on it like they the weapon crafting and like upgrading and customization system is really really cool it's like every item is a blade portion and a handle portion and they each have individual abilities that they though on you and you can like take the blade of one and the handle of another put it together and create something new and it's like really really interesting and it's their own thing and I think that's where they kind of distinguish themselves and then they've just got like the Pinocchio stuff is really cool like the loading screen is Pinocchio's nose yes it says it's kind of funny because lying is a part of I've heard the game it doesn't as far as I can tell I've not finished it but it doesn't manifest in a very like exciting it doesn't make the most of it it's that it's you know how in bloodborne the umbilical chords is how you access the three endings in this it's like are you lying a lot or not the one interesting thing is the more you lie the way uh Pinocchio animates slightly changes it becomes a little more like human really because obviously he's all puppets are built and programmed so that he cannot lie except for Pinocchio who who is the exception who can lie and as he as he do more lies he's like he feels a little more human in a lot of ways that's right I don't think it manifests in a it will get you one of three endings sure but I don't know if they're drastically different that's his nose girl throughout the game sadly not he always looks like chemicals what if it like is it as a weapon yeah is it bloodborne where if you put the right uh helmet on like the Triangular one when you slide down there he goes well like that guy from Slipknot you used to have the pinocular oh yeah yeah he used to yeah wank it off what I like though is the one and off wait excuse me jerking off one more time no actually because I mean I didn't get the chance to review it because I was here basically and so Austin reviewed it for me but I did read his review uh before like the editing process whatever and um yeah he really loved it he strongly recommended it and he said like exactly what you guys are saying which is that yeah it's it's definitely very bloodborne 100 and it's not trying to shy away from that but it's also not just doing that it's doing some stuff on top yeah and because of how hard it's working with those things on top and because of how much it now is the fundamentals you don't feel cynical towards this being like clearly bloodborne like yeah 1.5 because otherwise because my first look at this was okay that looks really nice and all but I wonder if they're just doing that and we pay it when and we play it and we're like come on guys you really didn't try and go much do it much with this whatever so it seems like it didn't fall into that trap yeah and you know it was special people have been dying for another bloodborne for ages yeah yeah like they've come in and been like we'll make it and then we'll put our own thing there's also like stuff in there that they don't do quite right like where I am like you start off the game and you can upgrade through the Stargazer which is their version of the uh the bonfire or the Lantern and at a certain point you stop being able to do that then you gotta go back to the equivalent of the Hunter's dream to speak to their equivalent of the doll and it's just like ah it would have been good if you could do that from everywhere which is how it starts um but then they also have like really cool little touches that I love like when you're when you're out in the world and you're collecting um is it called ethos which is their version of like blood dregs or whatever when you have enough to upgrade the counter changes color to tell you hey you cannot upgrade now which is something in bloodborne and Dark Souls they never do but it's just like a nice little thing yeah it's like oh you guys thought about it a little more than just like upgrade Move Along yeah but yeah I I'm especially I mean like I'm sure NEOS has made other games but like for me this is the first game I have actually paid attention to of this and in my mind it's a you know debut game from them yeah in a lot of ways and it's incredibly strong like it's so so good there's like a market out there for people like a studio to come along and be like oh we're gonna do what they do but like mix it up a bit and create their own little niche within that world and yeah they can be the Pepsi to the coke you know or whatever so I also just like uh to what you were saying before with the the lying stuff is that like I like that NPCs will like have things to say and they'll talk about the lying and discuss the ramifications of lying not even like oh it's gonna mean you're gonna get an alternate ending but like actually it's like what it means to lie and like what yeah and I was like oh they're like there's something here like there's a little bit of like they're trying to figure something out talk about something and yeah actually also more overtly indirectly tells you a story yeah it's not amazing it gets it gets video gaming yeah it gets video game but like it's it will give you cut scenes and it looks cool seeing like Pinocchio sit down into this mad like Tesla like device where he's like being electrocute to change his water and stuff okay when you said Tesla device I'm like there's like cars in this game like no like science like the real one like the prestige it's very impressive yeah it is perceived as hell yeah yeah I I I I have there's no souls like game that I would wholeheartedly recommend and be like that is a good one if you want to play it that's one that I will give the thumbs up to and I have the terms of approval you go yeah look at the camera and say that seal improve seal of approval there we go can someone Photoshop like the Nintendo one yeah uh the other thing we wanted to hash out this week is some of the unity stuff yeah uh now this is ongoing it is definitely probably going to rapidly change because it has and Chances Are by the time we're talking about it something has evolved in huge ways fingers crossed all the leadership team are fired they've walked back to change and everybody's back and everything goes to normal yeah and every Unity gets to be a cool company that developers want to work with because right now none of them will make a unity game ever again so why are because I'm I'm not very um like smart so why are people upset essentially they changed their monetization model for this how they work with developers how they utilize the tool set yes yeah they essentially uh as of January first of next year are updating uh I believe what they're calling it like it's like a real time run time run time that's it it's called run time and they're able and they're he's gonna charge like the average of like a percentage of 20 to 40 cents depending on the game and sales and all that numbers based on everyone who installs the game on every platform so originally it was like really badly communicated as well because like how does Game Pass feature in that yeah yes so you're gonna be running a loss because people and also uh Rami uh Ismail mentioned that like hey you can review bomber games but now you can yeah download it multiple times there's OverWatch on Unity I'm gonna install that [ __ ] so many times uh no it was crazy like it's it's really insane and as someone who only understands a portion of this world just reading the developers and their reactions to it the exponent like how this affects them like charity bundles for example where developers give away their game to charity bundles yeah and they'll give away hundreds of thousands of copies of games uh to raise money for Ukraine or whatever those developers will now be on the hook for two or three hundred thousand dollars based upon previous like like it's for example if they were due to do the same thing this time then they would have to pay like two or three hundred thousand dollars for participating in a charity bundle worse it's actually retro active in a way which is that if your game is already in Market anyone from when this policy kicks in anyone who installs your game after X date you have to start paying for that right and so it's kind of like well that's not the business model that those gains were developed on they had a different there was a different deal in place when they used your engine to make that game and now it's like reminds me of that [ __ ] Simpsons episode when Homer has the elephant and he's trying to overcharge the real House's dad he's like that was under our old pricing model kind of thing you know what I mean they had a GitHub page where it was a running log of the changes made today and they deleted it but this guy actually and I forget his name but he was the the CEO yeah the legendary and there's this very very famous clip of him talking about the fact that when you were playing Battlefield oh boy and you are running low on bullets and you're like really deep into it at that moment you are very you are not price sensitive which means that if they want to charge you for bullets that that's the best time that's the best time to charge the player for bullets because they're not price sensitive at that point they'll pay for them right and then he just basically starts talking about how like whatever so that was the one quote he's a Mountain America his other one was into 2009 I think it was which was the if you're not putting monetization in your games you're you're a [ __ ] idiot he was he was he was responsible for EA it's worse when it came to monetizing oh online pass yeah he was like he was I mean like I'm sure there's more than one cook in that horrifying kitchen but like he was the head chef so like you know like it is unsurprising that he's up to that [ __ ] again yeah the other thing too that's um that's very sketchy is that he they say it's a scheduled stock thing but it's like you schedule an advance yes he and several other people at the higher executive level sold their their stock in unity like not all of it but a portion of it before the changes were announced totally um and so that that's that to me is like a a even bigger red flag um but most layoffs earlier in the year too yeah and then you also I mean the the not the cool thing but the nice thing you're seeing is you're seeing the unit innocent of all the game developers and content creators and Publishers coming together we don't make we don't uh make statements usually that's how bad you [ __ ] yeah guys yeah that's how they announce they work on our new game by the way just play the spy team and working on a new game and have been for 200 years and the way they announced it they announced it was by dunking on this Unity Chase it's badass I love that I respect that so aggro crab those guys came out and said as well like [ __ ] you guys [ __ ] hate it here like every Cult of the Lamb is threatening to delete Itself by the end of the year they said it was a joke but like oh that was a good joke I'm sure some no but like it's serious though that absolutely many games will have to be delisted as a result of that change that's not a joke it's not different from what HBO is doing and Disney are doing with their content where it's like we don't want to contact position delete it sure yeah so it's not it's it's bizarre how quickly they tanked their entire business with this you know with this change and there's a lot of people now being like hopefully the biggest like Studios and like companies step in to help developers figure out a way to convert their projects opportunity for like Sony and Microsoft and even Nintendo to a degree and various even if you even if they do replace the leadership team and they do walk this back it's kind of like the breach of trust that this creates why would you trust Unity again at this point you just be like well I can't so I'm just going to go with someone else I don't know the name of the alternative that everyone's throwing it around oh my God it's like it starts with a g it still looks like oh yeah yeah because I'm not sure yeah so there's that that's getting thrown around but obviously there's unreal for like bigger projects yeah game maker I think has been making huge strides to be like hey everyone if you join right now you get like three months free right and providing tons of tools of how to convert your projects to game maker which is huge I wouldn't be surprised if epic rolled up and we're like we've got all this Suite of tools now yeah and I think like they're one of the few companies that is in a position to Pivot and quickly create a pipeline and Technology to get people from uni onto they want to be disruptors like we've seen them do that before like it would be perfect for them to do based off the update two or the the updated update right for what they were saying like they were trying to Unity basically was trying to go off the angle of hey so charity bundles those won't count we're not going to count those they said game pass too Game Pass is also not gonna count and they also said we made this decision because 90 that this will this won't affect 90 of our clientele it's going to affect 10 and it's meant to to tax the bigger bit guys but even at that you're an indie developer you're brand new you have no idea if your game's gonna take off you hope for the best that it does do gangbusters and does super well you wake up one day you reviews through the roof everyone's streaming it like it goes viral life has changed and then it's like by the way because you got lucky massive Bill subtraction of all the hard work from there it only affects 90 of the people they say by FX 100 of the people who have Ambitions to make a game absolutely that is and if they if there's anyone out there who's like I'm gonna make a game I've got an idea they now are guaranteeing that they won't look at Unity because like if it's good and I believe in my idea I'm just gonna [ __ ] me I'm not gonna do it and so many games are made in unity right absolutely I see it all the time yeah and you need is the kind of company nowadays that like it's kind of like shady to talk about but like I have like a lot of military contracts they do a lot of business outside of games to me this feels like uh we're doing this on purpose to cut the fat of it being like the face of the game industry because we have military countries to pay for all of our stuff yeah I mean the government's not going to give a [ __ ] about any of that they don't care at all yeah yeah well that sucks but also do you have a connection to it personally oh yeah three of the games I'm producing are made in unity and uh the dev teams it's pretty bad oh yeah yeah the dev teams are freaking out and and the thing is that everyone is so everyone's talking that's the nice things that everyone's communicating I I kind of foresee that in the future as Indie Dev start communicating more there is a world where you're gonna see people go hey I'm leaving Unity but I want to go to Unreal or I want to go to um uh RPG Maker yeah RPG game maker RPG Maker and you're gonna have a lot of devs bind together and be like hey I specialize in this let's get your game over there um there are Studios all over the world that specialize in console boarding and and and even engine porting and so like I think we're gonna see it's not I'm not like this is good for indie game it's very very bad but I think the indie game community at large is is going to come together and kind of find their own Solutions yeah they're gonna have to right like it's it's almost like hey guys let's let's build our own Kazar or Morpheus and like let's go underground and like figure out a way to make this thing work and that takes me back you could say that all this [ __ ] you can say they found some Unity no you can't say that Tam you just know no you can't say that I don't know guys I just said if you say that they're gonna have to take a percentage the other thing worth highlighting if we are sticking with kind of bummer news uh is ascendants pardon me ascendant Studios announced significant layoffs what was 45. did you say 45 yeah yeah so center studios are the people that made uh Immortals of abium it was a debut title yeah they've got external funding actually so they were I think I think EA handled the marketing side of it under the label of EA originals but I'm understanding from what I've read is that the funding for the game was from almost like an angel investor and various sources and um I mean look we had an entire podcast only entire podcast we had like the thumbnail of one of our podcasts is like is there room for a 7 out of 10 game in 2023 because Jake and I like two of the few reviewers that actually kind of like this game I mean I mean like I mean to my point you know the disclosure here is that I hosted the Comic-Con panel I worked with the team closely to put that together and it was just like I haven't talked about my experience with the game but I was playing it before that and I was like I'm actually having a really fun time sure I've got no like a connection to them I think it's a fun game it's fine it's and it's like that's the thing I think a lot of people when we were talking about this in the in the thing where people were like this game is utter trash so shoot whatever else it's like it's really not it's not particularly great like I'm not gonna come here out here and say that like oh you must play a Moors of avian but it's like it's fine and it's like pretty polished the PC performance was a bit of a bum unfortunately I will like I love all different types of games and all levels of games but I will always celebrate a game that is just like a bombastic silly yeah or maybe like overly expensive ridiculous yeah exactly because I love the spectacle yeah they spent a lot of money you can tell they spent money to make this game because it had like Hollywood cast full mocap unreligion five they like this is not this is a debut studio and they're getting like funding from whoever I don't know but like this is not a bootstrap thing where they were just kind of like cobbling together a few bucks and punch down a game yeah like on the EA Originals labor which is you know like that actually while we're on this topic I just saw a headline that EA may be dropping support for wild Hearts oh really yeah I saw that headline as well no that's not confirmed so I'm not sure if that's true but anyway that's that's a side note but um yeah so anyway um 45 of their studio is gone um I mean look the Silver Lining is that the studio is still exists at least for now because look when this launched I think it peaked at around like 700 current players on steam or something and it could have been less than that I have a number it had to be the current place no I think 700 was it really what was the price it was a full price it was a full price game and it was not on Game Pass or anything and it's a brief Adventure it really should have been yeah and so this is the original window was to uh end of July yeah yes Border's gate was coming and whatever so like that level of flop which is a harsh word but it's true that's like you kind of think maybe that could kill a studio especially when they clearly spent big money on it so at least the studio still exists and hopefully they get another crack at it because I really think this was like okay maybe it didn't like even more maybe you think it's whatever but it's a pretty well made game in many aspects like it's it's a game that's well made enough that you'd want the team to have another crack yeah at something else and I was kind of thinking like look I don't think everything should be a licensed product but I do imagine about like what if this team was to get a Marvel license for example I reckon they would really crush it if they had a Marvel license and they were making I don't know the doctor strange the first person shooter calls Duty games absolutely like that could work right and so um and that would maybe would de-risk it for them because you know they've got a license they can lean on and they've clearly got like those AAA chops where they can make something like that there's a lot of people in that studio too like who come from totally yeah exactly so I'm glad that they still exist yeah it's sad obviously there's also like most game projects after it's done and shipped there is downsizing yeah for sure people well it's either that or wrong yeah yeah that or most the team as contracts but 45 is is significant I imagine like if I see if I see a future in that studio I imagine they scale down to two smaller projects like I could see them coming back with a that ideas that they had in in like another game in the AVM universe that's more like a isometric travel bus game or something like that genre is so hot right now the other This was um the studio that did uh it was Marcus lato Studio oh yeah it's integration oh the hover the hovercraft yeah yeah and it was very much you know that passion project of the creative director as Immortals is that they've wanted to do forever the difference was that was a bad game like that was a straight up bad game it really was so um I think that the sad part of this is like people are always talking about having wanting new ideas and also like that the the kind of existence of a tier of production game between Indie and and Tripoli and this feels like it's closer to AAA yeah it's still there yeah yeah the the production is definitely like you said but like in terms of like experimenting with ideas it feels very much like double a yes and it's I feel like in terms of execution it's probably what most people who used to make those games or want to make those games one out of it right like this is the game that when you're done you're like I made a double a game this is a banger this is a good double a game it's just unfortunate that it didn't really I'm not saying people have to support it yeah but like I feel like it's there are factors at play Within the industry that means that its failure is is a result of Beyond just the quality of the game itself yeah which is the sad part about it yeah I mean I think as well like it's such because clearly there's some issues with quality of that game not this not quality in the sense that it's really buggy quality in the overall package and whether or not people really find a lot in that a lot of people just find not much they found it vacuous whatever fair enough right but I mean the price point thing is I think a big issue because right now like the way we talk about games and value and no one like no one's Nuance like 70 for that game like we might sit here and say okay I had a 12 on 12 hours of that game and I paid you know what like ten dollars an hour for that enjoyment that's fine for me personally right but I think all of us at the same time would agree that like 70 for that game was not the right price point like at all you know especially in a sea of a lot of other games at the same time you put that out of 40 bucks I reckon it would change the narrative around this game people would be more like yeah it's okay sure why not forty dollars put it on Game Pass would have had a shot like all the commercial stuff is so different now when it comes to double a titles and this just reflected none of that so it's kind of sad because it's also kind of cyclical because I remember games that came out like this we all do and then the next kind of evolutionary step to make them viable was make them multiplayer or multiplayer them and make them like lifestyle games or service games like ninja Series yeah exactly what was that game they made uh just a bunch of Double A's hellblades bleeding engine then they've got well they've got great slaves shout out to enslave that's the Warriors where like this is another opportunity for the John rickettellos of the world to reappear and be like you should have made it so you monetize everything you can't make these games anymore yeah no one wants single player games anymore I do I want nothing but them I want more games like Immortals of avian where the character equipment screen is really cool and when you go to equip a gauntlet the character spins around a game called Destiny too no no no no no no I tried it's not I think timing's key as well right like it got you know you said it best to figure out earlier it got delayed when it was going to come out it was like at the right time frame and then suddenly it wasn't like yeah oh no it was it was meant to be it was meant to be like Comic-Con weekend yeah like end of July and then it got delayed into mid-august yeah it's like it that kind of stuff is like it's it's not that like the game would have performed better by any means in terms of like the reviews would have been the same and and I'm sure people would have the same gripes but in the sea of you know a year where seven attends may not be enough for a game yeah like there's just too many freaking games this year yeah you're better off just kicking it just for the sake of the game will probably make more money just by moving the date I hope they become like a you know Airship Syndicate yes like that team like they started off as a big team you know making a big project and now they just no they started off small isn't like uh the the origins of the people who worked there like because they were they're darksided yes and that kind of stuff and now they make really cool small games and I believe they work with like Riot on one of their rights titles yeah and that's a really cool game I'd love to see their Studio do something like that where it's like we're a small team we've got the chops to make awesome really cool games we're gonna do that instead of trying yeah yeah I agree that's yeah I think yeah some of the same if I think if you give them a license something safe that lets them like lend their talent to it and gives them a buffer where they can like guarantee some success I think that'd be good so yeah yeah shout out to ascendant hope you guys doing okay yeah and uh check out Immortals of AVM check out our videos yeah yeah like like when the price drops I think I think when you can when you can when you feel like it's the right price I think it's worth it yeah yeah not that you don't have any games to play because yeah when you're done with your third playthrough of Baldur's Gates you can then uh you know let's see uh next episode The reason why we're here all the games we played uh you guys got to check out Final Fantasy 7 rebirth we did yep yeah yes indeed let's deal with that it's a video game Chocobo is confirmed yeah man yeah [Music] [Applause] when I was doing they actually there's a clip in the trailer they released just well because state of play just happened by the way um and there's a clip of a chocobo just straight up walking up a wall and I was actually trying to like because when I was playing I had I was on my chocobo I saw this wall it has like some up arrows and a picture of a chocobo and I'm like I can climb that wall can't I and I was like pushing into the wall or pressing all these buttons nothing worked and eventually I just walked away sad it was like oh because there's no one around me that I could ask you gotta unlock the ultimate Chocobo yeah maybe that's it yeah yeah the red 13 can write it [Laughter] it's like imagine if red 13 Road or motorcycle yeah it was pretty cool maybe I was imagining it but he looks slightly uncomfortable [Laughter] I can't seen uh when they sneak on the boot the boat to June on to Costa lasol where he's in the human outfit of the Sailor and he's doing that weird dance thing for like forever that's gonna be great I just imagine red on the Chocobo being like you would die a hero oh you live long enough so positive sentiments sorry around like is there what you expect look okay here's the thing I don't know how you feel about this Gerard yeah personally so I was there the the demo that we played was the TGs demo which is going to be available Tokyo game show next week it's divided was divided into two parts 15 minute block where you get to play as cloud and sephiroth and another block where you're kind of just exploring the open world right in a very small section of the open world and that was it unfortunately the demo is just not I just don't think it was a great it didn't show off a lot you know it's like cool you could play sephiroth and I loved it it was fantastic super cool the the um it looks fantastic the dialogue between the characters is rad you know how everyone cutting down to how horny bald is gay yeah yeah yeah big memes and everything it's gonna be there's gonna be so I mean so much more Cloud sephiroth stuff yes there's a point where they they have they fight against something and saffron goes oh you're panting already yeah that's right and then he calls him like a little puppy and I was like oh my God such a little puppy there's some real Interview with the Vampire Vibes yeah I think that's actually not to put my actually do it but the reason why Steph Roth calls Cloud a puppy and says spoilers for Crisis Core antibiency seven just so you know is because uh there's a character named Zach who actually in that moment is playing the role of cloud and Cloud's lying about what's there yeah and they call Zach Zach the puppy the entire game yeah so in that moment when you see him call him that you know you're just you're oh you're a puppy it's like he's actually calling him Zach the puppy yes he was very he was very sexual it was it was so so I mean like I I definitely enjoyed I I guess I definitely enjoyed the demo because you know like I love the Remake series basically well the first game at least I can't say at this point but um but yeah it just didn't show off a lot you know what I mean because it was just a pretty small slice so we played another game this week where we got to play like two and a half hours and Spider-Man we played for about two and a half hours as well that really lets you sink into a game experience different things explore see different parts of it this demo was just it was just quite brief so again I had a really great time it looks great sounds great ticks every box to me I'm like yeah cool man looks like you're on track but I would say that the trailer that I saw at state of play today got me way more hyped about this game than my hands on time with it was because again the Hands-On was just was just quite a limited slice I also I haven't played it since 2020 and that is a hard game to pick [Music] there's a bunch of new mechanics yeah that's what I wanted to ask like what are the big gameplay change UPS the biggest thing is that uh now you can create um party build outs so you can create an advance like instead of having to be like oh I want to change them individually you can have three preset parties that you are just like okay this is my my cloud Tifa Barrett party my my cloud aerith red 13 party or whatever and you can just wow hot swap them like in the battlefields you don't have to open the menu just press X and a button and boom you're there they're all hanging around as well yeah it's like yeah when we're on chockables all of them are on chocobos and I really liked it because it was like you'd have up front front would be your main three and if you swap gun formation yeah and then the others would come forward yeah and and it the cool thing about is it it feels like because you know in Final Fantasy VII obviously you've got a three-party setup and then how it happened is the others would go ahead or go behind or we'll meet you at the next location cloud and then they'd call you on the phone and you know that's who you switch party members this time around they're they're hovering around the battles and they actually participate in the battles but they don't do any damage like it's like a visual thing you'll see bear be like you know fight you know shooting his gun arm or throwing a grenade like fire the hole or whatever and like doesn't do anything to the fight but you feel like it's like they're all weird moments though because he's obviously can partake because he's a like long-range that I had a moment where I panned the camera and Tifa was just in the background [Laughter] um yeah the the new Big skill they were showing off is synergy skills yeah so Synergy abilities it's like another so now in the menu of like if you have your three characters they have like five blue like meters and uh every time you I don't remember actually how to build the meter because it was it all happened really quickly but uh based off of how you stagger how you apply pressure um the abilities and how you use your ATB moves and all that such you fill up your meter and then when two party members have have the meter you can turn on a Synergy ability and it's like essentially a a combo team-up move similar to that of like Chrono Trigger or sea of stars where these two come together and do this crazy cool combat move and uh all of them I I mean I can only assume but you can it doesn't have to be cloud in another person it can be it could be anything like they are nice they all have their own combination and so it's really useful because some of them are just healing some of them are just combat yeah um the one with cloud and sephiroth was like they really wanted to show that off in in the in the nippleheim portion and it was it was so sick you're fighting this big boss and it comes up it it feels more important than a limit break almost because it's it's the whole time then limit break yes like limit break is yeah when you team up together it's just it's more fun I think yeah yeah and they have a like a countless system or like a more useful because in the other one you could block but it was like why like what are you getting out of this but in this game if you block and then press a button uh you will do like a special move that is only accessible when you're blocking yeah so like there's one way it'll be like you parry and the projectile back another one's like you charge a blade with sephiroth and then like unleash a massive like slicing move and it's really really cool that um they have that element of it um yeah yeah they kind of um they uh for you Crisis Core fans who put the the Remake version of Crisis Core Zach has this new Perry mechanic where like he can change stances and that kind of makes them like a slow tank and he takes damage but does like bigger moves and can block stuff um they kind of gave that to cloud in a more modern way so now cloud has like a secondary stance that okay they mix that up he had it in the first game too yeah this one is like a little more close to that mechanic where it creates a little more having to flow to what you were saying which is like creates unique opportunity yeah okay creates unique opportunities to counter-attack and and yeah sephiroth had similar things where it was like yeah once you hit 10 attacks in a combo instead of doing a basic attack it would switch to like a special like you know multi-blade attack and it was like encouraging you to do that stuff and they only like Synergy system is also good because it forces you to make sure that you're swapping to other characters and yeah or at least giving them commands to make sure they're involved they showed us like a private little like cool um video that was like from the developers the directors and the and combat director and so on and so forth and they were saying their biggest thing was we want players to use the entire cast all the time they don't want you and they're encouraging that yeah and and that's why Synergy ability is such a core mechanic because they want they want you to be able to do it and I agree I kind of wish that you could change party members during a fight because you can't do it during a fight yeah I think the balancing for that is probably tricky when you've got like the ability to bring in anyone at a certain point like how many how do you limit who you can bring in and he got because like if you've got yuffie and Kate Seth and and all these other characters and Vincent and all that like yeah he's bringing in eight different people in one battle that's like going yeah mad but the trailer is like generally released is wild because yeah it like confirms golden saucer is back and you the weapon fight Subway Cloud on a Segway it's got Chocobo breeding yeah it's got every the stuff that people thought this game is like that is being created with a budget and like a kind of like polished level that feels like it would cost way too much to make it everything it was yeah they're actually doing it like yeah the big question mark that that the demo doesn't really solve on the June on side is what is the open world aspect because yeah overall was very restricted yeah because basically I don't know how familiar you are with Palmer C7 yeah but um you know the portion where you like you walk from the mid-rise alarm cave to like June on and then yeah you you have the fight with the dolphin and the girl and the monster I'm a little fuzzy but yeah yeah well basically dolphin's back the Dolphin's back cool he's better than ever yeah they change the opening sequence a little bit so now yuffie's the one in danger instead of the little girl um which was really interesting but um before you walk into the city that's like the open World part of the game plays and you open the map and it you see like the entrance to junon and you see like where the rest of the map is but and because it's a demo obviously they're good there's some areas like you can't go here because it's a demo but there's not I don't really know what it looks like this feels like open zone-ish yeah that's what I would guess to follow Matthew 16 where you might fast travel in some other places or some areas are like kind of roped off differently but as of right now we don't really know if it's actually the open world that we think it is yeah especially because everything is just so intricate and specific with how they designed the map I think they'll be okay with however they do it just because for seven it was pretty abstract like a lot of it was pretty simple back in the day so I feel like there's room to get weird yeah or keep it simple I don't know yeah but I think you're right Ralph the the slices they chose were not the strongest especially the nibbleheim one like you just you walk 10 feet and then you're done yeah it was just so you can place it for us yeah which is awesome yeah very cool I think the reasoning was like if we make it too big people aren't going to get off the demo station absolutely yeah yeah but it does kind of hurt in a preview session but I mean for me personally like obviously fun of sc16 everyone's responded to it in different ways um I you know I liked the adult tone of it um but I didn't love it and I guess now having seen particularly this trailer for rebirth I'm like [ __ ] yeah man that's not like the craziness the Ridiculousness the cast of characters that vibrancy I'm just like ah I'm so excited for that again because again I I enjoyed the most serious take on Final Fantasy with 16 for sure I'm glad they explored that direction you know it's actually one of the parts of the game that I like the most of it I think but at the same time part of me was a bit like ah you could still get a little bit goofier right you can still mix it up a little bit Yeah and this trailer was just wall-to-wall [ __ ] nuns and I'm like yes let's do that please I'm down yeah yeah the demo demon idea Jake the June on portion was like there's four fiend hunts outside of the entrance station yeah okay and that was kind of the only thing you could do okay did you find the so I mean like crafting was much more of it yeah it was a huge thing too chocobos did you do the the little sniff thing yeah yes treasure around them they kind of go and then you follow the sentence yeah you tell it to like Sniff and then follow it there's a very little sugar bears that come up to you and they're like hey what's up and then you're like hey and then they run away from you to chase them and they lead you to a chocobo stop and then you can like pick up the sign and then that becomes your fast travel point oh and then you can get a little Chocobo a little Pat and be like yo what's up man thanks very much for that it has the theme did I have the joke today oh yeah yeah it could be illegal to not so yeah yeah so the menu music was also the same but I wonder if that's yeah yeah the battle music was I think it was similar but like I feel a bit different just a little like a few more layers on it it's so good it was good the music was great yeah yeah the um the the interesting thing was so with these fiend hunts there were four of them and all three of them or all four of them had three objectives that you had to execute based off of completing them wait so it's like do it in the time pressure the enemy stagger them yeah what the hell's the difference between pressure I got you okay so pressure essentially in in in this instance of of rebirth is one of two things it's either um you use the most devastating weakness of that thing so in the case if it's like a a hard-shelled enemy like using bio or poison like is its most devastating thing for me it's ice cream there you go uh or or there's a specific task that the enemy will do that you then have to perform to put it in a pressured state so so there was one hunt where I fought this um this big Condor bird thing and uh every time I got into a fight I used the assessment area and it tells you its weaknesses and statuses and then tells you a fun fact and there's also this this robot called Mia that's giving you data points and like telling you about about the hunt and the fight and like it's almost like a pokedex it's like this is the thing you're fighting Isn't that cool um but when you use the assess Materia it tells you in bold font like hey week two this week to this or this enemy in this case this Condor thing is like it will be in a pressured state if you dodge at the precise moment that it does a devastating attack so you piss it off it it gets mad at you goes to attack you you then Dodge it and then when you do that Suddenly It's like surprised that you died in a pressured State and then you build up the Stagger meeting now stack image is what you use to down really well is really fun yeah seven is like my yeah it also offs you in that fight to be like hey it's gonna do this move interrupt it yeah which means that you have to like really pay attention to the uh the actual fight as is happening to the spamming which I think is really clever yeah I found myself getting bodied a lot despite me like missing using the same old tricks I've learned from from rebirth I was like walking's not working quite as well dodging's not working quite as well I couldn't tell if it was me just not playing the game in the last three years or if I think it's unfamiliarity because it gives you a lot of mechanics to get to grips with it again I played that game so much the original and even I was like why do I feel incompetent right now because you're trying to do the new stuff but also remember the old stuff yeah for sure sounds good yeah and it's February we know it's coming February now February yeah so is there anything else coming from fair but there's gonna be stuff the last two years in a row nuts yeah but like usually we've kind of known that stuff was coming by this point because the only other window to announce stuff that's like big stuff is like the game awards at this point right yeah but you could announce something in December yeah exactly so I feel like February this year looks a bit lighter because January we've now got alone in the dark Tekken and there's something else announced in January right yeah and so February is this and I feel like there was something else coming in firm have you got a list there I'm looking for one um there might have been a couple of things announced in the uh Suicide Squad no it's not it says February 2nd that's gonna get delayed dude oh okay uh Mario versus donk Nightingale Nightingale is the um is the former BioWare guys yeah and Tomb Raider versus Nightingale and I was like what Mario versus Donkey Kong Nightingale yeah Tomb Raider remastered Persona 3 reload Suicide Squad and Grand blue fan so February's not as nuts as it has been in the past with like six AAA bangers just hitting all at once and that was just like I died in those months uh so yeah this would be nice to play through then I'm excited I'm really pumped for it for sure yeah sure I'm excited for uh Spider-Man the other game we got to play yeah yeah we all felt like Spider-Man again yeah yep definitely all two of them in yeah so well hang on I want to know because you're uh you and you're a New Yorker this is your home turf what do you think uh so I immediately got to work and just like scoured the map as much as I could yeah they added uh like upper Queens Brooklyn and um it's it's pretty good it's got like it's it's kind of how their New York is where it's like really good it's a really good fictional New York where it's like you can recognize landmarks and you kind of can go off of Direction and neighborhoods do have somewhat of a feel to them but it's all very sterile it's idealized right you know it doesn't have that that grit or Grime to it um no I'm shouting I'm walking here no I mean that's definitely in there that has to be right um either that or hey it's Spiderman there's a lot of that stuff yeah but uh yeah it's interesting because it's like a lot of low-lying areas now like in England in Brooklyn so yeah which is rapidly changing show in real life constantly so yeah it was it was it was cool I the thing my biggest takeaway like environmentally was just how much brighter and vibrant everything is definitely because you know I I played Spider-Man the remastered PS5 PC version so the density the crowds the cars has already been pretty great Miles Morales was a big jump in Fidelity too but now I think it's like a more of a color palette and lighting thing where this game is like whoa like it's very in your face it's a different time of year or two it's like spring or summery but it's just got a lot of like life to it which is cool yeah yeah for sure yeah the crowd density on the ground was what really was like yeah just straight away as soon as you look down you're like okay this is a different game than miles or remaster whatever like they're just the level of visual Fidelity but even just like when I first stepped into that there's just because the demo began with um like this scene in a church yes right and you know like Pete's in the symbiote suits and it's all like black and very slick and just the lighting on it the lighting on the wood and the textures on it the whole thing I was just like wow man this looks significantly better than I remember like yeah I mean and I remember that game looking really good back then so that was one part of the demo that really stood out to me just like visually it's it's quite a step up for sure yeah it's uh it it's also just there's a lot more going on that was my big takeaway especially with combat definitely it's like a lot of yeah it was it was pretty rough because now it's like okay you're you're worrying about the Dodgers you're worrying about certain attacks that you can't totally but then like there's different yeah so now it's like there's you gotta look out for yellow you got to look out for red then you gotta look out for blue and it's all coming at you a lot and uh yeah you can Paris I've got a man can Parry but not like Batman where he'll grab your fist and twist it around he just goes yeah like that like he has like a Wonder Woman yeah it's like a it's like an explosion of symbiote yeah yeah it's it's genuinely reserved for like if a heavy or like big weaponed character is like going into two blades they're like yeah yeah here comes the big move that's when you're like all right and Perry yeah I think that the Parry thing has like one step too many because like it the yellow is to tell you an a parable attack is coming yes and then the red is now you hit the Parry button yeah I feel like I think in Sakura it's like which is the main point of comparison for me but it's like it flashes like this is about to happen and then it just happens and also watch the animation it's like back bridge for the power black is a wild choice and blue is like safe cool stuff is happening yeah and it's like it's blue is a crushing attack which you just need to get out of the way of and also uh shooting bullets is also red yeah like pictures and block bullets no it doesn't dodging does but they're both red so you're like I'd like to see Spider-Man Parry a bowling that's how Uncle Ben died that's brittle yeah there's a lot going on it did lead to a lot of encounters just with enemies like you know a sword guy gun guy heavy guy a lot of it just felt Messier more chaotic I couldn't just smoothly just stand there and like take everybody out because like I played the game the previous game a lot but we also dropped in at level 25 yeah so we yeah no adjustment period right I mean I got dumpstered multiple times on this demo it was cool to get my ass kicked by the lizard I was like cool yeah he also he kicked my eyes many times as well and I was like do I suck I'm like yeah I do suck at the same time it's level 25 like I'm sure I would have had a lot of practice by this point yeah because yeah there's a lot of abilities and all those new mechanics and whatever so but I mean I actually felt the difficulty was really well tuned in the sense that I had to focus and I had because there was a risk because there's a lot of new abilities now the symbiote suit kind of just dumps all this power everywhere it's like yeah just huge net worth of face button correct and you can kind of just use them on cooldown almost if you're playing well because the cooldowns are really short and I was kind of worried like with those abilities plus the Parry is this gonna be like really easy now and whatever but no like they're up the difficulty it seems to like there's a balance for that there's tons more enemies this time around yeah yeah you're like you know I think I was like uh climbing a roof trying to knock out one of like craving satellites and the rooftop had like eight people but I must have fought like 30 because they just can't come in and then you have the flying robots and you're constantly just whipping and pulling yourself and it's it can be overwhelming but it never felt unfair sure it felt like once I learned it okay I think I got it yeah I think like there is a lot to get to grips with but once you internalize it as we probably would from the start it makes a lot of sense like they have the innate power on the left hand side which is you hold L1 to access it which is for Peter it's the Symbiote and for miles it's the bioelectric stuff and then they have the technology stuff on the right side yeah and the technology stuff is more to create like an Enviro or manipulate the enemy yeah like you launch them with a technology thing or you like bring them together and then the other one is where you either do for Peter it's like heavy damage that also just happens to have AOE impact because it's December and it's just like Reckless yeah whereas for Miles just a little more focused like I can use my electric abilities kind of like do damage and move around which is so it's a lot to think about in one like encounter that you haven't like built up for yeah but when I did towards the end get to grips with it it felt really satisfying it felt like playing one of those like very mechanics heavy fighting games yeah so I enjoyed that element of it I was um sorry Gerard no go ahead I'll just say I think my probably my favorite part of the whole thing was just Yuri lowenthal getting mad like that was a really sick angle you know because and I said in my video I'm like you know like Toby Maguire God love him my favorite Spider-Man but he could never sell the Symbiote like he's just he just couldn't sell it you know he danced his way through he's like with the hair with the dancing with the cookies none of it worked right but like Yuri long thought was just a hundred percent selling it in his delivery yeah you just feel this like seeding anger rising up without it over without him being like without it overdoing it so he's like he's not like comically evil he's just kind of like a pissed off Pete it reminded me of the fox kids yeah so I I think that whole angle is great because it creates a lot of natural tension with Miles because there's one scene where like Peter's like oh you know miles dropped a ball he's like kind of blaming miles yeah he's not really it's like relaxed yeah yeah he was trying his best it's not good enough you're like okay and he definitely didn't drop the ball that's that's genuinely being an [ __ ] yeah yeah I think that angle is really interesting thing because obviously that is going to spill out into his relationship with MJ it's going to obviously affect the way he works with miles it's going to have like internal struggle for Pete himself like I'm just that storyline I'm really keen on yeah yeah I think narratively it's like doing some really interesting and potentially ambitious things because it is like about both characters having a crisis of identity and conscience and also like Discovery and loss of family like Peter lost family and now Harry's back so he's regained what is effectively a brother because it when you see him talking to miles or other people he's very aggressive when you see him talking to Harry he's still normal yes he's like you can see the love he's almost it's almost like the Hulk holding a flower yeah yeah exactly and you can tell like and that the Symbiote obviously takes your innate feelings and twists them and amplifies them yeah and you can see that how his love for Harry is making him like worse to everyone else at the same time miles lost his dad yeah and you know Martin Lee are still out there somewhere and he's fixated on Revenge but he's trying to justify it as like a heroic thing that he's trying to do and yeah they're both on the wrong path as Spider-Man yeah but they don't realize it which is really cool and interesting it's like one of the fundamentals of telling a good fight Spider-Man I agree they've always insomnia get it like yeah and I think for me that's that's the thing right because I'm sure there'll be a lot of cynical takes on this game which is like oh it's just Spider-Man two you know like Spiderman or Spiderman is literally what I said in my red review it's more of the same but you have to remind yourself more more of that same is more it's very the best like sorry one of the best Superior games ever made yeah and it's like it's I I think it quite similar from what I can see quite similar to Ragnarok right God of all Ragnarok which is that this is a continuation of a saga it started with white with with PS4 like you know original Spider-Man it was continue with miles in a kind of spin-off fashion and now it's the next chapter in that major story and so it does reference a lot of what happened in the original like in the in the previous games um it's same like similar cast and whatever else same location same feel like this is not you're not picking up a different game here yeah and I think you know some people are going to be like well it should feel completely different like no it shouldn't it's a sequel to a very good video game and this is it and it's a new story and that's the part that's really drawing me like I'm coming for the story yeah that's it I'm like I'm over there like the combat stuff is a nice addition I like it Brooklyn and Queens sure why not one thing I would say is it would be interesting if those locations were more diverse in terms of how they felt to play I went over there and I was like okay yeah there's not as many skyscrapers as well yeah Batman yeah you're literally just flying and it's like it was very easy to fly in and out of those areas and not really feel much difference to it you're just super Manning around like especially if you want to get places quick like you're gonna find yourself relying on Just Wing suiting so the wingsuit lets you Glide especially if there's no buildings but then you can jump into you slip into like a Windstream down like a city block yes and then that's kind of like turbo mode where you are just flying straight yeah through New York City there's something yeah shoot you up yeah we did we did ask one of the devs like why would you swing if you can fly yeah and he did point out what we experienced is like wingsuit is good for short bursts but very quickly you slow down you're not moving as fast as you think yeah in one of those slips I actually experienced that myself where I was like oh wing suit I'm gonna do this all the time let's go yeah but then after a while I was like this is not as fun as website it's still fun don't get me wrong but it's just way more fun to be web swinging and so that's what I eventually did you know because I and it because I was like I can fly in a million games but I can only web swing in one or I guess two with fortnite so like I'm gonna just do that here that's what I went back to you know I was enjoying it more it works better as like one part of an overall like yes Loop of movement and it's is they basically put it in there because there was that moment in the original games where you're like you swing out of the city and you're on a park and you're like oh no thank you yeah did you guys when you beat the game did you go back and do the side quests no because I was doing side quests I was doing side stuff as a thing I was like kind of did you guys do the one about the uh about miles in the high school no no no no no I got a good one I beat the demo uh and I noticed that everyone was gone because I was taking my time it was like just Jake Tam Lucy and Jeff Keeley everyone else was gone yeah yeah and uh I stopped playing and and shout outs by the way to all the users who work at Insomniac Games to Josh and to what was his name Kai uh he's a user who watches all of us and supports us we appreciate you guys um they work at the QA team over Insomniac I appreciate them um after I was done playing he was like do you want to go back in and play more and I was like what do you mean there's more to play and he goes boot up the game again and abandon the mission so I did and then I opened my menu and I had side quests that I could do that were completely different from the main story and I was like oh okay so I did one where uh and this is like what I well my favorite part about my favorite Parts about this demo experience was that you play as both Spider-Man obviously but miles is still in high school yeah so like trying his college essay yeah yeah yeah so he still has like like his side quests very much are like be a student kid and Peters are like you got to be an adult and do laundry and deliver pizza whatever it is right and so um for Miles uh the school mascot was stolen from the Rival school and you and they made it seem like that they stole it a person they're like Lance has been stolen like he was supposed to be at the pep rally and like this like crazy hacker is like the one responsible for it and he's to be reprimanded and as you start doing this Mission it's a cool puzzle mission where you're reflecting light and using your moves to to change where it's pointed and then there's like a crypted message that you then use to go to a different location and it all culminates in you opening up a storage locker and inside is the hacker which is just a bunch of high school kids who know how to use an iPhone and Lance which is just an empty stuffed animal suit of a lion which is the the the uh the mascot for the school and so miles is like great I got the mascot and so instead of like Fast traveling to the mission being over you're swinging around New York with this huge lion mask on your shoulder be in miles is like trying not to like give up as he has this huge mascot on him and it's kind of slows your momentum building a little bit you can't use the wingsuit but there's just something funny about this mascot that's like half of you as you're like trying to go back to school yeah nice it was cool that'd include that in the b-roll no no no there's also like a couple of interesting things one of the things like even when I was talking to them they very very carefully avoided ever saying symbia and Venom yeah like oh yeah I know people call it the black suit but like in a way like people call it the symbiote suit yeah way more and they were like we're not saying that yeah they there there is no Flash Thompson mentioned yeah there is no Eddie Brock mentioned and they keep showing Venom so it's like there's a question around what the deal is like I just want to say like if the last game did a great like the last game it was a big move to kill off MMA like especially because that was before that had been done in a movie or anything like that was a big leap I feel like with this Venom thing they're going to give us not the traditional yes what everybody expects and I want to see that this is like it feels like they're holding back kind of like how Doc Ock was a surprise when you jumped into the game like oh is he gonna what's gonna happen is that gonna be and then oh [ __ ] yeah so also we didn't mention like Craven the hunter is in there and they're doing like a good job with him he's like menacing and he's he's there to catch um the lizard he's gonna say he looks a lot better in the game than he does in the movie oh yeah yeah he's like a character that doesn't get a lot of time in Marvel stuff he feels like the Chaos Agent yes he's just there to kill I know that was the coolest thing about it there's this one moment where where Peter is like fighting the crocodile and crave at the same time yeah and he's pissed off in the suit because he's trying to hit him with the with the needle in the other and and Craven's messing it up for him and so he's like mad at everyone he's like he's like why can't you all just let me do my damn job yeah yeah yeah he's like Dr Connor is like you're just just stop just you need to just stop let me help you yeah uh I did get to break this or I tried I pushed the swinging as far as I could I unlocked yeah as much traversal stuff as I could and there's some new move so first of all the swing animations are like oh thank you incredible you got it in Miles Morales like they amped it up for miles and he's expressive and he's light and he's loose but now you have that here for Peter as well so he's got a lot more expressiveness to his swing and then the new moves are pretty cool a lot a lot of cool options I actually was surprised how much I could increase you know because in the previous game it was like you got your momentum up to full speed and that's about it like you just got there and then that's how you go but now like it seemed like you could kind of go a little further a little faster yeah yeah they said they actually specifically said that though like in the briefing they'll like fly through New York faster than ever before yeah so maybe they were just talking about the wingsuit but like yeah maybe there's something like the the one where you like Ping yourself off a building like and then the loop the loop is yeah it's designed I think they want you to go higher as well yes so you can wing suit down so it makes sense yeah I'm in I'm an easy Mark the last game is like one of my favorites I feel like every time we do a preview we're always like uh you know on the fence about it like you know we'll see if it works out and it's good but like I'm even just like yeah this is gonna be good like that was my first Sony preview and I had a great time dude when when Craven like got in in symbiote Peter's face and he was like yes I smell a beast I was like oh my God this is so cool even Sonia doing a horny content I didn't even mean that but yeah it's the year of The Thirst Jesus yes yes yes next we're going to talk about a question from one of our users user questions Jack we saw we do off topic Jack asks what are your top three movies of all time with only one sentence to justify each yeah all right see good question I'll go first here we go but none of these are gonna surprise anyone uh Back to the Future nice good choice it is one of the the best time travel movies that is aged relatively well relatively yeah excuse me incestors kids are gonna love it uh Scott Pilgrim Vs the World it is the best video game movie that's not a video game it elicits those feelings of it and I love Edgar Wright and how it's directed and then the mummy oh yes thank you thank you yes yeah you don't have to explain why yeah oh Carmel it's like you're on the wrong side of the river a lot of times I say uh Americans I said that from when they did it in um Finding Nemo when they're like humans think they own everything and one of the other things is like probably American it's very clever thank you Pixar so that's me what about you Jake uh so uh so you said the mummy so I'm not gonna use the mummy thank you but thank you though like speed oh yeah yeah uh because it is a perfectly watchable well-paced movie that I've actually watched twice in one sitting yeah I wasn't tired it was good yeah all right best Keanu uh also it's kind of like it changes right uh Spider-Man two yeah uh because it this is hard this is so hard I don't know because it's good uh and I mean like that Subway scene alone is so good actually that's my my sentence is the the Spider-Man 2 specifically because there's a part where he gets knocked off the train and he goes spinning off the train and he hits the street level and he shoots a taxi cab and he starts surfing on the ground with the taxi cab and he flips up and as he starts swinging back up through the train tracks the music crescendos in this beautiful moment where he jumps and goes ha like that and he goes onto the train to fight back again and I'm like getting the Willies just thinking about it anyway also third so cute that was like a kid explaining uh and then I like I don't want to pick like this stuff I it's always obvious uh um right now uh prisoners gorgeous it is freaky it is horrifying it is excellent it is that's a great choice that's it uh okay so Terminator two because it is the greatest action movie ever made sure uh still holds up to the stick even the effects which show is wild yeah um The Princess Bride As You Wish As You Wish endlessly quotable fun family romp that I watched multiple multiple times when I was a child oh yeah and then Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind because being sad can be very beautiful sometimes true great soundtrack too I am going to say RoboCop because it is the perfect film not a single friend you would change about that film in any way uh I would say Good Fellas because I think it is just yeah I wish I said that peak of that entire genre of cinnamon am I funny and my third one is my out of weird like the outer pocket one is actually and I'm the only person who says on the entire planet Steven Spielberg's hook yes I think it's fantastic I think it's so underrated it gets so Shattered by everyone no it's because I know you only left because you watched it when you were like eight or nine or whatever I'm like correct no that is thinking great great film like Robin Williams just like [ __ ] Dustin Hoffman is hook bohus everyone the whole thing is perfect the sets are incredible actual real sets doing their thing just this is not one sentence I Know Jack I'm sorry no but take it that's it and so cook man squeeze me that's it exactly that's it I love it ah Terminator 2 and mommy got taken so well I know one of them Demolition Man number one it's got everything you want it's got Wesley Snipes Kung fuing the [ __ ] out of cops that don't know what they're doing while still Sylvester Stallone is hunting him in a world where Arnold Schwarzenegger is what Schwarzenegger is the president and Taco Bell won the franchise Wars and destroyed all other franchises yeah or Pizza Hut if you're in Europe and it's it's predicted pretty much everything so it's perfect as a film especially the VR so um that's one of them uh Dark Knight is probably the best Batman movie ever made still even with the Batman out there to behave yourself um and then The Shining I think is probably just like classy Choice yeah amazing amazing movie Kubrick um and yeah yeah best horror damn it I want to go watch hook now I want to say yeah I got the 4K The Mask Who Framed Roger Rabbit Star Wars that was hard yeah thank you for that question which Christopher Nolan movies are on the screen I'm like oh yes yeah I will watch Interstellar for the 40th time on this flight let's go Django Unchained I can watch a million times a few weeks ago so I was going through a Nolan phase you're not you're not about it oh man I don't know what you guys are talking about come on I like that Matthew McConaughey he's just doing his thing I know he's green poor with the science stuff like what else do you want man it's the side stuff what's the emotion genuinely the conceit with Dr Mann and all that stuff is great and then I love transcends time and space not like well you lost me Chrissy also Jonathan I don't know the Watchman movie is pretty good the Watchman movie Watchman movies understood it and you know who wrote that movie where were you guys when I needed you because when I was in college everyone made fun of me for liking that movie so and the TV show as well oh the TV show next level Perfection is so cool he I feel like he likes okay well uh you can submit questions to contact at friendsforce.com yeah shout out to the users for giving us weird stuff to talk about sometimes We Salute You users also I should have said Tarzan also that was really good that was not uh with the Phil Collins the Phil Collins oh also if we're singing greatest showman I'm coming to San Francisco just for that if you guys say greatest showman in front of Zan he'll perform the whole show oh yeah I messaged him the other day about a musical we're going to see and he was like I am so jealous well I'll buy you soda thanks man yeah I mean technically I bought you a Diet Coke oh then I owe you let's just yeah yeah yeah way to throw it back in his face Jake yeah that's it yeah it's okay yeah well that's it then this week in the way back everyone uh this week in the way back uh games that we all love from within this week uh so we all can feel old together uh I'm gonna go first eight years ago a little indie game came and changed the world and now we know the name Toby Fox because of it it is undertale I didn't realize those characters were named afterwards oh yeah this was amazing by the way I've also not played undertale yeah this is the story oh God I'm at the fan game packs and they had like a little figure of sans and then a little figure of Papyrus and they had their names in the fonts they also talk in those fonts yep I love that yeah yeah my one is actually not one that I love but just interesting I just think four years ago grateful came out oh bro I mean like look I personally did not love grateful it was made by it's made by a company called spiders it was a double a game the comment section is like I can't believe a bunch of spiders got together so um it's funny it's funny because of how you're talking yeah so anyway spiders a video game Studio Bound By Flame fade uh Fame and also uh Mars War logs I don't know I play you play all the spiders games fair enough weird yeah yeah he's really caught in their way the studio does actually have a following like it's a thing for sure but um but um but um yeah like I didn't look I personally didn't like it it was it was like I think it was at 30 hours long and I felt like they took the first 10 hours and kind of stretched that out over 30 hours they have all these like reuse spaces or whatever but like they were really trying to do some stuff and they were really going for the BioWare style storytelling and approach at a time when no one else was really doing it so like hats off for like you know going for that and a lot of people really did like it and they're making a sequel yeah from my from memory there's that like that's on the way so yeah man great for four years that's it double we don't often mention the double A stuff in this category yeah bring it up uh 19 years ago the greatest wrestling game ever made was released Def Jam fight for New York what an incredible incredible concept yeah uh wrestlers or slash no supposedly wrestlers replaced by um hip-hop artists and they just beat the [ __ ] at each other the villain is Snoop Dogg who goes by The Crow and he's trying to take over New York and you've got like Method Man red man you've got all every rapper DMX and staggering the best soundtrack like licensed music soundtrack Bar None like still slap so hard I wish they would bring that back that franchise many of us do yeah yeah I I have like literally written down an entire concept for a new Def Jam game that involves Mumble rappers from SoundCloud fighting classic rappers yeah to kind of in a new city that's cool oh my God come on we gotta hang out I want to talk about that um uh mine is 20 23 years ago so here I am doing everything there's so much musical was it two or one pro skater too man oh yeah introduce the manual change manual wasn't in one manually Emmanuel was in two and that like but like um actually really the revert in three is what tied the combo chains together better but the manual was significant and also the maps into were like the best and it's great you didn't have a dunk on yourself while you explain uh mine was also 19 years ago uh the greatest live Sim game I've made I know I always say you are you're the Sims is your destiny I am good episode she was going to say Kingdom Hearts no no no not even be the same not anymore he's repented no I just like Kingdom Hearts fans have made Kingdom Hearts unlikable I reviewed those guys fan I'm like you get in the back yeah I get it I get it fun anyway uh no I Sims 2 for me I remember I had all of the Sims one expansions and in the making magic expansion they had a disc and it had the uh the video for The Sims 2 which would be like the main trailer and the intro movie and I just watched it on repeat over and over and over again and then honestly like Sims 4 has come a long long way but Sims 2 if you look at the animations if you look at the way that the Sims worked and like they had memories and wants and needs and aspirations and fears and everything it was just it was it's a perfect game I remember when they came in those thick DVD size cases three we had four cabinets and they would empty every day for literally years University pets it was the time yeah I remember all those expansions what was it for the first one what was it a hot date yeah um hot date living large or living it up if you're in the UK um holiday or vacation Superstar naked magic which one I remember all these boxes and then the monkey would come and he's like hurry up serve me my drinks the house party had Drew Carey Drew Carey if your party was really good television host Drew Carey would come wow Avril Lavigne was in and so is Jon Bon Jovi was in Black Eyed Peas we're in a console spin-off yeah that was made to herbs two expansions 15 pounds yeah it was back in the day yeah before they got shitty with stuff what a time to be alive yeah well and in retail yeah that was that was that was this week in the way back everyone there you go time keeps going and unfortunately it's time to wrap up oh thank you guys all for being here I don't know why I'm thanking you we all do this but uh thank you now a flight home you know so I just drove you yeah nice it's nice yeah well thank you to everybody for listening we appreciate you guys you know we're here on YouTube of course but also on all the podcast platforms rate it you know tell your friends thank you all that stuff they need to Tamp who bye thank you for having me again yeah I appreciate it I'll be stuffed back into my basement Cellar what do you got going on what are you working on tell the people what you got I have no idea I'm sleep deprived we've got like a Spider-Man thing going up soon it'll be up it'll be up don't worry about it how about the show that you and Lucy do that's oh we do a shaking show called spot on which is fine it's good yeah I want to try and have fun and do new stuff but yeah it's good I like that you just tackle just like straight straight up and down top it's like should we pre-order games this is like let's talk about that yeah no but like let's just have a fun chat about it you know yeah should we play all the games yeah yeah who was I watching you well that's it I'm Jake baldino this is Gerard aka the completionist that is Lucy James that is Timor Hussein that is Ralph AKA scale up see you guys in the next one tie your shoes and go to bed yeah [Music]

Channel: Skill Up

Views: 168,757

Keywords: skill up, skill, up, gameplay, games, guide, friends per second, the friends per second podcast, friends per second podcast, friendspersecond, fps podcast, gaming podcast, best gaming podcast, lucy james, jake baldino, the completionist, before you buy, gaming news, news, skillup, games podcast, Review, review, interview, Spider-Man 2, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, cyberpunk 2077, Cyberpunk phantom liberty, phantom liberty review, cyberpunk 2, cdpr, gabe amantangelo, cyberpunk 2077 2.0

Id: aXShm9mm5PI

Length: 139min 16sec (8356 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 21 2023